“Oh, God,” I said. “I wonder if I could reach Yoshida on the phone.”
“Wait, I’ll see what else is going on.” Eddie hurried back to his lookout point and stood there again, craning his neck. Just then, in time to cut short his hysterics, the gendarme party walked down the gangplank without any prisoners, looking calm and peaceful. A moment later the little ship sailed. We saw Maya on deck, waving to us; Reeny was probably below, mingling her tears with Frances’. The whole story had been a characteristic fable of Eddie’s; he loved to stir people up.
“So!” sighed Paul as we walked back to the bank. “They are well out of it. My poor Mickey, you are not cheerful. I too, I will miss Maya. But that was a moment, hein? That Eddie!”
I went home. Auntie and Phyllis, much subdued, were rearranging the bedroom furniture. There was a lot more room now in the house, but we took no comfort in that.
“She said she’d send for you if it was all right,” I reminded Phyllis.
“But what about me?” said Auntie. “I don’t want to leave Hong Kong.”
“You don’t have to. Auntie. That kind of trip is only for young people. You’re like me; your husband’s still here in camp. That makes it different. Cheer up; things look much better in North Africa. The Allies have taken a lot of prisoners.”
“Oh dear,” wailed Auntie Law. “Now we’ll have to feed them all!”
As if they had at last decided to throw us a grain of comfort, the Americans suddenly bestowed upon us the first sign of life we had seen since the beginning of the occupation. I was playing with Carola on the floor when the air-raid siren began to sound. Ah Yuk scampered in, calling me.
“Tai-tai! Planes are coming!”
“Nope,” I said, putting one brick on top of another brick. “It’s false, Ah Yuk, it’s a practice alarm.”
“Boom, boom,” sounded the horizon; “karump, karump.”
“Rat-tat-tat,” went the ack-ack guns.
“Practice?” scoffed Ah Yuk. She grabbed Carola and raced for the stairs. “This is real. Come on, Tai-tai.”
The first air raid from our own planes! Somewhere inside of me a flower burst open. It was amazing, the happiness of it. Only a child is capable o£ that pure ecstasy, in the ordinary way, but this was no ordinary occasion. Those of us who were home — the servants and Carola and I — gathered in the basement, from the front door of which we could see through trees to the Kowloon side. We saw a few puffs of smoke, we heard more explosions, and that was all.
Viewed as more than a token raid, it was disappointing. The raiders actually accomplished nothing, except to light up our lives again and to blow the cinders of hope to roaring flames. That was enough for the time being, but there were two bad aftereffects. The first one to come to our attention was the boastful reports that came through immediately from Allied broadcasting stations. Chinese and American pilots claimed to have destroyed the Hong Kong power station and to have left the military parts of the city in flames. This wasn’t true. Whatever the planes did accomplish, we didn’t see any signs of it. And so these broadcasts were bad for us in the end, because they devaluated all the other reports we had been getting of Allied victories elsewhere in the world. We heard the Japanese laugh at the Allies for their lies, and we knew the laughter was justified, and we were ashamed. Until then we had thought that only Axis people lied and boasted.
In my mind I held long indignant conversations with the people who had spread these false reports, back in Chungking. It is seldom vouchsafed a mortal to carry out his dreams in practice, but this time I made that record. Twenty months later I did have such a conversation, sate and snug in my New York apartment, with Teddy White.
“How did it look from the ground, Mickey?” he asked. “I was in one of those bombers, you know. I waved to you; did you see me?”
“It looked lousy,” I said emphatically. “You didn’t hit a damn thing except some civilians. I can’t tell you how awful it was, listening to those crazy reports afterward.”
Jack Belden, still limping from a wound he got at Salerno, leaned back and roared with laughter at Teddy’s face. “But honest, Mickey,” Teddy pleaded, “it looked as if we hit everything in the world. It looked fine, it looked swell!”
“Well, it wasn’t,” I growled. “I was safe as houses. Phooey! Now the raids that came next year — oh, those were something.”
