Hong Kong War Diary (original) (raw)

Hong Kong War Diary - November 2024

Welcome to Hong Kong War Diary - a project that documents the 1941 defence of Hong Kong, the defenders, their families, and the fates of all until liberation.

This page is updated monthly with a record of research and related activities. Pages on the left cover the books that have spun off from this project, and a listing of each and every member of the Garrison. Comments, questions, and information are always welcome. Tony Banham, Hong Kong: tony@hongkongwardiary.com

October Images

153 Queen's Road West (author), Lisbon Maru Weaver fever (via Kent Shum), Japanese Uniform (St Stephen's Girls' College)

23 Coombe Road exterior (author), interiors (via Alvin Lau Chi Hung)

Interior of renamed Museum of Coastal Defence (author), Items from the James Brown collection (courtesy Brown family)

October News

Last year saw the twentieth anniversary of this website, and I added a special exhibition section at the bottom of this page to re-tell some of the more interesting stories. I have decided to leave it in place for another year. I have also started the update (after a decade and a half’s pause) of the website www.lisbonmaru.com to support the film.

STOP PRESS: We have now learned that the Lisbon Maru documentary is ineligible for the Best International Film award as “too much of the soundtrack is in English” (see the 28th). Apparently, though, there is still a chance that it could be entered for Best Documentary. To look on the bright side, controversy drives publicity; the film had been outside the top 20 in China for a few days, but on the 31st it was back in at number 14

30 Sue Beard let me know of a new exhibit launched by the Canadian War Museum online. George MacDonell, Royal Rifles of Canada is one of 50 veterans to be honoured here.

28 Unfortunately it was reported in The Hollywood Reporter today that the film The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru has been declared ineligible for the Best International Film Category at the 2025 Oscars: “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirms to THR that the film failed to meet their minimum language requirement for the award — a film must have ‘a predominantly (more than 50 percent) non-English dialogue track’ to be eligible, per Academy rules… Though the film is no longer eligible for the best international feature Oscar, it is still eligible for the best documentary feature Oscar, and a campaign is being mounted in pursuit of that recognition. It will next screen at the Asian World Film Festival on Nov. 18, and then begin its qualifying run at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Santa Monica on Nov. 22, for which director Fang Li will be in town.” The news was later picked up and repeated by a host of different media.

27 Leo Landau’s (HKVDC) daughter emailed me to say that she has completed scanning her father’s wartime diary. I am looking forward to reading it. Interestingly we worked together on the episode of My Grandparents’ War with Sir Mark Rylance, Hard to believe that’s more than five years ago now! UPDATE: It has now been posted online here.
27 This morning the 2024 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival held a press conference in Beijing. The list of jury nominations for the 37th China Film Golden Rooster Awards was also announced at the event, among which the documentary ‘The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru’ was nominated for Best Documentary / Science Film.

26 Walking to Sai Ying Pun market as we often do on a Saturday morning, we happened to cross to the south side of the street. Looking across at 153 Queen’s Road West I saw for the first time that it was built in 1941.

22 Here’s one that stretches my normal 1941-45 focus, though in covering the 1940 evacuation in Reduced to a Symbolical Scale I learned a lot more about pre-war Hong Kong society. Today I was contacted by the daughter of Sydney and Rhonda Simpson, who was born in July 1940 in Hong Kong, probably at the old Victoria Hospital (interestingly, although the hospital was so badly damaged in the war that it was pulled down shortly after, the pre-war Maternity Block remains). It seems that she and her mother left on the SS Taiping shortly after the main evacuation (delayed, obviously, by childbirth). Hong Kong’s 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, & 1940 Jurors Lists all record her father as: “Simpson, Sydney - Chemist, Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Co. of H.K., Ltd. - Quarry Bay”. By 1941 he had apparently left, to Singapore according to family, from whence he joined mother and daughter in Australia in 1942. But he seems to have left very few traces in Hong Kong.

21 I met a visitor at the Hong Kong Museum of the War of Resistance and Coastal Defence (ex-Museum of Coastal Defence) this morning and took a look around. They’ve made some changes commensurate with the new name, and added three fine new posters in the lift (one illustrated), but overall it’s not too different. I wonder if they could be talked into a new Lisbon Maru exhibit to complement the film?
21 I had guesstimated that the Lisbon Maru documentary might have cost around US$7 million to make. This article is the first that I’ve seen mention the cost, and their estimate is US$11 million. Another new article mentions the film’s importance in China / UK relations.

18 Two CGTN interviews with Fang Li were released today, the first as part of a longer magazine piece, and the second standalone. Meanwhile the story of Weaver and his Chinese wife seems to have gone viral there!

17 23 Coombe Road Came up again in facebook conversation today. “George Best” notes that it: “was recently declared as a Grade One Historical Building and it was known as 530, The Peak in pre-war time. During the Battle of Hong Kong, it served as an officers mess for the Battalion HQ of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, ‘C’ Force and witnessed several days of fighting near Wanchai Gap areas. Several books mentioned this house such as Major Kenneth G. Baird’s book -Letters To Harvelyn. Check it out when it is fully restored.” He added some interior photos which I haven’t seen before, and as I was up at Wanchai Gap today I took an up-to-date photo of the exterior. What a great place this would be for a C Force Education Centre or something of that nature!

16 The Brown family’s collection of internee James Connell Brown’s Stanley paintings arrived today. There are a number of fine watercolours of Stanley camp (and views from it) which are very relevant to anyone studying the period, and I have made 600dpi scans of ten or so. The other paintings and bits and pieces are of less direct interest to me, but may well be to others. Next month I hope to visit St Stephen’s College Museum (at the site of the camp) and see if they would be interested in the Stanley ones. The remainder I will send back to the family.

12 The Southern People Weekly Lisbon Maru cover story came out today, but unfortunately only in Chinese.

11 Here, at last, is a decent account of the Lisbon Maru film in the Chinese media.

10 “George Best” notes that St Stephen’s Girls College: “was once used by the Japanese authority as a temporary hospital during the years of Japanese occupation and its historical collection office still has some Japanese stuff- uniform, cap and bell.” And kindly provided a photo by Alvin Lau. I had no idea they had these, despite living nearby.

8 Although the video of President Xi Jinping’s speech with Queen Elizabeth II at the State Banquet in 2015 has been deleted from the UK official site, you can find it on Youtube here. The reference to the Lisbon Maru comes after about 3 minutes 20 seconds.
8 Although I didn’t see it reported in local news, apparently a large Japanese bomb was found recently, and detonated today in the waters off Sai Kung.
8 Justin Ho has found “Something of interest: Alexander ‘Alec’ Steven of the HKVDC Field Ambulance’s medals were recently sold.”

6 An interesting story in the Chinese press about what The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru Producer Fang Li might do next.

3 I did a Zoom Lisbon Maru interview with Southern People Weekly in China today.
3 I had a note from an American researcher who wrote: “I have been researching George William Cooper for a few years with limited success - he was Manager of the H.K. Meat and Dairy Produce Company and he was re-assigned from the Combatant Group to the General Group for Essential Services in the Hong Kong Defence Reserve, under the provisions of the Compulsory Service Ordinance, 1939. (Source: H.K. Gov’t Gazette). I believe him to be the same Geo William Cooper who served as Private with the Shanghai Volunteer Corps circa 1900 (Third China Medal). I’ve been able to track/trace his employment up until the Great War - not sure why or when he relocated to Hong Kong from Shanghai - though I suspect it was politics.”

2 This won’t be of interest to everyone, but it’s still quite common to find .303 chargers in the hills of Hong Kong (though in another twenty years or so they will all have rusted away). There’s a video here which shows how they were used to reload an SMLE.

September Images

Lisbon Maru illustration (China Daily), Beijing Premiere (author), "Goldie" and daughter (via press)

Billy Marrs (courtesy Julie Harrison), Lisbon Maru location (author), Stonecutters Island (via 'George Best')

Museum renaming (courtesy Tim Hoffman), Umbrella Seat (author), Japanese Corporal (via 'George Best')

September News

I must apologise to Canadian and Indian readers of this site, and to all British readers who have no connection to the Lisbon Maru, but again this vessel’s story dominated the month. The film was released in China on the 6th and is still in cinemas. So far 800,000 people have watched it, and it has had very good reviews - both critical and on social media. It looks like it will stay on release during the Golden Week holidays of early October, and the number of viewers could double. On top of that, it the film won Best Documentary at the Xian Silk Road Film Festival this month, and it will be China’s entry to the International Film category at the 2025 Oscars (see the 27th for details).

30 For a number of reasons (one of which was the wholesale copying of the photos there!) I haven’t added anything to the www.lisbonmaru.com website for the best part of twenty years. However, I’m now starting to tune it up and hopefully make it more useful.

28 In the enormous flurry of stories and videos coming out of China since the release of The Sinking Of The Lisbon Maru, I think this is the first I’ve seen with some obvious errors. Luckily it’s behind a firewall! This one by China Daily is far better and had a nice illustration. And here is confirmation about the ‘Best Documentary’ award.

27 I heard today that the film The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru has been officially selected by China as the country’s nomination for the International Film category at the 2025 Oscars. Now, of course the latter is only one country’s nomination out of 75 or so, but I’m still impressed! The deadline for submissions to the Academy is 2 October 2024. Following that, a shortlist of 15 finalists will be announced on 17 December 2024, and the final five nominees will be announced on 17 January 2025. I have to say that I think the geopolitical winds are blowing in the wrong direction for a win, but perhaps this will at least make finding an international distributor a bit easier. The Oscars® will take place on Sunday, 2 March 2025 at 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. PST at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, but I’m not booking my ticket yet!

25 A number of newspapers today carried obituaries to Masamitsu Yoshioka, an airman who is thought to have been the last survivor of the Japanese attackers at Pearl Harbour. This is the one from The Telegraph (not my favourite paper, but their obits and Matt’s cartoons tend to be good).
25 A medal collector tells me that he has the group for 7262936 Sergeant Frederick William Ward RAMC. When researching We Shall Suffer There, I discovered that although the great bulk of ex-Hong Kong POWs stayed in groups when shipped to camps in Japan, it was quite common for RAMC men to be sent individually to whichever camp needed them most. In Ward’s case, I have not yet been able to find out which camp he ended up in.

24 Justin Ho kindly let me know that a large set of interesting documents relating to Alfred Norman Tucker (RASC) are currently on eBay, but at quite a high price.
24 The October Java Journal newsletter was published today. Among other things it reminded me that the Lisbon Maru Memorial Service will be held at 12.00 noon at the National Memorial Arboretum on 2 October 2024. Anyone interested should contact Brian Finch at bfinch1941(at)gmail.com.

23 A Lisbon Maru article with a difference, apparently the film won the prize for Best Documentary at the Silk Road International Film Festival in Xian this week.

21 Some years ago I managed to find the names of all the men of 4 Section, 7th Heavy AA Battery, who lost their lives when the Japanese overran their AA position at Wong Nai Chung Gap, and also found a photo of one of the gunners – Peter Delahunt – lost there. Today ‘George Best’ on facebook provided a photo of a Japanese corporal killed in the same engagement at the age of 22. ‘George’ also provided some very nice contemporary photographs of Stonecutters Island, a place I have never visited but really should.
21 More Lisbon Maru articles have appeared in the Chinese press (again they appeared on different days, but for neatness I am grouping them here: One, two, three.)

20 I am back in touch with Henry ‘Rusty’ Forsyth’s son (Forsyth was of course the Commanding Officer of 2 (Scottish) Company, HKVDC, who died in the defence of Stanley).
20 Fang Li has been using the latitude and longitude of the wreck of the Lisbon Maru as part of the ‘marketing’ of the film (we each received a T Shirt with this on the back, at the Beijing Premiere), so I thought I’d go back and check it against my estimate when I wrote The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru back in 2005. In that year, when coming back from a visit to the Zhoushan fishermen, my wife and I flew home from Shanghai on Cathay Pacific and by pure luck passed right over the location. I was in a window seat and took a decent photo, later putting an image of the ship where I thought it had gone down. Bearing in mind the slant of the photo, it wasn’t a bad job.

19 I saw an old photo on facebook today (via Victor Li), of the ‘Umbrella seat’ on Mount Austin Road, looking down towards Wanchai. As I pass that location twice a day (it’s where sedan chair men waited for customers in the old days), I thought I’d try a ‘then and now’ photo. Unfortunately the roads around the seat have been built up higher since the war, and the vegetation has grown up too, so a good view wasn’t achievable.

17 William Marrs’ (Royal Navy, Lisbon Maru) great niece got in touch: “My great uncle died on the Lisbon Maru and I am really keen to watch the documentary at some point. I live in New Zealand so won't get to any in the UK. My uncle’s name was William Marrs and I have attached a photo for your information… I thought you might also like to see these. One is a Christmas card sent I presume from Hong Kong to my grandad from Bill. I have this with me in NZ.” One of the photos was of Bill at the shore establishment HMS Royal Arthur, before coming to Hong Kong and joining the complement of the destroyer HMS Thracian as a Signalman.
17 Bernard Sam Hanson’s (Royal Scots, Lisbon Maru) grandson got in touch.

16 You would think I would have cleared up all Hong Kong’s non-Chinese wartime fatalities by now, but while going through my collection of December 1941 South China Morning Post newspapers looking for something entirely different, I noticed the report of the death of a Mrs Rosaleen Bertha Phillips (illustrated) on 23 December 1941. I can’t find her Death Certificate in my collection, nor is there a mention of her in Ron Bridge’s list, but the CWGC have a very bare entry here. I’ll look into it.
16 One of the many stories related in the Lisbon Maru film is that of Lance Corporal John Douglas Haig Weaver 620811, of 1st Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, who was lost in the sinking. In his letters home he had told his family that he had married his Chinese girlfriend, Leung Sou Kam (nicknamed Goldie) at the beginning of December 1941. She wasn’t informed about his death until 1945 by the British War Office in Amoy (now Xiamen). Sadly, the family lost contact with her after this. After the film’s release, producer/director Fang Li started a social media campaign to try to find Goldie and reunite the two families. Apparently Goldie’s daughter Ms Huang, who lives in Xiamen, has now been located by a newspaper who reports: “Ms Huang told reporters that her mother is not actually called ‘Liang Suqin’, but called ‘Liang Xiu Jin’, the two names in Cantonese pronunciation is the same. ‘The photo that the Evening News used to search for her, I’ve seen it before, and I still have a lot of photos of my mother at home, exactly the same.’ Ms Huang said her mother, a native of Gulangyu Island, was born in 1922 and attended Yuk Tak Girls' High School on Gulangyu Island. ‘My grandmother was very rich and used to run a hotel on the coast along Gulangyu’s Longtou Road; she loved to wear blue cheongsams and lived to be over 100 years old. My mother was my grandmother’s second daughter, plus her son, whom everyone called ‘Sister Bajie’, and her sister looked very much like her. People say that I look like my mother too. My mother knew English and Cantonese, was the mainstay of the Gulangyu District Mothers’ Volleyball Team at the time, was a good ballroom dancer, and a great swimmer, and I swam with her in Gulangyu Island’s Harbour Queen when I was a child.’ Ms Huang said her mother was very capable, but her habits were different from others. After the founding of New China, her mother continued to live on Gulangyu Island, relying on and supporting her only daughter, Ms Huang herself, before falling ill in her later years and dying in 1997. ‘My mother didn't ask for a huge compensation pension at the time, but left it to John’s family in the UK, something some of my relatives know. But that part of her early life in Hong Kong, she never told me as a lifelong secret.’ Mrs Huang said. ‘I’ve just returned to Xiamen from travelling abroad and the Evening News is looking for this about my mother, I just found out today. I looked for a lot of old photos. If John’s relatives in the UK want to contact us, I can oblige and co-operate with them, but I don't want to be speculated by the internet.’ Ms Huang said.”

6 Today the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence was renamed the “Hong Kong Museum of the War of Resistance and Coastal Defence, focusing on the history of the War of Resistance and the city’s military affairs, to cultivate a stronger sense of national esteem and patriotism.” Unlike when the museum reopened after its post-typhoon rebuild, I was not invited to the unveiling. However, I intend visiting next month and will report on any changes.
6 Today was the first day of the Lisbon Maru film in Chinese cinemas. 9,690 people watched it.
6 Justin Ho has kindly put together a summary of Yip Chow’s wartime career (see last month) and sent it to the family. They are very grateful.

5 The HKVCA have released their Autumn 2024 newsletter here.
5 Today I was reminded of St Martin in the Fields FEPOW Memorial.

4 The weekend in Beijing seems to have produced results. (These articles appeared on different days, but for neatness I am grouping them here: One, two, three, four, and the film’s trailer.)

3 As so often happens, while researching something else entirely I came across this summary of William Wagstaff (sculptor, artist, and father of Donald Wagstaff who was killed on an MTB during the battle of Hong Kong). By pure coincidence, many years ago I found that Donald’s son lived just two hundred yards from my parent’s house in North Norfolk. I was able to pay him a visit.

2 Elizabeth Ride kindly sent me a summary of details of Indian POWs in her father’s papers.

1 I spent today in Beijing assisting Fang Li in publicity for the upcoming release of the Lisbon Maru documentary in China. Tomorrow is the pre-release premiere, consisting of two showings side by side, one for media and industry and one for celebrities and VIPs.
1 Alan Clark emailed me to tell me of his Great Uncle’s grave in Hong Kong, but did not respond to my reply. Possibly yet another case of over-eager anti-spam software.

September 1st, 2024 Update

August Images

Lisbon Maru new poster, Hong Kong Fellowship (via Brian Finch), Rambles of Sandy Gow (courtesy Iain Gow)

Landsbert POW Index Card, RS Depot 1935 (courtesy Iain Gow), Japanese War Memorial Base (courtesy Empty City)

Leonard Wood (via Tai Wong), Wanchai Market wall now and then (author), Jack Etiemble at Stanley (courtesy Martin Heyes)

August News

You may notice that I have posted this month’s update a day early, as I am flying up to Beijing to join the premiere of The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru there. The film goes on general release in China on September 6. I wonder how well it will do? I have been amazed at the level of interest shown there thus far and hope it does well. Documentaries like this are very expensive to make, and while I doubt that the Producer/Director Fang Li will ever recoup his investment, it would be nice if he could at least get something in return for all this time, effort, and expense.

