This blog is written by Brian Edgar, an academic and author based in Britain who grew up in Hong Kong. Edgar uses his blog to trace the history of his parents, Thomas and Evelina Edgar, from 1941 to 1945 (hence the title). In doing so he takes us on a journey to wartime Hong Kong, probing issues around race, identity, and the lives of marginalised minorities. Both original and thought provoking, this blog is one of my ‘must reads’.
Tony Banham is probably one Hong Kong’s most prolific and well-known historians, and is responsible for much of our knowledge about Hong Kong’s WW2 military history. Banham writes monthly updates about his work, and extensively about all facets of Hong Kong’s war.
And finally, the ‘Refugees of Habsburgia’ is a relatively new blog written by PhD student Matyas Mervay. It traces the history of Central European refugees in the Republic of China (1912 – 1949); Mervay’s accounts of archival research in China are particularly illuminating.
My most recent blog posting discussed the internment of civilians at Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong (1941 – 1945). Today’s posting investigates the evacuation of British women and children in 1940 through the story of Wynne Ward, who sadly passed away in 2017. This article was originally written for The Hong Kong Heritage Project’s Past & Present magazine.
Wynne Ward was born in Hong Kong in 1917 and died in Stanley in 2017, making her one of Hong Kong’s longest living residents of British descent. The daughter of two Yorkshire emigres, Wynne’s father was Arthur Robert Fenton-Raven, the renowned architect who built King Yin Lei, a palatial mansion situated on Stubb’s Road which was a backdrop for films ‘Soldier of Fortune’ (1955) and ‘Love is a Many Splendored Thing’ (1955). Wynne spoke to HKHP in 2008 and gave vivid accounts of her pre-war colonial life, the evacuation of Hong Kong in 1940 and an invaluable insight into the social history of Britons in the city.
Up until the Second World War, Wynne lived with her parents and sister at Tsat Tsz Mui in North Point, then a rural enclave on Hong Kong Island. ‘It was all countryside in those days and nice beaches along the main road and we had a bungalow sort of halfway up a hill.’ Her life as a young woman there, though devoid of indoor sanitation, air conditioning, proper refrigeration and at constant risk of malaria and TB, was interspersed with carefree swimming parties and tennis lessons. On hot, sticky summer nights the family would sleep on the lawn in camp beds, protected only by mosquito nets. Wynne kept a donkey called Dennis and for a short time cared for a honey bear, a pet that was quickly returned to its original owner. ‘We had a job trying to get it back up to the hill, to the other house, but we eventually managed to get it back there by putting a honey tin in front of it and rattling it, and it could smell the sweetness’. Wynne vividly remembered the devastating typhoon of 1926, which caused one of the greatest floods in Hong Kong’s history. The typhoon ‘went on all night long’ and resulted in smashed windows and more than a dozen villagers taking refuge in the family home. School was at Central British School (CBS) where students would eat ‘very good curries’ for lunch. Along with other children from North Point, Wynne took the ‘school boat’ – the Tai Koo launch – to school every morning and back.
Wynne and her sister enthusiastically took part in the then colony’s vibrant social scene. As talented ballet and ballroom dancers they were often asked to perform ‘floor shows’ at glamourous balls. Tea dances were held every afternoon at the Hong Kong Hotel on Pedder Street, as well as The Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon and the Repulse Bay Hotel on the south side of the Island. The ladies would wear strings of cards around their wrists on which men could write their names for the privilege of a dance. ‘It was a different sort of existence altogether’ recalled Wynne, with one girl to every five men. Another important part of the social scene were the parties held on P&O ocean liners. They left for Britain every fortnight, transporting civil servants to Britain on ‘home leave’. Before the ship’s departure Wynne would enjoy on-board cocktails and a live band, and later, ‘streamers would be thrown down to the people who were waiting on the wharf’ in a classic colonial image of pre-Handover Hong Kong. Such social conventions and forms of entertainment were exported from Britain, and although they served to re-enforce cultural separation, they also engendered a ‘home away from home’.
