Internees in Stanley Camp for civilians in the 1940s after Japan’s invasion of Hong Kong. European residents of Allied nationality were first temporarily interned in squalid “short-time” hotels on Hong Kong Island’s Western waterfront before being sent here. Photo: CWH
Internees in Stanley Camp for civilians in the 1940s after Japan’s invasion of Hong Kong. European residents of Allied nationality were first temporarily interned in squalid “short-time” hotels on Hong Kong Island’s Western waterfront before being sent here. Photo: CWH
Jason Wordie
Opinion

Opinion

Then & Now by Jason Wordie

Sick of quarantine? Hotel internment in Hong Kong 80 years ago was a true ordeal, and a prelude to 38 hungry months in a Stanley camp

  • Japanese troops occupying Hong Kong herded European civilians into fleapit short-time hotels and boarding house cubicles in January 1942, at first without food
  • After two weeks they were moved to an internment camp in Stanley. Compared to that, the Penny’s Bay government quarantine facility is luxurious

Jason Wordie
Jason Wordie

Updated: 9:15am, 8 Jan, 2022

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Internees in Stanley Camp for civilians in the 1940s after Japan’s invasion of Hong Kong. European residents of Allied nationality were first temporarily interned in squalid “short-time” hotels on Hong Kong Island’s Western waterfront before being sent here. Photo: CWH
Internees in Stanley Camp for civilians in the 1940s after Japan’s invasion of Hong Kong. European residents of Allied nationality were first temporarily interned in squalid “short-time” hotels on Hong Kong Island’s Western waterfront before being sent here. Photo: CWH
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