the-battle-for-hong-kong-1941-1945-hostage-to-2016 — Page 4

But, Lord, I think that even You

Would soon get tired of ersatz stew.

So what I really want to say

Is: if we soon don’t get away

From Shamshuipo and Argyle Street,

Then please, Lord, could we have some meat?

A luscious, fragrant, heaped-up plateful.

And also, Lord, we would be grateful

If you would send a living boon

And send some Red Cross parcels, soon.

“One working party used to steal ‘dubbing’ for several months from a Japanese cobbler’s shop. It made oil to enable us to taste the rice, and for the fat content. (It was horrible.) We could find no way to make chrysanthemum leaves palatable. Sometimes that was the vegetable brought in by the Japs,” recalls Captain Flynn. “It was worse than the green seaweed we sometimes got. Many crops were raised in the vegetable garden by seeds sent in. Tomatoes, much enjoyed, enabled the seeds, found thereafter having passed through us, to be replanted successfully.

“Some slops from restaurants were sent in by parcel to us. Amazingly enough, many brothels and prostitutes sent in things to former patrons. Inevitably, ‘sharp boys’ emerged who traded with the POWs. Possessions, such as rings, watches, pens and jewellery were sold for cigarettes and eggs – choice delicacies. This enabled the traders to amass their own supplies of cigarettes, food and money which they sold at exorbitant prices for post-war IOUs and cheques,” continues Flynn “I myself signed away nearly £500 to keep alive. Amusingly enough, ‘traders’ became identified through having clothing, bedding, cigarettes, and not being skeletons.” The film King Rat will be familiar to some.

“After the war, I was bugged relentlessly and felt obliged to repay the £500. As a serving officer, I couldn’t afford the bad publicity if it went that far. Later I heard of an Australian who agreed to repay in cash what he owed – on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall at an agreed time and date. (Presumably he had alerted the press.) I wish I had been as smart. I still feel cheated; I am sure the ‘traders’ were anything but straight. You would be shocked by some of the names I could mention.”

Once a month we were permitted to print one postcard, not to exceed 50 words. This was later reduced to 25 to make the Japanese censor’s job easier. We were not allowed to say anything about sickness. The first batch of letters arrived on Christmas Day 1942. For the last two years of the war, large quantities of mail reached Hong Kong. Colonel Tokunaga let it accumulate and then ordered that those letters containing more than 50 words be burnt. Six wooden trunks containing mail were also destroyed two days before the Japanese surrender. One wife impregnated her letters with scent, hoping the censor might prove sympathetic. One officer, Flynn, was given 23 letters on the same day because his fiancée painted pictures of flowers on the envelope. (Despite this, he didn’t marry her in the end.) A Gunner officer received only one letter in three years – it was from his tailor in Saville Row demanding instant payment. My father enabled me to get three letters. One of them came via the International Red Cross thanks to Count Bylandt, who was Foreign Secretary in the Free Dutch Government in London and rented my father’s house. I was much relieved that my parents knew I was alive.

Throughout the war, the Japanese attached importance to POWs in the Far East broadcasting messages to their families. The Japanese knew that the faint chance of hearing a loved one would create a large and willing listening audience. These broadcasts gave the Japanese a chance to insert propaganda and lies. The broadcasts from Hong Kong were ineffective because the POWs chose their words with care.

* * * * *

We had all become very cautious of any possible involvement with unknown people trying to pass us messages. In November 1943 Major R A Atkinson Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery was told by an Indian guard in a watchtower that he had a very important letter for him. The Indian dropped a piece of paper, which Atkinson picked up much later. He took it to Captain G V Bird Royal Engineers. It was misspelt and signed ‘68’. Bird suspected a trap and ordered that no reply be sent.

In December a Chinese threw a message in front of two other POWs. It was also signed ‘68’ and seemed to be genuine. Bird consulted Lieutenant Colonel F D Field DSO MC, Royal Artillery, the senior officer now in Argyle Street. Communications were maintained with the Chinese contact by Bird and T S Simpson walking to the wire talking to each other in a loud voice so that the Chinese contact, strolling beyond the wire on the road, could hear the camp news. It was agreed that contact be renewed, but also that no written messages be sent because there was no proof that BAAG was still involved. Five months later another note was dropped over the fence. By now we were very suspicious and those involved agreed to break off visual contact, and to pick up no more messages.

In early May 1944 the Japanese moved us all from Argyle Street to Shamshuipo, which now had room for us as large numbers of former inmates had been sent to Japan, or had died of disease or ill-treatment.

In June G V Bird, F D Field and T S Simpson were arrested and moved to Military Police Headquarters. The Japanese believed that Bird was the ringleader. He was indeed the last remaining POW who knew the names of the officers in the BAAG. Bird was taken to a back room where he saw in a corner a large concrete washing tub with a tap over it. Also in the room, apart from the guards, was a half-caste British subject, Jerome Lan.

The big, tall interrogator, named Fujihara, told Bird to take off his shirt and get into a coffin-shaped box. His arms and feet were tightly bound so that he could move only his head. “I was then lifted in the coffin onto the washing tub and my head was placed under the tap,” he recalled. “A dirty cloth was put over my face, and the tap was slowly turned on to drip, drip, drip onto the cloth. I had no idea what was going to happen and I was very frightened. Soon the cloth became saturated with water and my breathing became very difficult. I was gulping down vast quantities of water through my nose and mouth with every breath I tried to take. I got less and less air, and more and more water in my lungs. Fujihara asked me for the names of the British officers in Waichow. I replied that I knew nothing about any of them.

“Back went the cloth over my face and on went the tap. I was gasping, struggling and fighting for breath until I thought the end had come. I began to say a prayer we Roman Catholics are taught to say on dying. It begins, ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph…’. I had just managed to mutter ‘Jesus, Mary’ when the cloth was whipped off and the tap stopped. Fujihara thought I was giving the names of the officers. Lan, the interpreter, was a Catholic too and told Fujihara that I was merely praying. I was pushed under the tap again and eventually passed out. Lan later told me that I was unconscious for 40 minutes.”8

(A black and white film shot in Vietnam shows in the background a Vietcong suspect being similarly treated in the 1960s.)

Bird’s interrogation was resumed on the following days, the torture taking various different forms which were equally excruciatingly painful. Six days later the Japanese decided that they could prove nothing against Field, Bird and Simpson. They were told that the interrogation had ceased, and were returned to Shamshuipo. We were overjoyed and most surprised to see them once more.

Torture by water continues to this day. The International Herald Tribune reported on 19th March 2005 that Porter Goss, the Director of US Central Intelligence, has said he could not assure Congress that the CIA’s methods of interrogating suspected terrorists since 11th September 2001 had been legally permissible under federal laws prohibiting torture. Senator John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, asked Goss about the CIA’s previously reported use of a technique known as waterboarding, in which a prisoner is made to believe that he will drown. Goss replied that the approach fell into “an area of what I will call professional interrogation techniques”. He vigorously defended “professional interrogation” as an important tool in efforts against terrorism.

I and the others were saved by Godfrey Bird’s bravery. I have always felt an everlasting debt to him.

Lan told the three that, had they admitted anything, they would have been shot like Newnham. Fortunately Fujihara had not connected them with Newnham’s activities and they had never replied in writing to any of the Chinese messages.

* * * * *

Christmas Day 1944 was not very different to the previous one, but there was a sense of optimism as the following months went by.

The newspaper The Hong Kong News, produced in English under Japanese control, and edited in part by a cashiered former Royal Navy officer, continued to tell us of endless Japanese victories and crippling American losses. Nevertheless, with the small atlas I had retained throughout my imprisonment, there was no disguising that the fighting was coming closer and had reached the Philippines in late 1944. We knew nothing of Slim’s victories in Burma, of the American supremacy at sea, nor of their bypassing some islands occupied by the enemy – leaving them to starve for the Japanese no longer had control of the air or sea. (‘Island hopping’ would not be the correct expression.) Crippled by a lack of fuel, their most secret codes broken by the Allies, the Japanese were in desperate straits although the truth continued to be hidden from them.

The increasingly frequent American air raids over Hong Kong gave us every encouragement. We knew they were destroying Japanese shipping, oil depots and docks.

On 6th August 1945, as we were devouring our pitiful breakfasts, two American Superfort aircraft appeared in the sky above Hiroshima. Seventy-five hours later it was Nagasaki’s turn.

Two days later, a ration truck pulled into Shamshuipo. One of the POWs found a scrap of paper hidden in a crack in the truck’s floor; he hid it in his pocket. A short while later stories were circulating among us that a strange new bomb was devastating Japanese cities. On 9th August The Hong Kong News published a Tokyo syndicated report announcing the Vatican’s condemnation of the atom bomb.

On Wednesday 15th August Watanabi, the kind Lutheran minister, slyly told a few that the war was over. That same day some Portuguese ladies, seeing some of us marching back to Shamshuipo after a working detail, came close. They were seemingly engaged in conversation and suddenly raised their voices. “It’s all over,” they exclaimed.

On the following day The Hong Kong News announced, “Peace signed: His Imperial Majesty Broadcasts to Nation: Imperial Rescript Issued.” Lieutenant Colonel Simon White Royal Scots stepped forward at the morning roll call on the 16th and told the Japanese officer that there would be no count of his men as the war was over. The Japanese replied that he knew nothing of this. White showed him the newspaper. A few hours later a truck delivered toilet rolls to us! Arming themselves with iron bed-legs, a party of POWs drove to the Japanese HQ in the Peninsula Hotel and loaded up with food. Gradually our guards disappeared. Two lorries arrived with three dead oxen. We had never seen so much meat for four and a half years.

We held a victory parade in Shamshuipo on the 18th. A White Ensign was run up the mast; our band played Abide with me and we sang God Save the King.

“It was the most impressive ceremony I have ever attended,” noted the Canadian, Captain H L White. “Hearts were too full for much singing; many tears were in evidence. I couldn’t keep them back. We all realized more than ever before the meaning of freedom. We also flew the Stars and Stripes and Russian, Dutch, Chinese and Free French flags, all made from coloured rags. Some Indians came over from their camp, and it was very touching to see them greet their British officers with real big hugs. Some wives with their children arrived from Stanley to meet their husbands. It was so moving I couldn’t watch.”9 On Victoria Peak someone had hoisted the Union Flag.

There now began a strange period when we waited with growing impatience for an Allied fleet to appear. Discipline was difficult to maintain. Some ex-POWs crept out at night to seek the company of Chinese girls, one of whom was smuggled into Shamshuipo: there was quite a queue for her.

The few Japanese we saw saluted us and bowed before approaching us. During these weeks the Chinese looted everything worth taking.

Two American Dakota aircraft flew over our camp, dropping large boxes of food which burst when they hit the ground. They were eventually followed by an RAF plane which came very low over our camp. The pilot dropped a brown envelope; it was marked ‘OHMS’ and contained a letter signed by Admiral C H J Harcourt. It told us that our location was known; and we should remain there. We reluctantly did so.

At 10.00 a.m. on 30th August we saw HMS Swiftsure approach the harbour led by minesweepers. Beyond were cruisers, an aircraft carrier and submarines. It was a large fleet.

Several days later I was invited on board HMS Euryalus where I had my first pink gin for over three and a half years. I saw on the wardroom table Country Life with its pictures of British villages and farmsteads at their best. It brought tears to my eyes.

Notes

1. Interview Scriven with OL.

2. Young, A N, China and the Helping Hand, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 418.

3. WO 208 3260 HN 04176, p. 45.

4. Ride, Edwin, BAAG: Hong Kong Resistance 1941–1945, Oxford: OUP, 1981.

5. Letter Wallis to OL.

6. Statement by W J Anderson, PRO Archives Hong Kong CR 7676/45.

7. Alden, D, Charles R Boxer, Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001, p. 181.

8. Interview Bird with OL, and report dated September 1945.

9. Capt. H L White’s diary.

CHAPTER 21

Sinister Developments: Stanley

Internment Camp, the Japanese

Occupation and the Privileged

Nightmare

I gradually heard of the horrors faced by those imprisoned in Stanley Civilian Internment Camp. The internees had been moved there from 21st January 1942 onwards. Rather like our arrival at Shamshuipo, everything was initially chaotic at Stanley.

