The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945

by Oliver Lindsay

  Had Boxer saved himself and the three others because over the last few years the Japanese had “recognised his competence in the language of the samurai class; his skill as a kendo fencer; and his extensive scholarly interest in Japanese history? No other British officer in occupied Hong Kong could match those qualifications.”7

  It is unlikely that Boxer’s Japanese friends, who made such a fuss of him in Bowen Road Hospital almost a year before, could have helped him. There were no more crates of whisky in the pipeline. This is because within weeks of the Colony’s surrender the regiments, despite being seriously weakened from casualties incurred in Hong Kong, were despatched towards Timor, Java and Sumatra.

  * * * * *

  As Christmas Day 1943 approached we POWs still despaired of our survival. Fortunately the Japanese had resumed allowing POWs to receive food parcels from contacts in Hong Kong because no escape had taken place for many months. Maltby’s policy of no individual or small group escapes was paying dividends, although he himself had been sent to Formosa and criticised in some circles for his policy.

  The parcels were pooled; most of us had something extra to eat on Christmas Day, although we didn’t do so well as some in Shamshuipo, judging by one POW who wrote in his diary: “We really spread ourselves: we had a special meal for the men with Red Cross tins. The orchestra played, and the officers gave each man a packet of fags. Afterwards we had a guitar player and a singsong,” wrote Captain G White of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. “A wonderful day – hope we are home next Christmas.”

  Sergeant A J Alsey, a Musician in the Royal Scots, had a rather different Christmas: “Carol singing lasts for an hour. Three buns and a third of a tin of bully for Xmas dinner. Bed at 8.30 p.m. but up at 2.00 a.m. and made a really good cup of tea at 4.30. My scabies are terrible and I scratch for hours, and my feet are aching like hell.”

  One source of profit was gold teeth. Most of those with a gold filling had it removed and sold through the wire to buy food.

  The Japanese suddenly told us in Argyle Street that we were going to have a sort of psychological proforma to fill up – the names of our relatives, jobs, schooling, ages, our sex, and so on. The last question was, “In what capacity/job will you be willing to serve the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere? My friend Dudley put down Public Hangman; another put Grave Digger; while a third put Overseas Representative,” recalls Captain Flynn.

  “On quite a different form, those with musical experience were asked to put their names down for their musical instrument,” remembers Major A R Colquhoun, a former Battery Commander in the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery. “I put mine down for the saxophone, not because I had ever played one, but it was probably easy to carry and interesting to look at. Months later enough instruments for a complete orchestra arrived. The camp lay back, anticipating long Summer evenings with the limpid strains of the violins. Unfortunately most players couldn’t read a note and the Japs wouldn’t allow any practice or rehearsal.

  “We were ordered to play in the canteen. Twenty of us assembled – army officers, naval ratings, legal and government officials and former schoolmasters – all united under the baton of Lieutenant Commander Stanley Swetland RN who was elderly, caustic, sardonic, morose and completely imperturbable.

  “The entire camp including the Japanese guards assembled. We sounded rather professional as we tuned up – so much so that the guards applauded under the impression that this was the first item in our repertoire. Stan Swetland, with fingers like a bunch of sausages, could coax real music out of anything from a tiny mandolin upwards. He tapped twice with his baton for silence, raised his arms and collected us with a baleful glare over the top of his steel-rimmed glasses. ‘Black Diamond Overture,’ he gravely announced. ‘Letter A. Count of three. Come in on the down beat… ’

  “We did. The resulting discord of sounds was excruciating. Stan Swetland blanched. It was generally agreed that, throughout the war years, this was the only occasion he was ever seen to betray any sign of emotion. We cowered behind our music stands, facing an audience which was convinced it had been conned by a bunch of impostors.

  “When the Japanese decided that we should do mass PT before breakfast, the ‘Worst Orchestra in the World’ was resuscitated to lighten the burden. Stan orchestrated some rousing marches and simple waltzes to which the POWs could jump and wave their arms. The only advantage of being a ‘musician’ was that we didn’t have to join in these capers, which were not popular. Fortunately we had two superb players – Len Corrigan and Noel Bardel, both Canadians.”