The other bad result was manifested up at Bowen Road. When the siren went off all the wounded and sick who could walk rushed to the veranda on the east side of the hospital. This veranda was just outside a ward full of diphtheria patients who were all seriously ill, and some were dying. The able men crowded there at the railing and cheered. I can’t tell you how I know this story, but I do. Next day arrived one Lieutenant Saito, in a passion of rage, to “investigate this incident.” His investigation did not take long. The men were guilty of a grave crime in having made such a demonstration, he decided, and those directly responsible were Charles Boxer, highest-ranking officer among the patients, and Colonel Bowie, surgeon in charge. Saito made all the walking sick stand in line and he paraded Bowie and Charles, whose arm still hung helpless at his side, up and down in front of them. Then he slapped Charles and Bowie. Then he stormed into the diphtheria ward and slapped all the men in bed there, the sick and the dying.
For a few days it was better not to go out if you could manage to stay at home. The Japanese were sullen and all too alert. We had had two more raids within thirty-six hours, one at midnight. For several nights we were blacked out, but then the Japs decided, very sensibly, that blackouts would do no good, and they relaxed their rules. As it turned out, we were not to have another visit from the Americans, anyway, for nine or ten months.
I have forgotten to mention one of the crudest of the occupation nuisances, which now increased to a point almost unbearable. This was the institution of the “curfew,” as we called it for some strange reason. Anyone who has lived in Japan during the few years preceding Pearl Harbor knows what it is anyway. I don’t know what you call it in Japanese; it has nothing to do with nighttime. What happens is this: for their own reasons the Japanese will suddenly call a halt to all traffic in a certain part of the city. You run into a policeman who tells you to stop in your tracks, and you do. There you stand until he tells you to move again. Or perhaps, if it is that kind of a day, you don’t stand: you squat. Or maybe you have to kneel. At any rate, you stay where you are told to stay, in whatever position you are ordered to hold, until the order goes around to release you. Sometimes this state of affairs lasts for two hours, sometimes for eight. In Kowloon, where it happened more often than in Hong Kong, it was sometimes held for the entire day. There were various reasons. Sometimes the public was held up like that because of troop movements which were to be kept secret; sometimes the Governor was traveling around town and the Japs wanted to prevent his assassination, or an illustrious visitor was going on a sight-seeing tour and the Japanese felt he would be safer without any spectators. There was a violently uncomfortable period when a Prince of the imperial family was in town. Every time that Prince moved from his hotel Kowloon and Hong Kong were thus frozen into immobility. I happened to be in Kowloon that day, fortunately without Carola, for she would have had sunstroke under such conditions of heat and glare. I was stopped four times, an hour each time. I didn’t get home until six that night, for of course the ferry was stopped too. I was dehydrated and exceedingly anti-Emperor by that time.
After the first American raid the authorities went mad on these stoppages: we had a curfew every day. They also stepped up the rate of searchings in the street. They also put Selwyn into custody — not into prison, not yet. They just kept him under guard at his office and allowed nobody to talk to him on the phone or bring him food or anything. They seemed to hold him directly responsible for the raids, whereas in actuality he was livid with rage against his own side for attempting to destroy the powerhouse.
“Can’t they realize what that would do to Stanley?
” he demanded of me when he was set free again. “The entire population out there depends on electricity for cooking, heat, and everything else. How would it help the war effort, anyway, to destroy Hong Kong’s electric system?”
I couldn’t answer because all of this kind of thing is beyond me anyway. It was an interesting side light on the eternal struggle that goes on between the military mind and the civilian point of view.
“Anyway, Selwyn, they didn’t. The bomb that fell on the powerhouse was a dud.”
“Fortunately,” he said in bitter tones.
It’s a mixed-up business, is war.
Chapter 55
Carola was one year old. The sergeant who was in charge of parcels at Bowen Road was an old friend of ours by this time and we took little liberties with him now and then, especially the old-timers who had been coming there from the beginning — Hilda, Sophie Odell, one of the Weill girls, and me. He liked children, especially Hilda’s Mary and my Carola, and so when I asked him if I could send in something special to Charles because of the baby’s birthday he looked sideways at me and grinned in an encouraging way. Emboldened by this, I brought my offering the next week — a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, contributed by De Roux. Charles got it in spite of the rule against sending liquor, and shared it with his ward: Harry Odell, Tony, and a Canadian Major MacAulay. With Sophie’s even more than usually lavish parcel, they had quite a day of it. I think back on that bottle of wine as a major triumph against fascism. All their desires and attention were focused on food. The men in hospital were now permitted to write their orders on special slips which were read to us women and duly filled, as well as our means allowed. The Red Cross had at last prevailed upon the commandant, Colonel Tokunaga, in charge of all the camps, to allow the prisoners to write cards to the outside world once a month. These cards took at least six weeks to get to me, though I lived only a few hundred yards from the hospital; the Japanese interpreters who acted as censors were slow and cautious in passing them.
