[ { "id": 207396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "156\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nsteeply to one of the passes, Magazine Gap, through which roads passed from one side of the Island to the other. The hospital had wide shady verandahs but no lifts, and all windows had heavy wooden shutters for use during typhoons. A reservoir for fire fighting purposes had been constructed a little above hospital level and was fed by hill streams. Above that again was the Nursing Sisters Mess. About the same level as the hospital were quarters for warrant officers and a barrack block for male staff, a NAAFI block for recreation and a tennis court together with some lesser outbuildings. Below the hospital was the Sergeants Mess and a residential block for married staff, \"H\" block. There was only one approach road winding up to the hospital, Borrett Road, but there was a subsidiary road, Bowen Road, running along a contour line but not strong enough to take heavy traffic. The hospital was one of the landmarks of the Hong Kong scene when viewed from the mainland. Below the hospital the ground fell steeply to the main road linking the city of Victoria and the Island to the east, and to the Naval Command Headquarters in H.M.S. Tamar, the Naval Dockyard and the headquarters of China Command. The hospital was therefore close to legitimate enemy targets and any margin for error in artillery fire and aerial bombing was reduced still further by the precipitous slope on which it stood.\n\nThe hospital however had nowhere else to go, and Colonel Shackleton the commanding officer used his considerable ingenuity to have two operating theatres with their necessary adjuncts and X-Ray rooms constructed in the basement of the administration block. Engines for generating electricity, one capable of supplying the theatres and X-ray room, the other able to serve part of the hospital as well were installed and were of great value during hostilities and during the long period of captivity. When the hospital was severely damaged and the kitchen totally destroyed very early on by aerial bombs and shell fire, Shackleton speedily got an emergency kitchen operating in the sergeants mess and set up a protective wall of concrete blocks, known to us from a much publicised local court case as \"Mimi Lau's”, on the harbour side of the ground floor wards. Shackleton was a forceful character, apparently not aware of fear, who was ready to cut through any red tape which obstructed his aims. He liked his own way and was not an easy man to have under command, but to those relying upon his administration in war he always provided what was needed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207442, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "DONALD C. BOWIE\n\ntime with very ill patients, with food and from uncertainty about our future. We seemed to be living from day to day. In March however, during an administrative inspection, Saito required us to repair the ward damage and also to remove the 'Mimi lau' concrete blocks with which we had protected the ground floor wards on the harbour side during hostilities. We took this as an indication that a move was not imminent. Our sappers, helped by some of our own R.A.M.C. men, made an excellent job of the repairs and in due course the recreation room became usable again.\n\nAt this time our interpreter was Takeyama, an amiable buffoon on whom I spent some time trying, though without any success, to talk about war news. On 1 April 1943 he caught me for an April fool over visitors' parcels, and this is the only attempt I can recall at joking between the Japanese and me.\n\nOn 13 April 1943 the so-called 'unfits', e.g., those over 60, the blind and those who had lost limbs were sent to camp. Numbers of our patients in the hospital with neurological disabilities were notable and pathetic sights about the hospital with their high-stepping gaits, seeking the support of walls to maintain their balance as they moved. Those with visual defects developed a characteristic carriage of the head as they tried to see round their blind spots.\n\nAbout now we had a series of searches in the hospital and on 26 April all civilian clothing which was discovered was removed by the Japanese. This belonged to those of us whose peace-time base had been in the hospital and who, on the departure of our wives, had been allowed to store personal possessions in some of the vacated married quarters. These married quarters were thoroughly looted after our surrender, probably by Japanese. On one hasty stolen visit I paid soon after our surrender, I found the storage rooms thigh-deep in the possessions of the families of our men. Boxes had been broken open and the contents had been strewn about. I rescued a few of my own possessions but lost these again when the Japanese seized them later. When this civilian clothing was taken away, I protested strongly and made great play with the fact that the Japanese had no right to remove the possessions of medical personnel, and I handed in lists of all personal clothing known to have been removed. Of course, they were never returned, and in August 1945, I learned of the eventual fate of these possessions.\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "214\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nserve for Japan?\". We either left this particular question unanswered or replied that we were unwilling to serve for Japan. One young man who had put down roots in Hong Kong before the Far East war, in answer to this question gave a detailed account of his qualifications which were substantial. As the replies passed through my office I saw his answer and persuaded him to leave this question blank in a new form which I gave him and I left him to tear up his own original completed form.