28 Today I was given a link to this video (without sound) of a 2nd Battalion Royal Scots sports day in Hong Kong in “late August 1939”.

25 I’ve been invited to the Beijing Premiere of The Sinking of The Lisbon Maru next weekend, and have to see if I can make it. Last Friday the film was shown to an audience at Dongji Island itself.

24 Martin Heyes reminded me of Jack Etiemble’s (RA, Lisbon Maru) trip to Hong Kong twenty years ago, and kindly sent a few photos he took at the time. I had arranged through the British Military Attaché in China for Jack to visit his old Royal Artillery base at Stanley (the PLA’s Barracks since 1997), but got called away at the last minute as my father in the UK was very ill. Martin kindly stepped in and managed to get Jack into the fort despite the PLA claiming they knew nothing about it!

22 A couple of months ago I noted that I had access to files about the Indian National Army. Now I have very kindly been given the ‘mother lode’ of data, which will probably literally take me years to process. But I am now hopeful that given time I will be able (finally) to create a pretty complete view of the experiences of Hong Kong’s Indian POWs from capture until the end of the war.

18 Lance Corporal Henry Joslin’s (Middlesex) granddaughter got back in touch (see April 2021). He was the chap who met a Dolores Martinez at a dance hall in Hong Kong shortly before hostilities. They had a daughter, Teresa Martinez, but war interrupted marriage plans. Joslin became a POW and was lost in the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. The update is that mother and daughter: “stayed in Hong Kong. My grandmother was able to rent a property. I believe they rented a home from someone that had two homes on their property. She stayed in the back property and I believe she was able to rent rooms out. So they were able to avoid internment. They of course did move out of Hong Kong but not until many, many years later when my mother and her half brother were fully grown.”

17 The family of Ip (or Yip) Chow (Royal Engineers, Chindits) got in touch. He was (of course) one of the young Chinese regular army enlisted men who simply evaded and at some point crossed into China, was interviewed by BAAG, and then eventually ended up as one of the 128 members of the Hong Kong Column of the Chindits. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of detail on him specifically, although in general terms we know his history. Some of the story is covered in passing in my Short History of the Hong Kong Chinese Regiment.

16 Ron Taylor in the UK has done a lot of work in creating rolls and curating a great deal of other data about FEPOWs in general on his websites. This month I saw that he has made tremendous progress on the repatriation of FEPOWs, and much of his research is now accessible from here.

15 I took the bus back from Stanley to Central with my wife and photographed the new wall on Queen’s Road East to the east of the old (but now renovated) Wanchai Market. Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, the whole section showing bullet and shrapnel damage has now gone, so I made a quick ‘then and now’ image when I got home.

14 I heard from a couple of sources today that the documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru will go on general release in China on September 6 (poster illustrated). The China Daily had an article, and several news sources (example one, example two) placed it on a calendar of new releases.

12 I watched and commented on this video about the Battle of Hong Kong. It’s a pretty decent narrative, let down by many inappropriate and/or anachronistic photos.

9 Albert Leslie Landsbert’s (HKRNVR) grandson got in touch noting: “I believe he joined the HK Volunteer Defence Corps and was taken prisoner when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese. My grandparents lived in Hong Kong before the war and my mother and uncle were born there. Shortly before the fall of Hong Kong my grandmother, mother and uncle were evacuated by sea firstly to the Philippines and then to Australia where they lived for the rest of the war. I believe my grandfather spent the rest of the war in the POW camp at Stanley. My mother is now 95 but has never wanted to talk much about what must have been a very traumatic experience for a 12 year old.” Actually Mr Landsbert was in the Minewatching Station of the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He was stationed on the south coast of Hong Kong island when the Japanese attacked. He was then involved in the fighting in and around Repulse Bay Hotel. On 22 Dec 1941 when it was decided to evacuate that area around midnight, he was in a party with fellow HKRNVR members W/Os Isaac Goldenberg, Sydney Dallow, and George Oliver. They were separated under machine gun fire, and none of the other three men have ever been found (they were all listed as MIA, having no known graves). Landsbert spent the remainder of the war as a POW at Shamshuipo and Argyle Street POW camps. At liberation he returned home via the USS Joseph Dickman and the US/Canada. My correspondent’s uncle (I guess) contacted me in August 2004, almost exactly 20 years ago, saying:
====
I read with interest your website. My father, Acting Lieutenant Albert Leslie Landsbert, HKRNVR survived the war (just) and was reunited with my mother, sister and myself (evacuated to Australia) in England in 1945 having been repatriated via Canada. He returned to Hongkong to rejoin his firm, Davie Boag, and died in 1960, aged 59 - he never fully recovered his health after being a POW, a time he always refused to speak of. He was an electrical engineer by profession but was always very practical - it was he who built the operating table in Argyll Street camp. Regards, Brian Landsbert
====
The civilian evacuation, of course, actually took place in August 1940 - 18 months before the Japanese invaded:
Ada G. Flat 3, Inverleith, Eldon Rd., St. Kilda 26.6.45 to UK
Ada G. Annette E. 11 Flat 3, Inverleith, Eldon Rd., St. Kilda
Ada G. Brian 4 Flat 3, Inverleith, Eldon Rd., St. Kilda
The Landsbert family left HK for the Philippines, and then went to Sydney on the Slamat. However, their first home in Australia was actually in Melbourne (there’s a mistake in the address in my evacuation files: it should be Eildon Road). They returned to the UK on 26 June 1945. Interestingly I can see indications in Air Ministry files that Landsbert himself served in the RAF - perhaps at the end of the Great War - but I don’t subscribe to the paid services that provide those details. He’s buried in Hong Kong, about an hour’s walk from where I’m writing this. The family lived in Suffolk Road, Kowloon Tong and my correspondent’s parents were married in HK in 1953.
9 Tai Wong let me know that yesterday he visited Grant Wood, whose father (Sergeant Leonard Wood) and uncle (Lance Corporal Donald Wood), both of the Royal Rifles of Canada, fought in the defence of Hong Kong. He notes: “Sergeant Wood was drafted to labour in the Sendai coalmine of Japan and survived the war. Unfortunately Lance Corporal Wood succumbed to the harsh POW conditions.” Donald Wood died in Fukuoka #5 Branch Camp (Omine Coal Mine, Kawasaki-machi) of acute gastroenteritis / dysentery.

8 Brian Finch kindly let me know that Australian archives have what appears to be a complete set of Hong Kong Fellowship newsletters. He quotes the background: “In February 1943 a meeting was held in London to promote interest in the conditions of the prisoners of war and civilian internees in Hong Kong, and it was decided to publish a small bulletin called ‘The Hong Kong Fellowship News Letter’, providing information regarding conditions and news of the activities of all those in the camps.” I used some of these in Reduced to a Symbolical Scale, but hadn’t previously read them all. Looking through them, I saw a mention of Rosemary Mitchell, who often comments on the Battle of Hong Kong Facebook page.

5 Iain Gow notes: “Going through some of my dad’s work stuff from Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station, I came across his ‘playlist’, The Rambles of Sandy Gow, for the songs he recorded with the proper titles, which clarifies some of the lyrics a bit! Also I imagine the dates noted on it were when they were written down by him originally.” He also attached a photo of Royal Scots (including his father – fourth from right, second row down) at Glencorse Barracks, which he photographed in The Royal Scots Club in Edinburgh the other day. It is captioned “Depot, The Royal Scots, Silver Jubilee Parade, 6th. May 1935.”
The “Rambles of Sandy Gow” reads:
Glencorse Old Faithful (watch)
One Bright and Summer Evening
Dover Red Sails in the Sunset (watch)
Lahore Where do you think the Royals are now
I’m only an Old Rough Diamond (watch)
H/Kong That Distant Day
We’re the Little Boys that Churchill has Forgot
“ 1942 Bruised, Bewildered and Battered
“ 43 Kobe House Blues
Stevedore Swing
Hemmed in by Walls and Iron Bars
2 Boys Home from China
Listen to the rumble, thunder of guns
When is it all going to finish
Steve Denton added to this POW hit parade with this list of songs and their authors:
If Winter Comes* Corporal Frank Florence, RAMC
Loneliness of the POW Private Blair Taylor, 2/30 Bn
Free Again Cpl. G.W. Wills, 60 Coast Artillery, US Army
A Prisoner’s Prayer Unknown
Stevedore’s Swing Corporal Norman Colley
The Little Boys that Churchill had Forgot* Unknown
Kobe House Blues* Unknown
The Looter’s Lament* Corporal Norman Colley
Take no Notice of Joh! Private A.S. ‘Tibby’ Jeynes
Keep Owasaki Out Private A.S. ‘Tibby’ Jeynes
Takanaka’s Little Car Corporal Norman Colley
…plus other bits and pieces. A “*” above means that we have the lyrics too. Those with a ‘watch’ link were simply popular songs of the era, and not written by the POWs themselves. Iain also notes that “Sandy Gow – who died November 1933 - was a weel-kent-face in Dundonian politics, and my dad’s army nickname came from him.”

2 A Facebook post from “Empty City” was posted on the Battle of Hong Kong Facebook page today, with a nice drone shot of the base of the old Japanese War Memorial.

1 I had an interesting enquiry today: “Following the First World War, the Canadian Pacific Railway placed plaques across their network to commemorate the employees killed during the war. Our records show that one was placed at our office in Hong Kong, however I have never been able to determine if it is still there, moved to a museum or destroyed. Would you have any idea who might be able to assist with finding out the answer to this? Do you have any knowledge about such a plaque and where it could be now? Do you know anyone who could help?” There was indeed such a plaque in Hong Kong, but no one really knows what happened to it. Larger bronze items such as statues were mainly shipped back to Japan to be melted down for the war effort (though a surprising number of Hong Kong’s current pre-war bronze statues were found still in Japanese scrapyards in 1945 and returned).
1 A gentleman asked if I had any information about an Irish wartime policeman by the name of Tim Collins. There was indeed a police officer of that name, who was captured when the Japanese invaded. However, he spent the war years in Stanley Internment Camp sharing a small room with three other policemen:
Cairns, James British 13.06.14 M Police Officer Stanley 12/39
Collins, Timothy British 18.04.95 M Police Officer Stanley 12/39
Goddard, Jack British 08.10.00 M Police Officer Stanley 12/39
Hutchinson, Bert Vincent British 22.12.08 M Police Officer Stanley 12/39
His family (wife Elizabeth, four year old Margaret and new-born Timothy) had evacuated to Australia (Brisbane, initially), with the majority of British women and children, in July 1940. They spent the war years there, returning to Hong Kong as late as 1947. I think it is quite possible that Mr Collins joined the family in Australia after liberation and recuperated there before they all returned.
1 Booking is open now for the Researching FEPOW History Group’s 8th International Conference, Sat 14 Jun 2025 9:00 AM - Sun 15 Jun 2025 5:00 PM.

July Images

Japanese War Memoral Base (author), Baguio memorial (Wikimedia), "Kate" at Kai Tak (facebook, via Henry Wong)

Freddie Clemo letters (courtesy Janet Clemo), Lapsley memorial (SCMP), Book announcement (1941 Spatial History)

Hurd gravestone (via Colin Standish), Japanese POWs (courtesy IWM), Wanchai Police Station (facebook, via Ken Carew)

July News

It’s a short blog this month, as I spent quite a bit of July on holiday (in the rain) at our place up in the hills of Baguio. Since first buying that property some 30 years ago, I’ve been intrigued by the memorial, halfway along the drive up to our elevation of about a mile, to the 130 US Infantry of the 33rd Division (more can be read about the liberation of Baguio here). I was brought up in the UK, in a place surrounded by WWII training areas and airfields where I played and found many artefacts, then lived in Holland near the ‘Bridge Too Far’ area, then moved to Italy, living near Anzio, and today in Hong Kong. I’ve seen memorials and found artefacts and graves from the fighting in Malta, Greece, Guam, Japan, Saipan, Tinian, Singapore, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Thailand, Luxembourg, Indonesia, China, and probably ten or more other countries. It’s yet another reminder that the Battle of Hong Kong was just one small event in a truly global war.

30 I took a more dramatic shot this morning of the Japanese War Memorial base, which for the moment at least still seems to be complete.
30 This is just for fun, but today Cathay Pacific released their own new inflight safety video, to challenge that released by British Airways the other day. Interesting to compare how the two project their history and culture!

29 Ken Salmon kindly sent me a nice little gift today, a Lisbon Maru calendar for 2025!

26 The Battle of Hong Kong Spatial History Project posted a New Book Announcement: “‘Exposed Outpost: Revisiting the Battle of Hong Kong 1941’ is tentatively scheduled for release on August 15th 2024, published by Joint Publishing. Compared to the previous work, the new book features a thoroughly rewritten text with additional content. The number of chapters has increased from seven to thirteen, aiming for a more systematic discussion. The number of images has increased from 36 to 84, and maps from 28 to 42, all of which have been redrawn, with the vast majority processed using geographic information systems.” I will post updates here as and when it becomes available.

22 Henry Wong posted a USAAF reconnaissance phot of Kowloon on facebook today (illustrated). Baptist University has a quite complete set of these, which they are building into their Spatial History database.

18 Walking to Magazine Gap I noticed that the demolition of Cameron Mansions has reached the point where they appear to be at the level of the original platform of the Japanese War Memorial – and they are still digging. I wonder of any of the workers there are looking out for the ancient Japanese sword which is rumoured to be buried there?

14 I found this interesting video on Gwulo today, “How WW2 changed Hong Kong” by David Bellis. He notes: “This talk shows how the war changed Hong Kong, using a selection of photos from the 1930s-50s. It is a re-recording of a talk I presented at the Royal Geographical Society's Gala Dinner in October 2022.”

13 Janet Clemo kindly sent me a lot of correspondence relating to her late husband, Freddie. Among other things, it documents how Freddie had to have the end of a finger amputated after an accident at Innoshima. I wanted to know which Company Freddie was in. I note that although these letters say 2 Coy, his Paybook has 1 Coy written on it – which seems more likely.

10 Henry Wong posted a photo to facebook of an abandoned Nakajima B5N (‘Kate’) found at Kai Tak in September 1945. Ken Carew also posted a photo of the Wanchai Police Station, showing just how exposed it was in wartime, with none of the post-war reclamation and buildings to the north. Years ago, I had a couple of wartime Hong Kong Policemen visiting my flat, telling the story of shouting at a comrade who had arrived with a lorry to deliver hand grenades (this would have been around 15 December 1941), and had parked at the front in full view of the Japanese who instantly started mortaring it from across the harbour! They made the driver jump back in and bring it round to the back where it was sheltered.

7 I discovered today that Robert Lapsley, HKVDC, passed away on July 2 (Ron Taylor later kindly sent me a clipping from the South China Morning Post). An account of his wartime experiences can be found here. The way that the family was split by the war was covered in an SCMP article about one of my books here. That leaves, to the best of my knowledge, only two surviving Allied veterans of the Hong Kong fighting worldwide:
William Ng Jit Thye, HKVDC - Malaysia
Ben William Thompson, RASC – UK

5 During the Shanghai World Premiere of the Lisbon Maru documentary I noticed that a handful of mistakes had crept into the subtitles as the film was edited following the South Bank screening of August last year. I requested a copy of the film from Fang Li, and today sent him a dozen or so corrections. At this point, unfortunately, it is clear that the documentary has not been accepted for this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.

3 Justin Ho kindly let me know that Corporal Robert Douglas (Royal Scots) Medals are for sale here. Justin is also fairly certain that these are the medals of Lt Charles Rupert Robinson of the RNVR. He also reported this listing, which claims to be the “private Property of B.A. Jeld PTE HKVDC”. But no one of that name exists. The closest I can find is Private Boris A. Gellman.
3 Michael Hurst notes that the Spring-Summer 2024 POW Society newsletter "Never Forgotten" is up on their website now.
3 An IWM photo of Japanese POWs at Kowloon in 1945 (posted to facebook today; the original can be found here) reminded me of this IWM film of Japanese POWs being disarmed when the British fleet arrived.

2 I heard from Archie Brown again (see October 2022), the nephew of the late James Connell Brown who worked for the HSBC and was a civilian interned in Stanley (where he married fellow internee Nancy). Archie was left a collection of drawings and paintings by his sister, which all seem to be by various members of the camp and some dated and signed. “The most accomplished paintings have a signature of Ian Highet. Some appear to be copies of photos perhaps, as they have such definite borders and one is of Thuparama Dagoba Ceylon. I think these are studies to pass the time but some could be of local views. One called D Bungalow by Ian Highet, I presume as its signed I.H.C.H. There is a painting of some graves which seems to be a section of a larger painting. The grave names are A. Raddy RRC Killed Dec 1941, Li Lin Dec 1941, Kenneth Evans killed 1941 and James Merry killed Dec 1941, presumably from the fall of Hong Kong. Think there is a real sense of the time in these paintings. I will try to attach some photos so you can visualise the paintings. There is a Christmas card signed ‘Ian’ from Christmas 1944. At least half the paintings are on both sides of the paper for obvious reasons!” Archie is kindly sending these pictures my way. In the list of internees, James Connell Brown is shown as an electrical engineer with the government. Born 8 Jan 1908, he was in room A3/4 (this was not a bungalow, but people did move around). He was held there from January 1942 to the beginning of September 1945. Ian Campbell Hugh Highet was a banker. Born 11 Aug 1905, he was similar in age. He was in room 8/4. The graves are all in Stanley Military Cemetery, though I think Raddy was most likely Alexander Rattie.

