A REPORT ON CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG SUBSEQUENT TO THE SURRENDER, AND ON THE EVENTS WHICH LEAD UP TO MY ESCAPE FROM THE PRISON-OF-WAR CAMP IN SHAM-SHUI-PO.
by
Lieut. Colonel L.T.Ride, O.C., Hong Kong Field Ambulance.
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While the main theme of this report is the Japanese attitude towards the military prisoners in the camps in the Colony of Hong Kong, it is proposed to set out first certain personal experiences during the period prior to the establishment of the prison camps, for these incidents had not a little to do with the opinion I formed of the motives underlying the subsequent Japanese attitude.
PERIOD 25th - 29th DECEMBER, 1941
For a few days prior to the capitulation, Field Ambulance Headquarters were located in the basement of the War Memorial Hospital. Throughout hostilities it was my experience that on the whole the enemy restricted the accurate attention of their artillery and bombers to strictly military targets; hence the shelling to which the War Memorial and the Matilda Hospitals were subjected between 1400 and 1500 hours on the 25th, indicated a definite and purposive change in attitude. On that day I had not been informed of the morning truce (for it was certainly not universally observed over the whole of the island), but I now consider it more than likely that the Japanese, knowing that pressure on the civilian side (these hospitals were in the beginning civilian hospitals but of course eventually were used for military casualties) might tip the scale in favour of surrender, purposely embarked on a modified plan of frightfulness. This incident I consider significant, for it indicates that the Japanese fight according to the rules of warfare only so long as it suits them. The argument so often heard in the prison camp that “when things settle down they will treat us better” was therefore fallacious and a mere expression of a pious but doomed hope. The Japanese reverted to type at 1400 hours on the 25th December when they knew we were absolutely at their mercy and completely cut off from world opinion to which they are so susceptible because of their characteristic inferiority complex.
After the surrender I considered it the duty of my unit to search the hills for our wounded which we knew must be lying there in numbers, and for this reason I kept the Field Ambulance deployed although other units were falling back to concentration areas.
Permission to search for wounded was however not forthcoming, mainly because B.H.Q. [Battle Headquarters] could not contact the Japanese authorities who were apparently not in the least interested in our wounded.
All telephonic communication between my H.Q. and B.H.Q. was severed at 1100 hours on the 26th, and as my posts were the only ones manned by British troops in many areas, I decided to concentrate my personnel at two points (a) those from posts on the lower levels at the University, and (b) those from posts on the higher levels at my headquarters. Repeated personal attempts to get orders from the A.D.M.S. were made on the afternoon of the 26th and on the morning of the 27th, but each time without result.
On the 26th it was learned that all Volunteers had been ordered to report at Volunteer H.Q. and by some queer method of Hong Kong reasoning it was believed that now the war was over, the Volunteers would be allowed to go home to the bosom of their families. (This, together with the rumour that the Canadians were to be disbanded and sent home shows how some people in Hong Kong were completely ignorant of what war really meant). My orders that they should remain with their unit caused no little discontent amongst some of the Volunteers, especially as it was rumoured that other units commanders had said that they could slip away if they so wished. On the afternoon of the 27th, knowing that no wounded could possibly be alive on the hills and that therefore there was no real reason for keeping the unit intact, I gave orders for the Canadian and Volunteer personnel to report to their parent units and moved the remainder (R.A.M.C. and R.A.S.C.) to the University, for by this time we were the only military unit left in the Peak area.
On the 28th orders for concentrating all troops in the Murray Barracks area were issued but these failed to mention the Field Ambulance so again, not wishing to be altogether isolated from the rest of the British forces, I moved the remnant of the unit to the Bowen Road military hospital.
On the 29th permission was at last given by the Japanese for us to carry out a search in a restricted area for wounded; a thorough search of the hills was impossible but we visited houses in Wong Nei Chong Gap, Repulse Bay Road, and Shou Son Hill. We found no wounded, but the dead that we found explained why. We counted over 50 bodies of officers and men of the Navy, Army and Air Force; most of them, having had their hands and feet tied, had then been murdered by sword thrusts or bayonet stabs in the back, by rifle bullet or butt. By way of contrast, in the magazines at Shou Son Hill, we found a party of over thirty officers and other ranks under Major Dewar, R.A.S.C.; this party was living there quite comfortably, unmolested by the Japanese troops who were occupying houses in the vicinity.
The above atrocities were reported to General Maltby and he accepted my offer to ask for permission to bury the dead and collect their particulars. I interviewed the Japanese authorities in H.K. & Shanghai Bank but permission was refused and I was told "Tomorrow you go to another place and there perhaps you can ask again. Anyhow you need not worry about your dead because no member of the Imperial Japanese Army would ever desecrate the body of a British soldier". Rather ironical after what I had seen just a few hours before.
In view of the projected move I asked whether we were to take medical supplies with us, and again I was told that the Imperial Japanese Army would look after all our needs. We were not even to take blankets with us, but by this time I knew enough of our captors not to pass these orders on, or to act on them.
Again in orders for the move on the 30th, the Field Ambulance was not included, but in consultation with the A.D.M.S. it was decided that only the R.A.M.C. personnel required in the hospitals should stay on the island and the remainder should move with the rest of the troops. We took the precaution of packing medical supplies and equipment ready to load on an ambulance on the morning of the 30th, but at 0600 hours on the 30th three armed Japanese soldiers came into the hospital compound and took the ambulance away, and we were only able to take those supplies that we could cram into our already overloaded packs and pockets.
Throughout the period, there was an increasing tendency for Japanese soldiers to confiscate any motor conveyance they wished; in fact by the 30th it was impossible to go anywhere without an official permit. The result was that the narrow streets were complete chaos for a day or two, soldiers of all ranks and of varying proficiency in driving were travelling or stalling in all directions in every conceivable type of vehicle; in other words there was not very much attempt made to control the troops by the Japanese officers. It was almost as dangerous to be on the road then as it was during hostilities. Organized and unorganized looting by the Japanese was universal; I witnessed a party under the orders of an officer, smash open all the lockers and drawers in the University medical departments and take away all microscopes and instruments of any value. The irony of the thing was that many of the students who were members of the Field Ambulance were compelled to help carry away their own property.
PERIOD 30TH DECEMBER TO 9TH JANUARY
Orders were for units to march on markers on the Murray Parade Ground by 0715 hours on the 30th, but arrangements were so chaotic that it took us about five hours to go from Kennedy Road to the parade ground, and there some attempt was made to form us into fives and count us. As we lay in Garden Road civilians were allowed to come and talk to us, but in Des Voeux Road which we reached by about 1300 hours we were kept on the harbour side, the other side of the road being lined with Chinese spectators and an occasional European searching for friends. We embarked on ferries at Queen’s Pier and were landed at the Kowloon wharf. No attempt was made by the Japanese to keep units together, and in Kowloon one or two armed Japanese who could not speak English would take a group of about 500 men and march them off down the road past the Peninsula Hotel; some wandered along Chatham Road but fortunately we persuaded our guide to turn along Nathan Road, and it was obvious that our guards knew less about our destination than they knew of our posts a few days previously. At Jordan Road we heard the words Sham Shui Po and thither we guided our guards.
On arrival at Sham Shui Po Camp we swarmed through the gates and were let loose just like a flock of sheep being driven into new fields. There was no one in charge of the camp, no one to allot areas or huts to units. Our Staff were about the last to arrive, the General having been compelled to walk through the streets with his belongings on his back like the rest of us. We had been warned to bring just what we could carry and that this should include 24 hours rations, but not knowing whether we were going to Japan or Kowloon most people brought heavy loads, with the result that many were on the verge of exhaustion when we arrived.
