I remember on December 2, 1941, I told our Provincial in Macau about some difficulties and problems I was experiencing with my small group of 22-25 unruly boarders at St Louis School [then in Western, now in Sheung Wan]. He listened attentively and then told me that Our Lady would soon find a solution to my problem. She did! War broke out on December 8 and the boarding section of the school was phased out.
During Communion at the morning Mass on December 8, we heard the first siren or air-raid signal of the war. None of us moved. Later, coming out of the school chapel we saw Japanese planes flying over the Kowloon side and Stonecutters Island. They were dropping bombs! Later that same day policemen arrived to take four of our [Salesian] community, two Italians, a German and a Pole, into custody. They were taken first to the local police station near the school, then to Central Police Station before being moved to Stanley Prison, where they remained for the duration of the war.
The outbreak of war led to the decision to evacuate the boarders from the Aberdeen and St Louis schools. My band of 22 boarders and I were sent to the water's edge at North Point, to what used to be a billet for Kuomintang soldiers (who had slipped across the border to escape the Communists). Soon after we arrived, the Japanese began coming over in boats and things got really hot, so we decided to move to the Tai Koo Valley, avoiding King's Road with its bombed-out buildings and fallen electrical wires like so much spaghetti. After our position was bombed and having to sleep in the open, we decided to head for Stanley by climbing Mount Parker in the direction of the Tai Tam Reservoir. We managed eventually to get to Maryknoll House in Stanley and were there when it was taken by storm early on Christmas morning.
We were tied up in threes and fours and fives and were taken to a spot near the residence of the Carmelite sisters, where we were forced to squat, bound to each other for 60 hours. Thirty-two of us were made to squat in the garage of a nearby house.
My nearest brush with death was probably when I was returning one day to Maryknoll House from Stanley Village, where I had gone to buy bowls for my 22 boarders. The road from the village to Maryknoll twists and turns, sometimes in view of Stanley Mound and sometimes obscured. I was coming up that road, white in December sunshine, and I was conspicuous on it since I was wearing a long, black cassock. At times I could hear something whiz past my head. I would shrug my shoulders and lower my head and carry on. Sometimes I was hidden from view; and then rounding a bend I would again run into that strange repetition of a whizzing, whistling sound. On arrival at Maryknoll House, one of the priests ran towards me and almost embraced me. He was very pale . . . only then did it dawn on me that I had been a sitting duck for the Japanese snipers who had already taken Stanley Mound, the Twins, Sugar Loaf and Stone Hill. And there I was coming along in blissful ignorance of the fact that I was a target for those on the hill ahead of me . . . Thank you, Lord, for preserving me to tell the tale.
On January 25, 1942, I began five months of internment at Stanley, where we were all left to fend for ourselves on the first day and ended up eating faan chiu (the burnt ends of rice). We were all starving at Stanley. All the talk was of food. All we thought about all day, every day was how to get something to eat. We posted the most fabulous menus on the walls, but the truth was very different. I lost 20lbs (9kg) in a short time. Much time was spent queuing for our meagre rations of rice and a spoonful of vegetables.