  Occasional concerts in Hong Kong’s POW camps were an immense success for they enabled the POWs to forget their miserable surroundings.

  “The improvising in the play last night was really amazing,” wrote Captain E L Hurd on 21st May 1943. “Wigs were made from the string of rice sacks, evening dresses from mosquito nets and the ‘chorus girls’’ wings from wooden frames.” A Portuguese, ‘Sonny’ Castro, invariably played the leading lady with such success that some POWs to this day are unsure of his sex. More than one ex-POW was rumoured to have a sex-change operation in Singapore long after the war.

  The Japanese enjoyed the shows as much as everyone else, and they provided the chalk for makeup. They sat in the front row and roared with laughter, although they had only one interpreter among them and so could have understood very little. The lyrics had to be changed when they were in the audience. Plays produced included Journey’s End, You’re No Lady and The Merchant of Venice. John Trapman brought the house down as a ‘black Mammy’.

  Afternoon lectures were popular. In one month alone they included, ‘Scents and Perfumes’, ‘A Holiday in a Lunatic Asylum’, ‘Game-keeping’, ‘Murder and Armed Robbery in Shanghai’, ‘Communism’, ‘Hollywood’, ‘A Cruise in Swedish Waters’, ‘Ten Years in Destroyers’, ‘Training of a Minister of the Church of Scotland’ and ‘Life of a London Taxi Driver’, which I particularly remember. I also recall Lord Merthyr speaking on ‘The House of Lords and Democracy’.

  The camp magazines were professional and enabled us to amuse ourselves. Godfrey Bird and I took a leading part in producing them.

  The camp cobbler’s shop was run by an Etonian, Harrovian and Wykehamist which prompted the following:

  Though your boots were made by Maxwell

  And your shoes designed by Lobb,

  Aren’t you still a social climber

  Aren’t you candidly a snob?

  Are you suited – we’ll go further

  Are you booted by Lord Merthyr?

  With a coronet on every heel to mark the finished job?

  Need we prove our gentle breeding,

  Need we show our pedigrees?

  Eton, Winchester and Harrow – aren’t they always guarantees:

  One and all we pull together,

  Put the ‘polish’ into leather,

  Won’t you let us be your ‘sole’-mates, fit you with our family trees?

  I wasn’t the Harrovian in question! Instead I had the job of repairing the roof of the huts and such other chores.

  Lord Merthyr, who had nearly had me removed from the ship en route to Hong Kong, took a leading role in cobbling, using a last made out of a piece of steel and a log of wood. His aim was to create a pair of shoes for each prisoner. With this in mind he collected nails that had fallen out of shoes around the camp. He wanted everyone in the camp to have shoes in case there was an opportunity to escape. Usually we went barefoot.

  Lord Merthyr became a confirmed pessimist and told his friends the war would last ten years. He kept spare tins of food unopened. “When asked why,” one POW recalls, “he replied, though in more dignified phraseology, that when the crunch came and we were starving, he would be laughing. He was extraordinarily unselfish, often undertaking the most unpopular jobs in the camp. He was later Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords.” One of his great objects in life was to fix a date for Easter.

  Despite the magazines, few of us could div
ert our minds from food for long, as the following poem suggests:

  A Prisoner’s Prayer

  You know, Lord, how one must strive

  At Shamshuipo to keep alive.

  And how there isn’t much to eat –

  Just rice and greens at Argyle Street.

  It’s not much, God, when dinner comes

  To find it’s just chrysanthemums.

  Nor can I stick at any price

  Those soft white maggots in the rice.

  Nor yet those little, hard black weevils,

  The lumps of grit and other evils.

  I know, Lord, I shouldn’t grumble

  And please don’t think that I’m not humble

  When I most thankfully recall

  My luck to be alive at all.

  But, Lord, I think that even You

  Would soon get tired of ersatz stew.

  So what I really want to say

  Is: if we soon don’t get away

  From Shamshuipo and Argyle Street,

  Then please, Lord, could we have some meat?

  A luscious, fragrant, heaped-up plateful.

  And also, Lord, we would be grateful

  If you would send a living boon

  And send some Red Cross parcels, soon.

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

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

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

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

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

  * * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * * * *

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

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