June Images

Shanghai Red Carpet (author), First interview, Hodkinson Plaque (both courtesy Kent Shum)

POW Encyclopedia, Page and other Kobe doctors (both courtesy Yoshiko Tamura, MBE), C Force costing (courtesy Bill Lake)

Fryer as 'Confidence man' (courtesy the late Roger Mansell), two examples of CSDIC interviews (via Simran Jits)

June News

In most months, the discovery of a ‘new’ data source for Hong Kong’s Indian Army POWs would certainly have taken centre stage, but this was an especially busy and interesting June, and the World Premiere of the documentary film The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru has to be our lead story. Thus it was that I, a dozen or so family members of those on board that vessel, and Fang Li (Producer/Director) and his crew were in Shanghai for the International Film Festival – where our film was the first to be screened of the entire occasion. The reaction was as surprising as it was powerful. What a shame that so far we have been unable to find a similar level of support in the UK, but we are still trying. Perhaps the geopolitical situation is against us, but as I tried to explain in this interview at the site, this is a human story, not a political one. As for the Indian POWs, the challenge has always been that I have not been able to find a complete list of Indian POWs in Hong Kong. The ‘official’ Japanese list of POWs that I have was compiled in ShamShuiPo POW Camp after the Indian POWs had been separated and sent to another camp. So the British, Canadian, and Chinese POWs are fully represented, but the Indians not at all. In fact the Indian lists on my site were painstakingly compiled from peripheral documentation such as hospital records, lists of escapees, and so forth. It’s therefore very encouraging to see primary sources newly appearing in easily accessible archives.

27 George Plummer’s (Middlesex) daughter got in touch.

26 A group of Hong Kong universities and their friends have released a fascinating 45-minute video showing the geospatial and geophysical methods they are jointly using to research Hong Kong’s wartime remains. These are very advanced techniques, and it’s nice to see Hong Kong leading the way.

22 Yoshiko Tamura, MBE, of the Prisoners of War Research Network Japan, contacted me to say that their encyclopedia of POW camps in Japan has now been published. She notes: “It was not only full of reports re. each camp, but plenty of memories of ex-POWs with photos. It is only in Japanese, but we wish it will be e-book in English. As you see the photo I attach here, it is a very thick encyclopaedia, 2.5Kg and costs \23000. To those who are interested, we ask them to have a look at a library.” She also asked for details of the ‘G. Baladin’ of the HKVDC who served under the name ‘Henri Belle’ (though CWGC has this as ‘H. Bel’). I don’t really know the details, but I believe Henri Belle was a French merchant seaman who got caught up in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded. In further correspondence Yoshiko included a photo of the doctors at Kobe, including the famous Surgeon Page, RN, from Hong Kong, and included this story of their relationship with the local intelligentsia: “Japanese doctor, Dr Ohashi, happened to be friends with the rich man, Hajime IKENAGA, who lived only the next door to the hospital. Mr. Ikenaga invited these POW doctors for tea and showed some of his collections. At the heavy air raids in Kobe, to see the fire on Mr. Ikenaga’s house, doctors and patients helped to extinguish it with buckets of water. Although the fire was only onto the annex, who knows the fire wouldn’t have leaped to the main building unless they didn’t show their kindness. The hospital itself burned down with three victims. Mr. Ikenaga wrote a thank-you letter to them later, which is well known to people in Kobe, because his daughter wrote this episode in her book. But very few people know the testimony by one of the POW doctors on the occasion of the War Trial. He writes, ‘We were invited to our neighbour, a rich man, for tea. We had an honor to see his collections of art, too. Among the POWs taken to all over Japan, who else during the wartime, could have had this happiness to be invited to a Japanese citizen’s house for tea and art. It was a very precious time for us. How much we were refreshed.’ To return to his kindness, I think they hurried to put out the fire, I imagine. After the war, Mr. Ikenaga opened a museum and invited citizens to see his fine arts. Later all the exhibits were donated to the City Museum of Kobe. It is a pity that very few Japanese know this episode and how these fine arts were protected from the fire. The art, St. Xavier, is always shown at school now, as a missionary of Christianity, coming to Japan in 1549, via Goa, India and Malacca. This portrait painted by a Japanese, was secretly kept by hidden Christians for about 300 years. Mr. Ikenaga bought it from a farmer with a large sum of money, I hear.”

19 The Index to the first 63 Volumes of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, is now available on the society’s website. While of course not mainly concerned with Hong Kong’s Second World War experience, there are still a huge number of articles, notes, and book reviews relevant to that topic.

18 Sandy Wynd kindly sent me this link to Stanley items currently available on eBay.

17 While in Shanghai I was briefly introduced to the people behind a major Chinese movie called ‘Dongji Island’ which will apparently tell the story of the Lisbon Maru as a drama. It sounds – for the moment at least – like a seriously big-budget production, with underwater scenes and a reconstruction of the ship. For the moment there are only snippets of information online, but the implication is that it is in post-production already.

16 William Lee’s (Li Ping Hon - BAAG) granddaughter got in contact. Elizabeth Ride kindly sent me these details about him from her father’s records, though there are lots more: “Nationality Chinese-British subject, born 1.2.16 in Hongkong, Clerk in Naval Dockyard, BAAG 1.8.43 - 31.10.45. LTR: ‘This man was previously employed in the RN Dockyard in Hongkong, and after hostilities, escaped to Free China and there offered his services to the BAAG. After a period of valuable service in the forward areas, he was promoted to a more responsible post in the Security Section. During the enemy advance on Kweilin when the area was being penetrated by enemy plain clothes operators, Lee performed most outstanding work in forming and training counter-espionage agent groups. Later he was responsible for training certain counter-espionage groups which did excellent work in both Canton and Hongkong. His is a record of long, loyal and outstanding service in the Allied cause’.”

16 I flew back to Hong Kong today, having waved the families off on their bus trip to visit the islands and the site of the sinking of the ship. The press coverage has been fantastic, but rather than list the 20-30 articles and videos that have been published to date, it probably makes more sense for me to share this link which you can use to navigate through them. I later heard from Ken Salmon (son of Andy Salmon of the Royal Artillery, who survived the sinking) that the team was very well looked after in their tour of the islands and location.

15 The day started with everyone meeting for a bus to take us to the Bund for a short tour of the central part of old Shanghai. I’ve been there before, but it was still very enjoyable. Then after another quick lunch, six of us departed to get changed to attend the Red Carpet and the Festival Opening Ceremony. As around 50 films were being premiered at the event, instead of having a Red Carpet for each, there was one mass Red Carpet for all of them - which led into the theatre were the opening ceremony was held. If was quite an experience, but another long day. From doing make-up (some of us, at least!) to getting back to our hotels that night was about seven hours.

14 At 08.00 I walked out of my hotel and crossed the street to an address only about a block away – J.G. Ballard’s wartime house! To my astonishment it was still there, though with no ‘blue plaque’ or any other way of distinguishing it. Later I realised that I could see its roof from my hotel window, together with perhaps half a dozen large mansions of a similar date. At 09.30 we assembled at the lobby of our hotel to walk round to the cinema. When I say ‘we’, I mean the key members of the film crew, plus around a dozen family members of those who were on board the ship in October 1942. The film started at 10.00 and was an updated version of the ‘prototype’ which was shown at the South Bank in London last August. In many ways it is better. I was very surprised to see the whole studio full, and mainly with young Chinese people – many of whom wept pretty much throughout. As the film ended, us visitors were invited on stage with Producer/Director Fang Li to say a few words. Then, after a hurried lunch, we all attended a press conference. This was followed, for Fang Li and me, by six solid hours of one-on-one exclusive interviews with all sorts of different media.

13 At lunchtime today I flew to Shanghai to attend the International Film Festival, at which not only is The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru to be the first film of the entire festival, but it was also (they say) the first to sell out. I’m staying at the hotel next to the cinema which is screening it, though it seems that pretty much every cinema in the city is involved in the festival. It’s a major event; they have sold something over half a million tickets in total for all the films.

10 Bill Lake kindly sent me something that I’ve never seen before – the cost of C Force! I made a single image of the files he sent, in order to show the details and source.
10 I missed this article on the Kamloops Kid which was published last month.

8 According to the Shanghai International Film Festival press: “Among the most popular films are the documentary ‘The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru,’ the suspense thriller ‘Se7en,’ and the fantasy animation ‘Strame Film’ and ‘Perfect Days’.”

7 Justin Ho notes that in the last few days while visiting Australia he purchased a book titled For Honour and Country: Victorian Chinese Australians in World War II which includes a bio of James Kim (Yan Cheuk Ming) - BAAG agent 71, from Casterton, Victoria. In Sydney, he photographed the Australian Chinese Ex-Services Monument (illustrated) and found the names of James Kim and Bruce Hoy Poy there.

6 James Eugene Fryer’s (RA) son made contact today. Fryer was a career soldier, having joined up at the end of WW1, and briefly served in France. After being repatriated and de-mobbed, he worked in Army recruitment until he retired. He was the senior NCO in Sakurajima Camp (Osaka #4D), which took in ex-HK POWs from the Tatsuta Maru.
6 With today’s 80th anniversary of D Day celebrations, several people have remarked on the issue of Chinese officers serving in the Royal Navy. It’s also a good time to look back at one of Philip Cracknell’s blogs.

5 The HKVCA issued their Summer Newsletter today.

1 The grandson of Kartar Singh (2/14 Punjab Regiment) kindly contacted me, including a copy of his grandfather’s post-war ‘A’ Section CSDIC(I) screening report. In those pre-independence and pre-partition days, the British – following victory – had to decide whether returning ex-POW Indian army soldiers were still ‘loyal’ to the British crown. They adopted the white / grey / black standard for reporting. Obviously this is still a sensitive issue, and is the only part of Far East Second World War records that I am aware of which are sometimes still subject to the 100-year rule. My correspondent has been trawling through the INA papers collection of the Indian National Archives (filter on ‘INA papers’ on the left), which were only digitized in 2023. Although the site is hard to penetrate, he notes that: “the amount of biographical and biodata of Indian soldiers in these archives is staggering”. This is potentially very important for me, as up till now I have been unable to complete the POW rolls for Indian troops in Hong Kong as they were separated from the remainder and not covered by the same documentation. I can see a number of reports of individual 2/14 Punjabis and 5/7 Rajputs and Indian members of the Hong Kong Police (and others like the RIASC, but they could have been captured in Singapore), but there could be far more data there. While Katar Singh’s grandson is focused on producing this very nice website in his grandfather’s memory, he also kindly produced this listing of other 2/14 Punjabi ex-POWs included in this data set:
Report No H/No IA/No Rank Name IA Unit Document Page
1299 B1348 9550 Hav Sher Singh 2/14 35
1147 1196 12297 Hav Jarnail Singh 2/14 72
1202 1251 12234 Hav Pritam Singh 2/14 73
1208 1257 1477 Nk Zaman Khan 2/14 70
831 G874 53019 L/Nk Ram Singh 2/14 26
1242 B1291 15332 Sep Mewa Singh 2/14 34
572 G615 16204 Sep Dalip Singh 2/14 22
657 G700 9680 Sep Kartar Singh 2/14 23
734 G777 60635 Sep Panch Ram 2/14 25
736 G779 60685 Sep Mahanlu Ram 2/14 25
1229 B1278 14996 Sep Amar Singh 2/14 34
Hopefully I will have time to look at all this in depth in a less busy period.

May Images

Mount Cameron Road Splinter Proof Shelter, demolishing of Cameron Mansions (all author)

New signs and their locations (courtesy, Tan et al.)

West Brigade HQ (courtesy Battle of Hong Kong 1941 Spatial History Project), PB17 at Repulse Bay (via facebook), Tai Tam shelters (courtesy Andrew Service)

May News

Uniquely this month, all the main photos (even vintage ones) are of still extant Hong Kong fixed defences. An amazing number are still around, and it’s great to see the growing interest in them. They are generally well documented now, and hopefully a steady number will be protected in the coming years. Earlier this month I saw an internet question about their location, and took the opportunity to remind people of this fantastic resource, an interactive map showing all the fixed defences (and many other things), projected from an ever-growing database of well-curated wartime information.

28 I received confirmation today that the Lisbon Maru documentary will be premiered at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 14. Unfortunately the Chinese edition of The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru book isn’t quite ready.

25 I heard this evening that Clifford Holmes’s family managed to visit his grave at Stanley Cemetery as planned.

24 Douglas Ferguson’s (BAAG) daughter kindly sent a couple more photographs from her late father’s collection. One is of four men, and on the back says: “1943 in China headquarters of Aid Group. Norwegian diplomat, myself, Frenchman, Sergeant Major, Norwegian Captain.” There are no names, unfortunately, just ranks. The other is of two men and says: “Navy Lieutenant Maxwell Holiday, headquarters BAAG”. Alas, there is no indication of who the other man is.

23 I like to keep an eye on our wartime remains when I’m walking, and twice this month took an extended tour around Wan Chai Gap. Last week I checked the pillboxes on Lady Clementi’s Ride (the upper one had its steel door torn off a year or two back), and today I checked the splinter-proof shelters on Mount Cameron Road. One is clearly visible, still being used by the local government as a store for street cleaners, but the second has now been almost entirely taken over by creepers. Amazing to think it was once the battalion HQ of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. I’m used to seeing jungle and swamps reclaiming battlegrounds and artefacts on the Pacific Islands, and even farm and woodland reclaiming wartime airfields in my home area of East Anglia in the UK, but it seems a little odd to see it in Hong Kong.

21 Walking up to Magazine Gap this morning I took another photo of Cameron Mansions presumably being demolished from the foundations of the Japanese War Memorial. The previous photo was taken just three weeks earlier.

18 The Hong Kong Government announced on Friday that the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence will be converted into the Hong Kong Museum of the War of Resistance & Coastal Defence.
18 Tan notes that he has seen a new: “a signboard in front of the shelter at Mt Parker Road.” There are a lot of these about now, which is not a bad thing! I was also sent a photo of a board from outside a “Japanese tunnel”, and a map of new board locations.

17 I heard of a new book today, Traitor by Default by Patrick Brode. The publisher says: “This historical book tells the story of Kanao Inouye, a young Japanese Canadian who would stand trial and face execution for having committed war crimes by betraying his country during the Second World War. Born in Kamloops, B.C., in 1916, Kanao had relocated to his ancestral homeland of Japan, and by 1942 was a translator for the Japanese army. He was assigned to the prisoner of war camp in Hong Kong where he became infamous as one of the ‘most sadistic guards’ over the Canadian survivors of the Battle of Hong Kong. Scores of prisoners would attest to his brutality administered in revenge for the treatment he had received growing up in Canada. His reputation was such that he was quickly apprehended after the war and faced charges of war crimes. But his subsequent trials became mired in questions as to who he really was. Was he a Canadian forced to serve in the Japanese military machine? Or was he a devoted soldier of his emperor obeying his superiors?” It must be the first book in ten years, about Hong Kong in WWII that I was unaware of before it was published!

16 Andrew Service visited LPB 04, one of the inland pillboxes. The Headquarters of East Brigade is right next to it and he posted some good photos to facebook. Another photo of Repulse Bay beach posted on the same day (and credited to David Jones from the HK In The 60s Group) clearly shows PB17 clearly visible - if you zoom centre right above the car (which I believe is a Vauxhall Wyvern E from about 1953, which helps date the photo).

15 I heard today that at least one attendee at the London Hong Kong Society Book Fair heard about the event through these pages, so it’s nice to know it helps! Ian Gill says there was a full house, and kindly sent a photo of him with Diana Fortescue (author of The Survivors).

12 The South China Morning Post ran a Jason Wordie article today: “How Hong Kong POWs used every inch of innovation to fashion costumes for amateur theatre productions. Amateur dramatics helped alleviate the boredom of prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in the 1940s. Theatrical costumes were improvised from clothes obtained in camp and creatively decorated with items such as scrounged medical supplies.”

5 It’s not directly relevant to Hong Kong but may well be of general interest: “ ‘unknown’ POWs were buried in a Japan mass grave 80 years ago. Can an American forensics team finally identify them? 62 US airmen held as prisoners of war were buried in a mass grave after perishing in a fire that consumed the Tokyo Military Prison. The forensics team – Tokyo Prison Fire Project – have made ‘significant progress’ with the remains that were co-mingled and degraded by the fire.” Details here.
5 I had an email from fixed fortifications expert Rob Weir, who said: “Years ago we spoke about the Army troops who locked themselves in a shelter at WNC Gap, and apparently terminated themselves rather than surrender. The question then was which shelter, as there were many in the area. My VERY vague memory was that it was a now demolished one on the Parkview side of Tai Tam Reservoir Rd roughly below the AA Site. Right or wrong? If wrong, where?” It’s a good question, I absolutely remember the conversation, but when it took place, or what the conclusion was, eludes me.
5 Battle of Hong Kong 1941, A Spatial History Project posted a photo showing “Lawson’s Headquarters”. However, I don’t think that the Type A Shelters marked as “demolished” actually were. I think they are the ones still visible behind the petrol station, covered in shotcrete.

1 A few days ago I missed a post by Henry Wong on the Battle of Hong Kong facebook page (illustrated), describing the exploits of Joseph Gallacher and Daniel Hodges, Royal Scots. I’ve been looking into these two recently – and all the other escapees – for a possible new book. The text from this post comes from the Royal Scots themselves, but I don’t know the IWM number of the photo. I only know it from Alamy.

April Images

Henry Joslin and his letters (all courtesy Georgina Oropeza)

Kenneth Burrows (via Brian Finch), Lisbon Maru gift press cutting (via Henry Wong), RNDYP petition (courtesy Tom Dempster)

Skeet Ground photo (courtesy Tan, Davies, Lai), Shek Pai St. Park (courtesy Spatial History 1941), Castle Peak Road concentration (courtesy CWGC)

April News

Henry Dempster (see the 23rd) commenced employment with the Royal Naval Dockyard Police on 3 April 1937 after leaving the Royal Ulster Rifles on the same day. I believe that many of their recruits followed the same general path, from the army to the dockyard. But in terms of the casual racism of the system, 1937 was a different world. I think it’s fair to say that the Second World War catalysed great social change in the UK, especially in areas of class and race, and the famous Labour government of 1945 rode a progressive wave – which was clear, too, in the very different attitudes of the British rebuilding Hong Kong in 1945. It’s odd, then, that the policies of the Dockyard Police seemed fossilised in their pre-war state, but perhaps that’s primarily due to their small numbers and a lack of Admiralty interest.