“Four of us were given a cold, grey cell with no beds or furniture. We huddled together and couldn’t sleep, so we talked long into the night about our husbands and wedding days, and how wonderful life would be when we were released. I thought to myself, ‘We can’t live like this – we will die,’” recalls Mrs Topsy Man, whose husband had so distinguished himself preventing the Japanese breaking into Victoria during the fighting.

“Teamwork counted for most,” wrote another internee. “The American community was small enough to function as a single entity and it set the pace, while the British community was initially divided by class, occupation and prejudice.” One portly matron, watching a gang building a store, was most impressed and announced, “Isn’t it fortunate that the Americans have so many members of the working class in their camp!”

Three autonomous groups quickly formed – 2,325 British, 290 Americans and 60 Dutch. Each group had its own quarters and committees which had control over such matters as billeting, assignment of duties in work details, sanitation, medical clinics and education.

After Hong Kong’s surrender the Governor, Sir Mark Young, had been held incommunicado in a place unknown to us. His responsibilities fell on the Colonial Secretary, F C Gimson, who had the misfortune to arrive in the Colony from Ceylon the day before the Japanese invasion.

Gimson believed it imperative to maintain the Government in being, and issued orders to the internees that no official should take instructions from the Japanese except through him. He started by writing “in a language scarcely diplomatic”, protesting at the squalid and inhuman conditions in which the internees had to live in the Chinese ‘hotels’ before the move to Stanley. The letter resulted in his immediate arrest and imprisonment. On being transferred to Stanley three months after the other internees, he was dismayed to find the former Hong Kong Government was regarded most unfavourably for failing to have made better preparation before the Japanese attack and for refusing to surrender once resistance seemed futile.

All schemes for the pooling of cash and personal food supplies were opposed by Sir Atholl MacGregor, the Chief Justice, on the grounds that the whole principle of private property was involved and “endless litigation” would result. The Americans were more sensible and pooled many of their resources.

Fortunately the camp at Stanley lay alongside a pretty bay, and “the green trees, flowers, wide spaces, warm sky and friendly sea were things to feed our souls, if not our bodies,” recorded an American. A healthier site for the camp could not have been chosen. The accommodation consisted partly of the residential quarters of the former European, Indian and Chinese prison officers and their families. Other buildings included those used before the war as a sanatorium, hospital and canteen which had all formed part of the Hong Kong prison. A former school, St Stephen’s College, and staff bungalows also lay within the camp.

There were sufficient teachers to educate all the children. Many youngsters forgot what ‘outside’ was like; it seemed to them a kind of fairyland, full of abundance, except for food. One child saw a horse and assumed it was a big dog. Another could not imagine what a river looked like. Yet their education may not have suffered unduly. After liberation, five of the older ones entered British universities.

Men and women were not separated into two camps as happened in some other places occupied by the Japanese. Morale may thus have been enhanced though morals were jeopardised. The cemetery proved to be a popular place for lovers. The Japanese authorities issued an order on the lines of “Sexual intercourse is prohibited except between husband and wife or close friends.”

Religion played an important part in camp life. There were 20 different denominations represented. The Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Christian Scientists all held separate services. The thin pages of the prayer books were found to be excellent for cigarette paper: guards had to be posted during services to ensure that the pages were not torn out.

The internees endured a starvation diet which led to malnutrition and discord. As the years dragged by, conditions became harsher and a growing moral and physical deterioration was evident. Welcome parcels were received by some, due to the courageous generosity of some Chinese, Indians and Portuguese still living in Hong Kong and not interned because the Japanese wanted their co-operation.

Very controversially, Gimson did not endorse the principle of repatriation. He felt that the British internees were British subjects on British territory, therefore they had no claim to transfer from one section of the Empire to another. He also believed that repatriation would weaken the case for Britain retaining Hong Kong as a Colony after the war. Much later he admitted that he might have misjudged the situation.

The repatriation of 1,500 people in the Far East, including the British at Stanley, was prevented by General MacArthur, commanding the southwest Pacific area, and by the Australian Government, because they would have been exchanged for 330 Japanese merchant seamen interned in Australia. These Japanese were familiar with the Australian coastline and harbours. Some of them were probably spies before the war.

Yet in June 1942 the American civilians were repatriated in exchange for Japanese interned in America. They subsequently publicised the plight of the British and Dutch left behind.

Dr P S Selwyn-Clarke, the former Director of Medical Services, had still not been interned because the Japanese had confidence in him. He was allowed to visit the camp at least once a week, providing he gave no news and discussed only medical and relief matters. Everyone knew that some improvements in diet and the provision of medicines and clothing were the result of his untiring efforts. His arrest on a charge of treason was a culminating blow: the lifeline of extra foodstuffs was severed. Sixteen months later, he was given the light sentence of three years’ imprisonment because there was no evidence against him.

The discovery of the wireless set in the internment camp and the link to the BAAG which led to so many tragic deaths have already been described.

Fourteen internees were killed when they were bombed by the Americans. By resolution the internees stated that, while the incident was most tragic and unfortunate, no bitter feelings were held against the Americans, who were seeking out Japanese anti-aircraft batteries.

Two weeks before Admiral Harcourt reached Hong Kong, Gimson, hearing rumours of the surrender, told Lieutenant Kadowake, the Camp Commandant, that unless there was a formal announcement, serious incidents might arise if the guards continued to adopt their usual attitude of arrogance and violence. Kadowake replied: “His Majesty the Emperor has taken into consideration the terms of the Potsdam Conference and has ordered hostilities to cease.” Seeing the bewilderment in Gimson’s face, Kadowake added: “In other words you’ve won; we’ve lost.”

Gimson left Stanley and met the senior British officers at Shamshuipo Camp. He was, in turn, one of the first to meet Admiral Harcourt, who reported to London, “Gimson and his gallant band of ex-POWs and internees had already got going and continued to give very good service until some of them literally cracked up, not yet being fit.”1

In August 1995 Oliver Lindsay took a large Royal British Legion Pilgrimage to the former Stanley Internment Camp. After a moving service at the Sai Wan cemetery, we had lunch in the prison officers’ club, looking forward to the former internees in our party telling us of their reminiscences in the precise buildings in which they had been imprisoned. It would have been an exceptional experience for all of us. Alas! Typhoon warning No. Three had just been hoisted. We had not even finished lunch before we were bussed back to our hotel. Perhaps it was just as well we didn’t eat too much for a few of our party fell seriously ill with food poisoning attributable, apparently, to lack of hygiene in the club’s kitchens.

* * * * *

The Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong

When I was first interned in Shamshuipo, I saw a steady trickle of Chinese moving north each day, returning to China. As months went by, it became apparent that fewer and fewer were left in the Colony. It was only after my release that I could gradually piece together what ‘Japan’s New Order’ in Hong Kong had amounted to.

The Japanese administration’s first priority had been to reduce the Chinese population to avoid the responsibility of feeding them. In the face of starvation, unemployment, reduced educational and other social services, over one million Chinese fled to China during the occupation, leaving only 650,000 in Hong Kong by 1945. Many unfortunates died on the way, never reaching their destination, thereby doing untold damage to Japanese propaganda.

Several hundred of the more destitute were herded into large junks and abandoned on Lantau Island, which had no water.

Crime rose dramatically in view of the semi-starvation; draconian punishment kept it within bounds. Periodically there were mass executions of thieves, who were first made to dig their own graves. The Chinese whom I had seen executed at the water’s edge in 1942 had probably come from the nearby prison, which was overflowing. A Catholic nun who was released from the Internment Camp in July 1943 remembers: “We saw a Chinese man tied up in a cage which was three foot high and three foot square. He was kneeling and begging for mercy from a Japanese soldier who was amusing himself by poking a stick through the bars. We were told that the man was going to have his head cut off.”2 (Just as terrorists in Iraq behead some of those whom they have kidnapped.)

Father Granelli, an Italian priest who fled to Macao, reported that “Colonel Eguchi, the Director General of Medical Services, beheaded his cook at a dinner party. Eguchi was annoyed because the dinner was late and so bullied the cook before cutting off his head with his sword. A Portuguese lady who saw the whole performance had to go to bed for a week.”3

After the British surrender, nearly all Allied military equipment, ammunition, fuel, medicines, food and other stores were shipped methodically and efficiently to Japan together with any movable booty including trucks and cars. My little Morris was broken up for scrap metal, I fear.

Chinese labour was paid in rice; prices soared. Every commodity was strictly rationed and food queues were evident everywhere.

The Japanese set great store by hygiene. Hands had to be washed in a basin of antiseptic on entering a public building; feet were wiped on a mat saturated in the same liquid. The Japanese language was enforced in the few schools which continued to function.

Despite all these difficulties, life in Hong Kong went on as it did in cities in Europe under German occupation. It was not Japanese policy to antagonise Chinese or Indians for there were vague plans for Hong Kong and India to have an eventual role in Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, and this would need the conquered races’ co-operation.

The Chinese had no alternative other than to co-operate with the Japanese if they were to survive. Even so, the degree of collaboration would seem to have been no greater than in German-occupied territories in Europe, excluding Guernsey. (Incidentally the British made no attempt to defend Guernsey, choosing an ‘open city’ policy there. Hong Kong internees would have liked to have seen a similar policy in the Colony.)

Much has been written about Chinese collaboration; people such as Sir Robert Kotewall Keung, a former member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and Sir Shousan Chow were vilified after the war for allegedly co-operating with the enemy. It was suggested that they should be stripped of their knighthoods, just as Professor Anthony Blunt, the Russian spy, had his removed by the Queen in 1979.

The key point, however, is that both Sir Robert and Sir Shousan had been formally requested to work with the Japanese by the leading members of the former Hong Kong Government. Within a week of our surrender, R A C North, Secretary for Chinese Affairs, J A Fraser, Defence Secretary, and C G Alabaster, Attorney-General, had called on them and specifically asked them to promote friendly relations between Chinese and Japanese, and to do their best to restore public order and preserve internal security since the British were powerless. Moreover, some wealthy Chinese were secretly passing funds to Dr Selwyn-Clarke, and others after his arrest, for the POWs and internees.

Racing at Happy Valley was restarted, but the horses frequently collapsed during the races due to starvation; eventually the course was turned into a vegetable patch.

The Anglican St John’s Cathedral was used by the Japanese as a stable. Dr Charles Harth, a German Jewish refugee, enabled services to continue in the Anglican Bishop’s House. He was a tower of strength, although before the war some British thought he was a German spy.

Valtorta, the Italian Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong, was given $50,000 by the Pope to buy food and clothing for the internees. He spent it as best he could to help us all.

As Allied submarines sank more Japanese ships, Hong Kong became increasingly destitute and isolated. “Fear lay upon the town like an impenetrable fog, hope seemed dead and deliverance far away. At intervals a few tramcars rumbled along Victoria, Hong Kong’s capital. They were continually halted by American air raids,” recalls one eyewitness.

The Japanese Governor of Hong Kong was Lieutenant General Rensuke Isogai. He had an undeserved reputation for good living and geisha parties, whereas he preferred to be studying calligraphy and walking in his garden in his slippers listening to the croaking of bullfrogs. He was quite ineffective; it was the Military Police who wielded the power. Government House had been badly damaged before the war when air raid tunnels had been dug in the rock beneath its foundations. It was gradually rebuilt as a tiered and turreted east-west hybrid vaguely reminiscent of Japanese palaces and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Its completion coincided with the Japanese surrender.

Within one month of the Japanese capitulation, trains, ferries, telephones, electric power, lighting, docks and wharves were all working once more, albeit on a reduced scale. The corpses found rotting in the streets were buried; the filthy hospitals cleaned up; rice, fuel, wood and vegetables were imported. Trade rapidly resumed. Over the next five months 250,000 Chinese flocked back into the Colony which had staged such a remarkable recovery. Hong Kong’s Chinese, encouraged by this restoration, expressed no wish to be part of China.