State of the Camp. The state of the camp was almost indescribable. Except for Jubilee Buildings, there were no windows or doors left in any of the huts. All furniture and beds, taps, basins, baths, cooking utensils etc. had been removed and most of the woodwork in the huts ruthlessly ripped off by looters. Some buildings had been destroyed, others partly burned; rubbish, broken glass, tiles, bricks, paper and litter of all sorts lay around in utter confusion everywhere. Most of the latrine buckets and seats had disappeared, and the flyproof wooden doors at the back of the latrines were in many cases missing. No beds or blankets were provided for the 6000 men they knew they were imprisoning there.
In the allocation of huts it was a case of first come, first served. At sundown the heat of the afternoon soon gave place to the cold of a bleak windy Hong Kong January evening, and men everywhere frantically ripped damaged buildings to pieces in order to get material to block up empty windows and doors, or to supply fuel for warming fires. Jubilee Buildings were better preserved and a few quarters had both windows and doors; some of these rooms had been occupied for days by prisoners, over a dozen of whom we found lying on the floor ill with dysentery. There was no electric light of course, private torches, candles and fires being the only source of light available. No implements were available to dig latrines, and no conveniences were at hand to enable us to empty the remaining buckets which were soon filled to overflowing.
Brigadier Peffers divided the camp into 6 Administrative Districts, and as Senior Medical Officer it fell to my lot to grapple with the health and sanitation problem, and as most of the Japanese who visited the camp were medical officers, I had untold opportunities through these continual contacts, to form an opinion of the Japanese intentions. M.Os were appointed to each district, buildings were earmarked for British and Indian hospitals and M.I. rooms and isolation hospitals, and sick parades arranged, but all this was almost valueless on account of the small amount of medical equipment and supplies available.
At a meeting of Heads of Services, Brigadier Peffers explained that apparently the Japanese were not going to help us in the slightest, so plans were drawn up for each service to do what it could in its own line. In most cases this was practically nothing, but gradually all the running water pipes were blocked up and the sanitary squads made the place look something like a military camp. It was at this meeting that the Brigadier announced that it was the duty of every individual to escape if possible, and from then on I began collecting information and making plans that eventually made the escape possible.
On the 31st of December the Japanese M.O. (Major Joh) who was in charge of our area came into the camp and we explained the whole situation to him and asked for help. Throughout all our dealings with this individual (one cannot call him a man) he was over-bearing, arrogant, insultingly rude, non-co-operative and procrastinating to an almost unbelievable extreme - an utter disgrace to any army and to any profession. To all our requests he either turned a deaf ear or grunted ”tomorrow”. Later in the afternoon he came back and asked for a list of our requirements, both medical and general; when these were prepared and given to him he handed them all back and said he wanted them printed in block capitals; this was done and then he handed back the medical list demanding that it should be written in German. I doubt whether anything was ever done with this list, because on the 8th of January I saw the officer to whom it was given take it from his pocket when he was hunting for a scrap of paper to make some notes.
1st January. On this day we were supplied with rice, but no Japanese officer visited the camp in spite of Major Joh's promise to bring medical supplies and to remove our dysentery cases to a hospital. The amount of rice supplied was not sufficient, and it was necessary to supplement it with what could be bought through the fence from the Chinese outside. Most of the supplies thus bought whether plates, kettles, candles, tinned food, biscuits, buckets etc. had all been looted, much of it from military stores.
2nd January. The arrogant Major visited the camp on this day, accompanied by a medical Major General from Canton who was on a tour of inspection. We showed them the patients in the hospital lying on the concrete floor of a bleak, open room; we explained that we had been given no medicine or equipment at all to which the General observed through the interpreter, "Why don't you ask for them". We explained that we had, but there the conversation ended.