28 This week the press has been full of news about construction (or demolition) taking place at Cameron Mansions on Bowen Hill (often incorrectly reported as Mount Cameron), originally the site of the Japanese War Memorial (illustrated) which was built there starting in 1942. The SCMP, for example: “Hong Kong authorities have ordered a developer to conduct an archaeological assessment of its construction project atop a former Japanese war memorial site, amid mounting concerns about preserving the location’s heritage value.” The base of today’s building is the base of the original war memorial, which was dynamited in 1947. There is a wide-spread belief that it contains a Japanese sword – though whether it was an ancient and historic one, or actually made in Hong Kong just for this purpose – is a matter of debate. Either way, when I walked through Magazine Gap this morning, as I often do, I took a photograph of the current work for my records.
28 Sweepy-time Gal came up in conversation today. This was a B24, shot down in the Pearl Estuary, recovered, and put on display on the Hong Kong waterfront by the Japanese. The question was whether anyone knows of any other shot-down Allied aircraft being displayed like this?

25 Justin Ho found a 1976 South China Morning Post article mentioning a history/geography book written by George Hall, HKVDC, in camp, with the help of many members of 2 Bty. 2 Bty was without doubt the most cosmopolitan unit in Hong Kong’s defence, with members from at least ten different countries (it is well described in James Bertram’s books).

24 George White’s (HKVDC) granddaughter kindly got in touch, noting that: “George and my grandmother Patricia (Patsy) had three children in total (two sons and a daughter), prior to moving to Australia. I was his first born grandchild and he passed away shortly after my first birthday. Following his death, his two other grandchildren were born (a grandson, followed by a granddaughter).” The issue is that in the short bio of George I wrote for The Battle of Hong Kong 1941 A Spatial History project, I only mentioned the two sons. I will get that corrected, and welcome any other feedback on these entries. The three children were George Alexander White, Noel Patrick Thomas White, and Mary-Anne Alice Sampson (née White).
24 I heard today that a Vancouver Chinese Museum has the medals, photo, and war death certificate for Leung Tak Chiu. I let them know that he served in 8 Platoon, 3 Company, HKVDC under Lieutenant Donald James Anderson. They were manning positions somewhere between the AA Position at Wong Nai Chung Gap and the southern end of Sir Cecil’s Ride, together with a platoon of Winnipeg Grenadiers. It’s not clear exactly what happened when the Japanese attacked that area, but at least 13 of 8 Platoon’s men were lost. Whether they were killed in the fighting or executed after capture isn’t clear either, but the consensus is that at least three of them were killed after capture and others may have been. Either way, by the end of December 19th there were several hundred bodies scattered around that area, and left there. By the time the (then) IWGC arrived in 1947 to do what they could, only two of that platoon were still identifiable. Clearly some skeletons would simply have been lost, but the IWGC did a decent job and I would say there’s a fair chance that Leung Tak Chiu is in fact buried as a ‘Known Unto God’ in one of the two current CWGC cemeteries.

23 Tom Dempster, son of Henry Dempster, Royal Naval Dockyard Police, has been back in touch. Unfortunately the Dockyard Police are a very under researched unit. Patricia O’Sullivan has done some work on them, and I mention them in my Short History of the HKDDC, but that seems to be about it. Tom shared with me some documentation of the struggle of the European members of the force, in the immediate post-war years, to overturn pre-war regulations only allowing them to marry ‘European’ wives, and only granting them housing allowances if they married ‘European’ wives.

19 I have been discussing with the Jordan family whether Bandmaster Herbert Jordan’s remains were recovered from Shelter ‘A’ Skeet Ground where he was buried having been unfortunately shot by sentries after failing to respond to a challenge. The useful document Pillboxes Along the Gin Drinker’s Line by Y.K. Tan, Stephen Davies, and Lawrence Lai includes aerial photos of Skeet Ground in the section about Pillbox 407. As far as I can see, Skeet Ground must have been roughly where Shek Pai Street Park is today (comparing the site of PB407 placed on a modern map on The Battle of Hong Kong 1941, A Spatial History site). We know that some remains were recovered by the (then) IWGC from the Castle Peak Road area, and also some unknown remains from Golden Hill, but as far as we can see, Skeet Ground is not explicitly mentioned.
19 Frederick (‘Freddie’) James Duncan Clemo’s (HKVDC) family got in contact via Ian Gill. Freddie Clemo was in North Point and Shamshuipo POW Camps, before being shipped to Japan on the third draft of POWs from Hong Kong. There he was in Hiroshima #5B (Innoshima) Camp. Innoshima was an interesting mix of British regulars captured in Singapore, and rather more mature HKVDC men captured in HK. The former called the latter ’the Genki Boys’, and were fascinated by their ability to ‘manage’ the Japanese. There's a book called Living With Japanese by Terence Kelly which describes this, and mentions Freddie by name.

16 Today I recorded an RTHK Radio interview with Annemarie Evans. For once the subject was not Hong Kong’s second world war history, but the multi-volume hyperlinked index to the Journals of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, which I completed this year. Temporarily I have placed it here, but it should be moved to the Royal Asiatic Society’s website soon.

15 The American Club, Hong Kong, contacted me today to ask for information about one of the seven founder members, John Oram Sheppard, who died in Stanley Internment Camp and was buried in Stanley Military Cemetery.

14 Today I saw the first public rumour that the premiere of the documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru will be at the upcoming Shanghai International Film Festival in June.
14 For quite a while I’ve been promising Brian Finch that I would send him my newspaper clipping about the presentation of a fishing boat to the Zhoushan fishermen who saved so many of the Lisbon Maru men, but I couldn’t find it. So I was relieved today when George Wong published the same clipping on facebook and I was able to send it to him!

11 I heard today the sad news that Emeritus Professor Sears Eldredge has passed away. He was the expert on the performers and performances of Far East POWs during their captivity in the Second World War. His obituary can be found here.

8 I hear from Mike Babin that the HKVCA are planning a gathering in Ottawa on the weekend of August 14-17, 2025. It’s a pretty significant year, being the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, so my wife and I plan to attend.

5 Jonathon van der Goes has kindly completed sending me copies of the pages of The War Bonnet. I’ve been reading it page by page, but will have to find time to read through the whole thing again and decide on a course of action. I checked with Elizabeth Ride, but BAAG documentation makes no mention of Edgar Baptiste.

3 In 2021, fellow researcher Keith Andrews kindly put me in touch with the family of Lance Corporal Henry John Joslin, Middlesex, who perished in the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. They had originally noted: “My maternal grandmother (Dolores Martinez) had met Lance Corporal Henry Joslin at a dance hall in Hong Kong. They had a daughter, my mother Teresa Martinez. They were unable to marry because of the war. My grandmother had told us he was a POW. I would love to find out more information.” Now we know that the surviving family stayed in Hong Kong after Joslin was lost in the sinking. Eventually the daughter applied for a U.S. residency through a family friend, eventually bringing her mother over too. They have now found a cache of photos and documents from the time – which they kindly shared - including a letter from a friend of Joslin, telling the family that he had died.

2 Brian Finch kindly sent me a phot of Kenneth Burrows (Royal Navy, Lisbon Maru), which he received from the family.
2 Ian Gill let me know that he is on a guest panel to discuss his new book Searching for Billie. It’s from 5.30 pm on Thursday 9 May 2024 at the Hong Kong Society’s Second Annual HK Book Fair, at St Anne’s Church, 55 Dean Street, London, W1D 6AF. The book has also been reviewed in the Asian Review of Books.

March Images

Alan Potter, SJAB (author's collection), Jardine memorial then & now, PB2 (both author)

Edgar Baptiste at Shamshuipo?, Arthur Claridge's POW Index card (both author's collection), Supreme Court building (author)

Bandmaster Jordan (courtesy CWGC), Liverpool FEPOW Memorial (courtesy RFHG), William Pyke, RN (courtesy Linda Allen)

March News

I must admit to becoming fascinated by the Edgar Baptiste story. I have now read around half of the book The War Bonnet published under his name, and it’s very interesting. The wartime parts read like many other such books written 50 or so years after the events by other veterans. There are quite a few mistakes, but again, that’s typically the case in less controversial memoires too. And to some degree they even make the story more credible; someone trying to fool the reader might well have been more careful. Perhaps most interestingly there are a handful of specific details which only someone with inside knowledge of the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW years (or who had spent half a lifetime studying them…) would be aware of. In essence, had the wartime chapters been written by a ‘proven’ Canadian veteran, they would have been accepted as true without question. But we are left with this fact balanced by the complete and utter lack of formal or informal documentation of Edgar Baptiste from 20 December 1941 to the end of the war. That simply does not make sense.

29 The family of William Arthur Pryke (Royal Navy, Lisbon Maru) posted his photo on the facebook Lisbon Maru page today. He was born in Drinkstone, Suffolk on 13 April 1920.

28 When walking back from the French International School to Mid-Levels this morning I walked up past the old pillboxes to take a look at the site of the Jardine’s Lookout Japanese war memorial as it is today. Unfortunately, the trees have grown up a great deal, and the exact spot seems to have slid down into the valley years ago, so it wasn’t a great ‘then and now’ success.
28 Benjamin Thompson, RASC, one of only three known surviving veterans of the Battle of Hong Kong, got a good write up in the Java Journal today. Unfortunately the newsletter doesn’t seem to be online, but the organization can be found here.
28 Clifford Holmes’s, HKSRA, family got back in touch. He was mortally wounded at Ho Tung Gardens and is buried in Stanley where they will shortly be visiting his grave.

27 At a meeting in Central this afternoon I realized I had a good ‘aerial’ view of the old Supreme Court so took a photo or two.

25 Gunner Kartar Singh’s (HKSRA) grandson got in touch. Unfortunately it’s a common name so we are not 100% sure that he was the POW I have in my records with service number 7702.
25 Royal Scots Bandmaster Herbert Jordan’s family got back in touch. They are trying to find out where he was buried and have been communicating with the CWGC. Twenty-five years ago a friend of mine kindly visited the CWGC’s HQ in the UK and made me copies of their internal files relating to Hong Kong, which (among many other things) stated that Jordan had originally been buried in Skeet Ground. However, those papers were in poor condition and it is not clear whether the CWGC still have them.

24 Although not directly relating to Hong Kong, there was an interesting story in the Guardian today about a proposed search for Richard Bong’s P38.

23 Jonathon van der Goes has been kindly sending me copies of the pages of “Edgar Baptiste’s” book, The War Bonnet. I have to say that it is surprisingly compelling. Everything he writes seems reasonable and believable bar one point. He states that rather than being killed in action, he was wounded, lost all pre-war memories, and ended up as a POW in Shamshuipo. Everything he describes is credible and reads like so many other wartime memoires, but the point is that no one of his name appears in Shamshuipo records, or in any record or diary I have as an ‘unknown’ man, or a ‘man with amnesia’ or anything like that. I struggle to believe that in a closed system such as a POW Camp, an interned man could go totally unobserved and undocumented for almost four years. But details keep checking out. For example, a post-war photo of the author shows a scar which his army records describe. Also, he claims that an affidavit by a Middlesex soldier, Arthur Claridge, states that Edgar Baptiste was in the camp and they spoke to each other as late as Christmas 1944. While the affidavit itself hasn’t yet turned up, Claridge’s POW Index Card shows that he was indeed in Shamshuipo and – unlike the majority who had been shipped to Japan by then – was there for the duration. Interestingly, Baptiste claims that he is the dark skinned man, top right, in the well-known immediate post-liberation photo taken at Shamshuipo and displayed above.

22 Tom Dempster sent me a petition of 1949 from the Royal Naval Yard Police, Hong Kong, demanding that the 1939 regulations stating that ‘members may only marry a European of a type approved of by the Commodore’ be amended to ‘members may marry whom they wish, subject to Commodore’s approval’. By this date, no other unit – as far as I am aware – continued to have such discriminatory regulations.

18 Ronald Sanderson’s (Royal Marines) granddaughter got in touch. Unfortunately her email system rejects my replies!
18 I have heard from several sources that David Bellis, the man behind Gwulo, is returning to the UK for family reasons. I hope he can keep up the good work remotely.

11 The Researching FEPOW History Group (RFHG) let me know that the replacement Repatriation Memorial plaque has now been installed on the Pier Head in Liverpool. They note: “Thanks to the generosity of many individuals and FEPOW organisations, last December RFHG was able to commission this beautiful bronze plaque in three panels to replace the granite plaque that had been installed in 2011. Over time the granite had discoloured, the lettering was wearing off given the harsh marine environment, and it needed to be replaced. The RFHG will organise an official unveiling and re-dedication of the plaque, hopefully later on this year.”

6 The HKVCA’s spring newsletter has been published.

4 Justin Ho has been continuing research into the wartime St John Ambulance. I passed him my ‘mugshot’ of Alan Potter of that organization, who of course was fatally shot on the Lisbon Maru (the original photos being passed to me by his family). Justin has found a list of wartime members in the SJAB 100th Anniversary Commemoration Edition. While searching for Potter’s name in old Hong Kong newspapers, he also found a fascinating account of the first meeting of the Compulsory Service Tribunal (29 August 1939), hearing some 250 cases under Defence Regulations, of whether the men in question was exempt from service, would be enrolled (as a combatant or essential services or other role), or decision would be deferred.
4 On facebook “George Best” reposted the well-known photo of the informal Japanese war memorial on Jardine’s Lookout.

1 Lincoln Keays, son of E30657 Richard Keays, Royal Rifles of Canada, got back in touch. He had contacted me in the past about a boxing trophy that was once the property of Sapper William Murphy, RE. His father had said that William Murphy had given him the trophy as a memento for some assistance that my father given to him in the POW camp. Lincoln notes: “We wondered at the time how they had met and if they were ever in the same camps or not. Just within the last week, going through some old photo albums, I came across a photo of my father’s kid sister [illustrated]. It had never been removed from the album so I had never checked the reverse side. Upon removing the photo I realized it had been sent to my father in Japan while he was a POW and had cleared the Japanese censors. There was a name and address on the reverse as well which I found curious, but didn't hit me immediately what it was. I checked the trophy and realized it was the name of the man who had gave the trophy to my father, and an address in England. Judging by the age of the subject in the photo this would have been taken fairly late in the war as my father's sister was born in 1930. So, I would guess that this is proof that my father and William Murphy spent some time in camp together towards the end of the war. I am guess perhaps Omori as my father was that camp from Dec. 1944 to April 1945 before being transferred to Ohasi.” This makes sense as Murphy was on the first draft from Hong Kong, which ended up in the Tokyo area camps including Omori, so I think that’s quite likely to be where they met. I still find it amazing that Murphy held onto that trophy as a POW.

February Images

Bell party in Woodside (courtesy Emma West), Searching for Billie launch (courtesy Ian Gill), Prince Robert landing party (via Debbie Jiang)

Ex-Ashio POWs (via Henry Wong), Ferguson telegram (courtesy Heather Ferguson-Piggott), inside High West AOP (author)

HK Club walkers (courtesy Sanjay Sakharani), Repulse Bay Hotel drain, Tinian Hiroshima Bomb Pit (both author)

February News

The last six months in particular seem to have seen a huge influx of mainland tourists. While they have been noticeable in areas like Causeway Bay for years (shopping and eating), now there are thousands daily in Central and Mid-Levels. And today it seems that they are not so much eating and shopping as photographing and instagramming. And the backdrops they appear to prefer are old architecture (the Fringe Club, Tai Kwun, etc.) and anything from the Colonial period. I don’t believe for one moment that it’s the political side of the time that they admire, it’s just that it’s different and photogenic – just as are all the new boutique bakeries on the escalator. Hong Kong’s authorities need to be brave enough to face, and capitalize upon, these realities: there’s money in history. Sporting and cultural events have their place, but will never be as unique as Hong Kong’s colourful past.

28 I discovered today that Bunny Browne of Battle HQ had left an audio memoir with the IWM.

26 Following up on the story of HMS Thracian’s bell I contacted Stephen Davies and we did a bit of research. It turns out that it was actually sold in the UK in 1933 when the ship was put in the reserve (temporarily, as it turns out). We couldn’t find any record of a replacement when Thracian was put back into service. Stephen noted: “The Hampshire Telegraph, 9 January 1932 p21 notes that the Thracian was the most modern of the four destroyers recently sent back to UK from China and ‘is to join the Chatham Reserve until required later for duty as an emergency destroyer’. In December 1933 she was sent off to be part of the maintenance reserve at Rosyth (Sheerness Times Guardian, Thursday 28 December 1933, p.3). She was refitted at Devonport (no mention of any bell, naturally) in mid-1936 and despatched for the China Station in November that year... and the rest we know.” The Blue Boar was opened with that name in 1990, so our guess is that the owner may have simply picked the bell up at a junk shop then and used it as decoration. There’s also the possibility that the bell was from one of the earlier Thracians, but who knows? It’s an interesting puzzle, but if the bell was removed before the war then it doesn’t itself have much of a Hong Kong connection. If I lived in Poole I would try to follow this up for fun, but it’s unlikely to be cheap to purchase even if we were lucky enough to find it. This example went for nearly 4,000 quid!

25 While playing around on the web, I found this colour film of Tinian readying B29s for the nuclear strikes on Japan. It might be of interest. We took our children there twenty years ago before it became a tourist spot, and it was as if the B29s had just left yesterday. When I shared that old photo with the elder boy, now 26, his deadpan response was ‘top tier Photoshop’…
25 Brian Finch notes: “We had another gathering in Gloucester last Saturday hosted by the Chinese Ambassador. Some 120 POW relatives were there as well as a delegation from Zhoushan consisting of officials, entertainers and three of the descendants of the fishermen who had taken part in the rescue. It was a moving experience for the POW relatives and the fishermen’s descendants to meet.” There was a fair amount of coverage in the Chinese media, for example here, here, and here.

