RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 163 rapidly in the hospital but our nurses carried out full duty by day and by night though many had to draw on their reserves of courage to do so. In Bowen Road the women nurses moved at once into the hospital building from their isolated mess and were joined by their colleagues from other hospitals who had suffered the murderous attacks on themselves, their patients and their doctors. It is not surprising that many of them were deeply apprehensive. They never suffered any overt attacks but in their crowded quarters in war-damaged wards they had to guard against many peeping toms among the Japanese guards. On duty they were objects of much curiosity to sentries who, in their rubber-soled boots would suddenly materialise silently out of the darkness of night with their bayonets fixed. Inquisitive Japanese officers would appear in the wards where many patients had limbs immobilised in various forms of apparatus. Those in Thomas splints suspended from Balkan beams were special objects of curiosity but when Japanese tried to touch the carefully balanced suspensions they were speedily moved on by our sisters. In particular the lady who would have hanged the Governor showed, as might be expected, no fear. The courage and fortitude of our nurses at this time are beyond all praise and their example was of the greatest importance in encouraging male staff and patients. Early in 1942 the Japanese set about concentrating British and allied wounded, except Indian troops, in Bowen Road. The Japanese had their own political reasons for segregating Indians. By 26 February the only other hospital serving British and allied troops was the small St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon which provided a few beds for men from the P.O.W. camps there. Eventually on 11 August 1942 St. Teresa's was closed and its few patients who still needed care were moved to Bowen Road. Thereafter no British or allied wounded remained in any other service or civil hospital or building which had been used as a hospital. The Military Hospital, Bowen Road, thus fell into Japanese hands structurally damaged but functionally practically intact, fully equipped with beds, mattresses, blankets, sheets, normal hospital furniture and office equipment and ample surgical equipment, laboratory resources and good stocks of drugs and dressings and medical dietary necessities. Our stocks of ration fuel, coal and expendable materials which we could not replace were soon exhausted. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 171 engineers, of whom Mr. E. Sims was senior, contributed many talents from among their seven members and it was remarkable how other abilities, unsuspected beforehand, came to be displayed by other staff. We were lucky in our staff not only because of their varied skills but also because of the spirit they showed and their willingness to tackle problems in fields new to them. I considered that the removal of Simson and Shackleton was part of a Japanese plan to separate from bodies of prisoners those who had exercised command during hostilities and round whom men might rally against their captors. Most very senior officers were also removed from the P.O.W. camps. The only reason I was ever given for the changes was that the Japanese wanted to reduce our staff, which they considered to be too large. When I come to enlarge upon my diaries, which are complete after 8 August 1942, it is evident that the period of captivity up to August 1945 divides itself naturally into four parts. First, there was the period of the Infections, including wound sepsis, dysentery, and diphtheria. Then came the period of Deficiency Diseases. This was followed by a period of Slow Decline, which lasted till about March 1945. Finally came a few months of Relative Stability, which covered the period from April 1945 up to the Japanese surrender in August. Each stage merged with that which followed, but the divisions are convenient for descriptive purposes. All were characterised by undernutrition. THE PERIOD OF THE INFECTIONS During the brief period, only 18 days of active hostilities, I had been much struck by the disabling injuries caused by enemy mortars and grenades. These disintegrated into small pieces, almost slivers of metal, which were sprayed in a shower when they exploded. In the patients who got back, these splinters caused many eye and peripheral nerve and blood vessel injuries. Clouds of them also seemed to penetrate the skin and fat, though not often deeply, and lodged there or in muscle. All these tiny wounds became infected, the soldier victim was put out of action, and his treatment added much to the burdens of our medical services. Compound injuries of the bones and joints were always infected, and the difficulty of eradicating infection added greatly to our anxiety for the outcome in these patients against a background of undernourishment on unbalanced diets. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 175 at the corners of the mouth and scrotal oedema. During August 1942 only 17 cases of deficiency diseases were admitted as such, but the same signs were common among the dysentery and diphtheria admissions. We began an investigation into all the various manifestations and intensive treatment was started. These patients with deficiency diseases were to form a nearly immovable block in our patient population for a long time because improvement came about extremely slowly. An outstanding symptom was burning pain in the feet which sometimes required morphine for its relief. Many sought to ease the pain by plunging their feet into cold water and one patient had to be confined in a place where water was not available in order to avoid maceration of the skin. Some who had had deficiency diseases improved enough to return to P.O.W. camps. Others remained in hospital up to our release in 1945. These last had balancing problems, numbness of limbs and visual defects. The hospital had admitted 1225 patients during 1942 and this figure included all patients transferred to us from all the other civil and service hospitals in the Colony. Of the total, 443 were admitted during the five-month period August-December and at 31 December 341 patients remained. Pressure on our accommodation had been severe, and repeated changes in the usage of wards were needed to isolate infectious patients and provide room for all who needed our care. The Canadian P.O.W. camp at North Point closed in October and the troops moved to Kowloon. Perhaps because of the rearrangements required by this move, but almost certainly reinforced by the well-known Japanese fear of infectious disease, we were not allowed to discharge patients whom we considered would suffer by a move to a camp. The pressure on our space and feeding arrangements was therefore intense and this did not begin to ease until April 1943. By the end of 1942, however, the heaviest burden of the infections had become lighter, though the long haul to cope with the deficiencies as the main load had already begun. The year 1942 had weighed heavily on the spirits and energies of patients and staff. The departure of the women nurses cast a gloom over the hospital. The future seemed uncertain, the rations were poor, patients flooded in, deaths were frequent, but food gifts to the hospital from friends in Hong Kong and the arrival of a Red Cross parcel per head, to which I shall refer later, together with a natural resilience as the acute epidemics subsided towards the end of the year brought about some lightening of the clouds. