A British prisoner’s secret diary telling an epic story of love, survival and adultery in a Second World War internment camp has been discovered and returned to his daughter nearly 70 years after it was thought to have been destroyed. Civil servant Raymond Jones risked death by keeping a meticulous record of daily life in Hong Kong’s Stanley Camp where some 2,800 mostly British civilians were held from 1942 until 1945 after Japan invaded the former colony. The neat pencil strokes of newly married Jones, whose pregnant wife Marjorie was evacuated as Japanese troops closed in on Hong Kong, detail the war’s progress, the struggle to survive inside the brutal camp – and a passionate affair he had with a fellow internee. Memento: The only surviving wedding photograph of Raymond Jones and wife Marjorie . Throughout the war, Raymond, from Skegness, Lincolnshire, bravely kept a Union Jack hidden inside his mattress and was hailed a hero when he was allowed to hoist it above Stanley Camp watched by Allied troops and hundreds of fellow camp survivors following the Japanese surrender. Then, soon after he arrived home in Britain at the end of the war to join Marjorie and daughter Rae, a parcel arrived from his lover –  a nurse called Gwen Flower – with a letter telling besotted Raymond to forget about her and begin a new life with his family. But it was Marjorie who opened the letter and then read the diary. Heartbroken and angry, she tore up their wedding photos and the letters they had exchanged during the war and ordered Raymond to destroy the diary. Flag day: Raymond Jones proudly hoisting the Union Jack he kept stitched inside his mattress at the Stanley Camp when it was liberated after the Japanese surrender . Their marriage survived and – although Raymond pined for his lover – they returned to Hong Kong where they had a second daughter, Diana, and Raymond worked until 1957 when he was  diagnosed with cancer and returned to Britain where he died. Marjorie lived until 1985 and went to her grave telling her daughters her greatest regret was destroying the diary, which provided a unique record of life as a civilian war prisoner. But now, in a remarkable twist,  the diary has been returned to Raymond’s daughter, Rae Shaw, a 72-year-old grandmother. It was discovered in Scotland in 2010 by Alison McEwan, the daughter of another Hong Kong civil  servant, as she sorted through papers and books left by her father, who died in the mid-1980s. Alison recognised its significance and tried to trace Rae, who is mentioned  lovingly throughout. When she failed to find her, she sent the diary to Hong Kong where it was put on display in a museum on the site of the former prison camp. Rae learned of the diary’s existence when she was playing with a new iPad her grandson had helped her buy. She entered her name and ‘Hong Kong’ into an internet search engine to see if there was any record of her childhood in the Far East. It was then she saw a reference to the R. E. Jones War Diary in Hong Kong. The letter ‘E’ refers to Raymond’s middle name, Eric. When stunned Rae got in touch with the museum, the authorities copied the pages for display, released the original and sent it to Rae’s home in Nottingham. ‘I just tapped ‘‘Rae Marjorie Jones Hong Kong’’ on my iPad and up popped this list – and at the top of it were the words ‘‘R. E. Jones War Diary’’,’ explained Rae, a widow. ‘I shall never forget that moment. I froze. It was a feeling of shock – pure shock. And everything that has happened since has been so emotional and exciting and wonderful. How the diary survived the row between Raymond and Marjorie is  a mystery. ‘My mother described the destruction of the diary as her biggest regret. That is what we have lived with since,’ Rae said. Wartime record:The diary kept by Raymond Jones detailing everyday life in Stanley Camp . ‘After the war, Gwen sent my father a parcel containing an atlas, which I still have. My mother opened the parcel, and it contained this ‘‘Dear John’’ letter which she read. She was totally shocked and horrified and heartbroken. ‘They had this massive row where she ripped up all their wedding photographs and all the letters that had passed between them during the war. Mummy said everything was destroyed, including the diary. ‘I was only five at the time and I don’t remember the argument. I can only envisage a huge row. I imagine my father said, ‘‘I’ll go and burn the bloody thing,’’ and went off with the diary, but didn’t burn it and she just assumed he had.’ Rae believes her father secretly sent the diary to Alison’s father, Colin McEwan – who, like Raymond, served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Hong Kong – or gave it to a fellow internee who later passed it to McEwan. ‘My father never once mentioned the diary and he obviously never mentioned it to my mother to spare her any more misery,’ she said. The diary – by turns fascinating, mundane and mildly scandalous – records the daily hardships, deaths and the price of black-market goods inside the prison camp. It also tells of rumours that were circulating about the war’s progress in Europe and the Pacific. Raymond writes lovingly of Marjorie and daughter Rae, particularly on their birthdays and at Christmas, before his romance with Gwen – referred to as G – blossoms in the dying months  of the war, leaving him torn between family life and his lover as he  heads home. Joyous day: Stanley Camp, which held mostly British civilians from 1942 to 1945 . In a touching entry for January 22, 1942, he writes, clearly with his wife in mind: ‘Well darling, our Rae is 12 months old and I sincerely hope and pray that this, her first birthday, will be the first and last that we are parted until she leaves us to start a home of her own. I hope you had a nice little party sweetheart, with one candle on the cake. God bless you both.’ But the horrors of war are never far from his mind. On July 13, 1942, he says: ‘Canton bombed last night. Hong Kong blockaded.’ And in another entry a year later, he describes the dreadful conditions in the camp: ‘Joint protest being signed by all adult internees. It deals with all the problems that are becoming more acute daily: poor food, lack of drugs and medicines; the increase of diseases caused through malnutrition; the inadequacy of canteen supplies and money.’ During Raymond’s time in the prison camp, seven internees were tortured in front of fellow prisoners and later executed for possessing a radio set they used to pass messages in and out of the camp. Many other prisoners died of illnesses linked to malnutrition. Surrender: General Douglas MacArthur, left, and Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, centre, watching Japanese Foreign Minister Manoru Shigemitsu marking Japan's formal surrender to Alllied forces on September 2, 1945 . After the Japanese surrender,  Rae lived with the painful fallout of the affair for the remainder of her otherwise idyllic childhood growing up in Hong Kong. A gregarious character before the war, Raymond was morose and withdrawn afterwards. She said: ‘As I was growing up, my mother would say, ‘‘Darling, he wasn’t always like this,’’ ’ said Rae. ‘People who knew him before the war say he was a charming, witty, loving man, but that is completely the opposite of the man I knew. ‘He was difficult. Everything I did he picked on. I had a hard time, and I assumed it was because the lady that ended the affair had said to him, ‘‘You must stay with your wife and get to know the baby you have never met.’’ ’ Rae draws comfort from the many loving references to her mother  and herself in the dairy. ‘You can see he was a very loving husband. He missed my mother terribly. He wrote to her regularly and, when I was born, he was thrilled,’ Rae said. ‘He calls mum Darling Marj and me Baby Rae and on my birthday he talks about me. So it tells me that  he was a normal, young married man, and that he changed.’ The war in Hong Kong: British troops being made to march during a Chinese victory parade . Younger sister Diana, who was just six when her father died, said: ‘Mummy regretted destroying the letters and wedding photographs but she was clearly heartbroken at the time. She would be delighted that the diary survived. ‘Mummy said if she could have  the time over again, she would do exactly the same – she clearly loved him very much.’ Despite the rift her affair with Raymond triggered, Rae and her  sister are keen to trace the family of Gwen Flower. ‘Diana and I wonder where she is,’ she said. ‘Because of what she did, our lives have been different to what they would otherwise have been. We wish we knew what happened to her, and we hope she found happiness.’
Raymond Jones kept a diary of daily life in Hong Kong PoW Camp in WW2 .
It revealed that he had a passionate affair with a fellow internee .
His wife Marjorie found the diary and affair left her heartbroken .
Raymond's daughter only discovered diary existed after searching online .
A British prisoner’s secret diary telling an epic story of love, survival and adultery in a Second World War internment camp has been discovered and returned to his daughter nearly 70 years after it was thought to have been destroyed. Civil servant Raymond Jones risked death by keeping a meticulous record of daily life in Hong Kong’s Stanley Camp where some 2,800 mostly British civilians were held from 1942 until 1945 after Japan invaded the former colony. The neat pencil strokes of newly married Jones, whose pregnant wife Marjorie was evacuated as Japanese troops closed in on Hong Kong, detail the war’s progress, the struggle to survive inside the brutal camp – and a passionate affair he had with a fellow internee. Memento: The only surviving wedding photograph of Raymond Jones and wife Marjorie . Throughout the war, Raymond, from Skegness, Lincolnshire, bravely kept a Union Jack hidden inside his mattress and was hailed a hero when he was allowed to hoist it above Stanley Camp watched by Allied troops and hundreds of fellow camp survivors following the Japanese surrender. Then, soon after he arrived home in Britain at the end of the war to join Marjorie and daughter Rae, a parcel arrived from his lover –  a nurse called Gwen Flower – with a letter telling besotted Raymond to forget about her and begin a new life with his family. But it was Marjorie who opened the letter and then read the diary. Heartbroken and angry, she tore up their wedding photos and the letters they had exchanged during the war and ordered Raymond to destroy the diary. Flag day: Raymond Jones proudly hoisting the Union Jack he kept stitched inside his mattress at the Stanley Camp when it was liberated after the Japanese surrender . Their marriage survived and – although Raymond pined for his lover – they returned to Hong Kong where they had a second daughter, Diana, and Raymond worked until 1957 when he was  diagnosed with cancer and returned to Britain where he died. Marjorie lived until 1985 and went to her grave telling her daughters her greatest regret was destroying the diary, which provided a unique record of life as a civilian war prisoner. But now, in a remarkable twist,  the diary has been returned to Raymond’s daughter, Rae Shaw, a 72-year-old grandmother. It was discovered in Scotland in 2010 by Alison McEwan, the daughter of another Hong Kong civil  servant, as she sorted through papers and books left by her father, who died in the mid-1980s. Alison recognised its significance and tried to trace Rae, who is mentioned  lovingly throughout. When she failed to find her, she sent the diary to Hong Kong where it was put on display in a museum on the site of the former prison camp. Rae learned of the diary’s existence when she was playing with a new iPad her grandson had helped her buy. She entered her name and ‘Hong Kong’ into an internet search engine to see if there was any record of her childhood in the Far East. It was then she saw a reference to the R. E. Jones War Diary in Hong Kong. The letter ‘E’ refers to Raymond’s middle name, Eric. When stunned Rae got in touch with the museum, the authorities copied the pages for display, released the original and sent it to Rae’s home in Nottingham. ‘I just tapped ‘‘Rae Marjorie Jones Hong Kong’’ on my iPad and up popped this list – and at the top of it were the words ‘‘R. E. Jones War Diary’’,’ explained Rae, a widow. ‘I shall never forget that moment. I froze. It was a feeling of shock – pure shock. And everything that has happened since has been so emotional and exciting and wonderful. How the diary survived the row between Raymond and Marjorie is  a mystery. ‘My mother described the destruction of the diary as her biggest regret. That is what we have lived with since,’ Rae said. Wartime record:The diary kept by Raymond Jones detailing everyday life in Stanley Camp . ‘After the war, Gwen sent my father a parcel containing an atlas, which I still have. My mother opened the parcel, and it contained this ‘‘Dear John’’ letter which she read. She was totally shocked and horrified and heartbroken. ‘They had this massive row where she ripped up all their wedding photographs and all the letters that had passed between them during the war. Mummy said everything was destroyed, including the diary. ‘I was only five at the time and I don’t remember the argument. I can only envisage a huge row. I imagine my father said, ‘‘I’ll go and burn the bloody thing,’’ and went off with the diary, but didn’t burn it and she just assumed he had.’ Rae believes her father secretly sent the diary to Alison’s father, Colin McEwan – who, like Raymond, served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Hong Kong – or gave it to a fellow internee who later passed it to McEwan. ‘My father never once mentioned the diary and he obviously never mentioned it to my mother to spare her any more misery,’ she said. The diary – by turns fascinating, mundane and mildly scandalous – records the daily hardships, deaths and the price of black-market goods inside the prison camp. It also tells of rumours that were circulating about the war’s progress in Europe and the Pacific. Raymond writes lovingly of Marjorie and daughter Rae, particularly on their birthdays and at Christmas, before his romance with Gwen – referred to as G – blossoms in the dying months  of the war, leaving him torn between family life and his lover as he  heads home. Joyous day: Stanley Camp, which held mostly British civilians from 1942 to 1945 . In a touching entry for January 22, 1942, he writes, clearly with his wife in mind: ‘Well darling, our Rae is 12 months old and I sincerely hope and pray that this, her first birthday, will be the first and last that we are parted until she leaves us to start a home of her own. I hope you had a nice little party sweetheart, with one candle on the cake. God bless you both.’ But the horrors of war are never far from his mind. On July 13, 1942, he says: ‘Canton bombed last night. Hong Kong blockaded.’ And in another entry a year later, he describes the dreadful conditions in the camp: ‘Joint protest being signed by all adult internees. It deals with all the problems that are becoming more acute daily: poor food, lack of drugs and medicines; the increase of diseases caused through malnutrition; the inadequacy of canteen supplies and money.’ During Raymond’s time in the prison camp, seven internees were tortured in front of fellow prisoners and later executed for possessing a radio set they used to pass messages in and out of the camp. Many other prisoners died of illnesses linked to malnutrition. Surrender: General Douglas MacArthur, left, and Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, centre, watching Japanese Foreign Minister Manoru Shigemitsu marking Japan's formal surrender to Alllied forces on September 2, 1945 . After the Japanese surrender,  Rae lived with the painful fallout of the affair for the remainder of her otherwise idyllic childhood growing up in Hong Kong. A gregarious character before the war, Raymond was morose and withdrawn afterwards. She said: ‘As I was growing up, my mother would say, ‘‘Darling, he wasn’t always like this,’’ ’ said Rae. ‘People who knew him before the war say he was a charming, witty, loving man, but that is completely the opposite of the man I knew. ‘He was difficult. Everything I did he picked on. I had a hard time, and I assumed it was because the lady that ended the affair had said to him, ‘‘You must stay with your wife and get to know the baby you have never met.’’ ’ Rae draws comfort from the many loving references to her mother  and herself in the dairy. ‘You can see he was a very loving husband. He missed my mother terribly. He wrote to her regularly and, when I was born, he was thrilled,’ Rae said. ‘He calls mum Darling Marj and me Baby Rae and on my birthday he talks about me. So it tells me that  he was a normal, young married man, and that he changed.’ The war in Hong Kong: British troops being made to march during a Chinese victory parade . Younger sister Diana, who was just six when her father died, said: ‘Mummy regretted destroying the letters and wedding photographs but she was clearly heartbroken at the time. She would be delighted that the diary survived. ‘Mummy said if she could have  the time over again, she would do exactly the same – she clearly loved him very much.’ Despite the rift her affair with Raymond triggered, Rae and her  sister are keen to trace the family of Gwen Flower. ‘Diana and I wonder where she is,’ she said. ‘Because of what she did, our lives have been different to what they would otherwise have been. We wish we knew what happened to her, and we hope she found happiness.’
meticulous record of daily life in Hong Kong’s wife Marjorie was evacuated as Japanese troops brutal camp – and a passionate affair he had with a fellow internee. Memento: The only surviving returned to Raymond’s daughter, Rae Shaw, a 72-year-old grandmother. It was discovered in Wartime record:The diary kept by Raymond Jones Despite the rift her affair with Raymond