24 This morning I took a taxi (I know, lazy…) over to Park View to meet the Hong Kong Club walkers for our last outing of the season. This has been the first full season of walks since before Covid. Today was The Travelling Massacre, a route from Wong Nai Chong Reservoir to Deepwater Bay via the Violet Hill catchwater path, Tze Kong Bridge, and Repulse Bay. I’ve done this walk two or three times with the Club, but this was the first time I remembered to show them the drain where the civilians sheltering in the Repulse Bay Hotel during the siege spent the daylight hours. It’s still there and clearly visible if you know where to look.

23 Jim Walker of the Marine Police – who gave me some useful photos of pill-boxes in Tai Tam about 15 years ago, and left Hong Kong in 2017 for Devon. notes that he: “recently gave a talk on the RN & RM in HK, and in preparation, I re-visited a few issues that you covered in NTSC. I was always fascinated by the story of HMS Thracian, passing as I did Round Island, every time I headed east out of Aberdeen. I have consolidated some material on her, and was (temporarily) thrilled to discover that her bell was in the Blue Boar pub in Poole, Dorset. I called the landlord, but was told that the pub had changed hands in recent years, and it had gone. I reverted to my former profession and did more digging, and learnt that there was a chance that it was in another pub in Poole called the Foundry Arms. The landlord of the Foundry told me that it was not there either, and that the misplacement of the bell was a mystery.”
23 Richard Hide was one of several people to let me know that the TNA is currently promoting their content covering the East River Column.

22 Iain Gow notes that he has: “extracted the audio files of my dad’s songs from a tape he made ca 1974”. He kindly passed copies to Steve Denton and me. They are:
Lisbon Maru Martyrs of the East
The Little Boys That Churchill Forgot
The Kobe House Blues
The Stevedore Swing
Hemmed In
The War Weary Blues
Home From China
The Horios Cry
The Kobe House Blues is quite well known, and in fact Iain gave me this recording a long time ago, but the last three are ‘new’. Iain’s father was James Gow, Royal Scots, a survivor of the Lisbon Maru.
22 I was wandering around the Peak / High West area as usual this morning, but for the first time noticed that there was a hole in the cement blocking entrance to the High West artillery Observation Post, leaving enough room to stick a camera in.

20 Today I was pointed (by Debbie Jiang) to a very interesting artefact, a flag featuring HMCS Prince Robert’s landing party at the liberation of Hong Kong. I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before.

18 I took the MTR to Quarry Bay this morning and there met Theodore Leslie Bell’s granddaughter and her friends, and walked with them up Mount Parker Road to the point where Bell had been shot – but unfortunately was so deeply engaged in conversation that I marched them almost a mile past that point before I realized my mistake! Originally I had hoped to take them to the site of the “wartime communal kitchens” – the remaining parts of the refugee camps that Bell had helped manage – as well, but instead had to walk sheepishly back to Woodside. But it was still an amazing morning. I had been fascinated by Bell’s story ever since his daughter first contacted my 15 years ago, and to visit the spot with his granddaughter was genuinely a privilege. Also, for the first time, we went into Woodside and had a look around.
However, we have at least learned a little more about Bell’s background. As suspected, he was in the Royal Navy, joining HMS Ganges (RNTE Shotley at Ipswich) on 24 August 1923 and leaving via the Chatham shore station of HMS Pembroke II on 7 February 1927. Arriving in Hong Kong, he married Ngan Hoi Yung (said to be the sister of Ngan Shing-kwan, founder of the China Motor Bus Company) in 1938, the same year that Rose was born (so she would in fact have been no more than three when her father was killed).
18 Ken Skelton notes that: “I have a small pocket diary, originally a UK Regt. but my father affixed his Royal Rifles badge over the cover and used at war’s end in OMINE CAMP. The book contains 69 signatures of POWs most including their home addresses and often their POW Number at that camp. Many POWs from UK, Canadians & a few Dutch from Indonesia. There are also 5 Japanese Guards, they have written their names in Kanji, one has a nickname ‘BROWN BOMBER’ I have a sketch of him in his main diary. Also is one in Kanji and English ‘Siro Maru Takefume’ he is the ONLY Japanese my father spoke well of, I have a photo of him with my father & others wearing a POW CAMP armband which I have - my father recounts in his diary hoe he and several other Cdn. POWs wrote a letter for Gunso Siro Takefume to show occupying forces, it explains how he treated them and POWs in general well. Lastly, long winded to get to why I am sending this to you, one name in the book is ‘HUGH P. LIM c/o Poste Restante, Hong Kong’.” That was Staff Sergeant Hugh P. Lim of the Royal Engineers; he was on the third draft to Japan.

16 I found an interesting paper today: “The Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong: The Strategic Importance of Hong Kong and the Details of the Japanese Military Rule” by Kazuto Miyahira.
16 Justin Ho kindly noted that he had found some Dutch HKVDC POW Index Cards in the Netherlands Archive online. They were Gillaes de Jonge, Theodorus Huber, Herman Tadema-Wielandt, Erik van Walree, Jan Gerard Buis, and Unice Cazius. Justin also noted: “By the way, I think this may interest you. A letter by Truscott (Signals) in 1978 on Lisbon Maru survivors. Also found a letter from C.R. Boxer. The man who escaped Argyle Street Camp mentioned does ring a bell, but can’t quite remember exactly who.” That was Goodwin, of course. Justin also kindly sent me a scan of Norwegian HKVDC member Sverre Berg’s account from a biography written by his son Derek.

14 David Bellis from Gwulo asked me if I had any documentation about where Harry Goldman was originally buried. I eventually recalled that I had seen it recorded in In Oriente Fidelis, and when I finally laid my hands on my copy I discovered that he had been buried outside the Bowen Road Military Hospital, either on the slope to the north or in one of the two Borrett Road bomb craters that were also used as cemeteries. David noted that he’d posted this new information here, but then we got into a discussion about exactly how and when the BMH was moved to what is now KGV. David found the relevant section from Bowie: “On 19 March 24 lorry loads of beds (100) and mattresses and medical equipment left the hospital. On 21 March 109 patients with four doctors and 5 nursing orderlies were transferred to huts in Sham Shui Po leaving four officers and 56 staff with 15 so called strong patients. I left with these on 23 March for Sham Shui Po... The hospital equipment had gone to the Central British School in Kowloon… On 9 April 6 officers and 34 other ranks moved in to the Central British School... On 10 April 62 patients of whom 58 had been in Bowen Road and four were newly arrived in the hospital. There were at first no non-medical workers though these had been promised. On 12 April a further 62 patients arrived, 31 of these being crippled but in fair general condition and a further 31 being what we then called old men (i.e. unfit for service by reason of age).” (I have Bowie’s original ms for Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong in my collection, and really should have known this myself).

13 On the Battle of Hong Kong facebook page, Henry Wong posted an American photo of: “British soldiers (Middlesex Regiment) from Hong Kong with home-made Union Jack made from parachutes. These POWs were evacuated from Ashio prison camp (near Nikko), about 90 miles west of Yokohama, Japan. Photography by War Correspondent Jerome Zerbe and was received by the US Navy on 13th September 1945”. Ashio was Tokyo #9B, and this is odd because although I am pretty sure half a dozen or so POWs from the first draft from Hong Kong ended up there (though I hadn’t worked that out when I wrote WSST), they all seem to have been Royal Scots!

10 Heather Ferguson-Piggott kindly notes of her father, escapee Douglas Ferguson RE: “When we were corresponding about my father last year, I knew that I had a copy of the telegram he sent his parents when he escaped but could not find it. This evening while searching for some papers for my son, I found it! I have attached a copy for you to see.”

9 This paper looks fascinating, but is unfortunately behind a paywall: HMHS Oxfordshire and the Re-occupation of Hong Kong 1945

8 Justin Ho found a photo of the framed medals of Policeman John Edward Hayward (illustrated).

7 I had a very welcome email this morning: “I am contacting you as you helped my late mother find out what happened to her father, Theodore Bell, during the war. As a family, we are forever grateful for your research as my mum died knowing that her father did not abandon her as a child. The reason I am getting in touch now is that I am visiting Hong Kong for a week from the 16th February. It will be my first holiday there and I am keen to visit some of the places that were important to my mum growing up and meeting my dad. I would also really like to visit the place where my grandfather was staying and was killed (if at all accessible).” Mr Bell was a British man who was recruited locally by HSBC and had married a local lady, said to be from a wealthy family. That family disowned her for marrying a foreigner (or possibly for being pregnant already, we don’t really know the details). Either way, she gave birth to a daughter called Rose shortly before the war, and then died of TB leaving Theodore and Rose alone. Theodore joined the Essential Services when war came, and was allocated to work under Charles Mycock, based out of Woodside, managing the huge refugee camps lining the valley along Mount Parker Road. On the morning of December 19 a call went out for volunteers to help retrieve a man who had been wounded by shellfire, and Bell was one of six who responded. They brought the injured man up to the road just as the vanguard of the Japanese – advancing up that way – arrived. Bell was too slow to raise his hands (he probably didn’t want to drop the wounded man) and was shot, expiring shortly afterwards. But because he had no family to record his death – aside from Rose who was about four at the time – he has been forgotten and doesn’t appear in any official records.

5 Ian Gill notes: “We launched Searching for Billie at the FCCT (Foreign Correspondents Club Thailand) in Bangkok last Monday (January 29), an apt venue as Billie found peace and stability there for the first time in years after we arrived in 1949. She was joining UN ECAFE which had been transferred from Shanghai. The launch’s success was largely due to the warm welcome and help of the club’s Dominic Faulder and to my wife Jean who made major inputs during rehearsal and added charm to the book table. Thanks to publisher Pete Spurrier, of Blacksmith Books in Hong Kong, there will be similar speaking events at the Hong Kong Literary Festival (March 4 to 10) and the Hong Kong Society (London) book festival in Soho on May 9. In Manila, there will be a launch at the PHIMCOS dinner on February 21. Blacksmith has organized worldwide distribution with books available in bookshops in the UK, US, Canada and Australia from early March.”

3 Colin Standish asked if any veterans of the Battle of Hong Kong were still alive. I told him that the only three I know of now are:
Robert Lapsley, HKVDC - Australia

William Ng Jit Thye, HKVDC - Malaysia

Ben William Thompson, RASC – UK

February 1st, 2024 Update

January Images

Dafydd Thomas (courtesy Jeff Lane), Duncan Boag Izatt (courtesy Boag Izatt family), Mrs Banham at PB2 (courtesy Bren Archibald)

Commander Jolly's note, Buchanan's DC, Les Fisher's note (all author's collection)

Mystery objects (courtesy mystery man), Whealan memorial (courtesy Justin Ho)

January News

On my harbour walk this month (see the 10th) it struck me that in the waterside stretch between the Maritime Museum and the Noon Day Gun, nothing of any historical interest is presented to the walker. Yes, of course there are fantastic views, one small restaurant with a few tables outside, some paddle boats for hire by the Yacht Club, and an MTR train on display, but this is still a waste of an enormous opportunity. Perhaps it’s simply too early and they haven’t finished it yet, but why not display the wreckage from HMS Tamar found a few years back? Or take the 10-inch coastal gun from HKU and put it here (or any of the other cannon found over the years)? Or the American 2,000 pound bomb which was recovered from Tai Tam a few years ago and is currently being looked after by EOD? I understand there is currently a perceived moratorium on ‘celebrating’ the colonial era, but that won’t last (these things go in cycles), and if we want Hong Kong’s tourist industry to prosper again, we must focus on the things that make Hong Kong unique. And that’s not yet more shops selling the same dull European brand name goods… At the same time, why not look at what San Francisco or Sydney do with their waterfront? Or even London with the Thames? We seem willing to throw away billions of dollars on real estate projects vainly hoping to attract IT innovation, without investing creatively on what Hong Kong has always done best: trade and tourism.

30 I was looking for something on Gwulo (what a marvelous resource that has become), and found this interesting item: “We don't often get to hear of events in WW2 from the Japanese viewpoint, so it is very interesting to read Keiji Makimura’s memories of the Japanese surrender, available in Japanese, and translated into English.”

28 Justin Ho visited the Hong Kong Catholic Cemetery and found a La Salle memorial which included the name of Brother Peter Whealan. He was killed during an ambulance mission in Causeway Bay, on December 23, with Private Anthony Carvalho, Field Ambulance. Yet again his name is missing from the CWGC, but in this case it is likely that it’s because he was an American. It is quite an unusual name, and I am 99% sure he is the Damian Peter Whealan from the Baltimore area mentioned here.

26 It’s nothing to do with Hong Kong, but today I discovered that Dennis Frary – a very nice man who ran a shellfish stall on the quayside of the Norfolk village I grew up in – had been in 133 Parachute Field Ambulance. I always knew he had been captured at Arnhem, but didn’t previously know the details. Those were the chaps who, post-capture, set up a major hospital at Appledorn, treating both British and German casualties. Dennis himself was attached to 21st Independent Parachute Company, who were the pathfinders for the rest of 1st Airborne. It must have been very odd, after all that, to spend a lifetime selling whelks and so forth to sun burned holiday makers.

23 I had a minor breakthrough today. A few days ago I sent a very interesting potential article for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society out for peer review. The reviewer kindly came back to me with a favourable response, but mentioned that the author would benefit from reading the wartime report of Commander James Jolly, Hong Kong’s Harbour Master in 1941. He sent a copy, which I had to admit I had never seen before either. Much of the content was well known, and already covered elsewhere, but there were some interesting sections. One gave details of the infamous explosion of the Jeanette on 12 December. Jolly mentioned that a ‘Stephens’ and a ‘Buchanan’ were on board. I believe he is wrong about the former (I suspect this was Guy Ernest Stephens of the PWD who survived the war, and thus must have literally missed the boat), but the latter rang a bell. I recalled that Les Fisher’s book had also mentioned a Buchanan, who I had been unable to trace. With this extra evidence I looked harder, and found that I had a death certificate in my files for a Robert Buchanan of the HKVDC PWD, with a date of death of 12.2.41. I also found a node on Gwulo stating that George Buchanan, who died in Stanley, had a son Robert killed on Jeanette. The problem, of course, is that there is no CWGC entry for Robert Buchanan, and in fact he seems to have avoided memorialization altogether. Clearly the mistake in the date of death (February instead of December) has led to him being seen as a pre-hostilities (as far as Hong Kong is concerned) death. I shall put him on my list of names to ‘fix’.
This means that the deaths (four have incorrect dates on CWGC, but I don’t bother them with such minor issues) on the Jeanette were:
Buchanan, Robert HKVDC PWD (unrecorded)
Buttress, Eric Frank PWD [13 Dec.]
Clarke, Percy At Hong Kong Harbour.
Dickson, John Harbour Office.
Donohue, Patrick Lance Sergeant, HKPF
Hunter, James Of Leighton Hill, Hong Kong. Harbour Office.
Hudson, George Alf Police Sergeant, HKPF
Kossick, David Harbour Office [15 Dec.]
Santa Singh Constable, HKPF [14 Dec.]
Waryam Singh Constable, HKPF [14 Dec.]
No bodies were ever found, but Jolly’s note makes me wonder if some or all of the 30 Chinese stevedores might have been on board too? A Margaret and Georgina Buchanan were evacuated from Hong Kong in 1940, and might possibly have been Robert’s sisters. If anyone has any more detail on Robert Buchanan I would be very interested.

Interestingly, all the other dates on this set of death certificates also look wrong except for Davidson and Izatt. And Izatt is also not recorded in the CWGC, though really should be in the list of Civilian War Dead. The history of that interesting name is that a Scotsman named John Izatt married a Janet Weir Boag in Edinburgh, and his sons adopted the name “Boag Izatt”. One of those sons was Duncan Boag Izatt (Senior – the one on this death certificate list), born in Edinburgh in 1882, who joined the Chinese Maritime Customs and went out to China. He married a Chinese lady, who died of amoebic dysentery during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. He served in the HKRNVR, was interned in Stanley Internment Camp, and died in the French Hospital of unspecified illness in February 1944. Their children were Samuel Boag Izatt, born 1918, and Duncan Boag Izatt (Junior), born 1920 – both born in China. Both sons were privates in 3 Company, HKVDC. Samuel was killed after capture in December, 1941 while Duncan became a POW in HK and Japan. I corresponded with the Boag Izatt family for many years, and they sent me a fine photo of Duncan Boag Izatt (Junior, on the left) taken just after the war. It matches our re-enactor well (see below)!

22 Today the HKVCA hosted Michael Palmer talking about his book The Dark Side of the Sun. They described the event as: “Michael Palmer is the grandson of George Palmer, a Hong Kong veteran. Some years after George died Michael began thinking about how little he really knew about his wartime experience. He began to look for information to answer his many questions, which ultimately led to the publication of his book ‘The Dark Side of the Sun: George Palmer and Canadian POWs in Hong Kong and the Omine Camp’.” The presentation is available to watch on YouTube here.

20 Today I took the Hong Kong Club walkers (or 16 of them anyway, and two well-behaved dogs) on ‘Cadogan-Rawlinson’s Last Stand’. This walk goes from Park View, over the top of Jardine’s Lookout and then over the top of Mount Butler, before descending to Quarry Bay down Mount Parker Road. It traces the route taken by A and D Companies Winnipeg Grenadiers trying to intercept the invaders, and (in reverse) part of the Rajputs’ – and Cadogan-Rawlinson’s - fighting retreat from the North Face. The ankle I broke around two years ago had been playing up, but this walk seems to have literally walked it off! One of the attendees, Dafydd Thomas – serving in the RAF but currently visiting his Hong Kong-based uncle – is a keen re-enactor and did the whole route in British WW2 uniform and boots. It really added something to the experience. Again on this walk we saw another school party doing a historical hike along the Wong Nai Chung Gap Trail, and even my wife and her friends visited PB1 and 2…

15 Lionel Ernest Norwood Ryan, who died late in the war in Stanley Camp, came up in conversation today. It’s always worth typing names into a search engine – especially relatively unusual ones – because so much is online these days that you can have lucky finds.