\n\nEach month all in hospital received what we called necessities. The items varied but as a rule there were a couple of cakes of coarse soap, an envelope of tooth powder, a packet of toilet paper, and a fandoshi. This last looked like a triangular bandage and was tied round the waist, the point being passed back between the legs to be secured to the waistband behind, thus preserving the decencies. From time to time there would be an undervest or stockings or a toothbrush. In September 1942 we were able to restart our gramophone concerts broadcast to the wards during permitted hours after a stoppage which had lasted for several weeks. Also in September we equipped and opened a barber's shop served by men who could shave those unable to do so themselves. Thereafter growing beards, an affectation much in favour soon after our surrender, but already dying out, was forbidden! Ten Canadian combatant soldiers who volunteered for the job came to us as orderlies. Two wounded Chinese members of the H.K.V.D.C. whom we had been caring for were removed by the Japanese. By this time they were reasonably fit to leave and we were told that they would be released in the town. I only hope this was so.\n\nIn October '43 all our staff received ten yen each from the Red Cross Society and we began to receive three or four copies daily of the Hongkong News free. We were also given twelve X-ray films, and having previously been given glass for windows but having no putty, we eventually obtained a supply of thin wire which our sappers made into nails and re-glassing broken windows began.\n\nOn the afternoon of 26 October a single American plane flew low over the harbour and rose steeply to the north to disappear over the Kowloon hills. There were further raids during the nights of 27 and 28 October. No bombs were dropped, but thereafter I thought it wise not to remove the ‘Mimi Lau' concrete blocks protecting the ground floor wards on the harbour side. At this time we had beds on every verandah in the hospital in order to gain as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210217, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "167\n\ndirectly employed. Figure 3 shows a basic structure of the Chinese oyster exporting network to Hong Kong in terms of the geographical and administrative divisions of the producing areas. Shenzhen City is divided into two major administrative districts, Baoan County and the Special Economic Zone. Two Chinese government bodies, the Baoan Aquaproduct Bureau and the Nantou (Luohu) Aquaproduct Bureau, work in parallel to deal with technical matters such as oyster bed boundaries and production, and a third (the Shenzhen Aquaproduct Import/Export Company) is in charge of the overall import/export trading of oysters.\n\nFigure 3 Structure of PRC Oyster Exporting Network\n\nGeeliseling Provenge\n\nDomaljko Pron\n\nDapper Romany\n\nthe Pian\n\nAN I LIPLINE.........-- ---- --\n\nJIMI JEdugly very spl\n\nkad saved From Campylon\n\nLisommalle day. Ingiger) apni Long antes per Jimmie der rack pekonis |\n\nDada MAJ\n\nTaghan, Yanjung,\n\n4mm alle dis dalyjbm120 a pose tempiame aps laining miraçlı kılarının |\n\nדי עי חוף\n\nShenzhen C\n\n(Maga Lam\n\n• Special Demelle Zuk↑\n\nկոոր\n\nKylling Headgleda\n\nThe\n\nVan\n\nSpellen In\n\nBasso Autospraylu | Majorqu\n\nVIDOL\n\nDompodbell by Shyachçe dgorjebakyti fungert spoken Vompany J\n\nimportante villic\n\nNurlan HAN\n\nI\n\nsenculled by\n\nMyletop Aplanka Qureau\n\nSliche uffic\n\nI do dr.II.\n\nThe PRC\n\npakking Kun\n\n=\n\nEvery year, oyster farmers are required to sell part of their product at a relatively low official price to the Chinese Government to meet a certain quota before they can sell the rest on the open market. The quota was reduced from a few thousand dan (1 dan = 50 kg) to only five hundred dan (350 from Baoan County and 150 from the Special Economic Zone) since 1979, when about 90% of the Deep Bay oysters died from a mass mortality the cause of which could not be identified with any certainty. The reduced", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "99\n\n1941 there were thirteen operational batteries (complete with underground ammunition magazines, living quarters and access roads) on the Island, the earliest emplacements for these being built around 1895, an underground battle headquarters off Queen's Road near the naval dockyard (completed in 1940) and scores of reinforced-concrete structures comprising pill-boxes, observation posts, searchlight positions, anti-aircraft sites, bunkers, shelters, ammunition and stores dumps, tunnels and water tanks. On Stonecutters' Island the Royal Navy built between the World Wars a huge ammunition depot which included eleven large underground magazines; earlier the first land-based explosives' depot was completed here in 1876 from where it was transferred to Green Island in 1906. Of the original six battery emplacements designed and constructed on Stonecutters' Island during the period 1880-1905, only one remained commissioned at the outbreak of hostilities.\n\nThe two battery positions on Devil's Peak in Kowloon overlooking Lai Yue Mun gap were constructed soon after the New Territories' lease was signed in 1898 and a redoubt on top of the hill was completed by the Royal Engineers in 1914. The guns however were removed in 1936 and transferred to the Island. Subsequently the 18km-long Gin Drinkers' defence line was constructed during the mid-1930s across the hills to the north of the Kowloon peninsula and comprised a series of pill-boxes, trenches, bunkers and tunnels, the key feature being the underground Shing Mun Redoubt covering some five hectares on the northern flank of Smugglers' Ridge.\n\nThe decision to construct air raid shelters so that the whole urban population could be protected was not taken until 1940. In the space of about a year some 22 kilometres of 2.5m-size tunnels (of which about 80% still exist) were constructed on the Island and in Kowloon, including one adjacent to the Secretariat in Lower Albert Road which extended to Government House causing structural damage. In view of the urgent need for these tunnels, the project was arranged on a cost-plus basis and gave rise to rampant corruption, one architect involved even committing suicide to avoid giving evidence. The sub-standard pre-cast concrete breeze blocks made by the Director of Air Raid Precaution's girlfriend's firm are still (or at least until recently) known in the trade as Mimi blocks. Unfortunately the report on the Commission of Enquiry was never made public; it was taken into the Stanley internment", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 } ]