Ngok Fai Wong

From daughter Emily:

My parents got married exactly 2 years before my birthday. It was a semi-arranged marriage. Two cousins married 2 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 name the upper high shools colleges then and still do.

From sister Emily:

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. Since they couldn't put us all in a camp. We heard about some killing and some raping but 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 yens. My mother sold some of her jewlery for that. When the Japanese government set up law enforcement, things were much calmer. Schools were open again. We had no car because it was confiscated either by the British or the Japanese as I don't remember. There was no electricity so we kids used to do our homework by the my grandmother's mahjogg 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 tuitor 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 sedanchairs 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. So in January, my father hired a

fishing junk so that we could escape to Macau, a Portugese colony. We had to use only the sail and without the engine so that it would be quiet. A normally 30 minutes 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 rundown, old 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 lesson but without a piano in Macau, I had to walk a mile to my second cousin's house to practise 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 had told me that an elementary school rented the house.