THE WIDOWS' MITE
William McGurn finds that there are
a number of deserving people in Hong Kong excluded from the Nationality Bill
Hong Kong JUST 20 minutes from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong's financial centre, the chrome-and-steel skyscrapers crowding the roads give way to rolling green hills and gentle sea breezes that culminate in Stan- ley Military Cemetery at the far side of the island. Here, on one of these hills, under a simple white tablet and blush of purple flowers, lie the remains of a 37-year-old Eurasian named Jimmy Kotwall. Mr Kot- wall was beheaded by the Japanese Occupation on 31 August 1944 on nearby St Stephen's beach for his work in the British Army Aid Group; his brother George lies a few feet away, beheaded on the same beach for the same reason a year earlier. In his last letter from prison, scratched in pencil, the former exchange broker urged his wife to bring his children up in the Christian faith and insisted his resistance was not in vain. 'I die with love in my heart for my family, my country, and relatives and friends.'
Whether he could write that today is open to considerable doubt. Because of his sacrifice, Doris Kotwall was left a widow aged 24, with two young children to care for, throughout a brutal Occupation. Be- cause of that war, her family lost all of what was a respectable amount of property and wealth at that time. And because of the British policy today, Mrs Kotwall, now in her seventies, has lost something even 'Quick I think it's wounded.' more precious: the right of abode in the country for which her husband gave his life.
Nor is Mrs Kotwall alone. There are a number of people who equally deserve full British passports because of their or their husbands' service to the Crown in the second world war, and they fall under three broad categories: widows of British Army Aid Group fighters executed by the Japanese; wives or widows of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, the re- serve unit called into service when the invasion came; and the Hong Kong Chinese servicemen, along with their wives and widows, who were in the regular British Army. All together they add up to no more than 200 old men and women, yet they have been excluded from the Nationality Bill for Hong Kong that has just finished its third reading.
'The only right of abode these people won was the right of abode in a British cemetery', says Jack Edwards MBE, a British second world war veteran who has championed their cause. 'The new Nationality Act is for people considered important to Hong Kong's future. But what about the people who were important to Hong Kong's past? Mr Edwards, whose account of his own internment in a Japanese POW camp during the war, Bonzai You Bastards!, will be published in Britain later this year by Souvenir press, points out that most of the war widows don't even receive a proper pension. What pittance they do get comes out of a government charity fund, which unlike proper pensions will not be guaranteed by London post-1997.
Elfrida Minhinnett is another widow; her husband, John Danniford Minhinnett, was a member of the Hong Kong Volun- teer Defence Corps, the largely Eurasian reserve. In her cramped Kowloon apart- ment Mrs Minhinnett, not in good health, proudly digs out a yellowed scroll com- memorating his death on 21 December 1941 while holding out against the invading Japanese. The scroll reads as follows: 'Private J D Minhinnett [sic], Hong Kong 'Volunteer Defence Corps, held in honour as one who served King and Country in the World War of 1939-45 and gave his life to save mankind from tyranny. May this sacrifice help to bring the peace and freedom for which he died'.
When her Johnny was killed, Elfrida Minhinnett was also in her mid-twenties and left with a three-year-old to care for.
In some ways her plight is even worse than Mrs Kotwall's, for Mrs Minhinnett does not write Chinese and will be made state- less come 1997. To add to the indignities she was recently informed by Her Majes- ty's service that she would have to go to a government hospital instead of the military one that has been treating her for years.
Mrs Minhinnett also makes it clear that at her age actual emigration to Britain is not likely. 'If I went to the United Kingdom I would be all alone', she says. 'I would just like some guarantee against 1997.'
Unfortunately it doesn't look as though a guarantee is on the cards. During the second reading of the Bill on 19 April, David Waddington was interrupted several times by opposition members with ques- tions about the widows, wives, and service- men, and he cryptically said that they would be dealt with 'sympathetically'. In a response to a written query from a veterans officer in Britain, Mr J.K. Hague of the Foreign Office's Hong Kong Department said the Government 'had considered the case of the war widows fully but concluded that it would not be possible to include this group in the main scheme'. He added that 'further arrangements' were in the works but characteristically did not specify what they were.
To Jack Edwards this all smacks of more of the same. 'I suspect that in the end they'll give something to the widows, leave out the servicemen and wives, and even for the widows require that they come to Britain first to establish residency — absurd at their ages,' says Mr Edwards, who before the second reading stood out- side 10 Downing Street with the first British flag to be raised over Hong Kong after news of the Japanese surrender reached the camps. 'I thought she's such a flag waver that the sight might move her. But in the end it didn't touch her at all.'
Thus far the only group to get the golden passports have been the Volunteers, taking advantage of a clause in the 1981 National- ity Act referring to special service to the Crown. But even that has created prob- lems because it was not extended to include their wives or widows. Arthur Gomes is such a recipient, a man of dignified bearing who was one of those called up to resist the invasion. As a non-Chinese he worries about the fate of his passportless son come 1997, recalling how statelessness reduced the White Rus- sians in Shanghai to prostitution and the lowest levels of society. 'I would not like to use the word "bitter",' he says. 'I would say disappointed. Never would any one of us have believed in 1941 that we who took up arms as British would be stripped of our birthright — or that our families would be forgotten.'
Ironically, while the Volunteers have been granted passports the regular army have been left out completely, and it's hard not to attribute this to race since these latter tend to be ethnic Chinese. Max Cheng, now president of the Second World War Association, is one of these former servicemen, taken prisoner after the sur- render and clapped into Sham Shui Po camp. After nine months he was released in a Japanese effort to co-opt ethnic Chinese, but like so many others Mr Cheng took advantage of the freedom to dis- appear over the border into China, even- tually reaching India and signing up with the 1st Gloucester Regiment. From here he was sent into Burma, behind enemy lines, under the command of Brigadier General 'Mad Mike' Calvert, and he was later commissioned an officer. 'When the British want you, you fight for them and sometimes even sacrifice your life', he says. 'But when they don't need you any more, you're tossed aside.'
It was a different story in 1941. When he knew the invasion was coming, Churchill made an urgent appeal to the Governor. 'The enemy should be compelled to ex- pend the utmost life and equipment. Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you and your men can win the lasting honour which we are sure will be your due'. In response tiny Hong Kong, with only a few thousand men, held out for some 18 days against the Japanese invasion forces ('impregnable' Singapore lasted as long against a similar force although it had many times more fighters), and Churchill conceded in his memoirs that 'the orders were obeyed in spirit and to the letter, the Hong Kong garrison had fought to the end a good fight, they won the lasting honour' Have they?
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