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The biggest individual group of nationals was, not unnaturally, theAmerican, apart from the British; the majority were from the Philippines or from Hawaii though there were a few continental Americans divided between the religious denominations of missionaries and Pan-American employees of whom there were only two. The leading missionary was a Mr. Davies and there were also Miss Lowry and Miss Bond amongst those we knew best; for a while also there were a group of American Roman Catholic priests under the leadership of Bishop Paschang but they soon left us for the wider pastures of Free China.1 Davies naturally took the lead and we started telegraphing the State Department for assistance for the American citizens stranded in Macao. I think I am right in saying that we started on about the 16th January 1942 and went on till October without a reply when some genius suggested we should mention that the daughter of Vice President Osmena of the Philippines was in dire straits;2 coincidence or not this worked and we got US$5,000 from the American Red Cross. This helped but it was far from enough as were all the sums we received from America. In the end, in fact, the American Government owed us 800,000 Hongkong dollars, about £50,000. Perhaps this was used as reverse lend-lease. Davies finally left, of which more in another chapter, and took with him a number of Philippine seamen. These had been the subject of considerable telegraphic correspondence with Chungking who were urging us to send these men through. Our end of the exchange of telegrams finished when we sent a wire which referred to those sent by Chungking and added crisply “Using what for money query”. A certain comedy level invested much of my Chapter VIII Other Countries’ Interests The Lone Flag 72 correspondence with the State Department who once asked me how many Americans desired repatriation. I was obliged to reply, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, that one was under detention at my request. I similarly had some difficulty over a beautiful form called 430 which was headed something like this “Affidavit in support of application for pre-investigation of national status”. I felt that this was hardly a real proof of nationality being merely an affidavit by a Chinese that he was born in the United States. However I was told to accept this for purposes of relief; I kicked when people started coming in who had not been back to the States for twenty or thirty years (one had left in 1895) and obviously had no real intention of maintaining their American affiliations. So I wired the State Department and suggested, mark you, suggested, that a time limit be set to the validity of these documents. The reply was that no one knew where I had got the idea that there was a limit to the validity of these documents. I gave up and merely did my best to check the photograph and identity of what had been a ten-year-old when he left America with the strapping fifty-year-old now applying for a hand-out of American dollars. There was really very little we could do about it except to get guarantors but I have already pointed out that, as regards the British side of relief at least, guarantors were not always reliable. The Americans also wanted everything in quadruplicate and this strained our paper resources to the utmost. We dutifully complied and I can only hope that the mountains of forms have been found useful. Davies had organized an unofficial committee to gather information and dispense relief but after his departure and when I was put in charge officially of American Interests I felt that a democratic experiment would be in order and in the spirit of the times. I accordingly called a meeting for the election of a committee and held a secret ballot. When the results came to be counted it was only too clear that some of my constituents had learnt some of the less pleasant aspects of lobbying and had learnt also the universal pre-election promise fever habit. After some three or four months I had to get rid of some of the Committee, as elected and put in instead members of my own staff. Nathan Young, Pablino Cespedes, Manalac and Warren Wong remained of those elected and invaluable they proved to be to [18.119.132.223] Project MUSE...

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