[
    {
        "id": 211687,
        "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": 102,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG, DECEMBER 1941 — JULY 1942\n\nA. D. BLACKBURN*\n\n77\n\nThe following is an account of the personal experiences of my wife and myself at Hongkong during the Japanese attack and afterwards.\n\nI was still in Queen Mary Hospital when hostilities began. My leg had so far recovered that I was able to hobble about on crutches and the doctor had decided that he could now safely proceed to operate on my ear which had become completely obstructed with scar tissue. The operation was fixed for 8 a.m. on December 8th. I was waiting to be taken to the theatre when, almost exactly at 8 a.m., the wailing of the sirens and the noise of planes announced the beginning of the blitz and the operation had to be abandoned.\n\nMeanwhile my wife was at the War Memorial Nursing Home recovering from an operation for appendicitis. All patients whom it was possible to remove were evicted from the hospitals to make room for war casualties. My wife was turned out on December 10th and I on December 12th and Witham (Tea Adviser to the Chinese Government and a friend of ours) arranged for us to be billeted with him and his wife in their flat on the Peak, which the Hongkong Government had declared an evacuation area. There we stayed throughout the hostilities.\n\nThere was fairly heavy artillery fire and air bombing but the Japanese seemed to be concentrating on military objectives (particularly Mt. Austin barracks and two field gun batteries in our neighbourhood), and civilian property around us was not\n\n* Editor's Note. Sir Arthur Blackburn was Counsellor of the British Embassy in Chungking in 1941. On June 29th, 1941, his house there was totally destroyed by a Japanese bomb. Two people were killed, and fifteen injured, including Sir Arthur, who received injuries to his knee and ear. The injury to the ear required operation, as did the injury to the knee, which had become infected. Sir Arthur and his wife were evacuated to Hong Kong to enable these operations to take place, arriving at the end of November, 1941. Sir Arthur was a witness to the Japanese attack on Hong Kong in December, 1941, and he and his wife were interned from January 22nd to the end of July 1942 in Stanley Camp. He and his wife with other captured diplomatic staff were then repatriated, leaving Shanghai on August 17th, 1942. Sir Arthur was asked by both the Foreign Office and the Red Cross to report on conditions in Hong Kong and in Stanley Camp. These reports were completed by the end of September, 1942, even before the Blackburns docked in England. Because of the general interest of these reports, and particularly because of their contemporary character and absence of post-war hindsight, it is felt useful to print them here. The Journal owes copies of these interesting documents to the kindness of Mr. C. Blackburn.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    {
        "id": 211690,
        "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": 105,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "80 \n\nand get permission for us to move into the War Memorial Nursing Home, where the British staff were still functioning under the wing of a Japanese Doctor-Colonel and a gendarmerie post. He was able to arrange this for us, and we were fetched in a car and installed in the Nursing Home next day, January 6th. Dr. Talbot, an ear specialist attached to the hospital, looked at my ear and said the postponed operation should be performed without delay as the earhole had become completely blocked with scar tissue and pus was accumulating dangerously inside. On January 10th I was sent down to Queen Mary Hospital for X-ray photos to be taken both of the ear and the knee. The Martins were still there, and this was the last time I saw them. The expedition was of great interest to me since it was the first time I had visited the town since the Japanese occupation. The streets were crowded with Chinese, most of them in mile long queues trying to get cooked rice from \"co-prosperity\" congee kitchens. All the shops were shut and barricaded but the pavements in Queen's Road and the central district generally were lined with hawkers selling bread ($4 a loaf) and other foodstuffs, and large quantities of looted articles; bedding, silverware, cutlery, etc: one could have got almost anything one wanted, and all this without any apparent interference from the Japanese.\n\nAs the X-rays confirmed Dr. Talbot's diagnosis I let him operate on January 13th. He found it necessary to do a radical mastoid operation and make me a new earhole. At the time we expected to be left in peace for a month or so as there were a number of severely wounded British soldiers in the Nursing Home and we thought the Japanese would not insist on them and us being moved until they were fit to be moved. Eight days later, however, they announced that they needed the hospital and that it would have to be evacuated next morning. The military patients were sent to the military hospital at Bowen Road, and the rest of us to Stanley. I was told I need not go to Stanley Camp unless I wished, and I was given my choice of two other hospitals but I said I must go where my doctor went; so I was put on a long chair which was put on a lorry, and with my wife and our few belongings and half a dozen lorry loads of doctors, sisters and patients we went off to Stanley. That was on January 22nd. The place was in a turmoil as lorry loads and boat loads of people were arriving from all the Chinese hotels in Hongkong and Kowloon where the Japanese had congregated them and they were all scrambling for billets. The British personnel from Queen Mary Hospital (from which they and all the British wounded had been moved the previous day) were busy trying to get a hospital organised in a block\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211694,
