[
    {
        "id": 207393,
        "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": 161,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n153\n\nWorld War dealing with the Campaigns. This was compiled from records and reports prepared for the editorial board by Colonel J. T. Simson, Lt. Col. C.O. Shackleton, Dr. P.S. Selwyn-Clarke and myself.\n\nPRELUDE\n\nUp to 8 December, 1941\n\nAfter twenty-four hours delay outside the harbour because of fog, my wife and I disembarked in Hong Kong one fateful day, 1 April 1939, where I took up duty as surgical specialist in the British Military Hospital, Bowen Road. The Colony was by far the most beautiful station in which I had ever served and the scenery recalled to me, as to many others, parts of the west coast of Scotland. Twelve years earlier I had spent a short time there on my way to Shanghai, Tientsin, Peking and Shan hai kwan so that the scenes were not altogether strange to me. We lived a pleasant life in a hotel and flat for the next fifteen months.\n\nBecause of fears that a Japanese attack was imminent my wife was evacuated in July 1940, first to the Philippines along with service and civilian wives and families and thence to Sydney with them. She took hardly to the regimentation inevitable in view of the numbers involved, and after living in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane she left the shelter of the official evacuation. In some fashion she contrived to make her onward journey to the west via Hong Kong and after a short interlude there she lived successively in Singapore, Colombo, up-country in Ceylon, in Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay before she reached England on 4 July 1942. At one time in India she was tempted by an offer to go to Chungking to work there with a financial expert friend of ours who was attached to the Chinese government at that time, but in the end she did not. Experiences of this kind were not uncommon among service wives and I include this short note of her travels to show what a war-time evacuation of families can mean.\n\nWith her departure my own life in Hong Kong continued to be filled agreeably enough with work, including valuable experiences with the University Department of Surgery and the Professor, K.H. Digby. There were plenty of opportunities for physical exercise, and I carried out an order to prepare lists of surgical equipment I judged necessary to fit army hospitals for the inevitable coming",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211697,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 112,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "87\n\nwounded. Professor Digby, the senior surgeon at Queen Mary Hospital, told me that the hospital was crowded with wounded when the Japanese ordered it to be evacuated. There were many terribly injured soldiers for whom any movement was practically a death sentence and he had protested most forcibly against their removal. Some of the doctors and sisters also volunteered to remain and look after them under Japanese supervision. But it was of no avail, and all the doctors could do was to fill the poor men up with morphia before they were loaded on ambulances and lorries and taken to the military hospital at Bowen Road. Professor Digby described it as one of the most heartless performances in his experience.\n\nSTANLEY INTERNMENT CAMP\n\nThe camp is situated in pleasant surroundings on the Stanley Peninsula. It consists of the Warders' Quarters of Stanley Prison and the premises of St. Stephen's Boys School, well built, modern blocks with electricity, running water, flush closets, etc. While there is a considerable difference between the blocks inter se (e.g., between the Foreign and Indian warders quarters) there is no real ground for complaint regarding the quarters themselves, which are probably well above the average for internment camps. The area is surrounded by barbed wire with Indian guards at intervals, but the grounds are spacious (it would take about 25 to 30 minutes to walk round the perimeter), there is a good bowls lawn and room for soft ball etc.\n\nThis having been said, we come to the reverse of the medal. One of the most serious grievances of the internees was that of overcrowding. In the Foreign married warders' quarters (which are the best in the camp) there were as many as 9 people living in the larger rooms, and five or six in the smaller rooms. In a flat normally occupied by one married warder and his family there were between 30 and 40 persons. To take\n\nIn our flat there were: my own case:\n\nin Room 1:- One married couple, one mother and baby, and 4 other women; in Room 2:- five women; in Room 3:- Four married couples and one baby; in Room 4:- Two married couples, one grown-up daughter and a boy; in each of 2 Servants' rooms:- One married couple; in the Pantry:- One married couple. The furniture found in the flats was divided up roughly. Some rooms got beds but no tables. Others got chairs, and so on. In our room, for 9 people we had two chairs and no tables. Of course, people improvised and to some extent the gaps were filled, but even when we",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]