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 180 DONALD C. BOWIE chases made using funds voluntarily subscribed by officers of the staff and officer patients. A first charge upon all receipts was to provide what we called "extras" for patients in need and only the surplus after this prime need was met was issued for general use. The true value to the hospital of the gifts received is therefore much greater than appears in the records I am able to give here, which reflect only that portion used for general issue. (b) Supplies bought with money, contributed by Officers, Staff and Patients. I recorded earlier how sometime in 1942 before the departure of our nurses the Japanese began to pay commissioned officers, both staff and patients. In these days members of the Q.A.I.M.N.S., as it was then, were not commissioned and were not paid. I also recorded how Colonel Shackleton started funds from which to finance purchases for the general good. When I succeeded him the funds were reorganised and responsibility for administering them was spread more widely. A Hospital Central Fund was set up and managed by an executive committee of two officer patients and one medical officer with myself as chairman. This received money, still on a voluntary basis, from officers in the hospital and occasionally from those in P.O.W. camps in North Point and in Argyle Street, Kowloon. Disbursements were made to four sub-funds; one to provide extra diets for patients, one to supplement general messing, one to provide necessities and comforts e.g. electric bulbs, cigarettes etc. and lastly a small C.O.'s Fund. The first three were run by sub-committees and I was left to apply the minor resources of the C.O.'s Fund to support any enterprise for the general good. As a side light on human nature it is interesting to recall that one or two British officers were reluctant for a time to support the Central Fund. They feared, from past experience no doubt, that the British army's accounting system would seek to recover from their pay at home the value of the military yen they were receiving from the Japanese. They knew that when they became prisoners, marriage and other allowances ceased and they foresaw that their wives and families might be able to draw only upon their basic pay. This view was ridiculed by the majority who held that we were faced with a situation in which immediate action was required and the reluctant ones soon abandoned their position and made their contributions valiantly. Readers in the 1970s will find it hard to believe ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 185 received from Japanese sources, (Appendix A) will show that fresh milk was also received from time to time and this, of course, as is noted, was used practically wholly for the ill patients. It was only occasionally that a little was allowed to others in order to keep up their morale. Feeding the Staff I do not here include the officers who were members of the staff, for these received pay and could use what was left of this after contributions had been paid and friends supported to supplement their general messing, though the extra thus obtained was very small. The problems with other staff can also be stated simply. These men's work was essential; deprived of it, the hospital could not function. Some of this work was hard if intermittent, e.g., carrying patients or stores, felling trees for timber; some was hard and regular, like the work of the laundry squad, particularly during the dysentery outbreak; some was exacting and often provoking, like that of the nursing staff. On the other hand, the lamentable conditions of acutely ill patients had to be rectified at all costs. The principle adopted was that when a member of the staff began to show signs of early deficiency, as some were doing as early as August 1942, he was admitted to hospital, when he had all the rights of patients to extra diets. In the case of staff members who had, for example, put in a heavy day felling trees or moving 100 kg sacks of rice, I made to each man a small extra issue, maybe an egg, maybe some peanut butter, and so on. This was a token rather than a major contribution to their nourishment and was never resented by patients. In the early days of the Hospital Central Fund in 1942, the executive committee, on which officer patients were represented, recognised the special position of the working staff, and small, very small cash payments were made to these monthly from the Fund. At a later date, in 1943, staff were given working pay, again in very small amounts by the Japanese, but it was not till 6 March 1945 that the needs of working staff were recognised by a formal entitlement to extra general rations. We had long known that in the P.O.W. camps, men employed on camp duties got increased rations, and we got the immediate example we required when in January 1945 a working party from Sham Shui Po was accommodated in Bowen Road while employed on preparing land in Happy Valley ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 192 DONALD C. BOWIE dical Services of the Japanese Army of Occupation. Selwyn-Clarke represented to Eguchi that it was essential to take precautions to avoid outbreaks of epidemic diseases in the chaotic conditions following our surrender and he, with his wife and daughter and a handful of his staff, were spared internment for a while in order to organise the necessary work. Certain other categories of people, for example senior bankers, were likewise not interned at the beginning though the movements of all these men were always restricted within narrow limits. Selwyn-Clarke's mind turned at once to ways in which he could help those who were in P.O.W. or Internment camps. He knew exactly what would happen and how health would suffer and he set about getting food and drugs to combat the infectious and deficiency diseases he saw to be inevitable. I do not know how these relief operations were financed nor do I know many details. He visited the camps and though not allowed to see the prisoners he did get guides as to what was needed e.g., food, fuel, meat, cooking oil and at the same time he got the names of many prisoners. He had found out that the Japanese would allow entry to parcels of food etc. addressed to individuals but would not accept bulk supplies for delivery. He then recruited a number of women helpers; some of these had husbands, relatives or