Macanese Roll of Honour: Carlos Henrique de Senna Fernandes Basto

Carlos Henrique Basto was born on March 27th, 1890. He practised as an architect before the war.

During the occupation he became President of the Portuguese Residents Association, which both the Japanese and the British regarded as a centre of support for the Allies.

At some point in 1942 or 1943 Mr. Basto became an active member of the resistance; he used a code based on bridge problems to send messages to the British via Macau.

On October 28th, 1943 he was arrested at the Club Lusitano. In spite of the usual brutal interrogation methods, he admitted nothing – at his trial he called for a pack of cards and a bridge manual so he could demonstrate that the coded messages were in fact problems.

He was executed two days later – August 31st, 1944.

Macanese Roll of Honour

This is the first post in a series that will constitute a Macanese roll of Honour – the names of the men and women from the Macanese (aka Portuguese) community who were arrested at some point in the occupation for their work in illegal relief or in resistance. Although in many cases it is impossible to establish exactly what they did, it is certain that all or most of them were ‘guilty’ of something.

This Roll contains the names only of civilians. A complete list of Macanese in the Volunteers, indicating those who died in the fighting or in the POW Camps, is available in the private section of the excellent Macanese Families website. This section is open only to Macanese, but there is a public area with some interesting information and articles e.g.

https://www.macaneselibrary.org/pub/english/uiwarmemories.htm