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A life marked by courage and the determination to survive

Arthur Gomes may have been able to forgive what the Japanese prison guards did to him and other Hong Kong prisoners of war but he was never able to forget.

The extrovert Portuguese national with a lively sense of humour died in Queen Mary Hospital after being admitted on Sunday with a high fever and chest infection. He was 90.

For most of his life, Gomes worked in the shipping industry. He worked well into his eighties, most recently for the American Chamber of Commerce. The MBE holder, who founded the Hong Kong Prisoners of War Association in 1954, was a survivor of the Battle of Hong Kong. He was active in servicemen's associations and worked hard in the interests of their families.

He was full of stories. Some he would tell with his customary hearty laugh. Others were not funny.

Gomes used to recall the 'sports' prizes offered by Japanese guards at the prison camp in Sham Shui Po where low-ranking British, Indian and Canadian troops and members of the Hong Kong Volunteers spent three years and eight months.

'The first prize offered would be a tin of bully beef,' he recalled. 'We were all starving. We would run as fast as we could to win that prize, even the most wretched of us. But if you won, it meant you were the fittest and it was a one-way ticket to the mines of Japan.

'It was their way of finding who was the strongest among the starving prisoners of war.'

He said that it was only the fact that he was so short that saved him from being shipped from Hong Kong to work in mines or slave labour camps in Japan or Taiwan.

Born and raised in Kowloon, Gomes was among the many members of the Portuguese community who joined the Hong Kong Volunteers Defence Corps.

He loved to recall for younger people the placid city in which he grew up, where family, sports and the volunteers dominated social life. He joined the part-time army in 1938. It was something that many people from all walks of life took as an accepted obligation.

It was also a lot of fun, he used to say, at least until the Japanese invasion. Gomes was a lance-corporal and was ordered to protect British families living in May Road, Central. This meant he was not involved in the savage fighting in other areas of Hong Kong Island. He lived to surrender and be taken prisoner on Christmas Day, 1941.

He reflected later that as a Portuguese he could have taken off his uniform and melted into the general population, perhaps getting to Macau. 'I stayed for the honour of our regiment,' he said. 'We had to face what was coming to us. We thought we were going to be marched to Guangzhou but the road stopped at the ransacked and looted barracks at Sham Shui Po.'

He was a member of prisoner work gangs that rebuilt and extended the runway at Kai Tak airport.

Many of his fellow prisoners were selected to work in Japan and Taiwan, where many died. More than 800 prisoners from Hong Kong perished when the ship to Japan was torpedoed off the coast of China.

Gomes used to say that those who gave up hope during the starving years behind the wire also gave up their lives. It was only the determination to stay alive and take part in the British victory parade on Hong Kong Island that kept him going.

In the hiatus between Japan's surrender and the arrival of the British fleet, the city was in chaos.

The prisoners refused to accept further Japanese orders. Once they hesitantly ventured outside the camp, their first thought was food.

'We took over two Japanese military trucks and headed for The Peninsula hotel food stores,' he remembered.

It was the happiest day of his life.

He is survived by a daughter, Cynthy.

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