slice of life

From the pages of the South China Morning Post this week in 1946

Looking forward: 'There are few years that we bury without regret, and many would include 1945 among them - not for its own disillusionment alone, but because it was the last year of a bitter period. The tendency is to wrap up the four years since December 1941 into one unwanted parcel and consign them together into the pit of good riddance.

'If 1945 was the last year of travail, however, it was also the first year of the new dispensation. History will attach it as label to the victory; and, because it fulfilled our hopes and brought rescue and succour, it is a year to be dismissed kindly. Looking back upon them later, we may conclude that the last four months of 1945 were the happiest that Hong Kong has known - happiest despite the weariness, the protracted hardships, the separations and all the rest of the aftermath, happiest for the wonderful camaraderie that the Great Relief brought us, happiest for the comforting promise of better days.' (From the first editorial of 1946)

Lieutenant-General Takashi Sakai, former Japanese commander in South China and who captured Hong Kong in 1941, was arrested in China. Sakai was charged with attempting to co-operate with Chinese communists to create trouble in northern China.

He was sent to Nanking, where he was expected to be tried as a war criminal.

The Chinese military authorities in Shanghai were reported to be going ahead with preparations for the trial of Roland Sarly, former deputy chief of the French Concession Police, on alleged military espionage.

Sarly was to be the first Frenchman to be tried by a Chinese court and it was to go ahead despite vigorous protests from the local French Consulate-General against his 'arbitrary' arrest earlier in the month. The French described the action as 'a flagrant violation of international treaties binding France and China', as France had not yet relinquished extra-territorial rights in China.

Sarly was alleged to have been a Japanese espionage agent; to have been working for the Japanese since 1932 and to have passed on much important information to the Japanese during the occupation.

The French Ministry of Information in Shanghai said in a statement that the governments of France and China were negotiating a new treaty which would eliminate any points of contention existing between them. One of the problems under discussion was the question of France's extraterritorial rights which she had not yet abrogated.

'The existing treaties are still valid and effective,' the statement said.

The American army in China was instituting night courts to expedite the handling of cases involving American service personnel. Most of the cases involved brawls, traffic violations and other minor offences which produced a welter of criticism and complaints in the Chinese press.

A 37-year-old Chinese woman gave birth to a baby girl with four arms and four legs. The infant was almost stillborn, dying a few minutes after birth. The body was preserved by the hospital in Changsuh, 50 miles west of Shanghai, to be studied by the medical profession.

A Chinese woman on her way home after work had a lucky escape when two armed men stopped her sedan chair near Caine Road.

One of the men had a revolver and they were about to search her when they were frightened off by the sound of approaching footsteps. They managed to take only the victim's handbag.

Proof that things were returning to normal was this notice alongside a whole stack of notices placed by the British Military Administration Hong Kong.

It read: Diocesan Girls' School Kowloon. New term begins January 7th, 1946. Entrance tests on Saturday, 5th at 9.30am. New pupils should register before this date, each morning between 9am and 11am.