[
    {
        "id": 207421,
        "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": 189,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n181\n\nthat the fears of the reluctant officers were justified. A monthly deduction of the order of £14 was made from the home pay of officers who were prisoners of the Japanese. This, added to the uncertainty in all cases of their husbands' fate, caused great concern to wives. Fortunately, at a later date a wiser and more generous course was taken and by the end of the war all money thus deducted had been refunded,\n\nIn addition to their contributions to the Central Fund, officers gave support in money to individual other ranks, patients and staff, and some were particularly generous. It is pleasing to record the generous gifts made from their pay by officer prisoners.\n\nThe greatest contribution to our energy requirements was undoubtedly made by the rice in our diet. As an aside on this, my wife told me that when listening to the daily broadcasts on food by the Radio Doctor at that time, Dr. Charles Hill, she heard him say that rice was not a good diet. (It was probably in short supply at home at the time). Incensed, she wrote to him saying that his statement was most disheartening for families who had relatives who were prisoners in Japanese hands, knowing that rice was their staple diet. Needless to say she got no reply but ended up wiser in the arts of propagandists. Because of our dependence upon rice, that part of money spent and gifts devoted to general messing was used on purchases designed to make the wearisome rations more palatable, and also to provide a supplement on the lean days when boiled rice and vegetables were the only food available. If judged solely by calorie values the proportion of energy supplied in the general diet from money contributed by officers and from the gifts of our Hong Kong friends was not large. The money, though, bought substances which were invaluable in giving men some interest in their food and thus in making better use of it.\n\nAdding together the value of gifts received from visitors and purchased using money contributed by officers my records show the following additions to the daily of all receiving general rations\n\nProtein G Fat Carbohydrate G.\n\n1943. One week in Jan.\n\n7.9 12.6 28.6\n\nAverage for June.\n\n3.0 2.0 9.0\n\nAverage for Dec.\n\n2.0 3.0 6.0\n\n1944. - Average for March.\n\n1.6 3.6 12.6",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207471,
        "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": 239,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n231\n\nmore than a casual call during an afternoon's stroll but I would never have expected such a call to have been made by chance and at the very least they probably wanted to see for themselves the conditions in which we were guarded. When they left the guards and ourselves resumed our normal behaviour, not unlike the chattering of birds, stilled while the hawk is overhead and resumed when the danger has passed.\n\nIt is not difficult now to attribute some at least of the searches which took place about this time to the prevailing mood of the Japanese in Hong Kong. Suspicion of foreigners had been fostered assiduously in Japan before the war and xenophobia flourished exceedingly when war began. The turn of the tide against the Axis powers I suppose did nothing to soften this feeling. In Hong Kong Dr. Selwyn-Clarke was arrested in May 1943 to face charges some of which sound grotesque, and I have given a short account of his subsequent experiences. In July 1943 the Japanese gendarmerie arrested a number of men in Sham Shui Po. Under torture the names of others who had sent and received messages from Waichow via Chinese drivers of ration lorries were extracted and Colonel L.A. Newnham late Middlesex Regiment, G.S.O.1 British Troops in Hong Kong, Captain D. Ford 2 Royal Scots and Flight-Lieutenant Gray, R.A.F., were implicated. These three officers were tried by Japanese Court martial in Stanley in December 1943 and shot the same month. They had endured interrogation, a word now thoroughly debased, for many months and their condition at the end was described as deplorable.\n\nAgainst the background of events outside which I have just described we were in a position of some privilege in Bowen Road, but it seems likely that there was some link between the two situations. It could easily be that the Japanese inspections of some of our medical and electrical equipment was carried out by men capable of detecting apparatus usable for radio communications. Some of the searches certainly seemed aimed at the detection of concealed radio apparatus. We were lucky that nothing on which suspicion could feed was discovered, but my scalp always crawled a little while the searches were in progress.\n\nWe had a number of visits from Japanese doctors who wanted to see our patients, principally at this time those partially blinded by the deficiency diseases. My diary records that we found one such doctor, a lieutenant-colonel, to be courteous to our patients.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207502,