Although many Britons in Hong Kong were undisturbed by the prospect of war in Europe and the Japanese advance in China, Wynne remembers the sudden departure of several naval officers to fight for the Allied cause in September 1939:
‘I remember when the war broke out between Germany and England. We had a tennis party on that day and we had a lot of Royal Naval officers up playing tennis, and suddenly it was announced on the radio and one of them said; ‘we’ve got to go now’. And some of them of course went off and we never saw again. They were killed.’
Wynne, her sister and mother were among the women of ‘pure European descent’ evacuated from Hong Kong in June 1940 when war against Japan became likely. Over one third of Hong Kong’s British population was sent to Australia in a highly contentious policy governed by colonial notions of ‘Britishness’ and shaped by categories of race and class. Wynne set sail on the Empress of Asia, first stopping in the Philippines for six weeks before reaching Sydney in Australia. During the war Wynne worked as a model and met her future husband, John Ward, a Royal Naval officer who later became managing director of Gammon in Hong Kong. Wynne’s father was interned in Stanley Civilian Internment Camp and emerged looking ‘terrible’ as ‘all skin and bone’.
After the war, Wynne and John returned to Hong Kong following a short stint in Britain and Singapore. They started a family and moved to Shek O, then settled in Stanley. On the weekends Wynne would frequent Hollywood Road, where she discovered ‘wonderful bargains’ in her search for Chinese antiques. She remembered the open nullah running down Peddar Street and the low-rise buildings of Central District. Wynne fondly recalled Maxims (now Landmark Building) where she would meet her friends for coffee – her social circle included such renowned figures as the philanthropist Noel Croucher. After the 1997 Handover she lamented the end of the British Empire in Asia. Wynne, who lived in Hong Kong most of her life, was certainly the product of a bygone colonial era, but she always called Hong Kong home.
In previous blog posts I’ve written about the lives of uninterned Russians and Parsees during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong. In this article, originally written for The Hong Kong Heritage Project’s Past & Present magazine, I speak to George Cautherley, a fifth generation Hong Kong resident, to explore the experience of internment in Hong Kong as a British national. George was born in Hong Kong’s Stanley Internment Camp in 1942 and went on to become a successful bio-tech entrepreneur and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours.
A former internee looks back at Stanley Internment Camp. Photograph courtesy of Wikipedia.
When Past & Present sat down to talk to George Cautherley about his family’s connection to China and the first three years of his life spent in Stanley Internment Camp, we soon sensed his keen attachment to Hong Kong and his deep understanding of its past. George’s passion for history has recently found voice in the University of Bristol’s ‘Hong Kong History Project’, where he sponsors a PhD scholarship, and on the issue of an Archival Law for Hong Kong, one of many policy issues that have caught his attention in recent years. His enthusiasm for Hong Kong is hardly surprising considering his progeny: George is the fifth generation of his family to live and work in China. George’s mother, Dorothy Cautherley (née Campbell), was a descendent of the Heards, the family behind the famous trading firm ‘Augustine Heard & Co’ who have been active in China since the early 1800s. Dorothy herself was pioneering and headstrong – born in Shanghai in 1912, she was one of the first women to work for the Hong Kong Bank (HSBC), meticulously checking letters of credit. George’s father, George Hunter Cautherley (George Sr.), came to Shanghai from Britain in 1927, also to work for the bank. His family first arrived in Hong Kong in the 1860s, when descendent James Gregg worked for HSBC (Gregg was one of eleven members of the family to hold senior positions in the firm). George describes himself as a ‘Hong Kong Bank kid’ and remembers visiting his father in The Peninsula Hotel, which was for a time home to the only HSBC branch in Kowloon.
Dorothy and George Sr. met in Shanghai, fell in love, got married, and moved to Hong Kong in 1938, where they lived a comfortable life. However, the couples’ serene existence was soon torn apart when Japan invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. Their home, situated on The Peak, was destroyed by the British Army during the defence of the colony and their possessions wiped out. Dorothy, who had not been evacuated to Australia with other British women in 1940, volunteered as a nurse at Bowen Road Hospital, while George Sr. worked and slept on a camp bed at the bank headquarters. He was asked to help operate the bank while hostilities raged outside its doors. When Hong Kong fell after a brief but intense period of fighting on 25 December 1941, all British and Allied nationals were told to assemble at the Murray Barracks parade ground and were marched to the hotels of Western District before being transferred by boat to Stanley.
