In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Lzenks Break 9 ~~~ .. ~' ,z~ _ยป--A FTER THE CEASE FIRE, the Vice-Chancellor contrived to persuade the Japanese to declare the University estate a temporary intern- . ment area for those foreign members of his staff who were not in ~{b"lA'E1'~~~'o the armed forces, and this arrangement lasted until the end of January 1942, when they were moved to Stanley to join the rest of the enemy aliens. It gave them a short but useful breathing space, time to make and carry out decisions which eased the lives of all the students in final year and of many others. It gave Sloss an opportunity to generate morale among his staff, of strength enough to take them, or most of them, through the debilitating trials of internment, of which much has been written elsewhere, and to show that it was his intention to try and keep in operation some form of University, however tenuous, until internment should be at an end. Those who had survived in the armed forces were taken prisoner-of-war. Internment in the University during that month was a bustle ofunpermitted activity performed in secret. Clandestine degree ceremonies were organized to take place in the secluded areas between the three halls ofresidence in the upper level of the estate, the first in desperate haste on New Year's Day, to award medical degrees on the results of examinations interrupted by the invasion, including posthumous awards; and another three weeks later for the conferment of wartime degrees on final-year students, this time in the Vice-Chancellor's Lodge!. Other students who had not left Hong Kong were given certificates of their studies for use in the search for means of continuing if they reached the Mainland. In January 1942 the Swiss Government took on the protection of British and some other alien interests in Japanese-occupied territories, and the Registrar drew up provident fund statements for all the members ofstaff and on the loth January sent a copy to the Swiss consul for safe-keeping. 1 They included Algernon Ho (the brother of Eric Ho, now the Secretary for Social Services) declared missing; Patrick Vu, now a prominent Queen's Counsel and once a member of the local University Grants Committee; Paul Tsui, first Chinese cadet and later Commissionerfor Labour in the Government service; and Lau Din-cheuk, who is currently occupying a Chair at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Links Break 99 When Sloss and the interned teachers were moved to Stanley, they left two medical professors behind to complete their obligations in the Relief Hospital. One was Professor R. C. Robertson the pathologist, who died tragically in August before he could be moved into internment, and the other was Professor Gordon King. The Relief Hospital was closed in April and most of the few students who had remained left for China. Gordon King escaped before he could be interned. Shortly before this, Professor Lindsay Ride had escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp at Shamshuipo. We all know that a university is an institution not a location, an assembly of people not of buildings, their common purpose the pursuit and propagation of learning. But never throughout the history of universities can this have been so plainly proved as it was in China and in Hong Kong during those intense, tormented years of war and civil strife, by those groups of teachers and students in full flight, time and again, across thousands of miles of the earth in search of calm moorings and of time free from barren intrusion, to assemble and learn and exchange ideas. TheJapanese invasion ofHong Kong split the University into four directions: to prisoner-of-war camp at Shamshuipo, where its activities perished when three of the eight British teachers escaped shortly after being taken prisoner; to the University estate at Pokfulam, where its vital spark was kept alive in the library and in successful efforts to preserve its fabric and books; to the vastness of unoccupied or 'free' China; and to internment camp on the Stanley peninsula. The Japanese saw themselves as the champions of the races of Asia and frequently sought to prove it. Limited glimpses of their activities in Hong Kong were offered to the inmates of the Stanley Camp in an English language newspaper , the Hong Kong News up to the time the publication ceased in May 1945. Among the earliest items was an announcement that as part of the grand design for...

Share