Chiang Kai-shek wanted his representative to take the Japanese surrender in Hong Kong, just as he asked for all the Japanese war material found there. Prime Minister Attlee appealed to President Truman for help; he promptly gave it. Chiang Kai-shek had never made formal claim to Hong Kong and appeared satisfied that he could use the Colony’s port to redeploy his troops prior to his unsuccessful campaign against the Communists. Japanese ships and transport captured by the British in the Colony were given to him. The deadlock was therefore broken and the formal surrender took place in Government House on 16th September.

The British fleet took so long to reach us because Attlee, the War Office and indeed all the Allies did not anticipate the relatively quick surrender after the atom bombs were dropped.

* * * * *

The Privileged Nightmare

During these weeks, following the news reaching us in Shamshuipo POW Camp that the war was over, I wondered what had happened to General Maltby. I had considerable admiration for him; he had stood up to the bullying enemy so well on our behalf in the camp. It is not for me to judge some of the events in Hong Kong, but I did have an insight into General Maltby’s problems over the captive years. He was indeed a great man.

I discovered subsequently that he and the other senior officers from Hong Kong had been sent to Shirakawa in Formosa. Lieutenant General S J M Wainwright, together with A E Percival and Sir Lewis Heath from Malaya, were already there.

Sir Mark Young was also in Formosa. Following his surrender of the Colony on Christmas Day 1941, he had been treated with humiliation despite the fact that, or perhaps because, he was the King’s representative and former Commander in Chief. In February 1942 Private J Waller of the Middlesex Regiment was sent to the Peninsula Hotel to become his batman. “He called me John. To my mortification, when he wanted us to start doing press-ups together, he could do ten more than me. The following day, we were flown to Formosa. I had never flown before,” recalls Waller, “and Sir Mark seemed mildly surprised when I asked him where the parachutes were. We sat between two Japs who vomited continuously into their hats as the weather was bad.”4 As usual Sir Mark was quite imperturbable just as, throughout the shelling, mortaring and machine-gun fire, he had been found by Maltby’s ADC inspiring people to keep going, when the Japanese were closing in on Victoria.

The former Governor was moved on to Shanghai where Waller managed to smuggle meat to him. It was given to them by British awaiting internment there. But Sir Mark refused to eat the meat as it was not available to other prisoners. In September 1942 they were flown to Formosa to be joined by Maltby, Wallis and other senior officers from Hong Kong and Singapore.

They were shocked to hear of the final days in the battle for Singapore. Armed deserters forced their way onto ships which were evacuating women and children. Two Commanding Officers of units which melted away had claimed that during the battle they could scarcely lay their hands on 100 men. Yet each unit possessed almost 800 men in captivity, having suffered few casualties.5

In October 1944 the Governors of Hong Kong, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies and Sumatra, with the most senior officers, were moved to Japan and marched to Bappu. They saw three aircraft carriers at anchor in the bay.

The prisoners spent several delightful days in a small tourist hotel there. “Another boon,” recalls Brigadier T Massy Beresford who had been captured in Singapore, “was that we were able to indulge in hot sulphur baths which were 20 feet wide and five feet deep. We were startled when the hotel girls jumped in and rubbed us down.”

They were sent to South Korea and then on to the bleak Manchurian village of Sheng Tai Tun, close to the Gobi Desert. It was freezing cold and the prisoners’ teeth clattered like castanets. Morale soared when Red Cross parcels arrived. Moreover, news reached them that the Allies had advanced to the Rhine and Japan was being heavily bombed.

On 20th May 1945 the Governors and senior officers were next moved to Mukden in Manchuria to work in a factory. Life was hard there; 200 Americans had died in the camp during the first Winter.

In early August 1945 the POWs were seriously alarmed to hear that haversack rations were being prepared for them. “This meant an imminent move to some remote encampment,” recalled Brigadier Wallis. “None of us could have marched more than a mile, and we knew that thousands of Americans had perished on Japanese forced marches in the Philippines. Intense uncertainty descended upon us.”6

* * * * *

That week I was still in Shamshuipo Camp. A rumour was spread to us by some of the guards that if there was a surrender or an American attack, all of us would be put in the specially prepared basements in tall buildings which would then be blown up; the Japanese, we were told, would then claim that we had been killed by American bombs.

Many of us believed by early August 1945 that the Allies would triumph, but we were far from certain that we would live to see the liberation. Major Charles Boxer, Commander J N Craven RN, Lieutenant H C Dixon RNZNVR and Commander R S Young RN, now imprisoned in Canton, were surreptitiously warned by one well-meaning Indian guard that the Japanese were preparing to kill all their prisoners. This may well have been true. But on 6th August the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima as already related. Three days later Russia attacked the Japanese in Manchuria and elsewhere. The second atom bomb was also dropped on Nagasaki. The Japanese military prevaricated and seemed determined to fight on. The Supreme War Council and Cabinet remained divided, incapable of recognising the inevitability of Japan’s defeat.

On 15th August Emperor Hirohito announced that “the war did not turn in our favour… the new outrageous bombs used by the enemy caused incessant bloodshed of innocent people and havoc which cannot be stopped.” Just as relevant to us, he ordered all military forces to lay down their arms forthwith to “endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable”. His orders were obeyed to the letter. He dispatched members of his family to different battle zones to ensure that was the case.

All the lives of the POWs and internees in the Far East were immediately saved, just as the lives of the many thousands preparing to invade Japan were not endangered.

Many years later in Bath Abbey, Oliver Lindsay heard a Bishop in the pulpit announce that it would have been better if the atom bombs had been dropped on green fields in Japan. “Anyone with dissenting views can discuss them with me afterwards over coffee,” he graciously added, not anticipating the strong views Oliver expressed to him after the service! It took two atom bombs and the Russian invasion to bring Hirohito, if not the others, to his senses. A vast explosion amidst “green fields” would not have proved effective to save our lives!

Notes

1. The Colonial Office files CO 980 59 HN 00493, CO 980/53 and 129 590/18 HN 00152 have details on the Stanley Internment Camp. Gimson’s story is recorded in his Personal Impressions. See also CO 129 590/18 HN 00152. All the above are in the Public Record Office (National Archives). See also At the Going Down of the Sun, Chapter 4.

2. South China Morning Post, 4.6.50.

3. CO 129 591/4 HN 00035.

4. Letter Waller to OL.

5. Interview Brig. T Massy Beresford with OL. The Brigadier’s lengthy reminiscences, read by Oliver Lindsay beforehand, are in RHQ The Royal Green Jackets, with a time embargo preventing their being read for many years.

6. Interview Brig. C Wallis with OL in Aldershot in 1978.

CHAPTER 22

The Calm after Thunder:

Returning Home

On 10th September 1945 I boarded The Empress of Australia bound for Manila after almost precisely five years in Hong Kong.

I arrived there and spent three weeks in a US transit camp, where some 25,000 American Servicemen had been getting ready to invade Japan. The American camp was something I had never imagined. There were four films to choose from every night showing on open-air screens, and almost every kind of facility. We were issued with Australian blankets, one of which I still possess.

The approach to Manila up the 50-mile Gulf was dramatic since there was line after line of American ships, all loaded to the gunwales, all carefully placed for the coming invasion of Japan. It was the largest assembly of shipping I have ever seen or am likely to see.

When we arrived at the head of the sound after some six hours, we were given a berth adjoining one of the few undamaged quays. Around us were masts and funnels of ships projecting above the water. These were Japanese ships which had been sunk in the capture of Manila.

The Americans had provided some 40 ambulances for those seriously ill. But before the ambulances arrived on the quay the American Marine Musicians struck up God Save the King. All cheered, and the American national anthem was then played. Very few of the ambulances were needed as the Royal Navy had earlier brought the hospital ship Oxfordshire to Hong Kong and she had collected those who were in a serious condition.

After about two weeks I boarded a P37 American transport, a 6,000-ton landing ship designed with many others to capture the Pacific islands one by one. On board were 2,000 Americans and 40 British and Canadians. We all had mattresses. There were no complaints. We were all going home. I need hardly say the food was excellent; the galleys never stopped serving us. It was the first time I had seen food being served on a tray with indentations for all the different courses. After a three-week voyage on the P37 we arrived off Honolulu. At the entrance to what had become one of the world’s greatest naval bases was anchored a British aircraft carrier with the White Ensign flying at her stern – a most moving sight.

We spent the day on board the P37 as the Admiral at Pearl Harbor had prohibited our landing. Our Captain made amends for our disappointment by asking the ship’s company to gather round the main hatch at 2.00 p.m. Right on time he posted 40 Marines around the hatch; a few minutes later Hawaiian dancers in grass skirts arrived to everybody’s delight.

Just before arriving in Seattle a message came through to the Captain that we would be diverted to Esquimault (the Canadian naval base in the Pacific), near Vancouver. The reason was that America had withdrawn lease lend and there was no money to send us home across the States!

On arrival in Esquimault the names of the first POWs to arrive were read out in turn before each of us went down the gangway. It was dark, but floodlights were on and we were being televised. We saw a large group on the quay below and were greeted individually with cheers and clapping.

That night we were taken to a transit camp on the outskirts of Victoria, where we stayed for about ten days. The camp was still there 35 years later when I visited it, being used as part of the University of Victoria. We then took the Canadian Pacific train from Vancouver to Halifax, the first POW train to make the four-day journey; the Canadian Government had given the officers first-class accommodation. The next day we climbed up and over the Rockies; the scenery was beautiful. In the evening we steamed into Edmonton for a half hour stop. We had gone to sleep wearing pyjamas for the first time for many years. Suddenly a band struck up outside the carriage, God Save the King. The station and the town were lit up because everybody was celebrating. A number of girls came into our carriage and pulled us out on the platform in our pyjamas, and started to dance with us. If you have not seen or been with a girl for four years, when something like that happens, you have an extraordinary feeling. The Mayor of Edmonton was there with his gold chain of office while the ladies served tea and cakes. It was an amazing experience.

The next day we crossed the prairies to Winnipeg, deciding to be well prepared and remaining dressed, ready for the reception which we saw as the train drew in. The people of Winnipeg had turned out with the Mayor and a band. Whenever we stopped, whatever the hour, however isolated the outpost, local residents were waiting on the station to give us chocolates, hot coffee, buns and fruit. On the third day we arrived at Montreal, where some Servicemen made a good profit selling their worthless Hong Kong military yen notes to the Canadians as mementos.

Going across Canada we met trains going in the opposite direction, bringing Canadian Servicemen back from Europe. They shouted, “Don’t go back. They are watering the beer. England is finished.”

Finally we arrived at Halifax. I was able to telephone my mother and asked what I should bring her. “We would love a tin of butter,” was her reply.

We waited two weeks to fill the Ile de France, a large French ocean liner. Great was the excitement when it was announced that a Royal Army Pay Corps team was about to pay us. Equally great was the disappointment when the ‘team’ turned out to be a bespectacled Lance Corporal with sufficient funds to pay only 25 men, let alone a couple of thousand of us. Notices were everywhere on the ship telling us not to steal the towels. The POWs retaliated by numbering in Japanese during the ship’s boat drills, and released several men from the ship’s cells.

On arrival at Southampton on 31st October there was no reception and no Mayor, as there had been at Manila, Esquimault, Edmonton and Winnipeg. There was no Garden Party for us: it had to wait 50 years to be put right by The Queen on VJ Day 1995.

I had taken five and a half years to circumnavigate the globe, leaving from Platform 2 at Woking station and returning to Platform 2 from Southampton. My expenses had been met by the British Government, the Government of Hong Kong, the Emperor of Japan, the President of the United States of America, the Prime Minister of Canada and finally the British Government once again!

“It was misty and a very moving sight when this great ship came in,” wrote my father. “Freda and I had been lucky to secure a pass for the quayside. We spotted John at the aft rail and he spotted us. As she tied up, gangways went down, a band struck up welcoming music and John was quickly down the gangway to us at last, after five years. Praise and thanksgiving welled up in our hearts as we welcomed him, and then had to release him for formalities to be gone through.”