The Red Cross was at last functioning, though in a limping way, and had succeeded in getting funds to Hong Kong for relief work among the volunteer dependents, whom Selwyn still had hanging around his neck. Zindel was a Roman Catholic and he discovered to his distress that a lot of the women who were applying for relief as soldiers’ wives were actually unmarried, though they had children by these men. Catholic Zindel tried earnestly to straighten the matter out by demanding that they show him marriage certificates before they got their money, but too many people had lost their documents in the war to make this fair or feasible. Selwyn was opposed to Zindel’s moral attitude, maintaining that common-law wives could be just as hungry and just as needy as the more regular incumbents of the British Army. According to British law they were entitled to help. In my own case I refused indignantly to make a claim for an allowance. “I’m not a dependent of Charles,” I argued when Selwyn put it up to me. “I never was. Carola, yes. I’ll apply for Carola, but not for me.”
“Would you not be willing to sacrifice your pride in order to be a test case?” he urged. “If they give in on your account it would be a great blessing to all these wretched women who can’t get help. Think it over.”
Very reluctantly I did agree at last and made my claim. Zindel turned me down, though the Japanese were behind me on that. In their simple morality, a man’s own woman is his woman, and of course is a dependent, church blessing or no church blessing. They were shocked by Zindel, and I believe that he did ultimately give in, in the other cases, though I never put in another claim. Carola at once got her regulation twenty-five yen a month, and the sum was boosted later to keep pace in its forlorn, lagging way with the rapidly rising cost of living. Nobody pretended that this figure was in any way adequate, being about one fifth of the necessary amount, but it was all the Red Cross could get for the purpose, and that was that.
At the same time funds were sent in from Geneva for Stanley Camp, and for the military prisoners who were not receiving other money. Did you know that according to the Geneva Convention only commissioned officers in military prison camps are paid? Privates go without. That’s the truth, and a shocking truth it is. That is one reason why our enlisted men in Stanley were starving. The officers at least had their pay and could pool their resources and buy extra food, but if they had not sent half their monthly money to the men there would have been even more death from malnutrition in the enlisted men’s camp. Regarding the pay, the Japs did abide by Geneva rules. It certainly didn’t cost them much to do so.
Sometimes thereafter the men got Red Cross money; more often they didn’t. There was one unsavory interlude when the Swiss in Tokyo were caught out, juggling with Red Cross funds from Geneva in such a way that they profited heavily on exchange. Infuriated, the Japanese closed down on everything for months. Before the matter was cleared up we had appalling casualties in Hong Kong, from hunger. It should be known as the Swiss Famine, and it went on for more than two months. I doubt if the starvation and suffering in Hong Kong troubled the Tokyo Swiss very much. That year they had something to celebrate, and they celebrated it with enthusiasm: a record of one hundred years of peace in Switzerland.
A fresh blow suddenly fell. Charles was discharged from hospital, though his arm had not recovered. What with epidemics and malnutrition, they needed room at the hospital, and his recovery if it ever did take place would be a long slow process. Except for his arm he was quite strong again, and well enough to take his place in Argyle Camp over in Kowloon with the other officers. Sergeant Sieno told me this apologetically when I turned up at hospital early in November with my parcel. Owing to their nonsensical passion for secrecy, Sieno couldn’t tell me what camp Charles had gone to, though there was only one prison camp for commissioned men.
“He’s gone to Argyle, of course?” I asked.
Sieno sighed. “I don’t know. You must go to Argyle and ask there if they have Boxer. I cannot tell you; it is not permitted. Military secret!”
