Through the duration of the war, Isadore Davis Wong conveyed so many escapees from the concentration camps through the Sai Kung hills to Free China. He assisted thousands of refugees too, acting as a go-between for the East River Column and the British Army Aid Group. The British promised to repatriate any of their allies who wanted to go home after the war, so Wong sold his flat and all his furniture in anticipation of a return to Jamaica. The British kept him waiting, one week, two weeks, six months, nine. In the end, he never made it back and died an early death by tuberculosis in a small room in a small flat shared with six other families, leaving his wife, Jane, and their children still stranded in Hong Kong. Emily and I went over there with food when we could, though I’m ashamed to say that when the American embargoes started and we experienced shortages, we went over less often than we should have. But we had dinner with Jane and two of Izzy’s grown children just a few weeks ago. Jane has to use a walker now, and her hearing is nearly gone. But one of the kids is a manager at Lane Crawford, and one of the others is a librettist for a musical theatre company in Mombasa, back here like you to witness the handover.

Selwyn-Clarke was picked up again by the Kempeitai later in the war. This time they held him not for three weeks, but for a whole year. His friends and family gave him up for dead. But in the last days of the war, the Kempeitai released him. He’d been tortured and one of his legs didn’t work at all well anymore. When he came out, he had a long filthy beard and weighed half of what he had before going into their prison. Hilda Selwyn-Clarke and their daughter, Mary, were overjoyed at his return, and nursed him back to health. After the war, and a period of recovery, he was sent to the Seychelles to be governor.

Kathy Duffy made it to Chungking, and from there, after a journey of several weeks, back to Dublin, where she taught at Trinity College until she retired sixteen years ago. She still sends us a card every Christmas, and often books too.

After the war, between 1946 and 1948, a British military court conducted a war crimes trial here in Hong Kong at the Jardine East Point Godown, which was converted into a courthouse. Noma was convicted for his many atrocities and hanged until dead at Stanley. Many Kempeitai, Japanese navy people, and interpreters were tried, but it was a trial for crimes against British and Commonwealth nationals. But those of us who were only incidentally national got only incidental justice.