[
    {
        "id": 207505,
        "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": 273,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n265\n\nAt this time I took part in some discussions on any action to be taken to report on the conduct of individuals while prisoners and I took the view that adverse reports should only be made in cases of the grossest neglect of duty and I made no report of this kind. Our staff and patients, apart from an occasional minor misdemeanour by one or two, conducted themselves splendidly.\n\nOn 4 September the large Empress of Australia arrived. I took two R.A.F. doctors to the Central British School where they saw something of the population of bugs and very understandably wanted to occupy apartments in nearby flats. By now the R.A.F. had brought 3000 troops into the Colony and they needed hospital services for their sick. There was, as might be expected, some confusion in the various administrations. Some people were moving too fast with too little thought, while others thought too long before moving.\n\nOn 5 September I went off to the Empress of Australia early and later found that Surgeon-Captain George Abercrombie was now Fleet P.M.O. in the battleship H.M.S. Anson. Abercrombie was later to be a founder member and in due course a distinguished President of the College of General Practitioners (later a Royal College), and I had the pleasure of meeting him quite frequently in London later. He kindly invited me to lunch in the Anson one day. Long voyages in warships in wartime conditions had left him looking rather pale, while of course I was pretty thin by that time. The main dish at lunch was a mutton stew in which the mutton was extremely fat and the watery part of the stew was laden with fat globules. I well remember the look of horror on his face as he watched me dispose of what to him must have been a repulsive dish.\n\nAt this time I learned that Colonel Lindsay Ride was replacing Field as senior officer in the army in Hong Kong. Ride had commanded our Field Ambulance during the fighting in Hong Kong. He was a professor in the University and his Chinese students helped him to escape as soon as we surrendered to Mainland China, where he set up an organisation to keep in touch with events in Hong Kong and which helped people to escape from the Colony. I believe that it was through his thoughtfulness that my wife learned that I was still alive after hostilities ended but none of the messages I sent off from Hong Kong after our release ever arrived. Ride was later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and knighted for his services to the Colony.\n\nThe R.A.F. hospital moved into the Central British School",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207530,
        "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": 298,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "290\n\nEditor's Footnotes\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\n1. Dr. Bowie's own career and achievements, before and after the historic events of which he writes, will be of interest to readers of this Journal. They are as follows:\n\nM.B. 1918. University of Glasgow.\n\nF.R.C.S. Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh 1929.\n\nHonorary F.R.C.G.P. (Royal College of General Practitioners) 1969.\n\nSir Arthur Keith Medallist, Royal College of Surgeons, England, 1969.\n\nMain Appointments, Army.\n\nCommissioned R.A.M.C. 1918.\n\nServed in U.K., France, Germany, Turkey.\n\nSeconded to Egyptian Army 1923-25.\n\nShanghai Defence Force 1927.\n\nTerritorial Adjutant, 54th East Anglian Division T.A. 1928-30,\n\nSurgical Specialist, British Troops in Egypt 1930-35.\n\nSurgical Specialist, Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, London 1936-39,\n\nSurgical Specialist, British Troops in China, Hong Kong, 1939.\n\nPrisoner of War, 1941-45.\n\nReader in Military Surgery, Royal Army Medical College, London 1946-48. Consulting Surgeon, Middle East Land Forces 1948-50.\n\nRetired 1950. (voluntarily)\n\nCivil.\n\nRegional Postgraduate Dean, British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London in North West, South West Metropolitan and Wessex Hospital Regions, 1950-70.\n\nNow Retired.\n\nDr. Bowie was awarded the O.B.E. (Military) in 1946.\n\n2. Dr. Bowie's account of Japanese attitudes and behaviour can usefully be set beside the comments of Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and Dr. Li Shu-fan, the eminent Hong Kong surgeon, who both experienced them at first hand. Sir Selwyn writes (pp. 71-72 of his autobiography referred to at p. 178 above):\n\nNobody can deny that man's potential for cruelty was exhibited on an appalling scale by the Japanese in the stress of war. It was predictable in the circumstances that I should suffer my share of ill-treatment at their hands, and this is what presently came about. Yet the feature of their character that stood out from that whole experience was in fact their unpredictability. They would be acquiescent, even humane, when least expected, vicious with sudden fury after a phase almost of apathy. They could respect, sometimes, a principled stand or an unflinching argument, and yet visit a meaningless rage upon the helpless. To attempt to understand them was the plain duty of anyone seeking to protect a community that was at their mercy, and the first lesson to be learned was that surrender violated their military code, making a prisoner a non-person. But this too was a generalization, and as such to be guarded against as one guarded against racial prejudice. For men are not cast in one mould, even by war, even by a code or an ideology.\n\nDr. Li's account of Hong Kong under Japanese rule is given in chapters 6-9 of his autobiography, Hong Kong Surgeon (London, Victor Gollancz, 1964) in which his comments at pp. 159-160 are relevant here.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]