George recounts his mother’s confusion amidst the chaos of those early days: ‘when we got to the hotel we looked round the facilities and we said – we couldn’t find the dining rooms, and so we asked the staff there, ‘where are the dining rooms?’ and they said: ‘it’s not that kind of hotel’!’. Dorothy soon realised that they had been taken to a brothel. In the bleakness of war, the couple decided to try to regain some control of their fate by starting a family. George was conceived in the brothel and nine months later was born in Stanley Camp’s Tweed Bay Clinic, where he was delivered as a typhoon struck the Island. Dorothy struggled through a difficult labour. Anaemic and suffering from malaria, she almost died but was saved thanks to a risky blood transfusion. During Dorothy’s recovery, newborn George was cared for by a coterie of British women, among them Lady May Ride, the wife of Professor Lindsay Ride who escaped internment in Sham Shui Po military camp and set up the British Army Aid Group which gathered intelligence and assisted P.O.W. escapees. George spent the first three years of his life living in an alcove with his devoted parents. Life in camp was monotonous: much time was spent waiting in line for food from the canteen (often hot congee or rice served in tin cups) and attending roll call. George played with other children in camp, sometimes on Tweed Bay Beach, where internees were permitted to swim. George never had any shoes – he received his first pair after the war – and suffered from dysentery at least once. But in many ways, life in camp was better for children than it was for adults, who bore the burden of survival. George reflects that ‘we had the best of it, family made sure you got whatever food there was, my mother told me she sold whatever jewellery she had over time in order to buy food for me’. The years spent in Stanley left its mark in other ways. One of George’s most vivid childhood memories is when his mother frantically ran outside to take him back to the safety of the alcove. He believes this happened in the aftermath of the accidental bombing of a bungalow in the Stanley complex by American forces.
The Union Jack is raised after the surrender of Japanese forces. Photograph courtesy of Wikipedia.
When Stanley was finally liberated in 1945, George was taken from camp with his mother to a ship destined for Southampton, in England, while his father temporarily stayed behind to help rebuild the colony and the bank. It was the start of George’s transient life shuttling between Britain, where he was educated, and Hong Kong, where his parents resided, before he permanently settled in Hong Kong in 1964 to work for his uncle’s medical products business. He has remained here ever since, developing the company to new heights and working as a successful bio-tech entrepreneur. Like many children of internment, George is keen to connect with others who shared his experience of detention. He has attended numerous reunions organised by historians and former internees, the most recent was held in 2015 to commemorate the camp’s 70th anniversary. George estimates that he has met at least twenty former internees, including Dennis Clarke, a hotelier also born in camp. Now, as the only generation left who remembers Stanley, George feels a keen sense of responsibility to preserve the memory of Hong Kong’s P.O.W. camp. He has shared his recollections with historians and journalists, and now, after an oral history interview with HKHP, researchers can access his story in our archive, too.
As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’ve come across a diary which reveals the social, political and economic life of Hong Kong in 1941, including attitudes towards the evacuation scandal, the treatment of British and Canadian soldiers, refugee humanitarianism and race relations between the Chinese and British in the period immediately preceding the fall of Hong Kong. The diary was written by a British expatriate who had previously worked in Shanghai.
Below you’ll find the second diary extract, written on 15 – 16 November 1941, which describes a social event for the Hong Kong Volunteers, the eerie beauty of a blackout, and social work undertaken on behalf of Chinese refugees. As you’ll see below, the author expresses a fear, common at the time, that generous social welfare schemes would ‘encourage’ more Chinese refugees to settle in Hong Kong.
