Man Keung Wong

From his eldest daughter, Emily:

My parents got married exactly two years before my birthday. It was a semi-arranged marriage. My father and his cousin married two sisters. Both of my parents didn't go to College but my father's English was so good , he could have. He got a scholarship to go to King's College in HK. They named the upper high schools 'colleges' then, and still do.

My father was in the import and export business and his company is named W.S. Shirley and Co. He took over the business from someone after working there for many years. The exports weren't too interesting to us as kids, but we used to enjoyed eating things he used to import, like English cookies (they called them biscuits), Horlicks malted milk drinks and malted milk candies. Others things his firm used to bring into HK were Kleenex tissues, Pepsodent toothpaste, Longine watches and some engineering tools like compasses and other things from Germany.

The most profitable product my dad used to import was saccharin. He was known as the saccharin king at one time. This is a concentrated sugar type product for manufacturing all kinds of things in China including mui (preserved plums, candies and other canned foods). Monsanto in St. Louis was the manufacturer and I have no idea whether this product is still being used. At the time he imported all these products, he was the sole agent in HK. I used to have some free Longine watches that were samples. During the first few weeks after the Japanese occupied HK, the markets were not open but we always had plenty of canned foods because of his merchant friends.

The Japanese bombed HK on December 8, 1941 (December 7 here in the States), the same day they bombed Pearl Harbor. I had just turned 12 on Dec. 3. Because the Catholic school had a holiday that day, I was home. When the siren sounded, we all thought it was a practice or a rehearsal. Our house had a good view of the harbor and when we saw the airplanes dropping bombs on the ships in the harbor; we knew it was the real thing and we were scared..

Things were pretty bad for a while but soon the British surrendered and the Japanese put all the non-Chinese in the concentration camps. Since HK citizens were 99.9% Chinese, we were safe because they couldn't put us all in a camp. We heard about some killing and some raping but it was not near us. We only knew about one distant relative who was killed.

We survived on canned food for a time but soon we were able to get fresh food if we managed to get Japanese currency. My mother sold some of her jewelry in exchange for yen. When the Japanese government set up law enforcement, things were much calmer. Schools were open again. We had no car because it was confiscated , I can't remember if it was by the British or Japanese. There was no electricity so we kids used to do our homework by my grandmother's mahjongg table because that was the only hanging oil lamp in the house. At school, we couldn't learn English, just Chinese and Japanese. My father taught us English and later had a tutor for us so that we wouldn't be too far behind after the war.

Because of the gasoline shortage, there were no taxi cabs, just pedi-cabs, rickshaws and sedan chairs for uphill rides. One time my friends & I had gone to a wedding and on the way back we tried to save money by walking home. Three Japanese soldiers were laughing at us and teasing us, we were so scared that we rushed to a pedi-cab going the opposite direction. But there was really no reason to be afraid because the Japanese police were quite good then.

During the last part of 1944, we were bombed by allies airplanes or American planes so often that we were afraid. In January, my father hired a fishing junk so that we could escape to Macau, a Portugese colony. We had to keep the engine off and use only the sail so that it would be quiet. A trip that was normally a 30 minute ferry ride took us 30 hours. My grandma and my mom were very seasick. Once we reached Macau, the Monte Carlo of the orient, the light was so bright we felt like we were in heaven.

Our whole family stayed in the old, rundown family mansion that the Wong family had at the time. Many rooms had been rented out and the downstairs was then a pool hall. We took back two bedrooms and a living room but there was no indoor plumbing. The maid had to fetch water for us from the well downstairs and to use the large common kitchen there as well. My parents stayed in one bedroom and my grandmother and all of us 7 kids occupied the very large bedroom like in a dorm. We were able to study English again. I even started piano lessons but without a piano in Macau, I had to walk a mile to my second cousin's house to practice and I had to take my lessons at my friends house. My friends lived almost 2 mile or more in the other direction. Of course, back in HK after the war I had our chaffeur take me to all my lessons. After the Japanese surrendered in August,1945 we happily moved back to HK and returned to our old schools again. After the war, someone told me that an elementary school had rented the house.

Sending all their children to college was very important to my parents. They made big sacrifices to do so.

In 1973, my father had colon cancer., He recovered and three years later he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1976.