By the time the Kempeitai released him, a lot of Chinese had fled, either to Macau, like Mah’s old friend Robert Ho Tung, who was tipped off by the Japanese consul, or else inland to China. The new Japanese administration was encouraging ordinary people to leave. The city was already crowded. There were the people who had been here since before the British came. There were the many who came in the early colonial years seeking work and seeking to escape the wars and feuds that plagued South China through the late 1800s and early 1900s. And there were thousands of new refugees fleeing the current war in China that had started in 1937, while Hong Kong was still free and relatively peaceful. There were Sikhs, Gurkhas, and other South Asians who had followed the British from India to Hong Kong and worked mostly as policemen and security guards, though they did other kinds of work too, like any other Hong Kong person. The famous Harilelas were tailors. Some other South Asians threw their lot in with the Japanese during the war because they saw the pan-Asian project as compatible with Indian independence. There were Portuguese who worked as clerks and administrators. There were people from Jamaica who had come to do administrative work, or who were the children of Chinese workers and shopkeepers in Jamaica, sent back to the home village to marry in that old Confucian way, like our friend Isadore Davis Wong. There were Japanese people too, who worked for Japanese branch companies in Hong Kong, or as journalists and translators, like our friend Tanaka Shigeru. Some, like the Japanese barber at the Peninsula Hotel, were spies, but a lot were just ordinary people like you and me. Generally, the occupation government wanted everyone out. They were not well prepared for civilian administration, and the fewer people there were in the territory, the fewer they would have to look after. Plus, food was in short supply and getting scarcer by the day. The Japanese Army raided the godowns and took control of the warehouses. They confiscated cars and held them at the Hong Kong Cricket Club until there were ships available to take them to Japan. They gathered up everything that might be useful—most of it was sent back to the motherland to support the Japanese war effort, leaving very little for use here. There were rumours of mass shootings to reduce the population. Diseases, primarily cholera, diphtheria, and dysentery, were becoming a serious problem, affecting enemy and ally alike.