At the isolation hut the conversation was on similar lines - a promise of medicines "tomorrow". When I observed that that was the reply we got every day, Major Joh flushed and shouted to the interpreter to shut up, adding that if we spoke like that again he would turn the machine guns on us. He then strode off in a temper and when I tried to speak to him directly in German, he ignored me completely. General Maltby then stepped forward and asked for permission to see the Japanese General, and this was flatly refused. I then returned to the attack and asked for permission to visit our sick in Argyle St. camp, and again the answer was "NO"; when I referred to the Geneva Convention he broke into English for the first time saying, "British Doctors in the Philippines have turned machine guns on our men, pop-pop-pop; you will stay here." In vain did we explain that there were no British doctors in the Philippines (I have often wondered since whether he meant Stanley). We asked again when he would send us the medicines, and he replied ”Tomorrow, maybe morning, maybe afternoon,” and with that he jumped into his car, and did not visit us again while I was in the camp.
3rd January. The rice stores left in the camp today were only sufficient for one day. No medical supplies were sent in at all, but Lt. Sawamoto came in to say he would get us some tomorrow!
4th January. On this day a number of Indians - estimated at about 200 - were suddenly marched out of the camp by a group of Japanese; no one knew where they were going or for what reason they were being taken away. No medical supplies arrived, nor did any Japanese officer visit the camp. Two Volunteer officers were allowed to go out into Kowloon and buy some picks, shovels, disinfectant, cooking utensils, etc.
5th January. Lt. Sawamoto came in a lorry and took me, along with a fatigue party, to the Central British School which had been converted into a Japanese Military Hospital; there he gave us 47 camp beds (from our own stocks of course) for our sick. While the lorry was taking these back to the camp, I persuaded him to allow me to visit the Argyle St. camp nearby, and there I found similar deplorable conditions. There were about 1100-1200 men there of whom many were Indians. There were 82 cases of dysentery (69 Indian and 13 British), and 55 other cases (wounds, malaria, etc) were lying in a hut they called the hospital (43 British and 12 Indians). They had had 6 deaths (5 British - 3 from secondary haemorrhage and toxaemia and 2 from dysentery, and 1 Indian from dysentery).
There were 6 cases there at the time urgently in need of surgical attention, but no help had been rendered to these cases despite repeated requests by the doctors in the camp. I persuaded Lt. Sawamoto to arrange for these urgent cases to be taken to a civilian hospital that afternoon, and he promised to come to the camp at 1500 hours and pick up a surgeon and take him along to do the operations. We waited at the appointed place till 1900 hours in vain. He told us afterwards that the operations had been performed the next day by a civilian doctor. In this camp there was one military doctor together with about four civilian doctors, but their usefulness was curtailed by the same lack of supplies.
6th January. At 1500 hours Lt.Sawamoto suddenly arrived with a lorry load of Indians, many of them too ill to walk; but this was only the beginning, for it was followed by another and yet others until 120 additional cases of dysentery, including 12 British, were unloaded on us from the Argyle St. camp. I protested that we lacked the accommodation and the staff and the facilities to look after this large number of cases, and suggested that Argyle St. camp should be converted into an isolation camp and all the fit people from that camp should be transferred over to us, but I was told the Japanese Army could not agree. I think the trouble was that Argyle St. camp was so close to the Central British School, (Sawamoto’s own hospital) that he wanted any source of infectious disease removed as far as possible from this vicinity, but whether it endangered the lives or 5000 British soldiers mattered not at all. For all these cases we had only one I.M.S. officer, and no nursing orderlies; we tried in vain to be allowed to get more I.M.S. men and nursing orderlies over to help us, for we knew there were some available.
The conditions in the Indian hospitals was now beyond description; on the cold concrete floors of the windowless doorless rooms of an old recreation building lay about 100 Indians wherever they had happened to fall when they were helped in; those who were too weak to move passed their frequent motions where they lay; those who could move crawled outside but without supervision they relieved themselves anywhere on the ground. Pools of blood, mucus and pus lay everywhere and what was not sucked up by the swarms of eager flies, soaked into the ground. Fortunately the weather was cold, but what would happen in the hot weather one dared not think. Not even Lt. Sawamoto's news that he and Major Joh were being transferred to Canton and that Colonel Takata would treat us better than Major Joh, made the future seem any brighter. I slept little that night.
