Then & Now | 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

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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

Jason Wordie

Published: 9:15am, 8 Jan 2022

The only consistent aspect of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is sudden, game-changing volatility. Those bitterly complaining about Hong Kong’s draconian hotel quarantine restrictions – at 21 days, for most arrivals, the longest in the world – should spare a backward glance towards others stuck in involuntary hotel incarceration 80 years ago this week.

After 18 days of intermittent hostilities, Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. In the immediate aftermath, most residents – of all ethnicities – stayed at home, and fearfully wondered what would happen next. In other captured cities in China – most notoriously, the Nationalist capital of Nanking (Nanjing) – Japanese forces had embarked upon drunken, violent rampages, which added to civilian casualties and caused even more damage to already shattered urban areas.

Across Southeast Asia in the months that followed, as the Japanese advanced swiftly and inexorably and captured territories from Hong Kong to Malaya, Borneo, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilians were swept up into long-term internment conditions that the Japanese themselves – partially due to expectations of a longer drawn out fight – had made almost no provision for in their strategic planning.

Some days after Hong Kong’s surrender, a Japanese order was made for foreign residents to report for registration at the military parade ground in Central. Some – more prescient than others – appeared with a couple of suitcases and other essential items, in the expectation that they might be detained there and then. Others unfortunately assumed that registration was a formality which, once completed, would permit them to return home, and there await whatever came next.

An emaciated internee, Wendy Rossini, with a small meal of rice and stew at Stanley Camp for civilians, in August, 1945. Photo: Getty Images

On January 4, 1942, a cold, drizzling day, Hong Kong’s European residents of Allied nationality – British and Dominions citizens, Americans, Dutch, Norwegians and others who claimed Allied status – were assembled to go into temporary internment.

Squalid “short-time” hotels along Hong Kong Island’s Western waterfront and the Wan Chai backstreets – most formerly used for assignations by prostitutes and their clients – were hurriedly pressed into service.