friends in the camps and hospital. Before hostilities Selwyn-Clarke was at all times completely absorbed in the task he had in hand. In a community where alcohol and tobacco were cheap and widely used he did not drink and he did not smoke and I think found it difficult to interest himself in the small talk usual in the kind of society in which Hong Kong took pleasure at that time. His wife was an electrifying woman, full of energy, vastly intelligent and widely informed, with great warmth, firmly held opinions and completely devoted to the welfare of the Chinese citizens of the Colony. She unfortunately has since died, but she always played a leading part in organising the parties delivering food to the hospital. One of her main helpers was Miss Helen Ho. Miss Ho was arrested three times by the Japanese, the first being shortly after Selwyn-Clarke's own arrest. She was imprisoned once below the Supreme Court; another time she was confined in a house above Queen's Road, but being allowed to open a window for air she attracted the attention of a passing friend by flashing a reflected ray of sun in her eyes using a hand mirror. She then dropped a pre- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 194 DONALD C. BOWIE always been under close surveillance as well by the gendarmerie. After his arrest in May, 1943, he was confined in the cells below the Supreme Court in conditions of the utmost squalor and was subjected to the intensive, unending, repetitive "interrogation" about his alleged spying activities which are lamentably so well known nowadays. One of the accusations was that in some way he was in touch with the British Embassy in Lisbon to which he was supposed to have reported information about Japanese activities. The charge was a capital one and the sentence of the trial court was death. To such a condition was he reduced that he told his captors to get on with the job and carry out the sentence. This they did not do, and he suspects that the deaths in prison of the Chief Manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in circumstances in which ill-treatment and starvation were suspected made even the Japanese gendarmerie reluctant to offer Selwyn-Clarke as a third victim. Sixteen months later he was tried again, also upon a capital charge but due to some dealings of oriental subtlety by some of his friends in the Colony the sentence this time was three years in prison. In December 1944 he was transferred from Stanley prison to Ma Tau Wei Internment camp near Kai Tak airport and there he says he was alright. In August 1945, when we welcomed him to our hospital in the Central British School he was still physically in poor shape and he suffered permanent disabilities. His spirit, however, if it had once been bent, had by then recovered and as soon as he could after the Japanese surrender he returned to his office in Hong Kong to reestablish medical and health control and order in the Colony. Before closing this section which has been devoted to the problems of feeding patients and staff in the hospital I am glad to refer to the Red Cross organization in Hong Kong during the war. Mr. R. Zindel, a Swiss citizen and thus a neutral, was in charge. He made formal inspections of the hospital about every six months accompanied by the Japanese Commander of P.O.W. camps. I shall refer later to these visits, but it was quite evident to me that Mr. Zindel was confined within strict limits by the Japanese during his inspections. He must, I feel sure, have met the same difficulties in his work outside the hospital, but I record here with gratitude our indebtedness to his tenacity, skill and resource in getting to us so many of the food stores which made such a very great difference to our wellbeing. I had the pleasure of meeting him also in Hong Kong during my visit in 1964. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 196 DONALD C. BOWIE names in this account I shall spell them as they sounded to me. I was old enough to be aware of the fighting qualities of their troops in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 and Japan was acclaimed as our ally in the First War. The reputation of the people for courtesy in their own country was high. The situation changed drastically in the nineteen thirties. The conduct of their troops in Manchuria and in China, the truculence of their government and the xenophobia of their nationals in Japan itself gave the nation a sinister reputation, and those of us who had followed these developments had few illusions about what would happen to people conquered by their armies if war came. This reputation was entirely self-made. I never hated the Japanese as such though I came to distrust individual members of their army. I try here to record our dealings with those in charge in the British Military Hospital in Hong Kong. The name of our hospital changed from time to time. In April 1942 I was writing reports and requests from the British Military Hospital. By September 1942 our name had become "Dai Ichi Bun In, Kirishima Dori". By October 1943 we were "Dai Ichi Bun Ken Sho", but I don't know what our name was in Kowloon. The commander of P.O.W. camps in Hong Kong was one Colonel Tokunaga, and our hospital came under his authority. He was a thick-set man of a little over average Japanese height. His age was not easy to guess but I judged him to be well over fifty and he gave me the impression of having been recalled to active service from the reserve. He was nicknamed 'the pig' by our troops. I do not know if he could speak English but I suspect that he understood our language a little. I never had experience of conversation with him, and on his inspections and visits he seemed utterly withdrawn from any human contact with staff or patients though his orders, transmitted to me after inspections, showed that he had been observant and had noted arrangements which he considered should be changed. These referred only to such matters as the lay-out of beds, notices in wards, conditions in the hospital grounds and so on. He never gave me orders at the time of his visits; these were transmitted later. When the representative of the Red Cross came, Tokunaga always preceded him wherever they went and he obviously dictated the route to be followed. I never knew him speak to a patient. Tokunaga seemed to me to be a Japanese officer of the old school showing by his demeanour the rigidity of his training. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 197 had no means of judging his intelligence. After the war Tokunaga was sentenced to be hanged by our War Crimes Court in Hong Kong in 1946, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment and later still to 20 years in prison. I cannot speak for any of his actions as far as the P.O.W. camps were concerned, and I emphasise this. So far as our hospital was concerned I did not and do not consider that his conduct towards us merited a death sentence. Tokunaga, of course, was not a medical man. A Japanese army doctor, Lieutenant Saito, was in immediate charge of the British Military Hospital throughout our captivity. He also had charge medically of the P.O.W. camps. He acquired an evil reputation among our troops in the camps, partly from what was reported to be his haphazard selection of patients to be sent to our hospital, a selection made from lists prepared by our own doctors when he often never saw the patients at all. In the hospital I found it impossible to establish any kind of durable understanding with him even on a professional plane. I never got to know the extent of his medical knowledge. When reports, oral or written, upon patients were made to him they seemed to be engulfed and to disappear leaving little or no trace. He must have paid some attention to some of the written reports for at times he required elucidation of a point that had been made. Between August and December 1942 Saito made few appearances in the hospital; a typical sudden incursion was at nine p.m. on 9 September. He then demanded to see all our blind patients, all who had suffered amputations and all over sixty years of age. This done he wanted to go on and see sixty-eight others whom we had previously listed as unfit for service, either permanently or for a substantial period of time. As the visit was unannounced we had not got the case sheets and X-rays ready, and he and I vied with each other in proclaiming our readiness to wait for these and go on as long as necessary. In the end we restarted at seven a.m. next day and took seventy minutes to see fifty-eight patients. I got no inkling as to his decisions. On 13 October I had my next encounter with Saito when he came to see our diphtheria patients, including one who had received a transfusion of blood taken from a recovered diphtheria patient. In reply to my question he told me that the diphtheria situation in Sham Shui Po was better, the disease being less severe and presenting as one case every two-four days. This account was totally different from that given by patients we had admitted recently from ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 198 DONALD C. BOWIE that camp. It was at this time that I first proposed that I should be allowed to visit P.O.W. camps in order to discuss the various medical problems with our doctors there and plan the best use of our hospital services for their patients. This suggestion, like so many others, provoked no apparent reaction and though I repeated it at frequent intervals I never got near a P.O.W. camp until I was moving to our new hospital in Kowloon in 1945. Major Harrison was allowed to make one visit to North Point Camp to consult with Canadian medical officers about some problems in which specialist advice was wanted. This was his only visit to a camp and none of our other doctors were ever allowed to visit either. I had another passage with Saito following an air raid on Hong Kong in October of which I shall write later, but in these critical months in 1942 my approaches to him had to be made in writing or through his N.C.O., Sergeant Seino or the interpreter and any messages from him came back by the same route. On 23 November Saito saw all officer patients and though he did not make a physical examination he marked five for discharge. We considered that two of these would improve by a further stay in hospital, though it was not vital for them to do so. The order for discharge however stood. On 21 December we had our second Red Cross inspection, the first during the period I was in charge but Saito did not appear in the suite. A day or two later however he demanded a report on our sufferers from pellagra asking for detailed information about skin, gastro-intestinal and nervous symptoms and the details of treatment and on 16 January 1943 he came to see the patients. We demonstrated these including the eye cases. As our experience in these fields was small we asked his advice and he suggested giving 100 mgm nicotinic acid by intramuscular injection daily for 10 days. As was his usual custom he would not wait to make a detailed inspection and cut his visit short. We delayed him on the stairs long enough for him to use the English words "B. complex" when speaking on the causal deficiency. With this exception he had spoken Japanese throughout and whether he had got the information in discussion elsewhere, it agreed with our view that the symptoms were not to be explained by a pure vitamin B1 deficiency. In reply to my question he said that nicotinic acid and suitable diet were the important elements of treatment. He said also that yeast, easy to get before the war, was now hard to obtain. He promised to consult a colleague about ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 199 the eyes. He and I agreed that neither of us had ever seen a case of pellagra before. On 22 January 1943, Saito came in again and was handed a copy of our pellagra report which he should have had already from Takeyama, our interpreter, the night before. He now said that in Sham Shui Po patients were being given 10 mgm nicotinic acid by injection daily, a figure which contrasted with his advice given less than a week earlier. This did nothing to increase my confidence in him as a physician. A day later Saito came in again. We had heard that 1200 men had left P.O.W. camps by ship having been equipped with some warm clothing, a Red Cross parcel and 10 yen each and that they were accompanied by two British and one Canadian doctor. I tried but failed to extract any more information on this subject. Saito told me that Sham Shui Po then held 2000 men of whom 1000 were sick and twice he emphasised that he did not want our hospital to be used as a hotel by men who were fit for camp. I found this rather irksome coming so soon after the tragedies of the closing months of 1942. I acknowledged that we did have some patients who were apparently in good condition physically but who showed serious visual defects which were evident if any examination of them were to be carried out. I complained that the only information we received about an incoming draft of patients was the approximate number and the time they were expected to arrive and even this was not always reliable while the notice was always short. Because our space was limited the only way we could accommodate new patients was to discharge about the same number of our existing ones. It thus came about that I was asking medical officers for the names of patients best fitted to return to camp and whose progress was unlikely to be jeopardised by discharge, rather than those in whose fitness we had confidence. I said that I could not overrule a doctor's decision on the medical condition of a patient only to be told that the same applied in the Japanese army. I was a little surprised at this. My protest had no effect and on our side we continued making room for new patients by discharging the fittest among the old patients. In 1943 this policy was the only one possible. Eighteen months later we did have patients