7th January. Our sick list was now as follows:
British Hospital - 21 cases
British Isolation - 36 cases
Indian Isolation - 130 cases
A Japanese Staff officer visited the camp this day, but General Maltby got nothing out of him excepting the information that the Imperial Japanese Army was very busy and we would have to be patient.
For the past week I had been preparing my plans for escaping, and I now told General Maltby that I was convinced that this treatment by the Japanese was deliberate, and I could not ascribe to the general opinion that it would improve with time. My opinion was that when the warmer weather came it would be impossible to stop the spread of the dysentery with the primitive facilities at our disposal; that the meagre diet of rice would so weaken the men that they would fall an easy prey to any epidemic, and that with the summer cholera, which was endemic in Kowloon, would certainly slay those whom dysentery had failed to kill. I was convinced that the only thing that could possibly save the lives of those 5000 men was for someone to escape and either (a) force the Japanese to alter their policy by pressure from without, or (b) to smuggle vaccines and medicines back into the camp from China. I do not think either the General or the Brigadier had much faith in my plans, and after some discussion I promised that I would not try to escape until I felt that all I could possibly do in the camp as S.M.O. had been done.
On the 8th January Col. Takata, the new Japanese A.D.M.S., visited the camp and he was justifiably appalled at the hospital conditions; this gave me heart until he followed that observation by the statement that the dysentery was our fault, and he ordered me to stop it at once. Neither the time nor the place was opportune to venture a remark about Canute, so I meekly replied that we would do all in our power if we could but be given the facilities so often requested, to which he curtly replied that the I.J.A. was very strict about these things and that we must do as we were told. He ordered us to put barbed wire around the Indian Isolation "Hospital" and I agreed to do so provided we were supplied with the where-with-all, meekly suggesting that barbed wire would not stop the flies from spreading the disease, which was the real danger.
A plea for medicines, disinfectants etc. was again met with the reply that the I.J.A. was very busy and that we would get everything in time. Unfortunately for my promise to postpone my attempt to escape, an order to barbwire the Chinese Volunteers in an area within the camp compelled me to put my plans for escape into immediate action, and the first step was taken this evening, which meant that I must attempt to leave the camp on the following night.
9th January. On this day there was terrific Japanese activity in and around the camp. Barbed wire was rushed in, bags of lime were delivered together with about a dozen bottles of some Japanese vitamin preparation, and I was ordered to provide beds for all hospital patients. The Japanese would discuss no requirements but medical, and it then transpired that the Japanese General was coming to interview General Maltby and to inspect the camp, and all this fuss about medical matters was so much look-see-pigeon. Col. Simson, the A.D.M.S. was allowed to come over from the island to the camp today, and he gave news of similar treatment at the North Point camp on the island where there were 2500 prisoners.
During our conversation with Col. Simson, which took place at the main gate and at which the General and the Brigadier were present, a Middlesex private was brought in under armed escort; he had apparently made an attempt to escape and the General was ordered to warn all his troops that, although this man would be let off, in the future anyone caught trying to escape would be shot immediately. The Brigadier later passed this order on to unit commanders, but was careful to add that it did not mean that people were not to attempt to escape, but that they had to be very careful about their plans. After this interview I told both the General and the Brigadier that I was making my attempt to get away that night, and the General suggested that I should leave my final decision till after he had his interview with the Japanese General. I witnessed that "interview" that afternoon; sentries were placed along either side of the main road in the camp and our soldiers were forbidden to cross the road or to stand around. From 25 to 30 cars laden with officers drove on to the parade ground together with 6 lorries of armed soldiers, each lorry mounting a Bren gun. When the Japanese General arrived, they all assembled in a group which General Maltby and the Commodore had to join, a photograph was taken, and the cavalcade disappeared in the reverse order of their arrival. That constituted the camp inspection and the interview.