After spending several days in a hut in Southampton, I received a railway ticket for Woking, the station nearest to my home. And that was my discharge!

* * * * *

The healthier Canadian POWs were embarked on HMCS Prince Robert, the same merchant cruiser which had escorted them to Hong Kong 45 months earlier. Thirty-one who were seriously ill were carried aboard the Oxfordshire. The remainder paraded to board the Empress of Australia. Captain S M Banfill of the Royal Rifles remembers how “the Senior Medical Officer shouted ‘Attention! Right turn.’ Then he looked at the emaciated, ragged men and said quietly, ‘I won’t say, ‘Quick march’ but toddle on the best you can’.”1

At Manila, the Canadian Shamshuipo survivors were reunited with their comrades who had been imprisoned in Japan. “Nearly every man who came home had physical and psychological problems of one kind or another, and many of them would suffer the effects for the rest of their lives,” concluded Brereton Greenhous in National Defence HQ, Ottawa.2

Many of the Canadian veterans “had returned with undetected dysentery, and as there was only one doctor in Canada with experience in diagnosing the disease, these cases were neither identified nor treated. One of the more unfortunate results of this was the contraction of dysentery by wives and medical personnel.”3 After considerable political pressure, by 1976 the Canadian Government “generously gave Hong Kong veterans with assessed disabilities an additional 30% pension. Each man therefore collected a minimum 80% pension.” The British who were imprisoned in Hong Kong receive no special pension unless they can prove disability. Health in the three camps was governed by the gradual weakening of the prisoners. The doctors who were with us said that if the war had lasted another six months many prisoners would have died. The rations were of course inadequate for health, comprising rice twice a day, a watery vegetable soup and occasionally some unexpected addition.

In my case, and it was probably fairly common, I developed beriberi towards the end of our imprisonment and from then on found myself considerably weaker when walking round the camp. In the Autumn of 1943 beriberi affected my sight. I understand that without a healthy diet eyes become weaker after some months, and this happened to me. Francis Rossini, a POW with us who was an eye specialist from Harley Street in London, collected a small party and each afternoon read to us some pages from a book.

Beriberi is a deficiency disease resulting from sub-standard nutrition, including vitamin deficiencies. The usual symptom was burning pain in the feet. Beriberi also caused my legs to blow up like balloons, and my joints began to ache. I had one injection of thiamine, which was all that could be spared. Was the drug smuggled into the camp by BAAG? I never discovered. I needed thiamine injections for 20 years after the war.

I expect that many British POWs were suffering in the same way as me and the Canadians. Gradually they joined me before we all sailed on the Ile de France. It was interesting hearing of their experiences.

Corporal H F Linge of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who had ended up as a POW in Japan, was astonished by the American hospitality in Manila: “We were issued with 40 cigarettes, five cigars and two cans of beer a day. When an American Sergeant discovered we were queuing up for a second free chocolate bar, he issued each man a whole box of them. We eventually embarked on HMS Implacable where everything was done to help us.”4

For Staff Sergeant J Winspear and other ex-POWs, the highlight was witnessing the Japanese surrender on USS Missouri. They were then assembled on the flight deck of the carrier which steamed slowly round the great battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the Pacific Fleet, every space being manned by sailors who cheered the POWs enthusiastically.

Major A R Colquhoun, a Gunner, also remembers Esquimault well. “The scenery was lovely; we were accommodated in what had been the local golf club over which a Union Jack flew; there was a waiter in a white jacket with a tray under his arm. We were penniless and sat in the sunshine while nice Canadian ladies plied us with tea and amiable conversation, and sewed on our campaign medals. It had never occurred to me that I was entitled to any medal, let alone three.”5

While I had been dispatched to Woking, others went to Waterloo Station. A uniformed chauffeur employed by the Duke of Grafton’s son drove Winspear through devastated, bombed-out East London where disillusionment set in: “We had been given a ration card which entitled us to double rations for six weeks, and we had to apply for them on the same form as a pregnant woman. One of the form’s questions was: ‘How long were you confined?’ I put down 1,324 days. I got the double ration, but a sour note crept in when the manager of the local Co-op would not accept my coupons.”

Lieutenant Commander Young, who had been imprisoned in shocking conditions with Major Boxer in Canton, also arrived at Waterloo Station and “saw a taxi draw up which I tried to enter, but a gruff policeman said ‘can’t you see there’s a queue? These people have been waiting an hour or more. Go to the bottom end.’ Quite exhausted, I sat on my suitcase and replied: ‘I have been waiting five years.’ The couple who had just got into the taxi must have realised who the thin, forlorn creature was, and they invited me in, and fed me on the way with biscuits and tea from a thermos. I was a little surprised to find out how bitter the feeling was against the Japanese; to my mind everything that had happened was a clash of Western and Eastern civilisation and culture.”

Major Colquhoun was sent to a Rehabilitation Centre which was in a stately home in Kent. “After changing for dinner, we saw a roaring fire, waiters with silver trays and a pompous full colonel in scarlet mess-kit, medals and spurs. The whole idea was to re-create the atmosphere of a pre-war Regimental Guest Night. After dinner and the Loyal Toast, the Colonel announced that he was in a position to guarantee us an appropriate posting of our choice and we should give our name to a waiter if we had any psychological problems.

“All this high-grade flannel induced me to see the Colonel’s highly qualified psychoanalyst. I was ushered into a cosy room where I expected to be questioned on a couch and encouraged to think about sex. Instead, over a decanter of Cockburn 1898 port and a brace of Churchillian cigars, an elderly man listened to my story and said, ‘My advice to you, old boy, is that you should go to Ireland for a holiday; their steaks are excellent and their Guinness is good, too. You do the paying, but I could probably wangle you a couple of weeks’ leave.’ So much for the psychoanalysis. Next day I told the qualified career planner that I would like to be posted to a Field Artillery unit in the south of England. ‘Excellent, old boy,’ he replied. ‘Would Southampton suit you? Good! Consider it done.’ We shook hands warmly. A week later a War Office letter arrived, posting me to an anti-aircraft battery in the far north of England.”

Private Waller, the former batman to Sir Mark Young, had also been on the Ile de France with me. He reached an Infantry Depot at Amersham where he was told he must remain until he had been “processed”. “I had already been processed at Okinawa, Manila and Halifax and I had had enough. And so I went absent without leave,” he remembers. Eventually he returned to the Depot where “Everyone thought us prisoners of the Japs were all a bit bonkers and so we were given plenty of understanding. I was quickly discharged; a Major drove me to the station.”

Sir Mark Young and Major General Maltby had been flown back to England much earlier, on 5th September. Sir Mark had immediately visited Waller’s son at school and given him a mouth organ. During the war, Mrs Waller, who never knew for certain that her husband was still alive, received food parcels from Lady Young. Sir Mark never fully recovered his health, as was the case with some regular soldiers who, to their bitter disappointment, were too ill to continue with their Service careers. Then there were the oldest ex-POWs who were told that, after four years and nine months as a POW, there was no future employment for them in the Services. To his great dismay, Major General Maltby fell into this category.

* * * * *

Much is known about the British and Canadians, but virtually nothing has appeared in print about the repatriation of the loyal Rajputs and Punjabis who fought in Hong Kong with us.

The Indian survivors from the POW camp sailed in SS Takliwa from Kowloon after the British and Canadian POWs had departed. They were commanded by Major Kampla Prasad and were accompanied by Captain B A Hurd, the Adjutant, and Captain J L Flynn, the ship’s Quartermaster. Both were British officers serving in the Indian Army. The other British officers had been sent to Britain independently, not that many of them had survived the war.

After calling at Singapore for supplies, “SS Takliwa took a short cut through the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. She tore her bottom out on a reef at about 11.00 p.m. and caught fire,” recalls Flynn. “Some lifeboats were panic-launched and sank; others caught fire. It was a really dangerous situation. The Indians were badly frightened. Fortunately HMS Sainfoin arrived and rescued everyone. But we lost all our possessions. The Royal Navy were marvellous, found space for us, giving us their clothing and cigarettes. They took us through a bad hurricane to Madras and cleared up after the Indians were very sick. On arrival there, we were given an advance of pay and Red Cross amenities. A ‘Released Prisoner of War and Internees Unit’ warned us for psychological testing and for retraining for the post-POW changed world.” It would appear that they had a better reception than the POWs reaching England!

“I would estimate,” continues Flynn, “that of the 2/14 Punjabis only about six or seven Indians were recommended for dishonourable discipline for cooperating with the Japanese, while maybe 20 helped them under duress. In any event, all courts martial were later quashed for political reasons.”

Most of the Japanese POWs after the war were moved to Shamshuipo Barracks, which we had just vacated. It is estimated that there were between 7,000 and 10,000 of them. Like some of us in 1942, they were put to work improving Kai Tak airfield, under robust Commando guards. They also swept the streets and removed rubble, “a very suitable job for the Japanese who were responsible in the main for the damage done.” After some months they were shipped home, along with their Korean and Taiwanese auxiliaries. The hard core of suspected perpetrators of war crimes had already been rounded up, as will be discussed in the penultimate chapter.

Thus it was that the former internees and the British, Canadian, Indian and Japanese ex-POWs returned home, some to uncertain futures.

We had bid good-bye in Hong Kong to the brave Chinese civilians, some ex-internees and the gallant men of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps who had truly been fighting as Volunteers for their homes in the Crown Colony in 1941. It is to those we left there that our gratitude should be expressed. They made the Colony such a prosperous, cheerful, vibrant and safe place to live for so many post-war years and thereafter, when wars were raging in turn in China, Korea, Malaya, Indonesia and Vietnam. By comparison, Hong Kong became a haven of peace and a “vision of delight” once more, as those who lived in the Colony will agree.

Notes

1. Greenhous, B, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 30, 1997, p. 316.

2. Ibid. p. 148

3. Vincent, C, No Reason Why, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1981, p. 238.

4. Letter Linge to OL.

5. Interview Colquoun with OL.

CHAPTER 23

New Worlds to Find:

An Architect At Last

“He looked a skeleton,” my father wrote about me when I arrived home at Chobham in early November 1945. “Diphtheria, beriberi and captivity had taken a heavy toll, but after his discharge from the Army we took him to our local GP and Sir Geoffrey Marshall, the chest specialist.”

My sister Rosina had, when she left school in 1940, joined the American Ambulance service rather than accept the place already offered to her at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She took up her law studies there after the war. My parents were proud of her when they saw her drive off with her large Ford ambulance, in company with some dozen others, from Sussex Square in London en route to Reading. She was based there for some 18 months, evacuating the wounded after bombing raids in London, Southampton and other cities. From 1943 to 1945 she was based in London during the V1 and V2 attacks.

My wife Jill remembers one incident when she dived under her drawing board as the sirens sounded for a likely V2 rocket attack. The Architectural Association School had returned to London after being evacuated to Barnet and Jill joined Unit One, in the attic of a house in Bedford Square. The drawing boards lay on old wooden trestle tables. The students automatically dived for cover when the sirens went off, for most had had experience of ‘doodlebugs’ (V1s). These were different from V2s as they were fuel driven and when their engines ‘cut out’ everyone knew it would be seconds before they reached the ground with the consequential explosion. The V2s arrived silently and exploded. Luckily for Jill, on this occasion the explosion was heard some way off and the students resumed their ‘yellow ochre washes’.

After gradually getting fit, I began again my diploma course at the Architectural Association and there met Jill Rowe, whom I married in June 1950. I owe so much to her.

In the following year we opened our first office in George Street in London’s Marylebone district. It was one half of one room, heated by an oil stove; tea was made with an electric kettle on the floor. The telephone was shared. There was a shortage of almost everything and Building Licensing was required for any development over £500. No restaurant could charge more than five shillings for dinner (including the Savoy).

