China to Me (55 page)

The troops were first confined at North Point, at the edge of the harbor, and for as long as they were there it was possible to get away quietly by junk, if you had money. A few men made it. More than a few, perhaps.

One day Alf Bennett came in with a Japanese guard. He was being very useful at North Point because of his Japanese, but he was profane when he talked about the conditions under which the men were living. They had permitted him to come in that day with a truck, to forage for food. He glared at me with real resentment.

“You're so well off here, it's unbelievable,” he said. “I wish you could see that camp. It's just — it's just silly. Yes, old boy, you're well off here.”

Charles turned white. I decided, slowly but with decision, that I didn't like Alf.

“Got a drink?” Alf continued. He had been eating our chocolate hungrily, and now I was angry that I had given him any. Charles could have used it. I was in a most uncivilized state, as you may gather.

“No,” I said truthfully, “we have no liquor.”

He didn't believe it. He started to go at last, on his way to call on a girl friend, but he pleaded to the end, between insults, for a drink.

“We haven't any,” repeated Charles.

“This is your last chance. I really mean it, you know,” said Alf at the door.

“You,” I said, “are a pig. Better go now; Charles is tired.”

He suddenly became normal for a disarming moment. “I'm not really a pig, you know,” he said. “Bye-bye.”

Nobody said anything after he left. “Wonder how long we're here for?” said Charles at last. “This can't go in indefinitely.”

“No,” I said uneasily. I walked out on the veranda and looked around. It was quiet enough. Most of our friends were waiting on the Peak while their spokesman haggled with the Japs about a suitable internment camp, while the prisoners in the hotels, like Addie, made the best of it.

“Oy!” someone shouted. A sentry gestured at me violently to go back indoors. They wouldn't have anyone looking down on them from a height. I retired precipitately.

Chapter 44

The matron of Charles's floor was a nervous, jumpy soul, but even she continued for a long time to believe in Santa Claus. One morning while she was there in Charles's ward a large party of uniformed Japanese, wearing the medical insignia, came by under the twittering escort of the Rev. Mr. Short and a British doctor or two. They asked a lot of questions about the hospital equipment, and then they went away. Matron stepped out on the veranda to peek at their official car.

“I don't like it,” she said. “I don't like it at all.” She looked at Charles imploringly, silently begging him to offer her a little hope, but he said nothing and she left the room.

“I don't know how Selwyn-Clarke can figure on keeping this place,” said Charles irritably. “It's the best building in the Colony. Of course they'll take it over.”

“Then why don't we use the food while it's still in our hands?” I demanded. Wiseman, who constantly suffered from a gnawing appetite, added, “Amen.”

“Don't know. … Perhaps they hope to get their supplies smuggled out to Stanley,” Charles said. He was right. We all knew now that Stanley, the peninsula on the other side of the island, was the place chosen and being prepared for the civilian internment camp. Sir Atholl Mac Gregor, Chief Justice, as spokesman for the British, had begged without avail for the Peak as a camp. The Japs hemmed and hawed long enough to give him hope. It has been uncharitably suggested that Sir Atholl's real reason for his request was that his own house was on the Peak, and if the Japs had given in he would be able to see the war through in comfort, at home. Most of the richer Peak-dwelling British were naturally on his side in that; the others, who were refugees already, were fairly apathetic on the subject. Maybe the Japs really did consider this preposterous suggestion. They have never used the Peak very much themselves for residential purposes. But there must have been military reasons for refusing it; the Peak has been fortified and fixed up with lookouts since we were driven off it. Another thing that made it impossible for the camp was that the Japs, fully aware of the social implications of Hong Kong's geography, wanted to humiliate the whites as much as they could, and bringing them down from those costly heights to sea level was an obvious and necessary move in the campaign. The third and strongest reason for refusing Sir Atholl's non-altruistic request was that old Japanese idiosyncrasy of not wanting anybody looking down on them. They actually did make a law, later on, which made it punishable for any enemy white left outside of camp to live on the hillside. They had to revoke the law, though. Hong Kong is a bumpy place altogether and it was impossible to insist that everyone classed as an enemy be put on sea level. There just isn't that much sea level. After the first few months the Japanese gendarmes had to relax on that point at least, and the Peak was garnished with a Japanese summer pavilion at the top of the funicular, and everybody left loose was permitted to make expeditions up there and drink tea in the pavilion, even white people. Of course there were guards everywhere.