I called to see General Maltby but both he and the Brigadier were busy, and the preliminaries connected with my escape moved so rapidly afterwards that I had no time to see them again, or to get any letters they may have wished to give me. In fact I doubt whether they had any letters for me for I had the impression that they did not really believe that I would make the attempt, or if I did, I had very little chance of bringing such a foolhardy scheme off. This was the opinion of most of the people with whom I entrusted my secret.
This statement must not be taken to mean that there are none in the camp willing to make the attempt to escape - there are; but they need help and with that they will succeed; they do not realise that their war is not over till peace is declared, and that the fighting spirit must be maintained even in P.O.W. camps; there it must be fostered by promoting the will to escape. In Sham Shui Po there is not enough of the fighting spirit in evidence, the inevitable seems to have been accepted. One officer whom I asked to come with me said no after some days deliberation, because he “felt sure things would improve”. Another, when I told him I was going, simply remarked “Good Lord, whatever for and wherever will you go?”
But what was more serious than the degree of fighting spirit in the camp was the degree of fighting spirit during hostilities, and although this deviates slightly from my thesis, perhaps it may be of use if I record here the opinions which I hold on that subject. In doing so it is only fair to record that they were formed months before, and it may be that I have subconsciously stressed those incidents during hostilities that support my ideas.
I believe it perfectly true to say that the men fought well, but according to the style of Dunkirk rather than of the “Thou shalt not pass” school; all the schemes one ever heard of there were of withdrawal and none of attack. Outwardly Hong Kong fell on the 25th December, because its garrison was outfought; actually it fell weeks, months before, psychologically defeated.
The effect of the news of the loss of H.M.S. Prince of Wales and H.M.S. Repulse, together with the American naval losses and our hopeless state in the air were tremendous, and then when the Mainland was evacuated after we were told that Devil’s Peak was to be held at all costs, we had arrived at the stage of inter-unit criticism. I think it only fair to mention this fact about the 2RS [Second Royal Scots]. In the opinion of the M.O who was attached to them and who had to fill a combatant role part of the time, their morale was absolutely undermined by malaria; many of them were entirely unable either mentally or physically to offer anything like the resistance expected of a British soldier; that their fighting on the Mainland was not their true form was shown by the way the remnants (those who were fit) fought on the Island later.
The reasons for this psychological attitude of the garrison were these:
(1) Long sojourn in Hong Kong where the atmosphere was anything but conducive to the development of the real fighting spirit; the Hong Kong government was rotten to the core and its people really had no confidence whatsoever in their leaders. No one would believe that Japan would ever dare to attack this island, this Pearl of the Orient, this sanctum of the taipans; even during the first air attack on Kai Tak there were many people who did not believe that it was war. How could an army train seriously for a war that everyone knew would never take place!
(2) When war did come, it was unreal in the familiar Hong Kong surroundings. What was the use of calling Hong Kong a fortress when many families were still there, when the Club was still open, and when you could ring up your wife just as you could from the office (but with a better excuse for not coming home to dinner); Hong Kong never got down to real war until it was too late.
(3) Mental inertia was such that it was never realised that in a modern fortress there is no place for the civilian or his mental attitude. One example should be sufficient to exemplify this. Towards the end the Field Ambulance H.Q. had to move to the Peak area and in that restricted locality there was only one place suitable, and that was the basement of the War Memorial Hospital, which although nominally civilian was full of soldier casualties; we were not welcome and were told so; later the Matron visited me and said that she had had a deputation from the Sisters asking that we should go away - this from a British hospital built in memory of the fallen of the last war. This attitude was apparently also in the official mind, for the Governor came to see me about the whole situation the next morning. He seemed at a loss to understand why a medical military unit should invade a civilian institution - and Hong Kong was supposed to be a military fortress.
These facts display the Hong Kong mentality in cross section - its apathy, inertia, self-complacency and its limitations, - and I believe they support my contentions that it was the worst possible atmosphere in which to attempt to maintain, let alone to build up, an efficient fighting spirit in the forces.
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