        "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": 270,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "262\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nA R.A.F. sergeant got married on 28 August and Miss M. da Roza, a local lady offered her services as a masseuse for our patients.\n\nAt this time I had to deal with complaints arising from long standing antagonisms in P.O.W. camps now openly displayed after long repression. I am glad to say that this phase subsided eventually without overt official action becoming necessary. We also prepared a system of recording the medical condition of Hong Kong Volunteers before they were freed to their homes in the Colony. Doctor Newton, the deputy Chief Medical Officer in the civil medical service, took charge of the Internee Camp nearby and we were allotted a motor car which we shared with the Indian camp.\n\nIt was on 28 August that Saito came in with Hasegawa after 9 p.m. and told me formally that all our medical records had been burned about 15 August along with their own records which the Japanese were burning at that time. As I have reported earlier I got his written acknowledgement that these records had been destroyed and also that none of the plain clothes removed by him from us remained. My diary records that I spoke sternly on this matter, which must have given me some pleasure at the time.\n\nBy now a party was going each day from the hospital to visit relatives and friends in Stanley. The journey was made by ferry and took about two hours. On 29 August some planes came over just after 7 a.m. and some food and cigarettes were dropped later the same day in Sham Shui Po. Included in the drop were some medical boxes and my diary records that the contents of these came as a marvellous revelation to us. We were doing well about this time because the Japanese delivered about eleven thousand packets of cigarettes and jam to us and we heard that British warships and aircraft carriers had been seen off Stanley. On 30 August planes were flying over Hong Kong all morning and a B.B.C. radio report said that the fleet had come. Nomura asked for lists of our patients and I required him to come and get these himself. This action was possibly required of him by our relieving force.\n\nTrue enough a large fleet came into harbour on 30 August, which was 14 days after the Japanese surrender. This delay seemed a long time to us but the arrival of the fleet brought to an end a confused situation in which we were increasingly managing our own affairs. We sent our car for Admiral Harcourt to go to Sham Shui Po and he later went round our hospital with Mr. Gimson who\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208009,
        "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-1977",
        "page_number": 48,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "32\n\nG. C. EMERSON\n\ntoilet and small shower. Most of these flats were occupied by six internees. A building which had housed single Indian warders before the war was turned into a hospital by the internees and called Tweed Bay Hospital. On a hill overlooking the prison grounds were two lovely homes, one for the Prison superintendent and one for the Prison Doctor; these were used as Japanese headquarters. Other buildings were used for housing, ration distribution centres, kitchens and other needs.\n\nDuring the final hours before surrender on Christmas Day, very heavy fighting occurred on Stanley peninsula as the Allies were pushed back towards Stanley Fort. In buildings at St. Stephen's and within the prison grounds, hand-to-hand combat had taken place. Also, at St. Stephen's, Japanese troops had gone on a rampage of killing and raping at a hospital set up there for wounded soldiers. On the site today of that atrocity is the chapel of St. Stephen's College. I had been told by a former internee that a woman who had entered camp from the Peak had brought with her the altar cross from the Peak Church.* The first time I visited St. Stephen's chapel, in 1972, through curiosity I picked up the cross on the altar and discovered it to be the very cross brought into camp in 1942 and used throughout internment.\n\nTwo other areas of note in the camp were the cemetery and Tweed Bay Beach. During internment, the cemetery became a very popular place as it was an oasis of peace and quiet in the over-crowded camp. Many internees spent hours sitting there reading, chatting quietly with friends or just thinking. On a radio programme in 1961, one woman recalled:\n\nWhen we wanted to get together, we'd always say, 'we'll meet you at the graveyard'. It sounded very funny but to us it was a wonderful spot. It was very peaceful there with the old trees and all the old graves. ... we could look out at the sea. We used to stare and stare and imagine we used to see ships coming in.\n\nAlso in the cemetery, some internees found a private spot for romantic liaisons, and here hundreds of internees gathered to watch the Americans and Canadians go out to the repatriation ships in June 1942 and September 1943.\n\nRural Building Lot No. 23. It was not rebuilt after the war.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]