On August 29, 1941 39 men and one woman were tried in Stanley Prison Chapel. Most of the men, and the woman, were Portuguese – 19 in all – and there were in addition 8 Indians (and one man from Ceylon), 7 Chinese or Eurasians, and five Europeans, the best known of whom is Dr. Selwyn-Clarke.
The trial was more humanely conducted than another big trial involving Europeans, that of the morning of October 19, 1943, when the defendants were made to stand to attention and punished if they moved. In this case everyone sat in rows and each of them was called to the front in turn to be questioned – the Japanese made a last attempt to get information from people most or all of whom had proved unbreakable during previous interrogations.
The ‘defendants’ in fact were not allowed to defend themselves or even asked to plead. In accordance with Japanese military practice, guilt was assumed to have been established by the Kempeitai investigation. However, the authorities were generally uneasy about sentencing people who had not confessed, which is perhaps one reason why Dr. Selwyn-Clarke was amnestied (alongside D. S. Dinga) on December 8, 1944.
Two men died in prison: Fuk Kwan, of causes unknown, and C. M. Souza of nephritis brought about by malnutrition. Two men were sentenced to death: James Kotwall and Carlos Henrique Basto were executed on August 31 – a family source states that Mr. Kotwall died on Stanley Beach. Sentences for the rest ranged from two to ten years. All the survivors, as far as I know, were freed in the period between the Japanese surrender and Admiral Harcourt’s arrival on August 30 1945 – August 23 is known to have been the release date in some cases and might well have been so for everyone.
All of these people were indeed ‘guilty’ of illegal relief work, resistance activity, or both. They were all interrogated, with varying degrees of brutality, but I know of no-one who was arrested as a result. The contributions of some of these people to relief and resistance are, to an extent at least, known, while there are no records that tell us of the actions that led others to a Japanese prison. The spirit the group showed was magnificent – during their ordeal they agreed to meet together after the war, and such a meeting took place in 1946.
To the best of my knowledge only Dr. Selwyn-Clarke was honoured for his wartime achievements (although Mr Dhun Ruttonjee was awarded a CBE for his post-war public service). None of these courageous people should be forgotten and it saddens me that at the moment in some cases I can only record initials not names.
NOTES:
Those familiar with Portuguese practice with regard to names will understand that I can’t always report them definitively – for example, the name that I give as ‘C. M. (de) Souza’, might be ‘C. M. de Souza’, ‘C. M. Sousa’, or ‘C. M. de Sousa’. However, where I have been able to make a confident identification with an individual listed on the Macanese Families website, I have used that form even if it appears differently in my newspaper sources.
In the headings giving ethnicity I use the terminology of the time. ‘Portuguese’ has now been replaced by ‘Macanese’ in scholarly discussions.
Portuguese
H. R. (“Max”) Sequeira
Carlos Eduardo Mackintosh
Carlos Vicente da Roza
Eduardo Roza
Leandro Roza
Fernando Eduardo d’ Almada Remedios
Francisco Xavier d’Almada Remedios
Maude Elizabeth Basto (née White)
Luiz Eduardo Basto (husband of Maude Elizabeth)
Bernardino de Castro Basto
Fernando Augusto Gomes Prata
Francisco Cecílio Collaço
Marcus Rosário
Claudio Rocha
J. A. S. Alves (probably João António {de}Selavisa Alves)
Henrique Barros
Luiz Maria Ozorio Gardner
C. M. (de) Souza
Indian
Dinga, Dheramdas Sehwani who generally called himself D. S. Dinga
Imam Din
Dhun Jehangir Ruttonjee
Jehangir Hormusjee Ruttonjee
A. Vaswani
S. F. Jokhi
G. M. Advani
Mohammed Hussain
Ceylonese (Singhalese)
Neil E. Hunter
Eurasian
Dr. Frederick Bunje
James Edulji Kotwall
Ho Wing
Chinese
Lo Heung-hui
Wong Eye-Wing
Luk Wing-san
Fuk Kwan
European
Dr. Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke
Reginald Albert Camidge
Hugo Eric Foy
Gerald Andrew Leiper
William Alexander Cruickshank
The Dark World's Fire: Hong Kong in World War Two 