The Gwulo site publishes diary entries and through this I discovered the reminiscences of Sydney artist Paul Atroschenko who spent his first 15 years growing up in Hong Kong including through the Japanese occupation. His family were not sent to Stanley POW camp or interned but remained free to live in Hong Kong.
The anecdotes as he styles them are short but rich with details leaving this reader with a sense of his family’s experiences then. Just 4 when Hong Kong fell, he witnessed Japanese justice first hand on the street, and at least one head did roll!
You are left appreciating the walking on eggshells existence living under the Japanese. There’s a terrible story of a Chinese mother whose trip home fatally crosses a street momentarily cleared to make way for a commander newly arrived from Tokyo.
Since he was regarded as an emissary of the Emperor of Japan the route he was taking to his headquarters was regarded as a sacred passage. No foreigner was permitted to soil that passage by crossing the road before the eminent person had passed.
…
A Chinese woman approached the road, saw the soldiers and started to walk towards one, explaining in Cantonese that her children were waiting for her at home. Could she please cross the road?
Without a word, the Japanese soldier rammed his bayonet into her stomach.
How the Chinese must have laughed when they heard talk of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere!