Hong Kong in WW2

[yoMAMA]

Letter from Hong Kong: A city ravaged by war does little to recall it

Keith Bradsher International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2005
HONG KONG From the graceful dome of the Legislative Council Building to the gaudy entertainment district of Wan Chai and the touristy warren of small shops in Stanley, Hong Kong now seems as peaceful and prosperous a city as can be found anywhere in Asia.

Yet 60 years ago, this city suffered some of the worst ravages of World War II. What is now the Legislative Council Building was a torture center run by the Japanese secret police. Military-run brothels were set up in Wan Chai after numerous rapes of local civilians by Japanese soldiers. And Stanley held a internment camp for Allied civilians, with those who violated the rules risking execution on a nearby beach.

What is remarkable is that despite all the wartime horrors - which cut the city's population to 600,000 from 1.6 million through starvation, killings and flight to better-fed communities - the war is little remembered here. The approach of the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender announcement on Aug. 15 is being marked only by a few small gatherings - a talk by a war veteran at a local museum, and a protest on Sunday expected to draw hundreds or perhaps a couple thousand still eager to preserve the memory of the war.


Millions in China and Korea have signed Internet petitions or joined street demonstrations this year to denounce Japan's reluctance to teach its children about wartime atrocities. Many in Japan have outspokenly defended their country's wartime record. But the residents of Hong Kong have shown a surprising willingness to put the war behind them.


"Sixty years is a moment to remember, but people pay more attention to economic development," said Ho Pui-yin, a historian at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Ho and other historians ascribe to several factors the city's willingness to look past the war. A large majority of Hong Kong's 6.8 million people are not descendants of wartime survivors, for example, but are part of families that left mainland China later, fleeing the rise of communism.

Periodic discoveries of chemical weapons, munitions caches and other potentially hazardous wartime materials on the mainland have helped remind the Chinese public about the war. But there have been few such discoveries here in recent years, while historical research has languished, as few combatants are left to interview.

The city's history during World War II "is something which has been comprehensively strip-mined, and there's little more to say," said Jason Wordie, a local historian. A broad release of still-sealed military records in Japan - an unlikely prospect - is needed to spark fresh research, he said.

The British also excluded the Chinese population from the defense of the territory in 1941, as the Japanese Army massed nearby in an already conquered area of mainland China. So there are few army veterans of the war who are Chinese.

As documented in a recent book, Philip Snow's "The Fall of Hong Kong," Hong Kong's Chinese were eager to help fight the Japanese, especially after hearing horror stories about the sack of Nanjing four years earlier. The British, however, were very leery of arming the local population, remembering earlier agitation against colonial rule, especially during the 1920s. British imperial defenses collapsed quickly in the face of a Japanese attack that began hours after the assault on Pearl Harbor and ended with the city's surrender on Christmas Day, 1941.

After the war, the British paid limited attention to many of those Chinese who did fight the Japanese, because they were pro-communist guerrillas. For half a century, Hong Kong's return to British sovereignty after the Japanese surrender was celebrated on the last Monday of each August here, with British veterans arrayed around a pillar in the center of the city honoring the dead from two world wars.

Absent from those gatherings, however, were the survivors of what historians now say was the most effective resistance movement after the city fell to the Japanese: the pro-communist East River Column.

"We were never invited to attend such ceremonies," said Cai Song-ying, 80, a propaganda official during the war for the Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Brigade, a unit of the mainland-based East River Column. Former British officials have said the guerrillas would have been welcome if they has chosen to come.

Cai recalled how the British sent a banner of commendation in 1947 to the villages and residents where the brigade had been most active in attacking Japanese units, without mentioning anywhere on the banner the pro-communist groups like hers that had conducted the raids.

The territory's return to Chinese rule in 1997 brought a sudden shift in policy. Hong Kong's first chief executive after the handover, Tung Chee-hwa, soon invited East River Column survivors to what had been the official residence of British governors, and publicly thanked the former guerrillas, some of whom had been briefly thanked in 1946.

Tung also granted free medical care at government hospitals to the survivors and, in some cases, government pensions as well. A list of the East River Column's dead in Hong Kong was placed with a list of British Commonwealth dead in a little shrine at City Hall here. An annual ceremony at the shrine, with British veterans and former Chinese guerrillas alike invited, has replaced the government-organized commemoration at the pillar, although some grizzled British veterans still hold their own gatherings at the pillar.

But the City Hall ceremonies these days are modest and held indoors, a small recognition of what for most people in Hong Kong is a fading memory. "They are not that keen on it," Ho said. "It is always a pity when people forget history."

E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com

Monday: Brian Knowlton on the daunting challenges Karen Hughes faces as head of U.S. public diplomacy.



Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

[SunWuKong]

revive!

[Woody]

Hi all;

I have posted this link for The BBC Radio 4's 'Chinese_In_Britain' series here...
(It is a ten part 15 mins. radio series supported by a good Website with old-world pictures!)

Well, as the title suggests it is about the Chinese in Britain!
I apologise for the intrusion for this thread but I simply could not find a suitable place to put it yet, off-hand! (I am still digesting the stories & info. Myself..)

But, I am sure SunWuKong can have a quick perusal and give it the attention it deserves!

At last a minuscule of recognition from the BBC and the Brit. public in general...Wonders will never cease!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/..._britain.shtml

Enjoy!