14 Two mystery items, eacn about the size of a HK$5 coin, turned up in the hills today (see photo). Can’t identify them, yet almost certainly they are wartime artefacts.
14 A gentleman posted, on Facebook, a photo of an IWM document about Elizabeth Ann Wright Brown (illustrated). If he’d like to get in touch, we have the details.

10 Hearing that the harbourside walk has now been finished and you can walk all the way from Kennedy Town to North Point (and eventually Quarry Bay), I took the escalator down to Central this morning and set off east. I walked as far as the Noon Day Gun and it was pleasant enough, but disappointing in terms of maximizing the potential of that huge length of attractive waterside space.
10 I hear from Richard Graham that his book on Captain Man (Middlesex) and wife is to be professionally edited this year. Hopefully we’ll see it published before too long.

8 I have mentioned the Condon Report before (it’s interesting, but arguably a bit too condescending) and today found a version edited by David Macri, available online.

6 The new Java Journal for January 2024 was published today by the Java FEPOW Club. It contained a nice obituary for Hormidas Fredette, Justin Ho’s column about Dutch burials in Sai Wan, and a mention of the Lisbon Maru documentary.

1 Oh oh. Returned from Christmas in the Philippines yesterday feeling a bit off, and today I have two red lines on my Covid test! My first time. I’ll take it easy for the first couple of days this year.

December Images

Ben William Thompson (courtesy Susan Crawford), BRH panorama (author), Colourised HKVDC (courtesy oldhkincolour)

Cautherley bag (IWM), Walace Hastings cutting (courtesy Andrew Marshall), Carey group photo (author's collection)

HK Club Walk (courtesy James Hogan), Scouts on WNCG Trail (author), Ian's book at Bookazine (courtesy Philip Cracknell)

December News

Ah, at last I have Covid! I must have picked it up in the Philippines over the holidays. I seemed to have been the last person I knew who had never caught it, and even now – thanks to the miracles of modern medicine – it’s just been two days of sniffing and lethargy. But yet again I’m left thinking of the horror of diseases in the POW camps. With way too little food, let alone access to modern medicine, it’s no wonder that disease carried more men away than were killed in the fighting. While the survivable diseases such as pellagra and beri beri, and the famously fatal ones like diphtheria and pneumonia, tend to be remembered more, it was the various humble dysenteries and diarrheas that killed the majority.

31 A great end to the year! Susan Crawford reports that her father, Ben William Thompson, RASC, is not only still with us but also cooked the family Christmas breakfast! I last reported on him two years ago, and it’s great to see that he’s still around. (His blog can be seen here).

30 Tan reports that despite all the work done on Crest Hill, the old Scots Guard badge on the hillside fortunately appears to have been preserved.

29 Rob Weir kindly commented on the HKU 10-inch gun (see last month): “A lot of conjecture about where that gun originated. The 10” was used in HK Coast Batteries from roughly the mid 1880s to around 1907. They were used in four Batteries, two on Stonecutters Island totalling three guns, and also at Belchers Upper Battery (one) and Fly Point Battery (one), both those being reasonably close to the Vice Chancellor’s Garden. I have seen reference to it coming from Victoria Battery but that’s not likely as Victoria had a 9.2” mounted.” I have a vague memory of hearing Belchers mentioned in this context before, so that would be my bet.

25 Today I had a nice Christmas present from Fang Li, producer and director of the Lisbon Maru documentary, in that he confirms that the film is now finished and should have its premiere (or premieres) in June/July 2024.

23 Steve Denton kindly sent me an MI9 form for Charles Edward Fisher, Winnipeg Grenadiers, so clearly there must be a mother lode of these somewhere. He also confirmed that Corporal James Steele Moore, RAF, who I had listed as not leaving HK as a POW, was in fact on the third draft to Japan. This was one of the few inaccuracies in the ‘smuggled list’.

20 My Canadian correspondent sent me two photos today, one of Edgar Baptiste in uniform at the age of around 20, and one of the man who wrote The War Bonnet at the age of 90. I can honestly say that if someone had sent me those photos in an email saying: “Here are pictures of granddad aged 20 and 90” I would have accepted them without question. The plot thickens!

16 I had a note from Ian Gill, who says that his book Searching for Billie is now available in Hong Kong book shops!
16 Justin Ho’s interview about the Dutch servicemen buried in Sai Wan appeared in the South China Morning Post today.

14 The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society published their Fall-Winter newsletter this morning.

13 A very nice colourised HKVDC photo from OldHKinColour appeared on the Battle of Hong Kong facebook page today.

12 I found this file about Edgar Baptiste online, from a source I had missed before but looks extremely useful. It adds personal details of his parents and wife, and scars. Apparently he had a large and distinct scar on the back of his left hand. If nothing else, this confirms that the Canadian government knew nothing about his whereabouts from either the nineteenth or 21st of December 1941 onwards (confusion about when exactly a man went missing is common). It also mentions that he went AWOL while still in Canada, and forfeited a month’s pay as a result. The author of the book also had a facebook page, with a single entry, which is still live despite him passing away in (I believe) 2015.

11 Steve Denton kindly sent a copy of the war crimes trial documents, of 2 August 1949, of Tetsutaro Kato, a guard at Niigata Tokyo #5B. It makes mention of ex-HK POW Middlesex Lance Corporal William B. Shaw, 6203915.

10 Who should I bump into today but George Cautherley out walking with his friend Dr Martin Lee! Needless to say I followed up with an email covering the points noted on the 7th.

9 This morning I took the Hong Kong Club walkers out for the first time since October 2019 (long-time walker Edgar says that I started taking them in 2008. How time flies!) That 2019 walk was to the top of Mount Cameron where we displayed a ‘Happy Birthday Dennis’ sign to send to Royal Scot and Lisbon Maru survivor Dennis Morley who was celebrating his hundredth. Covid then interrupted play, and unfortunately did away with old Dennis too. But today’s walk was very cheerful and enjoyable, made more so by the fact that as we were setting off, so did a herd of 50-70 scouts doing a “World War Two walk”, and later, on the trail itself, we met other hikers. It was very satisfying to see so much interest on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning.
9 Today I was contacted by a reader in Canada who had seen my article (see the Twentieth Anniversary Special Edition below October) about Edgar Baptiste and his book, The War Bonnet. It turns out that he has been interested in this story for years, and has traced various family members and friends of the author. I await developments with interest.

7 Sandy Wynd kindly sent me this link to a film of Stanley Internees being evacuated from the camp in September 1945. Very interesting. I have certainly seen stills from this film before, but I’m not sure I’ve watched the whole thing. It’s always interesting to identify the individuals behind the names on the bags which were helpfully whitewashed on in those days! James Clark was from Taikoo Sugar refinery, Harold Napier Hardie was a ship’s officer (he and his wife were in A1/SQ3 in Stanley), and the little girl with bandaged legs is sitting in front of a wicker back marked Cautherley. I took a still from the film showing that hamper (apologies to the little girl for inverting her; what a shame Barbara Anslow is no longer with us – she would have identified her straight away). George Cautherley was born in camp and still lives here. Just for interest, the minesweeper towards the end is J363 HMAS Strahan.

6 Today, for the first time since Covid, I found myself lecturing at a school (illustrated)! The location was Island School, and the scholars in question were their year nine IGCSE historians. It was a lot of fun, with some excellent questions and discussions. Interestingly, these were not just about issues directly related to what I said, but covered vital areas like critical thinking and differentiating between fact and fiction in a world where never before have so many people (from politicians’ PR teams to the fossil fuel industry) been paid to lie to us. While leaving I took the opportunity from their new building to take a rather interesting panoramic photo of the old Bowen Road Hospital.
6 The HKVCA have published their winter newsletter. In it the editor, Jim Trick, kindly refers to Hong Kong War Diary and quotes something I wrote a while back stating that I knew of no other surviving veterans aside from Hormidas Fredette. Soon after that I realised that in fact there were two more: Robert Lapsley in Australia and William Ng Jit Thye in Malaysia, both ex-HKVDC. (And see the 31st for another update).
6 I found myself in the news today (in Chinese, but it’s the photos that count!)

5 I saw this rather too late, but still thought it might be of interest: “The World War II Discussion Forum is hosting Professor Steven Bailey this coming Tuesday, December 5th at 8pm ET. Professor Bailey will speak on his latest book, Target Hong Kong: A true story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War, which examines the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this massive operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots and the POW Ray Jones.”

4 It wasn’t uncommon in the first half of the Twentieth Century for men to join up under assumed names, but it is quite unusual for those such who perished to have two different CWGC entries. See Private W. Jones / Private Ng Chung Sze (RASC) as an example that I recently found.

2 I had a very interesting email from a gentleman who lives in Gravesend, Kent and has the hobby of researching local casualties who died from war or conflict. He is currently working my way through WW2 and has come across a number with Hong Kong connections. He notes: “I have attached the newspaper articles for your information to use as you wish - they are from the Gravesend Reporter (GR) and the Kent Messenger (KM).” He kindly sent me ten clippings covering the Allsons, Wallace Hastings, Alan Burnett, Dick Hooper, Harry Day, the Pembles, Frank Scott, George Barkway, and Albert Carey.
So, going through them individually: Albert Sidney Allson was a tea-taster in Hong Kong. His wife Emily, and a daughter, were evacuated to Australia before the Japanese attacked, but Albert was interned. Their son Alan was killed in the crash of Stirling III EF153 of 199 Squadron, which took off at 22.30 on 10 February 1944 from Lakenheath and crashed ten minutes later onto Forestry Commission land near Brandon Road and Shakers Road. "It is believed a serious technical fault had developed with the undercarriage as the unit was being manually wound to the UP position when the accident occurred.” I know exactly where the crash was reported, and in fact was there in July of this year watching F35s land! It is just a few hundred yards from the end of the runway. Wallace Hastings was a very helpful man I corresponded with for years. He was at HMS Tamar and survived the Lisbon Maru. Allen F. Burnett is in CWGC records as Alan Frederick Burnett. But yes, he died of acute pneumonia at Osaka #2B (Kobe), having also survived the Lisbon Maru. Richard (Dick) Hooper was someone I used to correspond with twenty or so years ago! He was on the fourth draft of ex-HK POWs to go to Japan. Nice chap. Clark of Works Harry Day unfortunately did not survive the Lisbon Maru. The Pembles were in Block A4, room 16, at Stanley internment camp. I don’t think I know why Evelyn and Pauline didn’t evacuate. Frank Scott went down with the Lisbon Maru. George Barkway was in A Company of the 1st Middlesex. He was killed in the fighting in Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941 and has no known grave. Captain Man’s papers state that he was killed on Bennett’s Hill. Captain John Hudson, who commanded A Coy, added: “during shellfire on MG section”. Unfortunately Albert Carey didn’t survive the war, though I have a great Police group photo (of 1932) including him. He died as an internee at Stanley in December 1944. I don’t seem to have the cause of death.

1 I heard today that Richard Garrett passed away at Matilda Hospital on 23 November. He was a regular contributor to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, and had a particular interest in both the Peak and old weaponry and fixed defences.

December 1st, 2023 Update

November Images

10-Inch gun (author), Stanley fortifications (courtesy George Chang), Japanese POW work party (courtesy Trudy Crew)

HMS Ruler ex-POWs (author's collecton), HMS Ruler names (courtesy Les Broadbridge), Kobe characters (courtesy Steve Denton)

Various WNCG Trail new signage (all author)

November News

There should be a special word for history that passes out of living memory. I remember thinking how strange it must have been for the very last veterans of the Great War when they found themselves suddenly alone and isolated by the deaths of all their comrades. Their whole lives, the one thing that all their generation could remember and bond around was that experience, and little by little it drifted away and disappeared. Now, seeing the news immediately below, we are getting closer and closer to that point for the Battle of Hong Kong. In five years only child soldiers (and child camp survivors) of that entire conflict will still be with us. That is, of course, how life goes. When I was born (rather astonishingly) the last few Americans to have been born as slaves were still around. Everything passes into history eventually; it just feels a bit bewildering to experience these transitions yourself.

30 Bad news. Hormidas Fredette, Royal Rifles of Canada – and the last survivor of C Force – passed away in Canada this morning. That leaves only William Ng Jit Thye and Robert Lapsley – both ex-HKVDC – as known survivors of the wartime garrison.

29 Today I joined a walk to celebrate Ron Taylor’s (Hong Kong) eightieth birthday. While waiting for everyone to arrive at the starting point, which was at the bottom of Hatton Road, I took a moment to photograph the old 10-inch gun in the Vice Chancellor’s Garden. Someone asked me what the story was, and I had to admit I wasn’t sure. The old Victoria Battery was very close to there (and abandoned in around 1920), but according to records I have seen, it had 9.2 inch guns. Yet apparently this 10-inch barrel was on the site when the lodge was built.

28 Trudy Crew – whose father served in Hong Kong immediately after Liberation, posted some very interesting photos of her father on anti-Malarial duties with a work party including Japanese POWs.

25 Private Matthew Andrew’s (Royal Scots, Lisbon Maru) great nephew got in touch. I replied but received no response in return (if you’re reading this: please check your spam folder!)

22 The grandson of Sepoy Surain Singh (2/14 Punjabis) got it touch. It’s always a red letter day (literally, in the case of this blog) when someone from a member of the garrison from the sub-continent makes contact. For some reason (and of course it’s partly because of the disruption of partition) it seldom happens.
22 Rifleman Joseph Thomas Leandre LeBlanc’s (Royal Rifles of Canada) family got in touch. I replied but received no response in return (if you’re reading this: please check your spam folder!)
22 This morning my wife asked me to help take a few things to work (at Jardine’s Lookout), so we took a taxi there in the early morning, and I walked home as usual via Sir Cecil’s Ride and the hills. Finally I remembered to go and check the new signs for the Wong Nai Chung Gap Heritage Trail. I am pleased to report that they are all in place and correct (except for one point raised by Tan, which is that “the description of PB1 still mentions the Japanese dropped grenades down the ventilation shaft. It’s impossible to drop grenades from there… the grenades were dropped down the commander’s shaft”). One of the ‘finger board’ signs had come loose and could be rotated to point in the wrong direction, but hopefully that can be fixed.
22 George Chang posted some interesting views, from the sea, of the Stanley Fort area today.

21 I visited Professor Kwong Chi Man at Baptist University today, for a sneak preview of the latest things they’re doing with the spatial history project. I don’t know when this version will be released, but it is quite incredible. The way they are combining contour maps, photographs, themed layers, and computer graphics feels more like time travel than dusty old history. And I suspect that this is still just the start.
21 Brian Finch kindly put me in touch with the family of Gunner Joseph Vernon Scott (RA, Lisbon Maru). They relayed a story of someone called ‘Maurice’ on the Lisbon Maru who helped Joseph and others escape the wreck, though it doesn’t ring any bells.

19 Robert Henry McDowell’s (RASC) POW Index Card states he was captured on 28 December 1941. I’m not sure if he was one of the men in Little Hong Kong, or held out on the wreck of the Thracian with a few Canadians. Does anyone know?
19 Sandy Wynd sent this very interesting link to HSBC sound recordings of their wartime staff. One of them is George Cautherley’s mother (Dorothy) talking about his birth in Stanley camp.

15 I received the usual kind invitation from the Canadian Consulate to attend the annual commemorative ceremony at Sai Wan. Unfortunately they are no longer providing the usual buses from Central, so I will not be attending. For those of us who have attended for decades, the social scene of the buses (as strange as this might sound) has been an integral part of the day, and it will be sorely missed. (For anyone not familiar with Sai Wan Cemetery, there is no parking there for those with cars, and no public transport except a tiny minibus. You can take the MTR and walk up the hill, but in a suit in the current temperature and humidity, you’d regret it). I also received the usual kind invitation to join the Free French Remembrance Ceremony at Stanley on Friday December 1st, but unfortunately am not free.

14 Steve Denton kindly sent me a Canadian MI9 form – quite a rare thing, it seems.

13 George Felix Chanduloy note that he attended Remembrance Sunday in Oxford and laid a wreath at the war memorial for his two uncles in BAAG.

12 Steve Denton and Iain Gow have been having an interesting exchange about the exact position of Kobe House POW Camp on the modern map. It seems that some earlier attempts to place it have been a little inaccurate. One of the photos they have shows some characters on a Kobe House gatepost in Chinese, which unfortunately I can’t read.
12 I heard today from a researcher looking into the life of Middlesex NCO and Lisbon Maru survivor, Charles Kitchener Heather. He was quite a character!

8 I have mentioned the name of Francis Dobbs more than once in these pages. He is the man who was working for the Salt Gabelle in China, and arrived in Hong Kong (from Kunming) with his American wife in late November 1941 only to be caught in the invasion. Volunteering for service, he was posted to a Food Control centre in Causeway Bay where he was killed by a boiler explosion. Knowing that he was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, I wrote to both institutions this month asking if they had details. Both were amazingly helpful, and sent abundant information including photographs of Dobbs as a young man.

7 It turns out that the John Butterworth mentioned on the second, could not have been the John Butterworth from the Lisbon Maru. New information shows that this ‘new’ John Butterworth served with the British army in India, and lived out his life in Acton Town, whereas the Lisbon Maru John Butterworth spent his post-war life in Australia. But why did the ‘new’ John Butterworth’s house have Lisbon Maru memorabilia? My guess is that he was the brother or cousin of ‘our’ John Butterworth.

6 Francis Bertram Cauldwell’s granddaughter got in touch. She notes that: “Bertram was a member of the burial detail for Colonel Sutcliffe, and along with a few other men attempted an escape and paid dearly for it.” And she added: “I’ve sent a picture of Mr Cauldwell’s Great, Great, Great Granddaughter, 4 year old Vivian, cutting out her very first poppy in memory of he and all soldiers and military personnel both past and present who serve for our nation. Lest We Forget!” (Illustrated).