admitted from camp, chosen by Saito, who seemed to us to be in better shape than some that we had to discharge. A Colonel Watanabe of the Japanese medical service visited us ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 201 in the recreation room and put disinfectant in a bowl outside the Japanese office. The general spoke to nobody. Two months earlier, in March I had been ousted from my office in the front of the building and this pleasant room henceforward became the headquarters office of the Japanese within the hospital. I was surprised that they had not seized this earlier. On 23 August 1943 the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society, Prince Shimatsu, inspected the hospital. At all times the appearance of the hospital was good, but at this as at all inspections the Japanese laid great stress on having the recreation room looking specially well. In addition to white cloths on the tables and vases of flowers all the musical instruments and equipment for indoor games had to be laid out on display. As usual the inspecting officer had no parley with patients or staff. I have records of only three occasions on which British doctors from P.O.W. camps were allowed to visit Bowen Road. Major Ashton Rose, Indian Medical Service, was the doctor accepted by the Japanese as being in administrative medical charge in Sham Shui Po camp. I believe he had considerable influence with them, in so far as any prisoner could have influence. On 5 March 1943 he visited the hospital bringing with him some patients for admission and came again on 23 March with an officer patient for specialist eye examination. On the second occasion he stayed to lunch, a phrase which of course indicates a higher degree of sophistication than in fact we deserved. It was however something for us to be able to entertain a guest at all. We learned from Ashton Rose that the general state of prisoners in Sham Shui Po was improving and that the men were fitter. On 13 May Captain Woodward, an Australian serving with the I.M.S., came over from Kowloon to have medical advice about himself and on this occasion Saito came too. It seems curious now to look back upon such things, but up to March 1943 the bomb and shell damage to the hospital inflicted fifteen months earlier had gone substantially unrepaired. The top floors were badly damaged and as I reported earlier the kitchen in the middle section connecting the two blocks of wards was completely destroyed. Rain poured in at these places as well as at other damaged areas and the recreation room below the kitchen was unusable in wet weather. The fact that we did not carry out repairs earlier probably resulted from our preoccupation at that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 204 DONALD C. BOWIE than he need. The improvement in his attitude to us in 1945 as the war drew to a close was significant. I never felt safe with him. His management of drafts of patients coming to our hospital from P.O.W. camps showed gross negligence particularly in the early year or so and I found it scandalous that he allowed a patient with acute and easily remediable intestinal obstruction to reach death's door in 1942 before allowing him to be sent to the hospital. How far blame should be laid on Saito and how far his commander, Tokunaga, should bear responsibility I do not know. I was then, and still remain, glad that we did not have to have Saito as our master if we had been losing the war, I thought Sergeant Seino was the most intelligent of all the Japanese army administrators with whom we came in contact. It was he who was most closely concerned with our routine affairs. He retained his dignity and upheld his position, but he was a man who could be talked to though not easily swayed. He never let his army down, and he never slapped me though he did, I know administer a token slapping to one of our officer patients whom he had caught communicating on a family matter with the outside world through the medium of our parcels. I do not know what happened to him after the Japanese surrender, but so far as we were concerned he did his duty fairly and earned a degree of my respect. Japanese officers and N.C.O's nearly always wore swords and always on duty wore what used to be called field boots in the British army in the First War and between the wars when they were worn by cavalry and gunner officers and by field officers in other regiments and corps. The Japanese used to skiff (or "skliff" is likely an OCR error for "scuff" or "skiff") their feet along the ground thus making an important noise as they walked, well suited to the dignity of their wearers. At first in 1942 the guards were drawn from Japanese units but later were Formosans (Taiwanese). The latter were of no great quality and were poorly clad and equipped, and some of their N.C.O's were pettily officious and often over ready to take offence. They wore ankle boots with canvas uppers and rubber soles and there was a separate compartment in the canvas for the big toe. It was often startling to meet them on a verandah in a blackout as they moved silently along with fixed bayonet and rifle at the trail. These guards interpreted their own orders in such matters as the amount of lighting allowed during blackouts and the time of our ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 209 advice or even treatment of a sort, no doubt for certain small advantages, though I have no proof at all that this was so. SUPPLIES OF DRUGS AND DRESSINGS At the time of our surrender, our hospital was well stocked with drugs and dressings. Except for very small quantities in categories which we could well afford to spare, the Japanese did not confiscate or ask for any of our stocks. In the parcels we received from our friends in Hong Kong from time to time were included small amounts of special drugs and preparations which were extremely valuable to us in treating patients. My record of the supply by the Japanese of anti-diphtheritic serum given in a previous section is accurate. At various times during the three full years of my charge, small quantities of drugs and dressings were supplied by the Japanese. Unfortunately, I have no records now on this subject, but my memory is clear that deliveries were irregular, quantities were so small as almost to be negligible, and such drugs as arrived were non-specific in their actions. Earlier, I recorded in this account the measures taken to make sure that drugs with specific action, for example, the sulpha drugs, were issued only in cases where they could be expected to turn the scales in favour of a sick patient. Through such careful conservation, aided by luck, we reached the date of our release with small stocks of essential specific drugs in hand and diminishing quantities of dressings still available, though I would not have wanted to have had to hold out much longer. I must not be understood to be saying here that we had all that we needed in the way of drugs and dressings. This was far from being