[Woody]

My 'dime's' worth I'd lifted from Wiki. I restructured it to make it more readable!

The Second World War was a near forgotten 'Dark-Period' for HK.

The Hong Kong 'Volunteer' Defense Forces, Indians, Canadians and the British resisted the Japanese invasion commanded by the Japanese General Sakai Takashi.

Action started on the 8th December 1941. That's eight hours after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour.

The Japanese were able to take control of Hong Kong's skies on the first day of attack.
They outnumbered the defense forces.

The Indians and the British retreated to the 'GIN DRINKER'S LINE' and subsequently from Kowloon under heavy aerial bombardments and artillery barrages.

Fighting continued on Hong Kong Island between the Japanese and Canadians.
The result of which was the loss of the only reservoir in Hong Kong.

The Canadian 'Winnipeg Grenadiers' fought at the crucial point of Wong Nai Chong Gap and successfully secured a passage between downtown and the secluded southern parts of the island.
But this 'stop-gap' did not last very long.

Hong Kong fell on the 25th of December 1941.

This day was known as: 'BLACK CHRISTMAS' to the Hongkongers.

The Governor of HK, a Mr. Mark Young, surrendered in person!

At the temporary Japanese headquarters, on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel.

A Mr. Isogai Rensuke became the first Japanese governor of HK.

Hyper-inflation and food rationing followed; and the Japanese declared the Hong Kong Dollars illegal.

Furthermore, 10,000 women were raped in the first few days after Hong Kong's capture and a large number of suspected dissidents were executed.

The Japanese cut rations for civilians to conserve food for soldiers, usually to starvation levels.

Many people were forcibly moved to famine and disease-ridden areas of the mainland.

When the Japanese surrendered to the US on the 14th August 1945.

The population of Hong Kong had shrunken to only 600,000.
That was less than half of the pre-war population of 1.6 million.

Restructured quote over;

My personal interest are the details of the two key events highlighted:

That of the battle at the 'Gin Drinker Line'
and the ceremony of the official handover at 'Black Christmas'!

If anyone can expand on this please do!

[Gordman]

"Black Christmas" ...

[Woody]

This is directly off wiki...

"Eighteen days after the battle began, British colonial officials headed by the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Aitchison Young, surrendered in person on 25 December 1941 at the Japanese headquarters.

Isogai Rensuke became the first Japanese governor of Hong Kong. This ushered in the three years and eight months of Imperial Japanese administration. Japanese soldiers also terrorised the local population by murdering many, raping an estimated 10,000 women, and looting. This day is known in Hong Kong as "Black Christmas"."

Further research sites are available from:

Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association

http://www.hkvca.ca/index.htm

From the CBC Archives:

Japanese attack Canadian troops in Hong Kong

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-2016...nflict_war/twt

From Answers.com (The best site so far!)

http://www.answers.com/topic/battle-of-hong-kong


P.S.

If; I'm out of your league Gordman just say so...(I'm more used to dealing with pros.)

[sandra]

my grandmother hid in a clothing factory while the japanese attacked hong kong. she won't go into much more without becoming quiet and almost child-like, very unlike her usual talktative and outgoing nature. and because she's 90 years old, i haven't had the heart to press.

[J Honcanese]

The Gin Drinker's Line was a defence line of bunkers, trenches and redoubts built across the hills above Kowloon. At the time the British believed that it would stave off a Japanese invasion for about six months, but in WWII the system failed miserably.

^My grandparents were in the countryside running for their lives. They were in college at the time and their whole class (2 professors included) fled as a whole group.

[SunWuKong]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7334098.stm

HK remembers Chinese war dead
By Vaudine England
BBC News, Hong Kong

For the first time, more than 2,400 Chinese nationals who died in both World Wars have been commemorated by name at a special Hong Kong memorial.

Almost 1,000 Chinese who died as part of the British and Allied effort in World War I, and about 1,500 in World War II, have had no known grave.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission inaugurated the Hong Kong Memorial.

Diplomats from Europe and Commonwealth countries laid wreaths at the elegant structure.

It names Chinese members of Britain's Royal Navy, Merchant Marine, Engineers and others.

Richard Kellaway, head of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, said it also names many from the Chinese Labour Corps.

"During the First World War they were recruited in China, in Hong Kong, in Singapore and taken to Europe," he said.

"They didn't fight on the front line but they were in support of the troops who were fighting on the front line.

"They ran the railways, they worked at the docks and as the war progressed they became skilled mechanics and actually repaired tanks and vehicles."

During the World War II, Chinese nationals helped defend then-British Hong Kong and Singapore against Japan. Mr Kellaway said many were also lost at sea.

"Here they were part of the Hong Kong auxiliary corps, they were in the merchant navy, the Royal British Merchant Navy, the Royal Navy, and clearly many of the people on this memorial here have no known grave because they were seamen, they were just lost at sea.

"That's why they need to be properly commemorated here."

Mr Kellaway said the naming of those Chinese nationals with no known grave finally puts right an omission.

[J Honcanese]

That's strange because I'm pretty sure I visited that memorial when I was in HK over Christmas. I went to Stanley War Cemetery on Boxing Day so the atmosphere was particularly poignant.

Are there any details about where this war memorial is situated?

[Woody]

Try these sites to begin with.....

http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Overseas/saiwan.html

http://www.discoverhongkong.com

http://www.geoexpat.com