Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3041797/too-young-know-he-should-cry-wartime-orphan-hong
Post Magazine/ Long Reads

Too young to know he should cry: a wartime orphan in Hong Kong and his Empire of the Sun life

  • ‘It was great in Stanley. No one told me to wash, no one told me to brush my teeth and no one told me to brush my hair. For me, it was heaven’
  • Canadian Bob Tatz, 88, recalls Japanese bombing Hong Kong, fleeing troops on a Star Ferry, his lonely life as a prisoner, and his return to work in the colony
Bob Tatz in Hong Kong a year before World War II began. Photo: Bob Tatz

The lost boy: I have just turned 88, so I guess I have been an orphan for 81 years. My birth certificate lists my place of birth as 98 Argyle Street, in Kowloon. My mother, Antonina Shangin, was a White Russian who fled the revolution. She married my father, Kalman Tatz, who was Austro-Hungarian, in Harbin, in northern China. They were both artists. My father died in a Kowloon hospital when I was one year old.

Our servant, Ah Kai, taught me Cantonese and she was my surrogate mother while my real mother worked. When I was about six years old, my mother remarried a former Russian cavalry officer, Nicolas Rojdestvin, who owned Victoria Riding School, in Ma Tau Wai Road. He died in a riding accident so my mum was widowed twice. In February 1939, my mother was suddenly taken ill and became paralysed. She died later that year, at the age of 35, in Matilda Hospital, on The Peak. I lost my boyhood when my mother died.

Orphaned and abandoned: When Hong Kong was being bombed by the Japanese, in December 1941, all the kids at Diocesan Girls’ School (which admitted boys at junior levels), on Jordan Road, were sent home to their parents. I was a boarder and had no parents, so they did not know what to do with me.

I was with the headmistress, Miss (Elizabeth) Gibbins. She told me to wait while she locked the school gates to prevent looting. I remember she reversed her car up to the gates and then got out to close them. Then she returned to the car and drove away, and left me behind. She was the headmistress and had told me to wait, so I just carried on waiting by the school gates. I was 10 years old.

A picture of Tatz’s family shows his father (reclining in the background), mother, oldest sister Margaret, an amah and a family friend, in China, circa 1929. Photo: courtesy of Bob Tatz
A picture of Tatz’s family shows his father (reclining in the background), mother, oldest sister Margaret, an amah and a family friend, in China, circa 1929. Photo: courtesy of Bob Tatz

Saved by Sewell:Eventually, I followed the crowds towards the Star Ferry. Everyone was fleeing south from Mong Kok as Japanese forces drew closer. I reached the ferry still dressed in my school uniform but I didn’t know what to do.

I was standing next to an Englishman. He looked down at me and asked, “What are you doing here, boy?” I told him I didn’t know and he took me under his wing. He was called William Sewell (a Quaker missionary and lecturer in pre-war China) and I remember watching Japanese bombs fall on Stonecutters Island as we crossed on the ferry. I joined his family. If I had not been picked up by him, I would have been wandering the streets until Christmas Day and would probably have been killed.

Under fire: A group of families took refuge at the home of the Kennedy-Skiptons (George Kennedy-Skipton was a senior civil servant), on Mount Cameron, but as the fighting got worse, we had to abandon it at about 2am (on December 23). I was excited as we retreated with the troops under shellfire. At one stage a soldier carried me by piggyback down into the valley. He gave me a prayer book and I still have it. The teenage girls with us were frantic about being raped.

When the bombing and shelling got close, the kids ran to their parents but I had no one to run to, so I just had to hug myself. At about 3pm on Christmas afternoon, a bomb fell in the garden of the house we were occupying. I remember I was combing my hair on the veranda when the windows shattered and I was cut by the flying glass. Then it fell silent. It was the last bomb in Hong Kong before the surrender.

Freedom in captivity: In January 1942, the Japanese ordered us to go to the internment camp in Stanley. I was split up from the Sewells and the other families, and designated Block 5, Room 17, where a space was cleared for me on the floor. No one was claiming me. I was a stray.

It was great in Stanley. No one told me to wash, no one told me to brush my teeth – I didn’t even possess a toothbrush or change of clothes – and no one told me to brush my hair. For me, it was heaven. I was furious when they transferred me to a refugee centre (in Canossian Convent, Mid-Levels) in the summer of 1942 (and remained there for the rest of the occupation).

With friends at the 38th Parallel, the border between the Koreas, in 1955. Photo: courtesy of Bob Tatz
With friends at the 38th Parallel, the border between the Koreas, in 1955. Photo: courtesy of Bob Tatz

All at sea: After the war, I was sent to England by ship and the Red Cross made sure I had everything I needed. I loved England. I was based near Coventry. In December 1946, I went back to Hong Kong with my godmother and started as an apprentice in the Kowloon Docks. In my final year I joined the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force and, aged 20, I joined Jardine Matheson as a junior (marine) engineer.

I was so naive. I didn’t even know what a salary was and knew nothing about girls. I knew about steam engines but nothing about life. The ship’s officers were like fathers to me. They kept me out of the bars and nightclubs and sent me back to the ship early. I took station leave only once and went to London where I met my wife, Eilish.

Swallowing the anchor: Our first daughter was born in Hong Kong but life at sea wasn’t compatible with parent­hood so I “swallowed the anchor”, as they say, went ashore and we decided to make a new life in Canada (where the couple would have another four children).

As a father, it wasn’t easy. I relied on my wife to convey to our children what normal family life was like. It was not something I had ever experienced. I was too rigid as a parent and had such high expectations of myself. I am not a person who carries regrets though. It’s futile.

All I ever had, I achieved for myself, but I don’t hold any resentment for anyone. I tended to isolate myself and focus on work but people kept asking me about wartime Hong Kong so I wrote a short essay when I was in my 70s.

Tatz with his wife, Eilish, at London’s Veeraswamy restaurant, in 1956. Photo: Bob Tatz
Tatz with his wife, Eilish, at London’s Veeraswamy restaurant, in 1956. Photo: Bob Tatz

Confronting the past: I was standing on the Great Wall of China, and had just turned 80, when I decided to write a book. I was conscious when I wrote Lost in the Battle for Hong Kong (2019) that I didn’t want to invoke too much sympathy. I had been too young to know I was in the middle of a crisis or that I should cry and feel isolated and vulnerable. But I was lonely.

I did weep sometimes when I wrote the book. It took me eight years to complete and cost about C$25,000 (HK$147,100), but all the proceeds will go to two Hong Kong charities to fund educational scholarships for kids from tough backgrounds.

“Lost in the Battle for Hong Kong: A Memoir of Survival, Identity and Success 1931-1959”, by Bob Tatz, is published by PageMaster Publishing.