        "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": 109,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "84\n\nanti-aircraft fire, but as far as I could see, they were completely unscathed. The bombing seemed to me to be directed entirely against what were, or might be taken to be, military objectives, and this indeed may be said of the artillery fire also. During the 18 days fighting Queen Mary Hospital, 400 yards from Mt. Davis Fort, did not receive a single direct hit. The two hospitals on the Peak (i.e. the Matilda Hospital and the War Memorial Nursing Home) were repeatedly hit by shells, but I think this was due to the fact that the Japanese were searching for two field batteries which were located uncomfortably close to the two hospitals: this, at any rate, was the explanation given by a Japanese officer who came to the War Memorial Nursing Home while I was there after the surrender. One point which struck me very forcibly was the small size of the bombs and shells which the Japanese were using. I saw many direct hits by bombs on buildings on the Peak but in no case did I see any building completely demolished as my house in Chungking was; and the shells, which I am told were mostly from field guns and trench mortars, did not seem to have much penetrating power: they hardly scarred modern reinforced concrete buildings such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building and the block of flats where my wife and I were living. I am told that the Japanese were using heavier weapons elsewhere, but my general impression was that the Japanese were mainly using what I think Mr. Hore-Belisha called “Woolworth” material.\n\nAs regards the behaviour of the Japanese in Hongkong I think I must distinguish between two phases, i.e. the actual attack and afterwards. There are many well-authenticated stories of the shooting or bayoneting of British prisoners during the attack, though how general the practice was I have no means of judging. (A Commissioner of Customs, Mr. Flanagan, who is in the \"Narkunda\", told me he had seen a number of corpses of British soldiers still with their hands tied behind their backs). There was also a very nasty affair at Stanley where two doctors, three nurses and a number of Canadian officers and possibly others were massacred. There were also apparently numerous cases of rape including a few European women and girls. The situation however was quickly brought under control and there was nothing at all resembling the licensed disorder which followed the capture of Nanking in 1937. We were indeed told by people who were in Kowloon when the Japanese came in, that the behaviour of the latter towards European women was good though numbers of Chinese and half-caste girls were taken off, obviously for ...\n\n* The staff repatriated via the \"Kamakura Maru\" were transferred to the \"Narkunda\" in Lourenço Marques. (Editor's Note)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211696,
        "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": 111,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "86\n\nwiring and piping ripped out. The ravage was so extensive that many people in the camp thought it must be part of a deliberate policy on the part of the Japanese. This I doubt: whatever pickings there were to be had the Japanese wanted for themselves, and I think the true explanation is simply that they could not at first spare enough men for effective policing. The looters were dangerous, and a party of five Swedes who were foolhardy enough to remain on the Peak were murdered.\n\nIt was not long before the Japanese themselves entered into competition with the Chinese looters, but on an official basis. Foodstuffs were their first objective, followed by metals of all kinds and medical stores. Hongkong had been stocked with supplies for 6 months: it held out for only 18 days, so enormous stocks fell into Japanese hands and these were shipped off to Japan as fast as they could be loaded. Of the Hongkong Dairy Farm's herd of 1500 cattle, over 1000 had been shipped away by the end of March.\n\nAll the European members of the Police Force were interned at Stanley. The Sikhs and Chinese accepted service under the Japanese. The guards round the internment camp and the gaol warders were principally Sikhs. If drawn into conversation, they would say they must work for the Japanese or starve; but Pennyfeather-Evans, the Chief of Police, told me that the Sikhs had been practically in a state of mutiny during the last days of the fighting.\n\nAs regards the Chinese or semi-Chinese members of the Legislative Council, Sir Robert Hotung was, I think, in Macao when the war broke out. He subsequently returned to Hongkong, but I do not know what line he took or what became of him. Sir Shouson Chow, Mr. Kotewall, and Mr. M.K. Lo joined the \"Rehabilitation Committee\" set up by the Japanese and had to attend official ceremonies such as receptions for the Japanese Governor. Lo, who met A.J. Evans on the street one day shortly after the Japanese occupation, told him that he had at first refused, and that he had then been imprisoned without food till he gave way. I have no doubt similar measures were taken with the others.\n\nI have already referred to the eviction of the staff and patients from Queen Mary Hospital and the War Memorial Nursing Home. The Matilda Hospital was cleared at the same time. Japanese wounded were pouring into Hongkong from other places, and it is clear the Japanese needed all the accommodation and the medical supplies they could get for their own.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
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    }
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