Winning a major competition was one of the best ways of founding a practice. In 1952 there were two major Royal Institute of British Architects’ open competitions – one for the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral and the other for the design of the new State Hospital, Doha. We won the latter.

My interest in health-care buildings dates back to 1935 when I went on a study tour of Scandinavian hospitals with my father, who had just been appointed as surveyor for the rebuilding of Westminster Hospital. In entering the Doha competition I had two advantages. First, I had developed a feel for climate, having experienced those five years in Hong Kong. Secondly, I had already visited the Arabian Gulf in 1951 as the architect for the Building Research Laboratories in Kuwait. I felt that the planning and elevation detailing of the State Hospital design would largely be determined by the inter-related requirements of solar control and natural ventilation. We were very fortunate to be awarded first prize and appointed architects, out of 74 entries from all over the world.

At the invitation of the State Engineer, who had flown to London for the adjudication, I flew out to Doha four days later. His Highness Sheikh Ali KBE, the Ruler of Qatar, was curious to know why I wanted more time to complete the working drawings for his new hospital. His new palace, he told me, had been marked out on the sand and work had started as soon as he had given his authority. I produced an acceptable answer whereby a separate foundation contract (the hospital being designed on a standard grid) would enable work to start on site immediately, although full working drawings took another nine months to complete. The hospital was opened in 1957 by Sheikh Ali who was presented by me with a gold key, and a national holiday was announced.

In the 1980s the office in Doha was commissioned to design and construct the new Women’s Hospital and the new National Tennis and Squash complex which placed Doha on the world circuit. In 1997 the firm undertook the 3,000-seat Conference Centre on the direct instruction of the Emir, to be built in time for the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Summit attended by the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. This Conference Centre was designed and completed in eight and a half months – a record time.

On completion of the Doha State Hospital, I was invited to visit Dubai by the Ruler, HH Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al-Maktoum. He wanted me to prepare a town plan for Dubai. This was initiated in 1960 and revised in 1977.

My first building commission in Dubai was for the Al-Maktoum Hospital. We extended the previous single shed-like structure from 18 beds to 125. Some funds were contributed by the British Government. After undertaking a number of small projects in Dubai, I happened to be in the Majlis (the Ruler’s court) in August 1966 when an oil company representative rushed in to break the news that oil had been found. He had with him a jam jar full of oil, which he presented to Sheikh Rashid. The Ruler got up and embraced everyone present. It was a marvellous experience to be there at that very moment.

Sheikh Rashid then declared to me that we could now go ahead with the development plan and hospital programme which he had long waited to put in hand. The Rashid Hospital was the first, followed by other hospitals, educational and commercial buildings. The Rashid Hospital was commenced on a loan so I had to detail every cost, right down to the cutlery and linen. When the job was finished I presented Sheikh Rashid with the final account and told him we had saved £18. He said to me in a loud voice, “Keep it!” and the whole Majlis roared with laughter.

Following a visit by HM The Queen to Dubai in 1972, HH Sheikh Rashid was inspired to give the order for a World Trade and Exhibition Centre to be constructed, and he sought my advice. At that time the New York Trade Center was only half built, and the idea of such a building was little understood outside America. I explained to Sheikh Rashid that I needed four months to research into current advances and design solutions by visiting Trade Centres then under construction around the world. Sheikh Rashid said, “Come back and see me when you are ready.” This I did. When I finally presented my scheme, Sheikh Rashid remarked, “That is not tall enough! The tower should be higher.” Many people in the Majlis thought that the proposed scheme was too ambitious; few buildings in Dubai were more than three storeys high at that time. However, the tower was raised to its present height and constructed in reinforced concrete (not steel as were the Trade Center towers in New York).

In 1979 the Trade Centre was opened by HM The Queen at HH Sheikh Rashid’s invitation. It was the tallest building in the Arab world from Morocco to Bombay for 20 years.

In 1984 we were successful in the design competition for HH the Ruler of Dubai’s new Diwan on a prominent site on the Creek. A principal government building, this was one of the first modern buildings in the region to respect the historical tradition of the windtower/courtyard structures.

* * * * *

Our links with the Middle East grew over time. It was from Kuwait in 1955 that I became one of the first Britons to return to the great oil refinery at Abadan after its takeover by Iran three years earlier. Secretly through the reeds in a small boat, I crossed the Shatt al Arab river, an area of conflict between the British and Iraqis in the Second Gulf War. In 1957 we opened an office in Tehran which flourished until the 1977 revolution.

Once established in the Gulf I then became involved in neighbouring Oman. In 1966 I was invited to meet His Majesty Sultan Said bin Taimur at his palace in Salalah, Oman. From this initial meeting a development programme for the country emerged. The first girls’ school and the foundation of a hospital was put in hand. The Ottoman Bank, located just outside the town walls of Muscat, was the first commercial building in reinforced concrete to be constructed in Oman apart from oil company buildings. My partner at this time prepared designs for the first Christian church in Oman.

I visited the Sultan regularly, both of us squatting on the floor with plans or maps spread out on the carpet in front of us. Outside the room was an armed guard. On one occasion, when the time came for us to rise, the Sultan stumbled and I instinctively put my arms around him to stop him from falling. Thinking the Sultan was being attacked, the guard rushed in with his rifle. Fortunately for me the Sultan shouted to him in Arabic to hold his fire. He then turned to me and said, “I am so sorry. My foot went to sleep.”

After this I suggested it might be more convenient if we worked together at a table, and arranged for one to be sent out from London in time for our next meeting.

A regional office was established which undertook many projects over 24 years. Under His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the pace of development in Oman increased and we were appointed to prepare a development plan for Muscat and Mutrah, and designs ranging from small tribal centres to large defence bases and commercial projects.

Expanding eastwards from Arabia, I was approached to be the architectural consultant for the 1,200-bed Kuala Lumpur General Hospital.

In 1976 we were invited to prepare a development scheme for the Royal Brunei Polo Club, which became a substantial project. This involved clearing jungle and preparing the polo fields. Buildings included grandstands, air conditioned stables and accommodation for staff and visiting teams.

While our architectural practice expanded its regional overseas offices, the UK-based firm secured a number of important projects in Britain and Europe. There followed exciting years when new projects included the complete refurbishment of the Dorchester Hotel and major work on Strangeways Prison after the riots.

In the late 1980s the practice had prepared plans and secured the commission for a comprehensive redevelopment of a 2.84-acre site in Kensington above Gloucester Road underground station which incorporated the historic Brunel railway arches of the District Line. The development comprised luxury serviced apartments, an office building, and a retail arcade with landscaped areas. Throughout the contract the District, Circle and Piccadilly tube lines remained in use. Major structural work, including 18.5-metre long beams over the railway, had to be undertaken at night. Access roads were closed to bring in the beams. Gloucester Park was officially opened by HRH the Duke of Gloucester GCVO on 29th November 1991.

During my career much has changed to produce the ‘global village’ and instant communications of today. In the early years I spent several days travelling to the Gulf on unreliable piston-engined planes with frequent night stops, often unexpected. Nowadays one can fly direct in a matter of hours. When I first travelled to the Arabian Gulf there were few telephones; cables, which had to be sent from cable stations by radio, were the main means of communication. Every word and punctuation mark was chargeable. Over all these years, London remained my base and I travelled laden with rolls of drawings tied up with brown paper and string, and detailed architectural models in wooden boxes which had to be placed in the aircraft hold. The reputation of the practice grew through the nurturing of personal contacts and the building of trust and confidence with clients. Promotion was principally by word of mouth. Cost control and quick responses were essential.

Jill and teams of architects and technicians undertook most of the design work in London. The hardworking professional teams and key personnel who ran the regional offices were no less essential to the success of the practice.

The full story of our architectural practice over more than 50 years, and which still continues, must be told elsewhere.1 There were many projects and locations – and inevitably there were disappointments.

One project in particular held special significance for me. This was the 1,600-bed Tuen Mun Hospital in Hong Kong. We had won against international competition the commission for one of the largest hospitals in the world to be built in one phase in the 1980s. After 36 years I was back in Hong Kong.

Other hospitals followed in Hong Kong, some in association with Leigh & Orange: United Christian, Caritas and a technical design consultancy for one of the largest hospitals of all – the Pamela Youde with almost 2,000 beds. We were invited to enter the People’s Republic of China to plan the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone near the former Portuguese colony of Macau. This was an urban development plan proposal for a new city of over 200,000 people. It incorporated a large resort complex, a city centre and commercial and industrial areas. The initial survey was carried out with my son Mark from the deck of a Chinese warship.

We should remember that the Chinese were our brave allies during the war years.

Mark had returned from the United States in 1981 with a Master’s degree in architecture and urban design from Harvard University, after which he had worked for the well-known architect developer, John Portman, who was based in Atlanta, Georgia. Mark introduced Computer Aided Design, then a new and rapidly developing field, into the practice. The first practical use of the system was for the design and working drawings of Tuen Mun Hospital. The Public Works Department in Hong Kong was impressed and subsequently installed a similar system.

The Tuen Mun Hospital was the first building services contract to be awarded in Hong Kong to a Japanese contractor since 1945. Before that, the Japanese were prohibited from tendering for Government contracts in Hong Kong.

* * * * *

Having endured the grim experience of being a POW in Hong Kong and seen at first hand the cruelty to which some of the Japanese descended, I was once asked by Oliver Lindsay, “What are your feelings today about yesterday’s Japanese?” After some thought I replied in two words: “Very mixed.”

As far as today’s Japanese are concerned, Oliver has seen another side to them. After 35 years as a regular soldier, he worked for six years at the Treloar Trust which looks after 300 very seriously disabled youngsters. Many have severe cerebral palsy, which prevents them having any speech.

A Japanese firm, a household name, visited the charity at Oliver’s invitation. After much bowing and inscrutable ‘smiles’, they departed. Oliver hoped they would pay for several appropriately named ‘Liberators’, each of which rests on the front of the child’s wheelchair, providing synthetic ‘speech’. They cost £4,000 each. Without them, the youngsters in question could not communicate.

Oliver heard from the Japanese the following day: they wanted to fund and equip the entire Communication Centre! There was only one condition: the Japanese wanted no publicity – it was the children they wanted to help, not their firm or its reputation.

* * * * *

Our London office has remained in Marylebone. We moved from George Street to Queen Anne Street and then to Devonshire Place in 1963.

In 2000 Jill and I celebrated our golden wedding anniversary with our family and friends; the reception was held on the River Thames on HMS Belfast. My life therefore came full circle. HMS Belfast was the sister ship of HMS Euryalus, the ship on which, within days of my liberation from the prison camp in Hong Kong, I had so enjoyed my first pink gin and the glimpse of Country Life once more.

Note

1. The 120-page account of John R Harris Architects was published by the Hurtwood Press in 1984.

CHAPTER 24

Retribution

Following Japan’s surrender in August 1945, all former members of the Hong Kong Japanese military police (the Kempeitai) were arrested. Colonel Noma who had commanded them was traced to Japan and flown back to Hong Kong. Added to them were some officers of the Japanese 38th Division. They were placed in the cells at Stanley prison, vacated a few weeks earlier by some of our men!

The trials started in Hong Kong in March 1946. All the cases were meticulously investigated. British Army officers represented the accused; four months later a team of Japanese lawyers arrived to defend them, too.

The three most senior officers were tried by the Nationalists in China. Lieutenant General Takashi Sakai, who had been captured in China, had invaded Hong Kong in December 1941 when shocking atrocities were committed against Servicemen and civilians alike. He was found guilty and shot in Nanking.

The two former Hong Kong Governors, Rensuke Isogai and Hisokazu Tanaka, both Lieutenant Generals, had fled to China and Tokyo respectively. Tanaka was shot by a firing squad in Canton. He was heard to grunt defiantly on the eve of his execution, “Let’s see who is calling the shots in East Asia in ten years’ time.” Isogai, who preferred beautiful handwriting to military matters, was given a life sentence for the forced evacuation of the Chinese which led to so many of them dying. He ended up serving only five years.