the case. We were expressly forbidden to send drugs to the P.O.W. camps, and the only possible reason that I can think of for this must have been Japanese unwillingness to admit that the camps required anything more than they themselves thought fit to provide. The prohibition fitted in with their persistent refusal to allow me, or the other doctors in Bowen Road, to consult with the doctors in the P.O.W. camps regarding the allocation of our resources and methods of collaboration between hospital and camps in the medical management and treatment of the diseases which beset us. We did get some drugs into camps carried by volunteer patients whom we were discharging from hospital, but the amounts were never large and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG 213 service, thirty-two women members of the Nursing Detachment of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps and two women nursing auxiliaries. By December 31 we had 341 patients, slightly over half of whom were Canadians, attended by six medical officers including myself, one dental officer, one Church of England chaplain, one quartermaster R.A.M.C., 81 other ranks including seven engineers and nine Canadian combatant soldiers who served as orderlies. In these five months we admitted 546 patients of whom 42 died, 31 of these were Canadians. Up to about 19 December 1941 we had buried our dead in Happy Valley, but when this site became unapproachable we used large bomb and shell craters close to Bowen Road immediately below the hospital to form common graves. When this site was full we prepared another cemetery by the main gate of the hospital. In August 1942 we had to prepare a new cemetery within our wired perimeter on the bank to the north of the hospital and between the hospital and Bowen Road. We had, of course, no coffins and at first we used sheets as shrouds. The mounting number of deaths compelled us to substitute well-worn blankets as shrouds and this practice continued up to the end of 1942. Our funerals were dignified affairs and I attended in every case. We usually had a few patients and staff as well and at first, remarkably enough, the Japanese were always represented by Sergeant Seino or others and they came bearing wreaths and sheaves of beautiful flowers. They did not keep up this practice very long and I think they had ceased to attend well before we had buried the last of our 42 men before the end of the year. Funeral parties were always guarded. In August 1942 we began to give thiamine by injection regularly to staff while all in hospital received yeast drinks. Each member of the staff received two yen from the Central Hospital Fund and I was given a copy of the Japanese "Rules for P.O.W. Camps", and I was told that though these were not wholly applicable to a hospital, we were required to conform to the rules in a general sense. I have no idea now what these rules were, but I do know that they did not introduce any new feature into our daily life. About this time all in the hospital were required to complete a form showing their previous experience especially as car drivers, members of the medical profession, those experienced in manufacturing processes and mining, communications experts, agriculture etc. One splendid question was "In what occupation you want to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 218 DONALD C. BOWIE attacks on defences which were hardly dented. The areas in which fighting was taking place were still thousands of miles away from us and the newspaper constantly asked the subtle question as to whether the American losses were worth incurring. In the hospital 1943 was a drab year for us; the number of patients dropped from 341 on 1 January to 234 on 31 December. Drafts of patients for admission from P.O.W. camps came on ten out of the twelve months and on each occasion patients were discharged. The condition of incoming patients showed a distinct improvement as the year went on though many patients and staff had an additional affliction to endure, that of intestinal worms. Suspicion fell upon a number of food items including vegetables and Chinese brown sugar as the vehicle of infection, but we never established that any one substance was the culprit. On three separate occasions I was handed sums of military yen by the Japanese in cash, the donors being the Red Cross Societies. One such gift came from the Canadian Society and was marked for Canadian troops only and was so distributed. Apart from this all other gifts had no limitations placed upon them. On each occasion the available cash was divided and paid equally to all except commissioned officers. Each man thus received 40 yen over the year while Canadians had an extra 30 yen, and in all cases I gained a few yen for my Commanding Officer's Fund from small surpluses. The Central Hospital Fund also benefited from money contributed by officer prisoners in camp in Kowloon which was transmitted to us by the Japanese. The signatures of some patients on the receipt sheets were indecipherable scrawls, because they were quite unable to coordinate their movements. Thirty patients died during the year, and by the end of October 104 of our men were buried in cemeteries in and around the hospital. In April we were given a tin of black paint by the Japanese at our request to allow us to paint the names of the dead on the very well made wooden crosses constructed by us to mark their graves. In December a Japanese interpreter appeared saying that it was his job to see to it that graves were properly prepared and marked and that plans of these existed. I was very proud of the work that our men put in, and the graves of those who had died were properly prepared, identified and maintained. Usually each grave held only one body; occasionally two shared a grave, and on one occasion three men were buried together when they had died ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 222 DONALD C. BOWIE Four times during the year the Japanese gave us supplies of soles, heels, nails, hobs etc. for repairing boots and three times we got issues of khaki and white cloth, thread etc. for mending clothes. As an example of quantities, on 19 June we received 15 yards khaki cloth, 11 yards white cloth, 5 packets sewing needles, 2 sewing machine needles, 3 reels white cotton, 3 large reels white thread and 13 large reels of khaki thread, one of these being extra large, 50 sets half-soles, 476 pieces heels, 9 lb hob-nails, 74 lb protectors and 5 lb nails. Religious services were held in the recreation room twice each Sunday and were conducted by Mr. Squires. The form of service was such that men who belonged to churches other than the Church of England could attend and the turn-out to morning service was usually good, resembling in a way a village congregation at home. Mr. Squires was hard put to it to produce wine for communion but kept up his supply by a variety of bought or ingeniously concocted liquors. In March we managed a Roman Catholic service conducted