Some war-time reminiscences

I was in Macau for 3 years during World War II. I finished my high school education there under the tuition of Irish Jesuit priests from a very prestigious High School in HongKong. I was in HK after the Japanese invasion for nearly one year, aged 14; then my family moved to Macau as refugees for another 3 years. Most HK refugees lived at communal centres and were housed and fed by the Macau Government and entrusted to the care of Santa Casa de Misericórdia, but my family decided to live on our own outside and we survived with a meagre subsidy from the British Government through their consulate. My lasting impression was that I was always hungry at that time.

I was fully aware of events and conditions. Macau in those days was an exciting place, full of refugees and incidents. It was much like Casablanca in North Africa, with plots, factions, spies, so many outside Government agencies – Portuguese, English, Japanese Chinese Nationalists and Chinese puppets of the Japanese – spying and intriguing against each other. These are some of the events I remember:

• The assasination of the Japanese Consul. Nobody knows who did it.
• The assasination of a prominent Macau businessman Fernando Rodrigues and the wounding of his two daughters in the process.
• The hijacking of the large steamboat passenger ferry which was tied up on a pier at the Porto Interior. The boat was then serving as a refugee centre for British passport holders. There was a late night raid to take over this boat and tow it to Hong Kong. After a whole night time of blazing gunfire between the highjackers and the Macau police, the boat eventually ended up in Japanese hands. I believe that this raid was carried out by Chinese puppet gunmen under pay and instructions of the Japanese.
• In January 1945 there was an air raid on neutral Macau by American fighter-bombers. They were on a seek-and-destroy mission from American aircraft carriers in the China Seas. They bombed an aircraft hangar with oil storage and strafed the people all around. Later they claimed it was all a mistake on their part and paid the Portuguese some compensation.