Colonels Noma and Kanazawa, the two successive chiefs of the military police, had been responsible for many callous murders during interrogations. Much of the testimony against them was provided by Chinese, Eurasians and Indians who had suffered in their cells. Both were hanged along with 19 other high-ranking military police officers.

Two other Japanese who faced the death penalty were Colonel Tokunaga Isao, the overall commander of all Hong Kong’s camps, and Saito Shunkichi, the camps’ medical officer. Lieutenant Colonel J N Crawford, the senior Canadian medical officer, told the Court during their two months’ trial that of 128 Canadian deaths from diphtheria, 101 would have survived if the Japanese had provided the serum.1 Warrant Officer F W J Lewis said that £30,000 worth of British medicines and surgical instruments were in the Colony when it was captured, but were deliberately withheld. “The death of every man who died of diphtheria because of failure to ensure segregation, or the lack of serum, was directly Saito’s responsibility, no less than if he had grasped the man by the throat and choked him to death,” declared Major Puddicombe KC for the prosecution.

Major C R Boxer called Lewis’s evidence about a beating of Saito “a tissue of lies”, while Major S Smith of the Volunteers wrote to the Court about Tokunaga’s kindness to him. There is no doubt that Tokunaga stole Red Cross parcels. G White, formerly employed by the Municipal Electricity Company, saw stacks of them when shown over the house by Tokunaga’s mistress. “They were given to me by POWs through Major Cecil Boon as an act of affectionate gesture,” claimed Tokunaga.

Saito told the Court that there were only three cases of cholera among the POWs due to his efforts, whereas 1,700 Chinese died of it. He blamed the high proportion of Canadian diphtheria deaths on inevitable overcrowding, poor sanitary discipline, Canadians sharing lit cigarettes and the ignorant POW doctors.

In short, they blamed everyone but themselves.

The evidence against them was overwhelming, but their death sentences were commuted to life and 20 years’ imprisonment. It is not known if Boxer’s evidence enabled them to escape the hangman’s noose. “Unlike many former POWs, he did not approach post-war Japan with hostility or with the spirit of revenge,” writes his biographer. “He considered that, given the nature of war, he warranted the punishment for disseminating war news in his camp.”2 Laurens van der Post, an ex-POW from Java and since discredited by his biographer, strongly opposed the war crimes trials and refused to testify against his former captors.

Major General Tanaka Kyozaburo received only 20 years’ imprisonment although the Court was satisfied that “the whole route of this man’s battalion was littered with the corpses of murdered men who had been bayoneted and shot”. Lieutenant General Ito received 12 years and Major General Shoji was acquitted. Captain Kyoda Shigeru, who had commanded the Lisbon Maru, received seven years. The sentences seem extraordinarily light. The British are not great ‘haters’.

By March 1948, when the trials against the Japanese were completed, those facing imprisonment were dispatched to the Sagamo war crimes prison in Tokyo.

By December 1945 over 50 suspected collaborators were charged with specific offences under English law (while the Japanese had been charged with crimes against humanity and the accepted usage of war). Six of them were accused of treason: one was hanged in Stanley Gaol. After the restoration of civil rule on 1st May 1946, 28 Indians, Europeans and Eurasians were found guilty. Five were executed; the remainder received imprisonment with hard labour. Inouye Kanao, the Japanese interpreter at Shamshuipo, a Canadian, was found guilty of treason and hanged.

According to Captain J L Flynn, “after the Japanese surrender it was quite common to see naked, head-shaven women being chased, stoned and beaten by Chinese crowds. Such women were said to have been prostitutes for the Japanese.”

About 400 Indian soldiers captured in Hong Kong are believed to have joined the pro-Japanese Indian National Army. Up to 40,000 Indians from all theatres may have done so, many of them in order to obtain better food and conditions than that which the miserable POW camps had to offer. There is strong evidence that their fighting amounted to no more than a token gesture. The Japanese must have found transporting, arming, provisioning and relying on the 40,000 Indians a considerable burden and let-down; their own Japanese forces were increasingly starving when Slim was advancing south of the Irrawaddy upon Rangoon in 1945. “On the way the 1st Division of the Indian National Army was encountered,” wrote Field Marshal Viscount Slim. “It surrendered en masse with its commander, 150 officers and more than 3,000 men. They were just in time to begin work on the captured airfields.”3 It can be seen that they were ineffective, as opposed to those French, Dutch, Belgians and others who did fight for the Nazis, largely on the Eastern front.

* * * * *

It came as no surprise to the POWs from Shamshuipo that Major C Boon Royal Army Service Corps faced a general court martial on 11 charges, one of which was assisting the enemy. He had been a staff officer in Fortress Headquarters. Aged 45, he had served in the First World War and had once been a professional ballroom dancing champion. Boon had been in close arrest for 11 months before his trial in London in August 1946. “Boon had never commanded troops in the whole of his career, having always held administrative jobs. The Japs probably spotted him as pliable material because of his subservient attitude and general obsequiousness,” noted Major A R Colquhoun.4 Boon had occasionally attended parties with the Japanese, as he recorded, in Russian, in his diary. “After roll-call had bananas, fruit and roll with Japanese officers… we went to dine with Japanese Commander, plenty of beer.”

The Japanese had given him the unenviable job of being in charge of the Other Ranks in Shamshuipo. In 1942 BAAG had addressed a message to him about escapes; fortunately it was intercepted before he received it.

Evidence was given by former POWs that he informed on them and helped the enemy find wireless sets and tunnels for escape. Boon was alleged to have said to other POWs. “We must do as the Japanese tell us. We are officers of the Japanese Army now. I don’t regard myself as a British officer, but as part of the Japanese staff. I owe no allegiance to the King.” The prosecution called 40 witnesses; there was no ex-POW to give evidence for the defence.

Major Boon was not at his best during the trial and his conviction seemed probable. However it soon became evident that the desperate years of imprisonment had made the witnesses’ memories unreliable. Some of their testimony was contradictory; a few broke under formidable cross-examination. “I think,” wrote one of the defending counsel, “that it does great credit to the court martial system that after appalling initial prejudice against him, the Major was acquitted.” Boon appeared half-stunned by the proceedings and was scarcely able to enjoy the celebrations at the Savoy Grill afterwards. In the absence of legal aid, he had to pay his entire defence costs, a considerable sum.

* * * * *

In conclusion it might be said that the returning British authorities in 1945 “did not launch a policy of vengeance or recrimination… With the passing of the years into the new, more prosperous Hong Kong, the public memory of any shame or humiliation suffered at the hands of the Japanese has faded.”5

Notes

1. Interview Crawford with OL.

2. Alden, D, Charles R Boxer: An Uncommon Life, Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001, p. 29.

3. Slim, FM Viscount, Defeat into Victory, London: Cassell, 1961, p. 412.

4. Interview Colquhoun with OL.

5. Endacott, G B, Hong Kong Eclipse, Hong Kong: OUP, 1978, p. 250.

CHAPTER 25

“Good and Gallant

Leadership”

In the months after the defeat in Hong Kong, Major General C M Maltby was so despondent that he was indifferent to honours and awards being conferred on his Servicemen. Fortunately he changed his mind.

In April 1946 the appropriate recognition was given to the outstanding gallantry of Company Sergeant Major John Robert Osborn of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. On 19th December 1941, having enabled part of his Company to capture Mount Butler at the point of the bayonet and held it for three hours against a much larger number of enemy, he covered his men’s withdrawal. Later that afternoon, several grenades were thrown at his Company; he picked them up and threw them back. Suddenly a grenade dropped between him and his men. He rolled on it to protect them and was killed. The citation for the Victoria Cross which was awarded to this most courageous Warrant Officer is best endorsed in the language of a private soldier: “This man sacrificed his life for the boys that might have been crippled or maimed for life. I say he was a real soldier and one of the best I’ve known.” The British named a large barracks in Hong Kong after him. (Although all recent books on the Victoria Cross and Canadian accounts agree that Osborn’s action took place on Mount Butler, the precise location is not known.)

Until relatively recently, only the Victoria Cross, the George Cross and a Mention in Despatches have been awarded posthumously. Yet an exception was made in the case of Lieutenant Colonel H W M Stewart whose 1st Battalion The Middlesex Regiment fought so gallantly on the approaches to Victoria and on the peninsula at Stanley. He may best be remembered for his fine leadership on the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, as was Captain (later Major General) C M M Man whose prolonged and heartening defence of Leighton Hill by the ‘odds and sods’ was so successful. A DSO also went to Major C R Templer who had rolled grenades down the corridors of the Repulse Bay Hotel at approaching Japanese. Two Canadians also won the DSO. They were Majors W A Bishop and E Hodkinson. The former prevented the Japanese breaking through to the Tytam Gap on 18th December 1941, while Hodkinson undertook a daring attack on the 19th; it led to him being seriously wounded.

Padre Uriah Laite, the Regimental Chaplain to the Winnipeg Grenadiers, won the Military Cross when D Company held out for three days until 22nd December. He tended the wounded day and night with no medical backup, as well as giving spiritual and moral comfort. Due to his efforts in interceding with the Japanese, the wounded were not murdered on the spot as elsewhere. Another thoroughly deserved Military Cross went to Captain C Otway Royal Engineers whose gallantry at Lei Mun was remarkable.

Subedar Major Haider R Khan of the 2/14 Punjabis was another proud wearer of the Military Cross. He spent much time in solitary confinement for his adamant loyalty to the Crown.

Three Royal Scots deserve special mention. Captain D Pinkerton, although wounded earlier, stormed through the Wong Nei Chong Gap reaching the objective, the Police Station there, in a frontal assault before being wounded again. 2nd Lieutenant J A Ford, who had earlier held up the Japanese on Golden Hill on the Mainland, carried him back to safety. Both won Military Crosses. There were innumerable Other Ranks who received recognition. Among them was Private J Gallacher who received his Distinguished Conduct Medal from Princess Mary, the Royal Scots Colonel in Chief, in 1944, following his escape from Shamshuipo. Tragically, having survived so much, Pinkerton was killed in action at Port Said in 1956 and Gallacher in Korea in 1951.

The courage of Godfrey Bird, the Royal Engineer who endured the water torture for three weeks in June 1944, was recognised by the award of the George Medal.

A number were appointed Officers of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) including Donald C Bowie, the captive surgeon who ran the British Military Hospital for five years, saving so many lives. Another was the New Zealander, Lieutenant Commander R B Goodwin. He was one of those who smuggled the British Army Aid Group’s secret messages into and out of Argyle Street. (John Harris was the first to do so.) Goodwin had been one of the radio operators before he escaped from Hong Kong in July 1944, the only one to get away successfully in the last 22 months of the war. (He wrote two books entitled Hong Kong Escape and Passport to Eternity in 1953 and 1956 respectively.)

The number of Honours and Awards mentioned above are, literally, only a fraction of the total.

Major Charles Boxer was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) because of his role in preparing and disseminating news bulletins at the Argyle Street POW Camp and for his conduct during his subsequent imprisonment. Before announcements are made in the London Gazette, the Servicemen concerned are not consulted. Boxer responded by asking that the award be cancelled; he said he was merely doing his duty. Moreover, he added that he and others had recommended for honours two members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps “who were deeply involved in all underground work in the POW camps… neither of whom have received any official recognition”. Boxer announced, “I have neither the wish nor the intention to receive any decoration whatsoever whilst the far greater services of these and others whom I could name have gone unrewarded.”

Boxer had a good point: Honours and Awards, particularly in wartime, are strictly limited. A poorly written or mishandled citation, or an act of extreme gallantry witnessed by practically nobody, is unlikely to lead to recognition. Boxer, who died aged 96 in 2000, was not referring to Major H R Forsyth whose “fine leadership, courage and devotion to duty… ” led to Brigadier C Wallis writing a citation for a Victoria Cross for this mortally wounded Volunteer who refused to leave his post. Forsyth received nothing. (Oliver Lindsay, however, was able to send a photostat copy of the citation to his son.)

