Then & Now | Love, sex and making babies in Asia’s wartime prison camps – how POWs got passionate
- More than 50 children were born in Stanley internment camp during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
- This shows connections were made even under the most trying circumstances
When prolonged malnutrition takes effect, among the first things to go is a desire for sex. The fact that some civilians at Stanley internment camp during Hong Kong’s wartime Japanese occupation maintained sufficient amorous interest for babies to be produced says much about the nutrition available there.
Physical tiredness, general lassitude and depression had kicked in for most by the late summer of 1942. Anecdotal evidence suggests that by then, several months into imprisonment, even those interned with their pre-war sexual partners simply couldn’t be bothered. But those with access to black-market food were in a different position. The nutrition contained in a single Red Cross food parcel was credited with at least one pregnancy towards the end of the war.
Stanley saw men and women interned together. In other parts of East and Southeast Asia, civilian prison camps were segregated, particularly in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), where the pre-war Dutch civilian population numbered more than 100,000. Mainly concentrated on the islands of Java and Sumatra, camps accommodated thousands of women and young children, often in desperately primitive conditions.
Pregnancies in women-only camps, long after any possibility that a husband or boyfriend was the father had passed, were not unknown. Some civilian women in Southeast Asia provided sexual services to Japanese, Korean or Formosan guards in return for additional food, medical supplies, clothes or other items. In these circumstances, abortions were often induced by midwives, using massage techniques augmented by herbal potions. Some pregnancies continued beyond a point of no return, with scandalous results when a part-Asian infant emerged.
Some married women came into Stanley in early 1942 already pregnant, and their children were born in the camp. By the war’s end, in August 1945, more than 50 children had been born there. Other babies were conceived in captivity, though internment posed practical challenges. An average room slept about 10 people, sometimes more, in a space that, pre-war, was considered adequate for one married couple. Privacy was at a premium.
