stop us. It was as if they wanted us to be in no doubt about who our new masters would be. The pavements outside the parade ground were already full of people like us, newly unemployed and not quite sure what to do with themselves except watch. We managed to find our way through the crowd to a space along Connaught Road where the crush had eased off. We positioned ourselves on the pavement and watched like everyone else. The British were walking ten across with their heads down. One man looked up and a Japanese soldier punched him straight in the face and he looked down again. Blood dripped from his nose onto the pavement. A dog ran over from the crowd and sniffed the blood and the soldier shot it without hesitation. The dog’s corpse fell limply to the ground.
There were two launches on the quay. The engines were running and smoke throttled out in a cloud over the sampans tied onto them at the back with towing ropes. The prisoners were herded up the gangplanks like goats, so many of them that I couldn’t even see the captain and Mrs Elsa and Mari any more.
We didn’t wait to watch the boats leave. Instead, we went back to see what was left of our kongsi fong . As we walked I put a hand in my pocket where I’d kept one of Mari’s bonnets, the size of a bird’s nest, and a letter to you, Third Sister, that I’d taken to the post office that morning, only to be told it was closed until further notice.
III
T ommy:
Captain Thomas Owen Jones Logbook
Stanley Internment Camp Hong Kong Island 1942
5 th January
Embark Victoria 11.00 am. Set sail 11.30. Hold course due south through Lamma Channel. Arrive Stanley 2.00 pm.
6 th January
22º 13’ 00” N, 114º 12’ 00” E
Stanley Peninsula: one fishing village of unknown population, one purpose - built prison for Hong Kong criminals, one preparatory school known as St Stephen’s College, and Stanley Fort. Enemy aliens – British, Dutch and American – to be interned in the college and some of the prison’s outlying buildings. Prison itself to be retained for detention of Chinese miscreants from the city. New barbed wire fences already in place around the denoted areas.
Thirteen buildings to house over three thousand captured civilians. Assigned with Elsa to former Indian warders’ quarters overlooking Tytam Bay: ten people to a room of 14 x 10 feet, no bedding except our two wool blankets, which must be used as mattresses. Men and women to sleep separately. Shower, toilet and kitchen to be shared between at least six. Mosquitoes.
Supper: rice stew and cabbage.
7 th January
Turn to at 6.00 am. First job is to clear up, starting in the science labs, wrecked during fighting. (Soldiers and Red Cross nurses maimed, raped, killed by Japs, then burned. Ash heap with bones sticking out of it still smoking in the exercise yard: our men or theirs, we don’t know.) Broken glass, brown and blue, all over the grass outside. Inside: dried blood on walls and floors, mud and plaster, exploded sandbags, glass, military buttons. Toilets overflowing.
Bodies – a few British, twenty - odd Canadians. Canadians still chubby with puppy fat, freckled to hell by the sun. We go through their pockets before we bury them. One of them has a letter folded up without an envelope. From your loving Mother. Bury it with him in the cemetery on the hill. Beyond the barbed wire a sea so bright it burns the blue out of the sky. We don’t know if they would do things differently in Canada, so we do things our way. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust .
10 th January
Five days in we can still smell death, although the bodies have been buried. We forage through each building in turn, collecting any utensils we can find: knives, forks, tin cups, maybe enough for three hundred people. Oscar Campbell says it’s a start. When I ask him how he thinks it will finish he says that such questions are best avoided. Women and children and all that. I see him keeping a nervous eye on them, wondering if
There were two launches on the quay. The engines were running and smoke throttled out in a cloud over the sampans tied onto them at the back with towing ropes. The prisoners were herded up the gangplanks like goats, so many of them that I couldn’t even see the captain and Mrs Elsa and Mari any more.
We didn’t wait to watch the boats leave. Instead, we went back to see what was left of our kongsi fong . As we walked I put a hand in my pocket where I’d kept one of Mari’s bonnets, the size of a bird’s nest, and a letter to you, Third Sister, that I’d taken to the post office that morning, only to be told it was closed until further notice.
III
T ommy:
Captain Thomas Owen Jones Logbook
Stanley Internment Camp Hong Kong Island 1942
5 th January
Embark Victoria 11.00 am. Set sail 11.30. Hold course due south through Lamma Channel. Arrive Stanley 2.00 pm.
6 th January
22º 13’ 00” N, 114º 12’ 00” E
Stanley Peninsula: one fishing village of unknown population, one purpose - built prison for Hong Kong criminals, one preparatory school known as St Stephen’s College, and Stanley Fort. Enemy aliens – British, Dutch and American – to be interned in the college and some of the prison’s outlying buildings. Prison itself to be retained for detention of Chinese miscreants from the city. New barbed wire fences already in place around the denoted areas.
Thirteen buildings to house over three thousand captured civilians. Assigned with Elsa to former Indian warders’ quarters overlooking Tytam Bay: ten people to a room of 14 x 10 feet, no bedding except our two wool blankets, which must be used as mattresses. Men and women to sleep separately. Shower, toilet and kitchen to be shared between at least six. Mosquitoes.
Supper: rice stew and cabbage.
7 th January
Turn to at 6.00 am. First job is to clear up, starting in the science labs, wrecked during fighting. (Soldiers and Red Cross nurses maimed, raped, killed by Japs, then burned. Ash heap with bones sticking out of it still smoking in the exercise yard: our men or theirs, we don’t know.) Broken glass, brown and blue, all over the grass outside. Inside: dried blood on walls and floors, mud and plaster, exploded sandbags, glass, military buttons. Toilets overflowing.
Bodies – a few British, twenty - odd Canadians. Canadians still chubby with puppy fat, freckled to hell by the sun. We go through their pockets before we bury them. One of them has a letter folded up without an envelope. From your loving Mother. Bury it with him in the cemetery on the hill. Beyond the barbed wire a sea so bright it burns the blue out of the sky. We don’t know if they would do things differently in Canada, so we do things our way. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust .
10 th January
Five days in we can still smell death, although the bodies have been buried. We forage through each building in turn, collecting any utensils we can find: knives, forks, tin cups, maybe enough for three hundred people. Oscar Campbell says it’s a start. When I ask him how he thinks it will finish he says that such questions are best avoided. Women and children and all that. I see him keeping a nervous eye on them, wondering if
Similar Books