The Military Secretary at the War Office ignored Boxer’s plea that others be given honours and told him that “refusing an award which has been approved would constitute an act of grave discourtesy to His Majesty The King”. Nevertheless Boxer did not back down: a subsequent edition of the London Gazette cancelled the MBE. When asked, an official at St James’s Palace was unaware of any other Serviceman who refused an Honour after it had been gazetted.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Boxer helped the Japanese during the war, as has been alleged. He became the leading foreign historian of the Portuguese Empire and of Dutch exploits overseas. In 1984 it was twice suggested to Sir Keith Joseph, the Minister of Education, that Boxer be placed on the New Years Honours List, but this proposal was met with stony silence because of earlier negative responses. A knighthood was also considered appropriate later, but was not pursued.

Paradoxically, while Boxer declined his MBE, it was widely felt that one name was missing from the awards. “After the war, when the Hong Kong Despatches came out, I found out that either Maltby or the pundits at the War Office had watered all my recommendations down,” remembers Wallis. “But I noticed that Maltby had been given no recognition. I felt that this was a slur on the whole force which had by and large fought with great gallantry, and also I had observed that, as our chief POW, Maltby had stood up well to the Japs.” Wallis was unaware that, with Colonel L A Newnham and Captain D Ford, Maltby had played the pivotal role in dealing with the British Army Aid Group’s spying organisation. Its vital contribution in smuggling medicines into the POW camps saved many lives and it provided military intelligence of considerable value to the Allies.

“Seeing that Maltby’s name was not to be found in the UK awards, I at once contacted all the senior survivors I could reach and I wrote to the War Office to complain,” wrote Wallis. “I pointed out forcibly that General Maltby had inherited a hopeless assignment and had done his best.” As another survivor of the campaign put it: “Maltby did not have a hope in hell of undoing the lethargy and blindness of the past, nor of trying to remedy and reorganise the Defence Scheme in a few months.”

At last the appropriate recognition was given: Major General C M Maltby received the award of the Companion of the Bath, which was not given to many Second World War Generals.

Wallis ended the war in Manchuria and was moved to Manila. He displeased the authorities there by refusing to be flown home, insisting instead that he must return via India as he was determined to see the survivors of his old Battalion, the 5/7 Rajputs, who had fought so bravely in Hong Kong, endeavouring to hold the waterfront against three regiments of Japanese troops. Wallis rejoined them briefly near Lucknow where he was given a great welcome. He addressed the battalion; a special Guest Night and sports events were held in his honour. Wallis received a Mention in Despatches after returning to England. He later emigrated to Canada and became a prosperous Business Consultant. Oliver Lindsay was able to discuss the campaign with him over two years when they were in Canada together.

Due recognition was also given to those who had played a very different part in the war against Japan.

Lindsay Ride had held the post of Dean of the Medical Faculty in Hong Kong Hospital before the war. He was the first to escape from Shamshuipo after commanding the Volunteer Field Ambulance during the fighting. For over three years, when organising the BAAG, he had endeavoured to maintain Britain’s prestige in South China. He was an outstanding person: his subsequent extremely successful career culminated in a knighthood.

With spectacular timing, F C Gimson, the Colonial Secretary, arrived in Hong Kong the day before the Japanese invasion. He laboured far-sightedly throughout the internment at Stanley to form a shadow administration and was able to put it into effect immediately the Japanese surrendered. The British Government recognised that Gimson had done extraordinarily well. He was rewarded with a knighthood and later became Governor of Singapore.

Throughout the Japanese occupation, until his arrest on trumped-up charges, Doctor P S Selwyn-Clarke, the former Director of Medical Services, had been deeply committed to the welfare of Hong Kong’s Chinese citizens of all classes, and also to the POWs and internees. He then survived 20 months of intense interrogation in the utmost squalor. Frail and crippled as a result of Japanese tortures, he thought he would never survive. Nevertheless, after the war he re-established medical and health control in the Colony. In 1947 he became Governor of the Seychelles – an unparalleled honour for a doctor and a tribute to his surreptitious relief work. He, too, was knighted. As with the military honours, the number of the names recorded here are only a fraction of those civilians who were recognised for their outstanding endeavours in terrible circumstances.

On 30th April 1946, Sir Mark Young, the first post-war Governor of Hong Kong, returned to the Colony. The King had re-appointed him as he had shown such outstanding leadership during the battle and as a prisoner of war, despite being subjected to every humiliation by the Japanese; during one period he was tending goats. Sir Mark’s return to Hong Kong gave great pleasure to many.

One other person received an unexpected reception. He was the Japanese guard Kyoshi Watanabe, who had risked his life smuggling medicines and money to the POWs, doctors and internees. Through him, some POWs were able to keep in touch with their families in Stanley Camp; he was a Lutheran Minister and put Christian charity ahead of his own survival. Tragically, his entire family was killed in Hiroshima. According to several reports, he appeared in the programme This is Your Life in London, receiving considerable applause.

Some Chinese in the New Territories and beyond had very bravely helped the POWs and internees who had escaped. They received the appropriate thanks and financial rewards after the war. This applied also to those Chinese who had hidden the three survivors from the Lisbon Maru and later taken them to Free China, thereby enabling everyone to know the truth of the terrible atrocity when the Japanese did their best to drown and shoot the POWs.

* * * * *

The military lessons learned in Hong Kong were not lost on the new generations of British, Gurkha and Chinese Servicemen in the Colony. Just as Staff College Camberley students studied the 1944 Normandy battles, so two-day battlefield tours in Hong Kong were occasionally run by Oliver Lindsay until 1995. Colonel A G Hewitt MC MBE, who had escaped from Shamshuipo and died in 2004, was the principal speaker for the Island battle, while J A Ford CB MC was among those who covered the battles for the Mainland and the Wong Nei Chong Gap. John Harris spoke on the smuggling of messages to and from the British Army Aid Group. Gurkhas played the part of the Japanese; they were dressed appropriately and quoted the precise reminiscences of the surviving Japanese regimental commanders who had been brought back to Hong Kong in 1946 to be charged with the atrocities. Thanks to the Commander British Forces in Hong Kong in 1990, Lieutenant General Sir Peter Duffell, steps were cut up to the Shingmun Redoubt for the veterans and their wives; coloured smoke, blank machine-gun fire and charging Gurkhas re-enacted the Japanese attack at the redoubt. The splendid lunch in glorious sunshine which followed was a more gentle affair, with a Regimental band serenading us. The battlefield tours usually finished with a Canadian playing the part of Brigadier Lawson staggering in, riddled with ‘gunshot wounds’, to tell the spectators that criticism was ludicrous when there was no air cover, inadequate ships, communications, transport, mortars, mobile artillery and so on.

Some of the guest speakers were members of the Argyle Street POW Association, which has met for lunch or dinner in London every year since the war. Major General Maltby regularly attended until his death. Derek Bird, the son of Godfrey Bird GM TD, took over as Chairman of the Association from John Harris TD in 2004. In November 2005 members of the Association and other Hong Kong veterans plan to participate in the Remembrance Day Service and Parade at the Cenotaph in Whitehall for the first time. The High Commissioners of Canada and India have been asked to publicise this participation in the hope that some of their veterans and descendants will join us.

* * * * *

Many of the battles in Hong Kong deserve to be legendary. The gallantry of the Canadians has already been described. Their last desperate charge was at Stanley Peninsula on the orders of a thoroughly controversial, newly promoted Indian Army Brigadier who was totally out of touch with reality, contemplating shooting those Canadian officers who wanted to surrender, complaining about a “bloodless mutiny” and considering blowing up Stanley Fort where the wounded were sheltering! The Canadian Battalions had earlier been considered in Ottawa as “not recommended for operational consideration”.

Then there were the two Indian Battalions who fought gallantly; many of them remained loyal, despite horrific conditions in the POW camp and relentless pressure to join anti-British organisations.

The men of the Royal Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps deserve special mention. Their motto was ‘Second to None’. Their fighting was certainly consistent with such a motto. The truly epic defence of the Volunteers at the North Point power station and their participation in some of the fiercest fighting, particularly at Stanley, reflected their extraordinary gallantry throughout the battle for Hong Kong. The Regiment received 37 decorations. The Corps was created ‘Royal’ after the war in recognition of its achievements.

The Middlesex Regiment owed their enviable nickname, ‘the Diehards’, to the encouragement of a former Commanding Officer who lay mortally wounded on the battlefield of Albuhera in 1811, during the Peninsular War. “Die hard, my men, die hard,” he was heard to shout. Their courage was such that Wellington exclaimed: “Cockneys make the best Troopers.” They lived up to this reputation in Hong Kong.

Finally, we come to The Royal Scots (the Royal Regiment), the First of Foot; the Regiment which enjoys the prestige and privilege of being the oldest and senior British Infantry Regiment of the Line, tracing its unbroken service to the Charter given to it by King Charles I in 1633.

The reputation of the Royal Scots was needlessly maligned by Brigadier C Wallis. On no occasion did he or Major General Maltby ever visit or witness the Battalion in action throughout the entire battle. They relied instead on telephone calls to assess the Battalion’s progress. These calls were logged in battle diaries which were then destroyed to prevent the Japanese capturing them.

The two Colours of the Middlesex Regiment, presented by The Prince of Wales in 1930, were hastily and secretly buried in boxes in the grounds of Flagstaff House by Captain I MacGregor, the General’s ADC. Exhaustive and unsuccessful efforts were made to find the Colours after the war. It was assumed that ants must have eaten them. The brass parts of the pike and staff were recovered and are now in the Regimental Museum. Field Marshal Sir John Harding presented new Colours to the 1st Battalion in Austria in 1953. They bear the battle honour ‘Hong Kong’. The Middlesex amalgamated to form The Queen’s Regiment in 1966, which in turn amalgamated in 1992 with The Royal Hampshires to form The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment. In each case the new Regiment proudly continued to have Hong Kong emblazoned upon its Colours.

In 1940 the Colours of 2nd Battalion the Royal Scots had been sent to the vaults of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Singapore for safekeeping; they vanished when the Japanese captured the Island. Four years and eight months later, Captain A S Carr Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was “going along a street just behind the waterfront when we were attracted by colourful embroidery”, he reported. “We found on closer examination that it was a Regimental Colour. It was lying amongst a pile of old clothing on a wayside vendor’s barrow; I bought it for one dollar.” The Royal Scots Regimental Colour is now in the Regimental Museum in Edinburgh Castle.

When Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, presented the new Colours to the Battalion in 1948, there was no Battle Honour ‘Hong Kong’ upon it because the War Office said the Royal Scots did not deserve it. (The Regiment also fought in Burma 1943–1945 for which Battle Honours were received, but that is a different matter.)

There is no doubt that the Royal Scots, however belatedly, deserve the same recognition as the Middlesex Regiment. The Royal Scots had a much higher number of officer casualties than any other unit – no fewer than 27 officers out of 35 were killed or seriously wounded – brave men who really were leading from the front.1 While virtually no ‘outsiders’ witnessed the Royal Scots’ gallantry when three highly trained Japanese battalions launched their ferocious Mainland attacks upon only them, there were those who saw the repeated assaults, led by Pinkerton and others who tried to clear the Japanese from the Wong Nei Chong Gap, the vital ground. The Japanese battalions on the high ground overlooking the Gap were thrown into confusion, and “suffered heavy losses in a fierce battle with the Royal Scots”, according to Colonel Shoji Toshishige.2

A campaign should be launched in Scotland to obtain the Battle Honour. True, it is too late for most of the veterans. However, their descendants, the few survivors still alive and the Regiment today, would be well satisfied if this injustice was addressed.

Five days before the last shot was fired in Hong Kong, Winston Churchill had signalled Sir Mark Young on 21st December 1941: “The enemy should be compelled to expend the utmost life and equipment… Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you and your men can win the lasting honour which we are sure will be your due.”3 He later wrote in his history of the war: “These orders were obeyed in spirit and to the letter… the Colony had fought a good fight. They had won indeed ‘the lasting honour’.”

“There was,” as the Official History has it, “no lack of good and gallant leadership.”4

That, then, almost brings this account to an end – the final curtain, the ultimate accolade, the end of the book. But not quite.