In the meantime, Stanley didn't sound too bad, from the Japanese viewpoint. There were school buildings with dormitories, a nice view, and a lot of bungalows and cottages that had belonged to wealthy Chinese — they were just taken away from the Chinese, that's all — and there were also buildings attached to the Colony jail, Stanley Fort, which was still being used by the Japs as a prison. Its grounds adjoined the camp's. The Army put up a barbed-wire boundary, selected the best buildings for the Japanese guard, and sent a lot of the younger enemy civilian men ahead, out of the hotels, to clear up the place in preparation for a general emigration of prisoners.

Here again I will let other books speak for me. I don't know what really happened out there when the advance guard was finished. I heard rumors, but I heard them from Japanese. They said that the American men who went in advance of the party did a good job of cleaning up, and that their allotted space was in splendid condition when their older people and the women and children arrived. Bill Hunt, Carola's old pal, was in charge of the American section and the Japanese spoke well of him. I know that a lot of the British were bitterly resentful of him and said that he snaffled all the best places, that he must have bribed the Japanese, and so forth. Feeling ran high between the British and the Americans at Stanley. Probably it would have anyway — it always does in Hong Kong — but I'm sure the Japs kept things stirred up. In those days it seemed to me that they were trying to placate the Americans. Not that Japanese are ever really placatory, but I could see, myself, from the way they treated me when they knew I was American, that a prejudice did exist in our favor. I think they felt that they would be able to make a deal with the United States later on. But their feeling toward the British was one of ruthless, revengeful hate. Why should the Japanese have hated the British and rather liked us? In the recent history of world politics England was much more inclined than was the United States to play ball with Japan. I think it was all dictated by Tokyo as a matter of policy, and I think, too, that the British were unjust in resenting Bill Hunt. He has a talent for organization. Undoubtedly it would have gone much worse with everyone if it hadn't been for those two much-criticized men, Selwyn and Bill.

I must get back to Stanley Camp. The unpleasant part of the story dealt with the British. It was whispered in town that the British young men, mostly police — for police were counted as noncombatant because they weren't armed during the war, and they were able-bodied and husky — didn't behave well. They were duly sent ahead to get the place ready and they did, but only for themselves. When the great mass of the British civilian population arrived, the lame and the halt and the blind, the old and the babies, these young men refused to give up their comfortable places to the newcomers.

Extenuating circumstances, I should think, are these: everybody was hungry. Young men suffer much more from hunger than do other people. Also the British had a bigger task than the Americans or the Dutch or the Belgians: their community was huge in comparison with the others. A larger proportion of Britons were very old or very young, which put a heavy burden on the in-betweens. The Americans weren't responsible for many women because of the order, earlier that year, from the American banks and oil companies which had sent most of the wives home. Nevertheless they did send me a few kind messages, telling me that they would be glad to have me and Carola when the time came. They could easily take care of us, they said. Gibson, an oil man, was left free in town to be their representative. The diplomatic squad, however, including Barbara Petro and Walter Hoffman, were cut off from the rest of the Americans and held in a special house outside the boundaries of the camp.