Last night we had one of our periodical blackouts. I went to see the 7:30 showing of the film ‘Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary’ with a friend – a delightful fellow who is in charge of the Government Radio Workshops here – and we had a quiet meal and a chat after. On returning home I saw one of the most wonderful star-lit skies that it is possible to imagine …
When I finish this page I will be going to the annual dinner of the No. 1 Machine Gun Company of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, of which I am a member. I was still in the training cadre when last year’s dinner was held, and I am looking forward to this evening when I shall be sitting next to congenial friends.
(The writer goes on to detail his social committee work).
At present the only other committee is in connection with free food kitchens for feeding refugee and destitute Chinese. At present there are four of these kitchens (2 on the Mainland and 2 on the Island) which between them provide over 4,000 mid-day meals daily and it is expected that this will be greatly increased in the near future.
The govt. social services are, to European eyes, inadequate but it must be remembered that any improvement in the conditions here would probably mean an influx over the border of many thousands of refugees without any certainty that they would remain to become an asset to the colony after their health and education has been looked after. At present there is no adequate primary education, and the boys’ and girls’ clubs have to provide an educational programme instead of supplementing existing education as is done in London and elsewhere in the British Isles; these clubs are open in the evenings and the daytime many of the youngsters try to earn a few cents as newsvendors and boot-blacks.
In recent years, more and more blogs have appeared online exploring the historical and political context of the refugee plight, both then and now. There has also been an increasing interest in the history of Hong Kong, especially via nostalgic Facebook groups or politically active Twitter accounts.
This blog boasts an impressive panel of experts seeking evidence-based solutions to the current refugee crisis. Blog posts cover book reviews, news about forced migration and probing historical essays. Recent articles include: ‘Victims of Decolonisation? The French Settlers of Algeria’ and ‘Belonging and Alienation in the Greek Return to Imbros’. You can follow Refugee History for conference highlights and other academic updates via @RefugeeHistory.
This excellent and wide-ranging Canadian blog covers several bases, from educational courses on offer around the world (certificates and PhD programmes), a scholars network to an excellent and user friendly research database which pools articles from all corners of the web. Articles are wide-ranging and cover the plight of refugees and displaced persons in Gaza, Kenya and Lebanon, among many other places.
Not to be confused with The Hong Kong Heritage Project, this excellent resource should be a first port of call for both budding and experienced Hong Kong history enthusiasts. It features a comprehensive historiography compiled by historian Vaudine England, much of it focused on race and identity, as well as guest blogs from PhD candidates around the world.
This blog has been a staple for Hong Kong history researchers since it was first launched in 2006 by the indefatigable David Bellis. With thousands of pages of research sourced and uploaded by David and his team of volunteer netizens, this blog has been invaluable for my own research, too. Highlights include census lists, GPS maps, oral histories and much, much more.
This blog is the brainchild of Dr Roy Eric Xavier, whose aim is to: ‘understand the roles that Portuguese-Macanese people played in the development of Macau, Hong Kong and other regions of southeast Asia, and their migration to other countries after World War II’. Roy has interviewed hundreds of Macanese, Portuguese-Eurasians and others who have lived or worked in Macao. Many of these interviews are featured on his blog or are available on YouTube.
I’ve been a fan of Paul French since having read ‘Midnight in Peking’, his bestselling investigative thriller about the murder of a 19 year old English girl in Beijing’s ‘bad lands’. Paul’s blog, China Rhyming, covers a ‘gallimaufry of random China history and research interests’, and is well worth a read. As French (and Twain) say, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme’.
And finally …
Here’s a few of my favourite Twitterstorians you might want to follow:
@jypersian is an active Twitterstorian, based in Australia, who posts mainly about post-war migration to Australia. @petergatrell is a giant in the field of refugee studies. He regularly posts about his work and other developments in the field. @hongkonghistory, The Hong Kong History Project’s Twitter feed, is a valuable resource for Hong Kong related conferences and general Hong Kong related news and info. Finally, @vischina, administered by Professor Robert Bickers at Bristol University, gives a glimpse into the collection of 20,000+ digitised images of China (1850 – 1950) which have been painstakingly collected by the Visualising China team.
