The Migration The War Years - Recollections Marcus Rodrigues Senior's Story KEEP THIS WEBSITE GOING |
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The War Years – RecollectionsWorld War II probably started in July 1937 when the Japanese attack on Peking heralded the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war in an attempt to bring the whole of the Far East into a Japanese-dominated East Asian co-prosperity sphere. In August 1937 the Japanese began their bombing of Shanghai, leading to the greatest influx of refugees into Hong Kong since the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850’s. Within a year, a quarter of a million newcomers were walking the streets of Hong Kong, putting intolerable strain on the colony’s already overburdened housing situation and bringing with them bad health and variable skills. With 30,000 sleeping on the streets, the government was forced by the summer of 1938 to set up refugee camps at North Point, Kowloon Tsai and Kings Road. When the camps became full, railways wagons were used as additional accommodation for refugees in Fanling until new camps could be opened. The fall of Canton to Japanese troops in October 1938 brought the war closer to Hong Kong and further increased the numbers of Chinese seeking refuge in the British Crown colony. Hong Kong fell to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941 forcing many of our people to take refuge in Macau. Because Portugal did not participate in the War, Macau remained a neutral zone for refugees fleeing from the fighting as well as soldiers of opposing armies, creating a very tense atmosphere.  After my grandmother Ignez died and Grampapa re-married, World War II broke out and Hong Kong was bombed. Grampapa was always prepared for anything that crossed his mind - fire, earthquake, war, death, surprises - you name it and he was prepared for it, so that when he heard rumblings of war, he had a passport photo taken with his children.At the time, the family lived on the top floor of 34 Hankow Road in Kowloon. Every time they heard a siren, Avo Josefina would grab the children and they would run down to the ground floor for shelter, sometimes taking their "fahn po" (rice pot) and food along with them. My father Francis was 13 years old, Eric 12, Dorothy was 8, Mildred 6 and Yvonne 4. They only had two blankets and Avo's fake fur coat the first night they spent at the Lusitano Club where they all slept on the floor with hundreds of other Macanese people. It was the next day that Grampapa and the boys (Francis and Eric) went back to the flat to salvage what they could. They used abandoned rickshaws to bring whatever they could find. Their flat was naturally looted, and all their good things taken, including Avo’s beautiful white sharkskin suit with a pale pink georgette blouse with tiny pearl buttons which was her wedding dress. The looters slashed the bottom half of the pretty blouse and left it hanging on the hanger, so the boys salvaged that. After that they took the last boat to Macau and spent their war years there.Those were memories the family lived through together.  Millie Brown's reminiscences:“I remember the bombs and wearing "those" shoes and didn't know I was so stubborn. I recall the days in Macau raising chickens and our chicks all were "color-coded" with a dab of paint on them to differentiate them from our neighbors - the Gonzales and Ablongs on Rua de San Jose. Every night we would gather the chicks and call out “chickee chickee". Then when they grew up and it was time to reap the harvest, Avo would ask Francis to kill one for dinner and Francis would disappear with tears in his eyes, and so would we. Then Avo asked Eric to do it, and he would pick up the chicken by the neck and gives it a fast twist. Thank goodness for Eric, because if it wasn't for him we would probably starve many chicken dinners. In the beginning, we cried so much because we couldn't bring ourselves to EAT our chickens. I also remember with all the feeling of insecurity around, I used to have nightmares and even did a lot of sleep-walking. I recall getting out of bed and Avo asked me "where are you going?" (very softly so as not to wake me in shock) and I said "I'm going to plant these" (thinking I held a bunch of seeds in my hand). Then I woke up looking at my palm and there weren't any seeds there. I remember the house in Macau with a thatch roof. Once in a while, a giant-sized centipede (7-8 inches long to a kid) would fall from the ceiling and we could hear the thud next to us. Then, in the muggy summer months, we had to sleep with the windows open and big gung-gungs would fly in and land and hit something. A gung-gung is our Macanese word for a huge flying cockroach. Huge rats also ran around looking for food.” Dorothy Stewart's reminiscences: “Eric was the family "terminator". Aunty couldn't kill any of our animal-food supply, so Eric had the job. We had lots of chicken and rabbits and ducks, all housed in huge cages built by Francis and Eric, and lined up against one wall of our kitchen/bathroom (combined, typical Chinese-style housing) on Rua San Jose directly across the street from the "Bonzaria" (Buddhist nunnery). Every night at 9 p.m. sharp, the prayer gongs will sound and we would all huddle together frightened out of our wits, with our imaginations going haywire with the sounds of the tock-tock-tock and chants of the nuns. We had no electricity of any kind in those type of housing, we used oil lamps, and we only had two lamps in our flat, one in the kitchen/bathroom and one outside in the living room. When the kitchen chores were done, we only used one lamp to save oil. So everything was always in darkness. Though we were terrified of the Buddhist nuns, we still couldn't keep away from them during the daytime, we would always hang around their front gate and peek into their nunnery and talk to the gatekeeper who was very old and had the longest teeth we ever saw! Occasionally she would get fed up with us and shoo us away...”  There were many stories of miracles too. My mother told me that during an air raid when they were all praying the rosary and the planes were flying overhead dropping bombs, a Chinese man delivering bread arrived in a state of shock. He told them he had just seen a huge lady enveloping the building and that all the bullets from the guns outside were bouncing off her cloak. My father also told me he was walking past a bombed church one day and saw something shining on top of a tree. It looked like a statue of Our Lady. He went back for his camera and took this photo. |
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