5 Norman Broadbridge’s (HKVDC, 3 Coy) son got back in touch. He notes that: “I was scanning through some of my father's records and found this photo of HMS Ruler. Norman’s notes on the photo identifies it as travelling from Tokyo Bay to Sydney on 25 Sept 1945.” His diary reads: “HMS Ruler departed 0900 16 Sep 1945 Yokohama Bay and arrived Sydney 0900 27th Sep1945. And so back to a civilized world.” I have featured the photo and name list here before, but it’s worth repeating as there are so many well-known HKVDC names and faces there and this new version has allowed me to tune the names slightly once more:
Front Row, L to R: Gunner Douglas Geoffrey Allen, Gunner Barry O’Meare Deane, Signalman James Joseph King, Private Bill Lowe, Lance Corporal Edgar George Mathias, Private Walter Duffield, Gunner John Ken Fitzhenry, Gunner George Ronald Ross, Private Alan Esra Goldenberg.
2nd Row, L to R: Sergeant Ernest Hillas Williams, Sous Knox, Lance Corporal Lyall James Glendinning, Gunner Ernest Oswald Butler, Silo Fisher, Private John ‘Ian’ Kempton, Private Freddie J.D. Clemo, Signalman Charles Barry Le Patourel, Private Douglas ‘Ginger’ Day, Private William Murray Wilson, Private Douglas Haig Hamilton, Private Kenneth Lynn Keen.
3rd Row, L to R: Jim Fisher, Lance Corporal James William Dove, CQMS Edward Fincher, CSM Victor Harold White, Warrant Officer Fred Arthur Fabel, Sergeant Robert John V. Everest, CQMS Leonard Sykes, Private Anthony Wilfred Lapsley, Private Robert Henry Lapsley.
4th Row, L to R: Corporal George Cottrell, Private Arthur Cecil Tinson, Private Fred Cullen, Private Ernest Allen Fowler, Private William Graham Lamb, Private Reggie Thomas Broadbridge, Private Victor Charles Bond, Private Ferdinand Lapsley, Private Charles Joseph Manson, Private Brian Hailstone, Private Charles Hugo Taudien, Private Boris Gellman, Private Herbert Otto Kees, Private Leslie Fred Coxhill.
5th Row, L to R: ...?..., Gunner Norman H. Mackenzie, Signalman Albert William ‘Bill’ Rowe, Private Ian Gordon Dixon, Private Alfred Leonard ‘Joe’ Eastman, Lance Corporal Norman Broadbridge, Sergeant George Dodds, CSM Leslie Charles Millington, Private John W. McDonald, Private Eric Neville Matthews, Private Raymond Walter Smith.
I am not sure if ‘Soos or Sous’ Knox was Corporal William Thomas Knox or Private Douglas Haig Knox. ‘Silo’ Fisher and ‘Jim’ Fisher could be any two of Private Edward Joseph Fisher, Private John Arthur Fisher, or Private William Diego Fisher. Note that Norman Mackenzie was a professor, and Ernest Hillas Williams was a famous judge! Only one more name to find now.

4 Today I heard (rather late, unfortunately) about a temporary Royal Scots Museum exhibition – featuring the Lisbon Maru - at Dalkeith Palace.
4 Ian Gill kindly sent me a soft copy of the latest version of his book ‘Searching for Billie’. Hopefully it will be published soon.

2 A gentleman who works for a removal and clearance company kindly contacted me, saying that they had recently cleared the home of someone by the name of Butterworth who was apparently married to John Butterworth who was on the Lisbon Maru. Several documents related to the ship were found. I have been in touch with this family in the past, so have asked for more details.

1 I have been back in touch with Ron Parker, son of Major Maurice Parker, Royal Rifles of Canada, who sent me some very nice family photos including his father in uniform.
1 I had another email conversation with William Beningfield’s family. He was the last survivor, a Middlesex man, of the Lisbon Maru. One of the many interesting things his son mentioned was: “About 20 years ago we had a lovely evening drinking and chatting and I ventured to ask him what was his greatest regret about being taken prisoner by the Japanese, and he answered, ‘Not being able to take part in D Day.’ He had joined up to fight the Nazis.”

SPECIAL TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY FEATURE

My timing was good. This website was registered in either 1999 or 2000, and the first ten years of its existence truly were the golden age. Firstly, I benefitted hugely from the fact that there were no other websites at that time focusing on the broad experience of Hong Kong in WWII.* That meant that anyone typing “Hong Kong in World War Two” into the search engines of the time (Altavista was the main one then) would be taken to my site. They would contact me and ask for help, I would provide it but ask for information in return. It worked; it was almost a monopoly. Secondly, there were still many veterans around in those days, and a surprising number were computer literate. I had thousands of exchanges with (among many others) Barbara Anslow (civilian), Deedee Bak (civilian), Bunny Browne (HQ), Phil Doddridge (Royal Rifles of Canada), Jack Etiemble (RA), Arthur Gomes (HKVDC), Ross Lynneberg (RN), Dennis Morley (Royal Scots), David Parsons (HKVDC), Ed Shayler (Winnipeg Grenadiers), Ray Smith (Royal Rifles of Canada), and so forth. These and many more were people I’d only been able to write to before, and my efficiency was suddenly an order of magnitude higher. The point is that the site gave me an unfair (but very welcome) advantage, which led to me finding all sorts of information and so forth, ranging from letters and diaries to more substantial artefacts, one of which being the example I’ve used to illustrate this section: the original manuscript of Bowie’s book.

* Though Richard Hide’s site about the MTB escape of 1941, and the HKVCA’s site focusing on C Force, were already online at the time.

When I first moved to Hong Kong in the late 1980s, war detritus could be found on the surface all over the place. I have often told the story of reading Oliver Lindsay’s book ‘The Lasting Honour’ and next day visiting Wong Nai Chung Gap – which he correctly described as an area of severe fighting – to see if I could find anything. Within minutes I found an expended Japanese 6.5mm rifle cartridge hanging out of an earthen bank. And that’s how it started. Later, the metal detector boys moved in. I did not encourage them, knowing how much dangerous material was out there, and some – Japanese ordnance in particular – gets less stable with age. Aside from that, there’s the archaeological aspect. Now, let’s be honest, most of this material has no historical or intrinsic value. I recall in around 1968, driving through northern France with my family when my father stopped to answer a call of nature. I dashed out of the car, through a hedge, into a ploughed field, picked up two well-preserved French Lebell 8mm rifle cartridges, retraced my steps, and was sitting in the car again before my father was finished. These things were made in the billions. And yet sometimes their positions, and the things found with them, can tell us a great deal. ‘Yes’, agree the detectorists, ‘but if we don’t find them now they will soon decay into nothing’. So I see both sides. I have never owned a detector myself, but have worked with ‘ethical’ detectorists who record and share their finds. One such was our late family friend Toby Brown, who appears in the photo above. He called me late one day saying he’d found a big hit and would like me to help extract it when no one was around. So we met at 06.00 on an extraordinarily hot and humid morning. We dug down to a metal dome until we’d uncovered enough that – with some trepidation – we lifted it. There was an instant fresh smell of woodsmoke. What we had found was a Japanese helmet in a cremation site. We both felt quite disturbed, but were too far in to stop. In the end Toby offered it to several local museums who showed no interest. As our researches pointed to it belonging to Lieutenant Umino of the 229th Regiment from Nagoya, I believe the helmet ended up in their regimental museum. In recent years a number of live Japanese 240mm shells have been found, plus American bombs of 1,000 and even 2,000 pounds, so my advice is still to stay well clear.

I always loved writing, and my writing project for 1999 was a set of thirteen ghost stories, in the style of the most excellent M.R. James, set in the little North Norfolk village where I had been brought up, and where my parents still lived; it was to be their Christmas present. Then, in 2000 I looked at the voluminous notes I had made (over the preceding ten or more years) on the Battle of Hong Kong, and decided that a book on that topic would be my project for that year. And so it was. And 2001. And 2002. In 2003 I had both a decent draft and the good fortune to contact the then publisher at Hong Kong University Press. A British polymath who had spent most of his career working in the United States, was probably a good person to take this rather idiosyncratic (and naïve, unpolished…) project to, and he kindly took me on board. I owe Dr Colin Day quite a debt. This first book, Not The Slightest Chance, covered the Battle of Hong Kong and the resulting British casualties in excruciating detail. The name came from a communication from Winston Churchill to General Ismay on 7 January 1941. “This is all wrong. If Japan goes to war with us there is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of increasing the garrison it ought to be reduced to a symbolical scale. Any trouble arising there must be dealt with at the Peace Conference after the war. We must avoid frittering away our resources on untenable positions. Japan will think long before declaring war on the British Empire, and whether there are two or six battalions at Hong Kong will make no difference to her choice. I wish we had fewer troops there, but to move any would be noticeable and dangerous.”

While writing that book, veterans and families who helped me constantly referred to the sinking of the Lisbon Maru, and that became the inescapable focus of my second book. Not long after it was published I explained the story to a well-known Hollywood scriptwriter, What caught his attention was the funnel: into it were poured the Hong Kong Garrison of 1941. Many were killed in the fighting, then hundreds died of disease as POWs in 1942. That September 1,816 were squeezed into the Lisbon Maru, and 828 died in the sinking. A further 200 exhausted and malnourished men died as POWs in the next two months, and yet more in the ensuing years of captivity. And some even died, liberated, as the American aircraft taking them home ran into typhoons and crashed. Their lives were ‘frittered away’ he said, and ever since I have kicked myself for not using that name for the book. The third book, covering the remainder if the POW experience, became We Shall Suffer There. And the fourth (based on my PhD thesis) was published as Reduced To A Symbolical Scale. I still have another book in me, about those who evaded and escaped from Hong Kong and continued the fight elsewhere, which one day (I hope) will be published as Noticeable and Dangerous. And The Big For? That was a light-hearted children’s book that I privately published – as light relief while struggling to finish my PhD.

Every now and then, ever since the founding of this site, I receive emails of the type: “My father disappeared in Hong Kong during the Second World War. Can you please tell me what happened to him, and where he was buried?” I keep files of all of these. These are not the neat cases of clearly recorded deaths and commemorations, but those that somehow fell through the cracks. Interestingly, the first I came across (some 30 years ago), was someone named in primary sources. Jessie Holland - together with another nurse, Mrs Sando - had volunteered to serve on a launch in the evacuation of Kowloon on 12 December 1941, and had been shot and mortally wounded. I found four mutually supporting accounts of this in primary sources, but she was not recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Eventually, with help from many people, I found her unmarked grave, and was able (thanks to In From The Cold) to get her name formally added into CWGC records.

Theodore Leslie Bell is now my oldest unsolved file. He was a locally-hired man at HSBC, whose wife died shortly before the evacuation, leaving him alone with a small daughter. And then he was killed when the Japanese came, leaving the little girl orphaned. She – at the time she contacted me, quite elderly – was desperate to know what had happened to her father, who didn’t even have a death certificate let alone a CWGC entry or a grave. Eventually I found two primary sources stating that he was in Essential Services and was helping out at the refugee centre near Woodside. There he was carrying a colleague wounded by shell fire when Japanese troops appeared, and he was too slow to drop his comrade and put his hands up, so they shot him. I was able to provide the daughter with a full report before she passed away, but have still not managed to get CWGC to accept his name.

There are others. George William Cooper, of Kowloon Riding School, another Essential Services man, has now been accepted by CWGC. Alfred Rough Fullerton of the Hong Kong Club was killed in action helping civilians into an air raid shelter, has not; I have his death certificate, but it is unsigned. Francis Edward Litton Dobbs worked with the China Salt Gabelle. Just before the invasion, Dobbs and his wife visited Hong Kong to see the dentist and do some Christmas shopping. They were trapped by the attack, and Dobbs volunteered. He was killed when a boiler exploded in the Kwong Sang Hong premises 192 Hennessy Road Hong Kong on 22 December 1941. His body was identified, his death has been commemorated by CWGC, but I’m still looking for his grave – if it exists.

But it was often not that ‘simple’. I was naïve, and learned the hard way that the phrase ‘daddy was killed in the war’ could be used euphemistically by mothers and other relatives. The war was enormously hard on families. Some husbands were so traumatised by the POW experience that after September 1945 they never looked back, and simply made new lives for themselves. Some women, evacuated from Hong Kong to Australia in 1940 – often with children in tow – not only survived the experience, but thrived in their new independence; independence that sometimes they didn’t want to lose. And of course in Stanley Internment Camp the two sexes were thrown together, close together, in frightening circumstances for nearly four years. It's no wonder that so many pre-war families disintegrated. And like a bull in a China shop, here I was (sometimes accidentally) putting them back together again. Mostly it went well. Twice it really did not. It reached a stage when if I received one of these emails, I asked the sender if they were sure they wanted my help, and warned them that they may not like what they learned. But I put families back together, reintroduced friends, in one case reunited a famous gentleman with the young lady who saved his life, and so forth. I won’t name names, for obvious reasons, in this section. It was the most satisfying and pleasing part of my work, but also one of the most stressful.

At time of writing there are only three known veterans of the Hong Kong Garrison still with us, Hormidas Fredette of C Force and Robert Lapsley and William Ng Jit Thye of the HKVDC. All are over 100 years old. Of course it is always possible one or two might still be around somewhere, having never made contact, but if so it must be vanishingly few. Children of the conflict are still around, but not adults. But I was lucky enough to meet many, either when they visited Hong Kong or when I made trips abroad. For example: Barbara Anslow, Flash Clayton, James Dignan, Phil Doddridge, Jack Etiemble, Taffy Evans, Gerry Gerrard, Arthur Gomes, James Hart, Charles Jordan, George MacDonell, Dennis Morley, Alan Nichols, Doug Rees, Wally Scragg, Ed Shayler, Maynard Skinner, Jim Wakefield, and Arthur White. One way or another I must have met, spoken to, written to, or communicated in some way, with a few hundred. And what a privilege that was. It’s still a privilege today to work with their families instead, but somehow it’s not quite the same.

Dear reader, I was born in an asbestos hut. The year was 1959, and the location, Morley, England. The hut in question was a prefabricated building erected as part of an United States Army Air Force Hospital in the county of Norfolk, England, in the Second World War. It had a design life of five years. After peace came, the site was converted to a school. My father arrived to teach French, and became Deputy Head Master. He (we) were given accommodation there in said hut – which had originally been erected for an American surgeon charged with repairing wounded USAAF aircrew returning from raids on Germany and occupied Europe. So… we weren’t exactly posh. On the other hand, I spent much of my professional career dealing with CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs of some of the world’s major corporations and (through no fault of my own, I assure you) ended that career reporting directly to the world’s seventh richest man. But it gave me great pleasure that my ‘hobby’ opened so many doors. When the great economist Larry Summers visited Hong Kong and his handlers wanted him to see an unexpected aspect of the place, they invited me to take him on a battlefield tour. When a huge surgical conference came here, I was invited to give local colour by presenting on the topic of POW medical issues. And when Canadian prime ministers came calling, from Paul Martin, through Stephen Harper, to Justin Trudeau, they dusted me off to greet them. Trudeau was the most interesting as the weather changed constantly during his visit, and he ended up with a 15 minute vacant slot which I was asked to fill by taking him on a one-on-one tour of Sai Wan Cemetery. (By the way, that photo of me and Paul Martin: I’d like to make it crystal clear that I am the light-haired, possibly balding, middle-aged and somewhat overweight man in the gray suit, wearing a poppy. Paul Martin is obviously the other chap).

It’s probably fair to say that of all the actions that British Forces were committed to in the Second World War, Hong Kong resulted in the greatest percentage of deaths due to massacres and murders. Even today I occasionally take people on a walk I call ‘The Travelling Massacre’ which follows these deaths from the north coast of HK Island, through Wong Nai Chung Gap, to Stanley: the Salesian Mission, the Pillboxes on Jardine’s Lookout, the houses from Postbridge to The Ridge, and south to Overbays, and Eucliffe. In almost all cases I have been able to identify who was lost at each point, except Stanley. I’m still working on it. This most infamous of massacres is hard to pin down, partly (I think) because when the bodies of the victims were cremated - on Japanese orders – many ‘legitimate’ bodies from the surrounding fighting were burned too. But there is no doubt that Eileen Begg (whose photo is above) was raped and murdered here, with a number of other nurses. Her family are understandably bitter about the circumstances to this day. Years later I learned that someone had salvaged buttons and decorations and watches from that cremation site, and I finally tracked them down to a museum in New Zealand. They very kindly photographed those artefacts for me.

When I first told people, 35 or so years ago (and a bit arrogantly in retrospect), that I was going to write new histories of Hong Kong’s Second World War experience using primary sources, they were instantly dismissive. “Impossible”, they said, “all the paperwork was lost or destroyed or simply burned to boil rice in the occupation”. And of course not only were they generally correct, but the world’s museums and archives were also relatively bare of such material. But the Internet changed everything. When families of the Hong Kong Garrison of 1941 reached out to me for help, I would always do everything that I could. And in return I would always ask them: “and did your brother / husband / father / uncle / grandfather / great uncle leave any documents from the period?” And time after time I was amazed to receive the reply, “No, just the letters… and the diary”. Now, ‘diary’ is a strong word. What was being referred to was everything from a few scraps of paper listing the odd days when Red Cross parcels were delivered to POW camps, to volumes of 1,000 or so pages of detailed information. Most, though, were more like scrapbooks of drawings, ditties, signatures, poems, and so forth. I have perhaps 50 or 100 in my collection now. Some are published, others in public archives, but the majority are unique. I have promised to write a proper scholarly article about them at some point, to get them the visibility they deserve. Meanwhile my favourite is that of Fred ‘Dingy’ Bell, which I placed on long term loan at Crown Wine Cellars in Hong Kong in 2009. Dingy was born on 3 September 1897 in London and served in 12 Company Royal Army Service Corps. I have been unable to determine what happened to him after Liberation, but a schoolboy found his diary in about 1958, in amongst a pile of rubbish left outside a house in Goole, East Yorkshire that had been vacated by the occupants. Eventually he passed it to me. It’s long and full of amazing artwork, by Dingy and others, and has plenty of coverage of their in-camp entertainment.

