Escaping from No Man’s Land and Other True Events in the WWII Era
2007-06-R5
(Copyrighted
2007
by Don M. Tow)
A previous article "No
Man's Land: A True Event from WWII" published in December 2006 in this
website (see
the
"Archived-Other Topics" page)
discussed the “No Man’s Land” situation in
Hong Kong on
December 24, 1941.
That was the day before the Japanese army
gained control of Hong Kong from the British, but after the British had
already essentially relinquished control of Hong Kong,
thus the title “No Man’s Land.”
Another previous article "Massacre
and Atrocities in Hong Kong During WWII" published in April
2007 in this website (see the "Archived-Other
Topics" page) discussed the
massacre and atrocities committed by the Japanese troops during their three
years and eight months occupation of
Hong Kong.
During that reign of terror in those three years and
eight months, the population of Hong Kong
shrank from 1.6 million to 600,000 people.
That shrinkage was partially due to people
getting killed in Hong Kong by the Japanese troops, and partially due to
people leaving/escaping Hong Kong to mainland
China,
even though conditions in
China
were also very poor and a large part of mainland
China
was also being occupied by
Japan.
Because of the lack of food in Hong Kong, the Japanese
government implemented food rationing and allowed people to leave Hong Kong,
while being very strict allowing people to come to Hong Kong.
In
times of war, economic condition is usually bad, and this was especially so
during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during WWII, as Hong Kong’s
economy depended greatly on trade with
China
and providing goods to
China.
Besides the lack of food, jobs were also
scarce.
This means that even if the food were available, most
people didn’t have enough money to buy the food.
It was no different in the case of my family.
To make ends meet, on several occasions my mom
had to go to the open-air flea market in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong
to sell some of our clothes and other belongings.
Because of the lack of food, the abysmal job
opportunities, the overall poor economic condition, coupled with the
ruthless methods of the Japanese troops, my parents decided to leave Hong
Kong and go back to mainland
China,
even though there was no guarantee that life would be any better in mainland
China.
In particular, they moved to Toyshan, a rural
county that was still part of Free China (i.e., not under Japanese
occupation) about 100 miles southwest of the big southern city
Guangzhou (or
Canton as it was called
then). Interestingly,
there is actually a close connection between Toyshan and the U.S.,
as many, if not the majority, of the Chinese immigrants who immigrated to
the U.S.
before and after WWII and into the 1960s were from the
Toyshan
County
or descendants of people from the
Toyshan County.
That was why as late as the 1960s if you went
to New York
or San Francisco Chinatown, and if you didn’t speak or understand the
Toyshanese dialect, you might have trouble communicating with many of the
merchants there.
Later on, Chinese immigrants from other parts
of China
(e.g., Canton,
Hong Kong,
Taiwan,
Shanghai,
and other parts of mainland China)
came, and Cantonese and Mandarin are now widely spoken in Chinatowns across
the U.S.
It was in Toyshan that I was born later.
Of the decrease of one million people in the
population of Hong Kong during the three years and eight months of Japanese
occupation, I don’t know how much of this population reduction was due to
people getting killed or died from starvation or illness.
Since we do know that many tens of thousands
were killed by the Japanese troops, let’s assume that 100,000 died from the
hands of the Japanese troops or from starvation or illness, this means that
at least 900,000 people left Hong Kong for China.
Although some left for other countries, there
were also new births that we have not taken into account.
So it is reasonable to assume that the number
of people who left Hong Kong for mainland China
during these three years and eight months was approximately 900,000 people.
An easy calculation shows that on the average
almost 700 people left Hong Kong for
China
each day during this period of exodus.
Speaking of exodus, there was also another brief
exodus from Canton
to Hong Kong
involving a memorable incident for my family.
Because of the instabilities created from some
internal struggle within Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Kuomintang army around
Canton
in 1936, my parents decided in July 1936 to pull up roots and moved their
family from Canton
to Hong Kong.
There were six people in my family at that
time:
My parents, older sister (almost two years old), and
two older brothers (four years old, and one month old), together with a
nanny. My
family, together with many other people, was rushing to take a train to get
out of Canton.
During that hectic process of rushing to get on
the train, the nanny who was holding my one-month-old brother suddenly
dropped him on the ground.
Seeing the danger of his youngest son being
trampled to death, my father had the presence of mind to move quickly to the
spot behind him and dropped the two big suitcases that he was carrying onto
the ground on two sides of him.
This provided a brief barrier but long enough
for the nanny to pick up my one-month-old brother again, thus avoiding a
potential tragedy.
In times of war and turmoil, the currency can
fluctuate wildly.
That was also the case in China
in mid-1942.
My paternal grandmother died in Toyshan in the
first part of July 1942, my family had set aside some money for her funeral.
Even
though the amount set aside was enough on the day she died, it was no longer
enough a day or two later when the funeral took place.
Sometimes paper money was almost worthless.
For example, part of the time when my father
was teaching mathematics at a local high school in Toyshan, he was paid by a
said amount of rice, instead of by paper money.
My family also experienced another big currency
fluctuation in 1949 (this was already after the end of WWII, but civil war
was heatedly taking place between the Chinese Kuomintang and the Chinese
Communists).
In 1949 when the Kuomintang government
announced the great currency reform to stabilize the value of the paper
money, all citizens were required to exchange all of their existing currency
for the new currency called Gum Yuen Huen (meaning Gold Money Bill!).
Even though many people did not follow this new
directive, my father, perhaps out of patriotism and perhaps out of naiveness,
exchanged all (or essentially all) of his money, including the money he had
in Hong Kong or U.S. dollars.
Furthermore, he even required his children to
exchange whatever little money they had in
Hong Kong or
U.S. dollars (the latter were given to them as gifts from my father’s
oversea friends).
Of course, the new currency crashed, and we
suffered a great financial loss.
One of the most tragic events in life is to experience
war.
My family experienced it during WWII and during the
Chinese civil war.
Besides WWII, many other people experienced the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, and more recently the Iraq War.
Unless it is absolutely necessary, war should
be avoided.
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