Excerpts from internees’ recollections of liberation from Stanley Camp, Hong Kong 1945
Composed by Dr Bernice Archer
Liberation of Stanley Camp H.K.
The actual surrender ceremony in Hong Kong was delayed from day to day and it was not until everything was ready on 16th September that the British authorities officially fired a twenty-one-gun salute from the war ships. Later that evening the British fleet performed a searchlight and firework display.
Rosemary Murray (nee Barton) aged 11 years when interned with her family in Stanley Camp Hong Kong remembers:
(Interview with Dr. Bernice Archer)
On August 15th 1945 I was playing schools. I had just expelled Roger (her brother) from my class. Before long he returned he said ‘The war is over – it’s true the gates are open’ within minutes everyone appeared to have heard the news and were running around jubilantly calling out ‘The War is over’.
We were compelled to carry on living normally until our repatriation could be arranged. My birthday on 29th August is probably my most memorable birthday. I was eleven years old on that day. Coloured mushrooms fell from the sky, as relief goods were parachuted into the camp. Once they had fallen we ran to retrieve the coloured silks….
Peacetime brought with it all the responsibilities of normal life. My father was called upon to re-establish the Treasury in Hong Kong, my mother and all but three of us sailed back to England on the SS Empress of Australia, a new life in a new community had just begun.
It was not easy fitting back into the normal swing of life. The children at school used to stare at us thinking we were some primitive creatures from China, because we came from China we must be Chinese – that was their logic.
After spending one year in Baginton Fields Hostel, a refugee camp in Coventry, we returned to Hong Kong to resume the colonial way of life.
In 1947 Jacqueline (her sister) and I went to boarding school…I felt more a prisoner there than at any time in Stanley. The rules, silence, discipline and censorship soon changed my personality. From a spirited youngster I became a withdrawn adolescent, frightened, lonely and always pining for home.
RFHG 