In April 1946 King George VI approved the posthumous award of no fewer than four George Crosses. It was an unprecedented number for one small theatre of war. They were in recognition of the most conspicuous gallantry of four men who were tortured most cruelly in Hong Kong’s cells for many months.

The recipients were

Colonel Lanceray A Newnham MC

The Middlesex Regiment

Captain Douglas Ford

The Royal Scots

Captain Mateen A Ansari

7th Rajput Regiment

Flight Lieutenant Hector B Gray AFM

Royal Air Force

“I had recommended Gray for the Victoria Cross,” recalls Wing Commander H G Sullivan. “The Air Ministry reminded me that this was awarded for bravery in the face of the enemy, to which I replied that many VCs were won in the heat of battle surrounded by one’s comrades. Gray, Newnham, Ansari and Ford had deserved theirs in the cold of the torture chamber.”

Colonel Newnham had been starved and tortured for five months. In spite of his acute suffering, both physical and mental, he refused to implicate any of his brother officers or connections, thus undoubtedly saving their lives. (Had he named John Harris, this book would never have been written!)

Captain Ford, like Colonel Newnham, had been in touch with the BAAG agents. He received the same treatment. “Throughout his terrible ordeal his behaviour ‘was superb’”, reads his citation. “He refused to implicate any of the others. He maintained his spirits and those of his fellow prisoners until the end.”

Captain Ansari, Indian Army, “steadfastly continued to counteract all traitorous propaganda and resolutely opposed all attempts at undermining the loyalty of his compatriots. In May 1942 he was thrown into Stanley Gaol, where he remained until September 1942, by which time, owing to starvation and brutal ill-treatment which is alleged to have included mutilation, he had become unable to walk.” On return to the POW camp, he not only resumed his previous efforts, but also organised a system for aiding escapers, before he was betrayed. Ansari and over 30 other British, Indian and Chinese were executed in horrifying circumstances by beheading on 20th October 1943.

Flight Lieutenant Gray was planning a mass break-out from Shamshuipo and had been much involved in smuggling secret messages and medicines. He was the first officer to be arrested and so bore the brunt of the torture inflicted by the Japanese. “In spite of this, and the fact that he was suffering from illness during the five months of his imprisonment, he steadfastly refused to implicate anyone,” reads his citation.

Newnham, Gray and Ford had all been condemned to death on 1st December 1943. Throughout the proceedings, Ford continued to accept full responsibility for everything. They lay for 18 days with no hope of reprieve and the certain knowledge that they would not get even one adequate meal before their deaths; but they never lost their courage.

When the three officers were removed from their cells, neither Newnham nor Gray could walk unaided. Ford half carried them to the waiting truck. “As the junior of the three, he took up his position on the left. The Japanese officer in charge, recognising his gallantry, insisted upon Ford standing on the right,” concludes the history of the Royal Scots.5 Their cold, calculating courage, steadfast behaviour and conduct were beyond all praise.

In October 1946 King George VI approved a fifth posthumous George Cross. The recipient was John A Fraser MC and bar. When questioned by the Japanese about the wireless news received by Stanley Internment Camp he replied, boldly and clearly, his voice ringing resonantly throughout the courtroom, that he alone was responsible and that he had the right to act as he thought fit in the best interests of the British interned in Stanley. His citation which appeared in the London Gazette on 25 October 1946 read as follows: “John Alexander Fraser was interned by the Japanese in the Civilian Internment Camp at Stanley. Fully aware of the risks that he ran he engaged continuously in most dangerous activities. He organised escape plans and a clandestine wireless service and succeeded not only in obtaining news from outside but also in getting important information out of the camp. Subjected by the Japanese to prolonged and most severe torture he steadfastly refused to give any information, and was finally executed. His fortitude was such that it was commented upon by the prison guards, and was a very real source of inspiration to others. His magnificent conduct undoubtedly saved the lives of those others whom the Japanese sought to implicate.”

Newnham, Ford, Ansari, Fraser and Gray are all buried close together in the peaceful, beautiful cemetery at Stanley. Royal British Pilgrimages to Hong Kong invariably say prayers among their graves.

The words on the British memorial in Burma to those who lost their lives in the Far East come to mind: “When you go home, tell them of us and say ‘for your tomorrow, we gave our today’.”

Thousands had fought and died in Hong Kong to restore freedom to mankind. Their name liveth for evermore. Remember them with pride.

Notes

1. The figures are taken from Appendix B to The London Gazette, dated 27.1.48.

2. Shoji’s statement to Capt. E C Watson in November 1946 (NDHQ).

3. Churchill, W S, The Grand Alliance, London: Cassell & Co, 1950, p. 634.

4. Kirby, W S, The War Against Japan, Vol. I, London: HM Stationery Office, 1957, p. 150.

5. Paterson, R H, Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard, The Royal Scots History Committee, vol. 2, 2000, p. 132.

Bibliography

The detailed source notes at the end of each chapter name the publishers of the books quoted from most frequently and give additional details on other sources.

Adams, G P Destination Japan, 1980

Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord, War Diaries, 2001

Alden, D Charles R Boxer, 2001

Allister, W When Life and Death Held Hands, 1989

Barrett D F S.S. Lisbon Maru, 2004

Bennett, D 18 Days, 1976

Best, B (ed.) Secret Letters from the Railway, 2004

Bosanquet, D Escape Through China, 1982

Bowie, D C Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong, 1975

Brown, W Hong Kong Aftermath, 1943

Bush, Lewis The Road to Inamura, 1961

Cambon, K Guest of Hirohito, 1990

Carew, T The Fall of Hong Kong, 1960

Churchill, W S The Second World War Vols. I to III, 1948-1950

Crew, F A E The Army Medical Services, Vol. 2 Hong Kong, 1957

Dew, G Prisoner of the Japs, 1943

Douglas, W A B & Greenhous, B Out of the Shadows, 1977

Duff, L P Report on the Canadian Expeditionary Force to the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, 1942

Elphick, P Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East, 1999

Endecott, G B Hong Kong Eclipse. 1978

Field, E Twilight in Hong Kong, 1960

Ford, J A The Brave White Flag. 1961

Garneau, G S Royal Rifles of Canada, 1971

Ghosh, K K The Indian National Army, 1969

Goodwin, R B Hong Kong Escape, 1953

Goodwin, R B Passport to Eternity, 1956

Greenhous, B ‘C’ Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941-1945, 1997

Guest, P E Escape from the Bloodied Sun, 1956

Hahn, E China to Me, 1943

Hamilton, G C The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, 1966

Harrop, P The Hong Kong Incident, 1945

Hewitt, A Bridge With Three Men, 1986

Hewit, A Corridors of Time. 1993

Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps Record of the actions of the HKVDC in the battle for Hong Kong, 1953

James, D H The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire. 1951

Kawai, T The God of Japanese Expansion, 1938

Kemp, P K The History of the Middlesex Regiment

Keung, K T & Wordie, J Ruins of War, 1996

Kirby, W S Singapore the Chain of Disaster, 1971

Kirby, W S The War Against Japan Vol. I, 1958

Lindsay, O J M At the Going Down of the Sun, 1981

Lindsay, O J M The Lasting Honour, 1978

Luff, J The Hidden Years, 1967

Manchester, W American Caesar, 1978

Marsman, J H I Escaped from Hong Kong, 1942

Ministry of Defence (Navy) War with Japan, 1995

Montefiore, S Sebag The Court of the Red Tsar

Morris, A E J John R Harris Architects, 1984

Muir, A The First of Foot, 1961

Paterson, R H Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard, 2001

Penny, A G Royal Rifles of Canada, 1962

Prasad, B Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in World War II, 1960

Priestwood, G Through Japanese Barbed Wire, 1943

Proulx, B A Underground from Hong Kong. 1943

Ride, E BAAG, 1981

Rollo, D The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong, 1991

Russell of Liverpool, Lord, Knights of Bushido, 1958

Ryan, T F Jesuits under Fire, 1951

Selwyn Clarke, Sir S Footprints. 1975

Shennan, M Out in the Midday Sun, 2004

Snow, P The Fall of Hong Kong, 2003

Stacey, C P Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War Vol. I, Six Years of War, 1957

Starling, P H Army Medical Services in Hong Kong, 1994

Thorne, C Allies of a Kind, 1978

Vincent, C No Reason Why, 1981

Wiseman, E P Hong Kong, 2001

Wright, R J I Was a Hell Camp Prisoner, 1963

Young, A N China and the Helping Hand 1937-1945, 1963

* * * * *

The poem at the beginning of Part 3 is from The Memory of the Dead by John Kells Ingram (from page 277 of An Eton Poetry Book published by Macmillan, 1938

Despatches

1 Despatch by Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief in the Far East, on Operations in the Far East from 17 Oct. 1940-27 Dec. 1941. (Published in the supplement to the London Gazette, 20 Jan. 1948.)

2 Despatch by Major General C M Maltby, GOC British Troops in China, on Operations in Hong Kong from 8 to 25 Dec. 1941. (Published in the supplement to the London Gazette, 27 Jan. 1948.)

War Diaries

1st HK Regiment Hong Kong Singapore Royal Artillery (HKSRA) Chief Signal Officer, China Command (1941) compiled by Lt Col. M E F Truscott.

East Infantry Brigade in the Defence and Fall of Hong Kong (133 pages). Compiled in Argyle Street POW Camp between 1 June 1942 and 15 Aug. 1942 taking account of war diaries of 1 HK Regt HKSRA East Group RA; B and D Coys 1 Mx; 5/7 Rajput; No. 1, 2 Coys HKVDC. The other war diaries had probably been destroyed or not written.

Mainland Infantry Brigade and Attached Troops (90 pages). Compiled as above.

Preliminary Summary compiled in 1942, based on Fortress HQ messages to and from Brigade HQs and units.

Reports and Notes (in author’s possession)

1945 Report on Indian POWs HKSRA (29 pages) unsigned

Australian War Crimes Commission Questionnaires compiled by some POWs

Building Reconstruction. Appointed by C.-in-C. HK 1946.

Christmas Day 1941 at Stanley by J A Lomax

Conditions in Hong Kong of POWs by Lt Col. R J E Cadogan-Rawlinson

Far Eastern POW Bulletin August 1945

Hong Kong 1941 by Rex Young

Hong Kong 1941–1945 by Mrs G Man

My Time as a POW by the Bishop of Mashonoland

Officers’ POW Camp Argyle Street by Captain G V Bird RE

Original Notes (184 pages) largely concerning debriefing RN and RNVR in POW camps. Compiled 1942–1945

POWs: New Zealand in the Second World War by W W Mason

Recollections by C B J Stewart

Record of Service by Surgeon Lieutenant C A Jackson

Reminiscences by H F Linge

Report on Fraternisation with Japanese by M C Tugby

Reports of General MacArthur in Japan Vol. I Supplement

Selected Articles

Adams, I Macleans, Jul. 1968

Bowie, D C ‘Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Mar. 1977, Vol. 15

Burd, F ‘Canloan’, The Guards Magazine, 1996

Canadian Veterans News Magazine, Spring 1977

Crawford, J N The Canadian Medical Association, 1947

Crawford, J N Manitoba Medical Review, Feb. 1946

Dobbs, K Star Weekly, Aug. 1965

Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps – various articles

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Oct. 1973, Vol. I

Morrison, W K ‘Malaria in Hong Kong’, Journal Royal Army Medical Corps, Vol. 114, No. 4, 1968

Muir, A The Scotsman, 14 Nov. 1960

Penfold, R J L ‘The Defence of Hong Kong’, The Gunner, Dec. 1946

Penny, A G A Short History of the Royal Rifles of Canada

Pinkerton, D The Thistle, Oct. 1946, Jan. 1947

Stacey, C P ‘The Defence of Hong Kong’, Canadian Army Journal, Dec. 1950

Diaries

Author

Location

Anslow, B C (née Redwood)

Imperial War Museum

Fenn, C H

author’s possession

Joyce, D