by Father Deloughry, a Canadian who was a patient at the time, but this represented nearly our only success for members of this church. Ever since hostilities we had had a number of patients who had been blinded or had suffered amputations while others who were over the age of 60 were likewise unfit for further service. In the latter cases I recall that if being over 60 barred a man from fighting, then one of the bravest and most stubborn resistances of our little war, carried out by senior members of the Hong Kong Volunteers would never have happened. So in April 1943 twenty-eight of our patients in the classes named were discharged to P.O.W. camps and I think that all left us quite ready for a change to new surroundings. Towards the end of the year we were examining how we could discharge to P.O.W. camps, without risk to themselves, those patients whose eyesight had been seriously affected by deficiency diseases. We decided that if these patients were in satisfactory physical state otherwise, and if we could ensure that they would get 8 mgm thiamine by injections every second day in camp, we could retain specialist control if we could get them returned to us at regular intervals for assessment of their progress. We were encouraged to believe that this was a realisable objective because three officers from Kowloon had been sent over earlier in the year for ophthalmic examination and one of these was admitted at ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 228 DONALD C. BOWIE of electricity and water supplies and firewood, increasingly frequent air attacks and I suppose the general problems faced by the Japanese in retaining a small unit isolated from other P.O.W. camps which they had to supply and guard. The fifteen months which remained to us in occupation of Bowen Road proved to be a long drawn-out test of our endurance. We knew from the local newspaper about the Normandy landing by the allies and thereafter we traced on our school atlases subsequent progress in Europe. We gauged progress on the Russian front from the place names, while the names that appeared in the accounts of the Pacific war betrayed the progress being made there against the Japanese even though they always emphasised the staggering losses claimed to have been inflicted on their enemy in all their encounters. Progress was more rapid than I for one had thought possible, but our own existence in Bowen Road became increasingly circumscribed as the boundary wire was brought even closer to the main hospital building. In January 1944 our staff were removed from their barrack block to occupy the fair-sized Ward 3 on the top floor of the hospital. Gates in the wire allowed our men to get to their own gardens for a few hours by day; by November the wire was brought even closer so that all buildings were excluded from us except for the cookhouse and the mortuary, During January 1944 we had to cut the rice ration from 383 to 354 in order to conserve stocks, and by now rice was being weighed out at the steward's store into the utensils of each ward and mess. All staff under commissioned rank began to receive Japanese pay, 25 sen for a warrant officer, 15 for a sergeant or corporals and 10 for a lance corporal or private, so it had taken three years before our captors allowed this trivial right. Pay for commissioned officers arrived pretty regularly and in June all received their Japanese banking accounts to check. All contributed fixed proportions of their pay to the Central Hospital Fund from which small monthly payments of five or six yen were made to staff and N.C.O.'s in charge of wards. Disbursements continued to be made from the fund to provide extras for patients in need, supplements to improve the general diet and cigarettes or cash instead to all except commissioned officers. Small purchases of various stores needed in the hospital were also made. In April 1944 the contributions to our fund which had been coming from our officers in P.O.W. camp in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 262 DONALD C. BOWIE A 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. At 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. It 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. By 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. True 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 Page 270 Page 271 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 268 DONALD C. BOWIE None of the foregoing figures can be taken as more than approximately correct. A figure however for which I can vouch with certainty is the total number of wounded treated in Bowen Road. This figure was 646 and was carefully computed by me in the studies I made of our records during the months and years of captivity before the Japanese finally destroyed them. The Bowen Road figures include all who were seriously wounded during hostilities, because all wounded admitted to other hospitals in the Colony and who were unfit for discharge to P.O.W. camps after our surrender were eventually concentrated in Bowen Road by the end of February 1942. The last patients who suffered war injuries to be admitted came from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon when this closed on 11 August 1942. My record of the total Bowen Road casualties amounting to 646 is likely to be less than the actual total number of wounded, because when other hospitals were closing and evacuating their more seriously wounded patients to Bowen Road it is likely that a number of other patients had by then recovered sufficiently to be able to go to P.O.W. camps and it must be remembered that it was the Japanese who decided where these patients must go. The official figures suggest that, excluding Indian casualties, some 855 soldiers were seriously wounded during hostilities. In Bowen Road we treated 646 of these. It is evident therefore that about 75% of seriously wounded other than Indians were evacuated by the medical services to hospitals. This represents a major success having regard to the conditions, and the system of evacuation and the skill and determination with which it was carried out must be judged to have worked well. The Field Ambulance commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ride, which achieved these results was responsible also for recovering Indian casualties, and I have no doubt that these were evacuated with the same degree of success as were the British casualties. Figures however are lacking since the Indian Hospital was overrun during the Japanese advance and records were lost. Readers will recall that early in the hostilities the Chinese ambulance drivers deserted, understandably enough especially to those familiar with the Japanese treatment of captured Chinese opponents. Thereafter ambulance cars were driven by Field Ambulance personnel usually drawn from the medical services. This makes their achievement all the more notable. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 276 DONALD C. BOWIE ordered to do so, unwounded. However this may be, there we were, available to relieve them of the responsibility of caring for our casualties. The next point of importance is the Japanese decision to behave like other belligerents and abide by the terms of the Geneva Convention though they had not been signatories. As a result, they recognised and accepted representation in Hong Kong and some, at least of the activities of the International Red Cross Society. As a possible third consequence they allowed the hospital to remain in its buildings and concentrated there all allied wounded from other hospitals in the Colony. They used it also to receive some, but not all sick from the P.O.W. camps. All of these actions conferred clear benefits on the Japanese, as well as upon us. Any drugs or dressings removed by them from the hospital were in such small quantities as to be unimportant to us. Even when an electricity generator was taken, we still had another left. Except when some unacceptable decisions to admit too late, or discharge too early, sick prisoners were made by the Japanese the clinical freedom of our doctors was not challenged. The hospital was given staple food and fuel rations and clothing and boot repair materials on a scale which may have been based on a standard used for Japanese troops who of course were known to live in part off the country in which they were operating. International agreements of course required only this scale to be observed. I think that our guards fared rather better than we did on their basic rations, especially in fish, but I have recorded earlier the anxiety shown by guards when their rations, like ours were late in arriving. I recall here the public statement to us in 1944 by a supplies officer that there were shortages on the Japanese side but that they would try to keep the hospital properly supplied. This was an appeal to us to understand their position, an appeal which fitted ill with much of the Japanese bearing towards prisoners. Their plight then, in Japan itself as well as in Hong Kong and no doubt elsewhere was extremely grave and their desperate resistance for another year is surprising. It was however hard, even impossible for prisoners to take then the detached view that we can today. While the Japanese haul of booty in the form of drugs and medical supplies in Hong Kong must have been enormous the quantities that reached the hospital were negligible and we were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 278 DONALD C. BOWIE Saito. He acted without giving reasonable consideration to the cases of sick people put to him as needing hospital treatment, so that many for whom hospital treatment could have been life-saving were not sent in. When the hospital moved nearer to the camps in Kowloon in 1945 we began to see signs that it might be going to be used properly to receive the more serious cases in the camps as they occurred and so fulfil its proper function. If we had been moved near to our sources of patients at the beginning of our imprisonment we might have served our sick more extensively and would have been of greater value to the camp doctors. A move then, when we had a hospital full of seriously wounded, would have been dangerous for these men. By the time the move occurred the need was much less pressing though our availability did, I believe, do much to improve our service. I do not know what relations existed between Saito and his commander Colonel Tokunaga, but while I must, in justice, be careful in reaching judgments, I consider that as a medical man Saito failed to do much that lay within his power for our sick, particularly those in camps. In saying this I do not claim for our prisoners more than the standards of care allowed by international agreements. A coordinated plan to apply such resources as we commanded in camps and in hospital would have made a vast difference to the medical story of prisoners in Hong Kong. While therefore I can agree that we in the hospital fared better than many in Japanese hands I must also record my conviction that the possession and careful husbanding in the hospital of our own resources played a very large part in such successes as we achieved. Any success that attended the efforts of any of us would have been immensely diminished without the aid of Mr. Zindel and the Red Cross Society and our generous friends in Hong Kong. Without the life-saving measures provided by the medical services in the P.O.W. camps, using makeshift resources, many patients would never have reached the hospital at all. THE STAFF My main purpose in writing this account is to record the history of the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong, from 1942 to 1945 and those who served on the staff or were patients there. The account fails to record some of the colourful personalities we had ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 40 G. C. EMERSON was summoned to Japanese Headquarters in Camp and informed of the surrender. The first days after the surrender were tremendously exciting ones as friends and relatives arrived from the city and prisoners-of-war came from the two Kowloon P.O.W. camps. On 23rd August, Mr. Gimson moved into the city and began re-establishing the Government. Nearly two weeks passed after the surrender before the British fleet arrived on 30th August. At 5.00 p.m. that afternoon, the Commander of the Fleet, Rear Admiral Cecil Harcourt, came to Camp and attended a very moving flag-raising ceremony. It was several weeks before the Camp was finally closed. Many ventured into the city to begin picking up the lost threads of their lives but many, particularly those whose health was poor, remained in Camp waiting to board the ships which took them away from Hong Kong. From this brief account, it may sound as if internment was not a particularly bad experience. Such an impression would be far from the truth. Internment was a dreadful experience. Not only were the physical aspects - lack of food and of clothing, the over-crowding, the insufficient food, etc.- most unpleasant, but the mental aspects were extremely bad also. The humiliation of defeat, the separation from loved ones and the years of waiting for release are impossible to imagine for those of us who have never had such experiences. While the horrors of the German concentration camps fortunately never were experienced in Hong Kong, internment in Stanley Camp was a terrible experience for almost all the internees. I would like to finish by reading you a few lines from a poem written by Mr. C. J. Norman, later Commissioner of Prisons, Hong Kong, in 1954. The poem is entitled “A Farewell to Stanley”. A Farewell to Stanley! It's over. Of Internees there isn't a sign. They've left for Newhaven & Dover For Hull & Newcastle-on-Tyne. No tales where the rumours once started. The kitchen's devoid of its queues. The strategists all have departed With the lies which they peddled as 'news'. ================================================================================