I was sure and didn’t need confirmation. On Monday, parcel day for Argyle, for the first time I joined the other women who rode across the bay to the mainland on the nine o’clock ferry, fought for places on an overcrowded Number 1 bus, and got off about half a mile before they reached headquarters in order to be able to walk past the camp. I discovered to my delight that now I was closer to Charles than I had been at Bowen Road. Our men were waiting at the corner of the barbed-wire enclosure, lounging about carelessly beneath the eyes of the guards who sat in lookout posts high up on stilts, always watching for signals. (Signals of all kinds were forbidden between the prisoners and the public outside.) The men were on only slightly higher ground than we were. At Bowen Road Charles had stood on top of a hill; my view had been foreshortened and unsatisfactory.
Two by two or one by one we walked along, across the street, at a distance of about three hundred meters. We could not stop, or loiter, or look squarely at the camp, nor could we approach closer, for if we did any of these things there would be an enraged shout from the guards, or even an attack. One sentry stood in the road brandishing his bayoneted rifle, waiting eagerly for somebody to break the rules. We walked slowly as we dared, and the men stood there grinning, picking us out as we came by. Charles always walked along step for step with me, up to the other end of the enclosure, and waited there until I had turned the corner into headquarters. His arm slowly grew better; I could see it. At first he carried his helpless left hand behind him, carefully supporting it with the right. As the months went by he became able to swing the injured arm, though the fingers were still immobile. The Japs were supplying massage to him. For this reason too I was glad he had been transferred, although now he was very far away from the house in Kennedy Road. After all, what difference did it make? Only a sentimental one.
I continued to carry parcels to Bowen Road Hospital just the same, because Charles’s friends there still depended on me. But at Argyle I had to make a bigger effort for Charles himself. The rules there were less elastic and
the Japs spurned homemade food, which meant that I had to spend lots of money on strictly sealed, commercial tinned foods. I planned the weekly parcel with intense care, and after delivering it I went home feeling rather smug, sure that I had sent enough food to keep Charles well for the following week. It was rather a shock, then, to receive his first card from Argyle:
Dear Mickey:
Many thanks for your Monday parcels. They are all the more welcome as I am sharing them with seven other men who get nothing otherwise. …
I cursed and worried and forthwith began trying, willy-nilly, to plan parcels eight times as big as those I had been sending hitherto. If De Roux had not helped me on this work I couldn’t have done it. He knew all there was to know about local shopping, and he had Chinese friends who helped me with supplies and advice. He sent his houseboy to carry the extra basket for me. Charles, I am pretty sure, didn’t go hungry. At least I sincerely hope he didn’t. Making sure that he didn’t was my whole existence, save for the effort I put in at home to seeing that Carola too was adequately fed. My universe shrank to the dimensions of a digestive tube. There was nothing else to think about, no world outside, nothing. My stream of consciousness went something like this:
“Eight eggs a week for Charles, two for Carola, that ought to be about even considering their respective sizes and weights. … If I buy a dozen tins of bean curd that will last him six weeks. Will there be any bean curd left in six weeks’ time? Shall I invest more money and buy two dozen? Prices will never go down, only up. … I have a dozen slabs of chocolate. Chocolate is one thing Charles assured me in his last card that he doesn’t share, so I must go on sending chocolate. I wonder if we can get chocolate until the end of the war? One dozen, twelve Monday mornings, three months. Better not buy more though prices are going up; it won’t keep that long. How long will this war go on? Marmite is too expensive. We can try that other stuff, Yeastrel; it costs only half as much and tastes the same. Marmite is vitamins; is Yeastrel equally good? There’s no way for Charles to let me know. What can I send for protein? They get no meat or fish. Should I go on hoarding those prunes for Carola? If I open the big tin they’ll spoil before she can eat them all, whereas if I send them in to Charles he’ll eat them immediately. But it’s wicked to give prunes to a man when there’s a baby in the family and not many prunes in town. … Still, Carola can eat fresh oranges when they’re in season, and I don’t think the prisoners will be allowed to accept oranges. Must go to Kowloon this afternoon; Sophie says one shop there has Japanese tinned fruit at a reasonable price. Oh damn, there goes my shoe leather. Now what can I wear to walk past the camp? Wooden clogs? Eight eggs a week for Charles, two for Carola; it doesn’t sound right somehow. Remind Selwyn to give me more cod-liver oil if he can spare it. Eight eggs …”