Waiting in the Queen Mary for the end of that phase, I thought that I had made up my mind to be interned like a good girl. I was miserable at the prospect but I didn't see any way out. It was just a matter of time, I thought, before this pretense of being ill would fall down. I tried to be in bed whenever the Japs made a tour of inspection, but it was pretty obvious that none of us could go on like that much longer. Some of the Chinese patients were being removed. It was cold and dark and sad in the hospital and we were all really very hungry. Our food, already insufficient, was being stolen, little by little, as it came up from the kitchen to our wards. Sometimes none of it was left when it arrived. The amahs and the cleaning boys ran away, one by one, stealing blankets as they went. I had acquired two blankets of my own, by special gift of one of the officers who had himself taken those blankets from a dead comrade. They disappeared, and I insisted on taking two of the hospital's blankets to make the loss good. We all began to think hard about blankets and clothing and such, in preparation for the end. The sisters thought so hard about it that many of them neglected their duties with increasing abandon. I'm not naming names, though I should like to. Toward the end many of them acted like dissatisfied guests in a hotel that wasn't being run properly, and they were utterly callous about the patients. All they talked about was their own affairs, and they speculated all day about how much of their property they would be allowed to take with them to Stanley.

Still the cases of food in the cellar were jealously guarded, and upstairs we pulled in our belts and wailed unavailingly. Somebody was stealing Carola's powdered milk at a great rate. Somebody even stole her last orange out of the icebox.

I think it was the twentieth or the twenty-first of January when the blow fell. Even with all the preliminary omens, Selwyn expressed himself as amazed and horrified that the Japanese wanted us to get out of the hospital that day. He acted quite as if it were an atrocity. I suppose it was, and yet, on the other hand, he should have expected it. The Japanese have their own code, and it is well known that they consider everything in a conquered village as their own. Nothing belongs to the inhabitants, literally nothing, not even the clothes they wear, not even themselves. The Japanese have always behaved according to this rule and Selwyn need not have been surprised that they took his prize hospital. And, damn it, he need not have left that food for them, either. I hate to harp on that, but I was hungry, and Charles was hungry, and we all were hungry, all but the staff. At least I will admit one thing: Selwyn was hungry too. Selwyn never took the better of anything.

I am bitter. I know it. Just about then I realized that I would have to wean Carola soon; my milk was no good. It was the worst time in my life to date. I am bitter. I don't blame Selwyn for the war but I can't forget all the carefully hoarded food that the Japanese took over.

Hilda, during the first days when we knew about Stanley, was wild with worry. “I'm making Selwyn ask the Japanese for a special camp for mothers and children,” she told me. “Some place like the Maryknoll Convent grounds, for example. Perhaps they would allow us to have better rations: they seem fond of children and we can make an appeal on those grounds.”

A few days later when I met her she was looking more cheerful. “It seems fairly certain,” she said, “that Selwyn and the Medical Department will be permitted to remain out of internment, as long as they are working for the community like this. Colonel Nguchi (Selwyn's new chief) said that Mary and I can stay out with him. We're looking now for a building that will house all of the medical officers; the Japanese stipulate that we must all be under one roof.”

“What about the special camp for mothers and children, Hilda?”

She looked at me blankly. She had forgotten all about it. “Oh, that,” she said vaguely. “Well, that seems to have fallen through.”

The hospital was suddenly in a terrible rush. The Japanese had evidently been arguing a long time with Selwyn and they lost their tempers. They often did, arguing with Selwyn. They probably were bulldozed by him for a certain amount of time and then suddenly they caught themselves up and said, “What the hell are we arguing with this damned Englishman for? Aren't we boss? Clear the decks, there!” First thing we knew, patients were being carried out by the dozen, loaded into trucks, and carried away to other hospitals. When Selwyn said he didn't have stretcher-bearers the Japs promptly supplied their own men for the work. They didn't want to lose any more time moving in. Our doctors stood in a row, their hands upraised in horror, their feet frozen to the ground. Old Digby, the surgeon, made an impassioned speech of protest when the authorities asked him if he were willing, like many of the other doctors, to stay outside of camp and work for the health of the community. No, he said, he would not co-operate with such vandals as the Japs, such barbarians, such — people, in short, who were capable of evacuating a hospital in such a heartless manner. The Japanese officer who heard this outburst said, in a remarkably good-natured way, considering: “You are lucky it's me you are talking to, Doctor,” and sent him to Stanley forthwith. The Japanese medical officers invariably seemed better than the other military men.