As a youngster I was a typical computer guy. I was quite happy spending all day programming and interacting as little as possible with other people. In my late twenties my job changed to the point where I had to stand up and speak to people, and I found the experience terrifying. No one could have been more surprised than I, when in later years I discovered a penchant for public speaking and PR. That led to me doing such activities professionally, and taking all sorts of Corporate training – including doing Hostile Media Training with Channel 9 in Australia. Later still I repurposed those skills for history, and have conducted many interviews with newspapers, radio shows, and TV channels / documentaries. The photo above is from My Grandfather’s War with Oscar-winning actor Sir Mark Rylance. I did most of the research for the Hong Kong segment (his grandfather being Osmund Skinner of the HKVDC), as well as interviewing him on camera at the Peninsula Hotel. I enjoyed his company, and the following day we walked together (without cameras) through the heart of Hong Kong Island. But there have been numerous other examples, from many interviews with Annemarie Evans on RTHK (here's an old one, about that helmet again), to working with many newspapers and Canadian and British TV channels. But by far my favourite examples was this, shot on a horrendously wet day in 2019 (there was a typhoon: I was soaked getting to the studio, and soaked again leaving), by film-maker Craig McCourry.

My greatest weakness in this subject is that I speak neither Chinese nor Japanese. That puts many primary sources off limits to me, to the point where I often have to explicitly state that I haven’t studied the Japanese point of view at all (and only the Chinese where sources are bilingual). Fortunately others have far better language skills! Tim Ko really pioneered this, with his epic effort to get copies of the Mainichi Shimbun’s photo archives of wartime Hong Kong, which he kindly shared with many of us. More recently, Kwong Chi Man and team have been finding the most incredible (and apparently privately taken) photo albums belonging to ordinary Japanese soldiers. And there is also a very interesting official Japanese history of the Battle of Hong Kong, but unfortunately I don’t believe anyone has translated it yet. On top of this, there is a growing co-operation with Japanese researchers. One example: no one knew the name of the Japanese ship that transported the first British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan. Some families told me it was the Maru Shih (or Shi), others the Shih (or Shi) Maru, and James Ford, MC, of the Royal Scots told me the men called it the Fukyu Maru – but he thought they were joking. But it turned out to be pretty close to the right answer. I quickly discovered that the name Maru Shih had been invented by an American author writing an (otherwise good) book about the hellships. It was the fourth that he couldn’t identify so he simply named it ‘fourth ship’ in Japanese – and families reading the book thought it was the real name. In 2021 Yoshiko Tamura in Yokohama kindly went through the records and definitively identified it as the Fukken Maru. The mystery was solved. And the photo at the top was taken by the Japanese during the great bombardment of Pinewood Battery on 15 December 1941. If you look very closely, you can clearly see one of the British guns.

I got one of those calls from the Hong Kong Police: “We’ve found a body. We want you to identify it”. I joined their search team one April morning, scraping about under an old pumping station on Argyle Street. They had recovered a British-style helmet (what they now call a Brody, though I never heard that name from anyone who served in the war), some bones, a tooth, and what might or might not have been shrapnel. There was a long deep dent in the helmet. The name John Gray (of Langruth, Manitoba) immediately came to mind. There weren’t many men missing in the urban part of Kowloon, and Gray was the obvious candidate as he and Private Shatford had become separated from the company of Winnipeg Grenadiers sent over to Kowloon just before the mainland was evacuated. They reappeared at the Star Ferry terminal, where Lieutenant Forsyth was in command of the final evacuation. He ordered them to remove cars that were blocking the road nearby, which could otherwise give cover to both the Japanese and looters. As the final ferry left the docks, Shatford reappeared with his Thompson submachine gun and jumped on board. But Gray was never seen again. I was sure it must be him; even the damage to the helmet looked consistent with being attacked by looters. I pestered people until DNA tests were done. Now, in those days DNA tests were very expensive, and they had to try several times before they got a sample that could be tested against Gray’s family. And it wasn’t him. I felt awful for the hope of identification that I must have given his family, but the test was clearly negative. What’s more, the helmet turned out to have been manufactured in Hong Kong, probably for use by local uniformed units. I saw the confidential reports, and have an idea of who it might really be, but I am far from certain. If that family ever contacts me, perhaps I’ll reopen the case. Meanwhile, there’s always the possibility this was simply an unrecorded fatality from the ARP or similar. Anyway, whoever it was, he was buried with due ceremony at Stanley Military Cemetery some years later with many of us in attendance.

As you might imagine after nearly four decades of research, I have heard some pretty bizarre stories relating to the war: ghosts and mysterious coincidences, surprising appearances and disappearances, luck both unbelievably good and bad. But perhaps the oddest is that of Herbert Edgar Baptiste. According to the authorities, this Winnipeg Grenadier was lost in the fighting of 19 December 1941 and his body was never identified. And so we all thought until in 2007 an H. Edgar Baptiste published a book called The War Bonnet, telling how he was born on the Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan in 1919, was injured during the fighting in Hong Kong, and lost his memory. He had been a POW at Sham Shui Po, and at the end of the war, not knowing his true identity he made a new life for himself in England. He wrote that gradually his memories started to come back, and in 1994 he returned to the Red Pheasant Reserve where he says he was recognised by old friends and relations (including his first wife) and because he had knowledge of the Reserve and past events which only he could have known, he was welcomed ‘home’ by his people. But… the Shamshuipo POW list doesn’t mention him. Had he survived, even if he had lost his memory, wouldn’t his comrades have recognised him? And even if not, there’s no record of a John Doe or anyone under an assumed name. Neither he nor any unknown POWs are mentioned in hospital records, and no one is recorded with amnesia. Nor was he identified at Liberation, and neither is his name on any repatriation list I have seen. But then again, why would anyone make up such a story, and if this H. Edgar Baptiste isn’t ‘our’ H. Edgar Baptiste, then who is he? It’s quite a story.

In around 2003 I received an introduction to Duncan Pescod of the Hong Kong Government. He kindly agreed to a meeting, where I sat opposite him at his desk and proudly told him that I had designed a historical trail taking in the World War Two remains at Wong Nai Chung Gap. Silently he reached into a drawer in front of him and extracted a very similar plan (written, I believe, by Bill Greaves). As I recall, it was pretty much the same as mine, but went up hill where mine went down! Either way, I ended up working with six or seven government departments for around two years before we had the trail and its associated signboards up and running in time for a 2005 visit from a Canadian delegation (there were also three separate plaques dedicated at the same time). My colleagues Tim Ko and Tan worked on the signboard photos and plans respectively, while I concentrated on the text. The bad news is that we were all so burned out by the experience (I was told that the signboard text even had to be signed off by Beijing) that we never did another. The good news is that in 2023 the aging signage was modernised and replaced, and other similar signs are now being erected elsewhere across the HKSAR.

15 The Book That Never Was

Over many years I took the Hong Kong Club walkers out for guided strolls over the battlefields. These ranged from sedate tours around St Stephens’ College and Stanley Cemetery, to proper hikes encompassing the summits of Mount Nicholson and Mount Cameron. We covered Violet Hill, the Shing Mun Redoubt, Wong Nai Chung Gap, the Wanchai area, and pretty much everything else. And in those days when my children were young I had plenty of time sitting, waiting at football practice and games, writing the stories pretty much as I told them – and illustrating them with my own maps and photos taken on the walks, together with photos of the various artefacts I had found on the paths and hills over the years. I found a possible publisher, and his team prepared drafts of a few chapters, and I thought I might get the Hong Kong Club interested in some sort of joint publishing. I forget now where it all broke down, but the project was never finished and I’m just left with the manuscript and memories.

In my opinion the greatest untold story of World War Two is that of the liberation of Allied POWs in Japan. The Americans had assembled a monstrously powerful fleet offshore, ready for the predicted bloodbath of invasion of the Japanese homeland. The Marines and others on board had honed their vicious and effective methods of attack down to a fine art; they were the most efficient killers on Earth. Suddenly – with no warning at all – the atomic bombs ended the war and this murderous killing machine was instantly tasked with saving the tens of thousands of Allied POWs there instead. And with no warning or preparation whatsoever, they performed this task with utterly astonishing levels of confidence, competence, and compassion. No POW rescued by these men ever had a bad thing to say about America (even when sorely tempted in their latter years!) I’ll write that book one day, but, dear reader, imagine my astonishment when the British post office suddenly, in May 2020, released a set of eight stamps to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, based on archive photographs, and one of them used a colourised version of a photo of the liberation of Omori camp. And there, sandwiched at knee-hight between a gentleman waving the Stars and Stripes and another waving the Union Jack, was the unmistakeable face of ex-Hong Kong POW Tom Middleton, Royal Navy! I alerted the family, and last I heard they were applying to the post office for the original art work.

17 The First Battalion The Middlesex Regiment

One shouldn’t have favourites, but I’ve always liked the Middlesex. I’m sure they weren’t quite the bunch of lovable rogues that their stories described, but they certainly had some characters amongst their ranks. There was one (an ex-convict) who – they say - while a POW in Japan was caught stealing a Red Cross parcel, and put in solitary confinement. While there, he stole another 14. He was said to have made an invisible compartment in the cell’s wall in which he stored food for the next inhabitant. Then there was John Frelford, who came across a wounded Japanese soldier early on Christmas morning when trying to link up from Stanley to Deepwater Bay. Separated from his colleagues, he bound the soldier’s wounds with a shell dressing. When the Japanese found them, an officer interrogated him. In Frelford’s own words: “He seemed to be puzzled by such behaviour. I explained that I thought the man was dying and did for him what I hope he would have done for me if the situation was reversed. But I also told him that if he had not been wounded I would have tried to kill him. The officer’s face brightened. ‘For that answer,’ he said, ‘your life is saved’.” Frelford ended up in Stanley rather than Shamshuipo, and the British even considered him for a medal post-war. (To be fair to the Royal Scots, it was Corporal Laird from their ranks who as a POW in Japan received a Japanese medal for jumping into the sea to save the daughter of the harbourmaster from drowning). And then there was Charlie Heather of 247 Ladbroke Grove, London W10. He was the commander of PB63, the pillbox which destroyed the lighter Jeanette on 11 December 1941. He was found wandering about near the Helena May Institute after the explosion; probably dazed, he thought the Japanese were invading. Somehow he survived the sinking of Lisbon Maru despite being so sick he was detained at Shanghai. Known to his friends as Charlie ‘Ever, he was always in the centre of things, and on Liberation is said to have persuaded the Americans to fly him to Calcutta, where he jumped on a Sunderland flying boat which landed him at Poole on 19 September 1945. This marvelous photograph is of him in hospital in London the following day with his parents visiting. There, rightly or wrongly, he was proclaimed the first British ex-FEPOW to return to the city.

Regular visitors to this site will be familiar with the names Ginny, Les Misérables, and Liquidator. At war’s end, America instantly switched from destruction to recovery. Realising that tens of thousands if freshly-liberated Allied POWs needed repatriation from camps in Japan, they quickly modified a large number of B24 bombers to carry men rather than explosives. Liberated POWs were concentrated in Okinawa, from where the USAAF would fly them to Manila. Unfortunately, in the middle of this operation a typhoon appeared, and the three named B24s – loaded with British, Dutch, and Australian ex-POWs – flew into it. Ginny simply disappeared. No trace of the aircraft or those on board has ever been found. Liquidator crashed on a remote peak in Taiwan – the incident and the dangerous recovery of bodies has been well documented, including on this site. The father of entertainer Clive James had been on Liquidator, and his remains – with the other Commonwealth ones – were eventually reinterred in Hong Kong. And Les Misérables stayed airborne long enough for crew and passengers to bail out into the sea by the British destroyer Ursa, but many of the passengers perished. Ten or fifteen years ago I tracked down and interviewed the captain of that plane, Bob Armacost, in the States. A nicer gentleman would be hard to find, but obviously the experience had been very traumatic. Many of those lost on Ginny and Les Mis were ex-Hong Kong, and some had even survived the Lisbon Maru. But that’s not all… Every now and then there have been clues to at least one more aircrash. Veteran Taffy Evans of the Middlesex himself told me of surviving such an accident and – I think, as I wasn’t focused on this story at the time – said that he swam ashore. And every now and then in CWGC records I find other deaths: Gunner William Henry Edward Hart, 3rd officer Robert Millar Brown, and Gunner Ernest John Bampton, for example, all apparently died on 24 September 1945 in another aircraft that crashed taking off from Okinawa. Initially they were all buried there, before being reinterred in Yokohama; Hart was an ex-Hong Kong POW (which may explain why the card above incorrectly shows his location of death as Hong Kong). But I have yet to track down the plane and the story.

19 The Lisbon Maru Documentary

I’m not J.K. Rowling. I don’t have the imagination to come up with so much creative brilliance. Yet I know a good story when I come across one. The story of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru hit all the marks, and listening to the survivors’ stories, and hearing from the families of those who perished, had a huge impact on me. The book that resulted meant much more to me emotionally than Not The Slightest Chance. For years I tried to interest Hollywood, the British Government, anyone, in making a film about it. But I couldn’t have been more surprised when a Chinese entrepreneur and scientist, Fang Li, contacted me out of the blue saying that he wanted to make a major documentary on the topic. He was serious and professional and built a team – of which I am a small part as historical advisor. Covid interrupted development and made things much harder. Not long ago I even thought that the while project had been abandoned, then unexpectedly I received notice that a Special Screening of the current version would be conducted at the British Film Institute on the South Bank in London in mid-August. The timing was terrible from a personal point of view, as I was in the UK on holiday in July when I heard, returning at the end of the month. But it meant so much to me that I bought another ticket and flew back to London. And I was very glad I did. 450 members of the families of the men on board were there. It was in effect the biggest memorial to those lost in the Battle of Hong Kong and its aftermath since 1945. And I was very touched to see my book in so many shots. In fact in the still above, Ron Brooks (who lost his father, Master Gunner Charles Brooks, Royal Artillery, in the sinking) has both The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru and Reduced To A Symbolical Scale on his desk.

There has been a fine tradition in Hong Kong, of university academics doing useful work in recording our wartime history. Lawrence Lai springs to mind, and Stephen Davies and others, and before them Endacott and Birch. But it only gets better. Now we have Wallace Lai (at PolyU) and team leading in ground-breaking LiDAR and remote sensing research into battlefield remains, and Kwong Chi Man and team at Baptist University building their Spatial History system for the battle and the occupation. To me, the latter is a complete game changer in history. Up till now, historical data was available in books (like mine) or individual computer files (like mine), or piles of uncatalogued papers (like mine). But those books, once published, cannot be corrected or added to. And those computer files are simply inaccessible to others - half the time I struggle to find things myself. And my hardcopy files are a disaster. But the approach at Baptist University is based around a database of all the historical information available to them. And while most of the focus has been on the clever visual displays and user interfaces they have built around that database, it is the database itself which has changed the paradigm. From now on, as this database of Hong Kong Second World War information is maintained for the long term by an institution, the data included can be constantly refined, corrected, improved, and added to. There is no single ‘publication date’ at which all the data becomes fossilised and dead, it has the potential to live and evolve for generations. I can imagine all sorts of future individual research and group projects adding to it over decades to come. On the computer on which I am typing this, for example, I have files on every single member of the Hong Kong garrison of 1941. In some cases it is no more than their name and fate, in others pages of data. But if all that, plus photographs, relevant documents, and so forth can be added to that database then we start to build an entire multi-dimensional long-lived model of the conflict and everyone (and everything – pillboxes, equipment, buildings can follow the same model) involved. This changes everything.

Links to other Primary Sources.

George Bainborough, Leading Writer, Royal Navy. (Sound File)
Kenneth Cambon, Rifleman, Royal Rifles of Canada. (Website)
Maximo Cheng, Gunner, HKVDC, later with Chindits. (Sound file)
Lloyd Beresford Chinfen, Hong Kong civilian, later fought with SOE. (Sound file)
Charles Colebrook, Lance Corporal, RAOC. (Sound file)
Francis Deloughery, Reverend Captain, Canadian Chaplains Service. (Website)
Phil Doddridge, Rifleman, Royal Rifles of Canada. (Website)
Tom Forsyth, Private, Winnipeg Grenadiers. (Website)
Arthur Gomes, Corporal, HKVDC. (Sound file)
Marjorie Grindley, Auxiliary Nurse, Stanley internee. (Sound file)
John Harris, Second Lieutenant, Royal Engineers. (Sound file)
Buddy Hide, Acting Stoker P.O., Royal Navy. (Website)
Donald Hill, Squadron Leader, RAF. (Website)
Drummond Hunter, Lieutenant, Royal Scots. (Sound file)
Charles Jordan, Gunner, Royal Artillery, Lisbon Maru. (Sound file)
Daisy Joyce, Stanley internee, embroiderer of bedsheet. (Sound file)
Uriah Laite, Reverend Captain, Canadian Chaplains Service. (Website)
David Lam, Private, HKVDC, later with BAAG. (Sound file)
Tom Marsh, Sergeant, Winnipeg Grenadiers. (Website)
James Miller, Private, Royal Scots. (Website)
Raymond Mok, Sergeant, HKVDC Field Ambulance, later with BAAG. (Sound file)
James O'Toole, Acting Staff Sergeant, RAOC. (Website)
Maurice Parker, Major, Royal Rifles of Canada. (Website)
Andy Salmon, Sergeant, Royal Artillery, Lisbon Maru. (Sound file)
Joseph Sandbach, Reverend, Stanley internee. (Sound file)
Albert Shepherd, Lance Bombardier, Lisbon Maru. (Sound file)
Alexander Shihwarg, Private, HKVDC. (Sound file)
William Sprague, Private, HKVDC. (Website).
Charles Trick, Private, Winnipeg Grenadiers. (Website)
Montagu Truscott, Corporal, Royal Corps of Signals, Lisbon Maru. (Sound file)
Alec Wright, Second Lieutenant, HKVDC. (Sound file)
Bernard Felix Xavier, Signalman, HKVDC, later OSS agent in Macau. (Sound file)