Author: Derek Pua
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947766006
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The occupational period by the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII is Hong Kong¿s darkest chapter in history, colloquially known as the ¿Three Years and Eight Months¿ period amongst veterans and survivors. However, the lack of contemporary interests towards this subject by historians has led to a limited amount of academic works on the subject being published. This lack of written works, coupled with the declining population of veterans and survivors, has already resulted in the memory of the war to be neglected amongst Hong Kong¿s youth, almost forgotten.
Three Years Eight Months
Author: Derek Pua
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947766006
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The occupational period by the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII is Hong Kong¿s darkest chapter in history, colloquially known as the ¿Three Years and Eight Months¿ period amongst veterans and survivors. However, the lack of contemporary interests towards this subject by historians has led to a limited amount of academic works on the subject being published. This lack of written works, coupled with the declining population of veterans and survivors, has already resulted in the memory of the war to be neglected amongst Hong Kong¿s youth, almost forgotten.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947766006
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The occupational period by the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII is Hong Kong¿s darkest chapter in history, colloquially known as the ¿Three Years and Eight Months¿ period amongst veterans and survivors. However, the lack of contemporary interests towards this subject by historians has led to a limited amount of academic works on the subject being published. This lack of written works, coupled with the declining population of veterans and survivors, has already resulted in the memory of the war to be neglected amongst Hong Kong¿s youth, almost forgotten.
Hong Kong 1941–45
Author: Benjamin Lai
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782002693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
The invasion and conquest of Hong Kong formed part of the staggering series of Japanese conquests across the Far East in late 1941 and early 1942. On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two battle-hardened IJA divisions. What defines the battle of Hong Kong was not the scale - just 14,000 defended the colony - but the intensity of this battle, fought not only by the British Army, Navy and Air Force but also Canadians, Hong Kong's own defence force, the Indian Army and many civilians. The campaign itself is characterized by a fierce land battle, with long artillery duals and as well as fast naval actions with intense actions at the Gin Drinkers Line as well as the battle of Wong Nai Chung Gap where a handful of defenders took on an entire Japanese regiment. Less known but equally important are individual acts valour such as CSM John Robert Osborne winning a posthumous VC, throwing himself over a Japanese grenade to save fellow combatants.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782002693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
The invasion and conquest of Hong Kong formed part of the staggering series of Japanese conquests across the Far East in late 1941 and early 1942. On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two battle-hardened IJA divisions. What defines the battle of Hong Kong was not the scale - just 14,000 defended the colony - but the intensity of this battle, fought not only by the British Army, Navy and Air Force but also Canadians, Hong Kong's own defence force, the Indian Army and many civilians. The campaign itself is characterized by a fierce land battle, with long artillery duals and as well as fast naval actions with intense actions at the Gin Drinkers Line as well as the battle of Wong Nai Chung Gap where a handful of defenders took on an entire Japanese regiment. Less known but equally important are individual acts valour such as CSM John Robert Osborne winning a posthumous VC, throwing himself over a Japanese grenade to save fellow combatants.
Battle for Hong Kong, December 1941
Author: Philip Cracknell
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445690500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Book Description
25 December 1941 is known to this day by the people of Hong Kong as ‘Black Christmas’. The battle for Hong Kong is a story that deserves to be better known.
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445690500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Book Description
25 December 1941 is known to this day by the people of Hong Kong as ‘Black Christmas’. The battle for Hong Kong is a story that deserves to be better known.
East River Column
Author: Sui-jeung Chan 陳瑞璋
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622098509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Hong Kong's story in the Second World War has been predominantly told as a story of the British forces and their defeat on Christmas Day 1941. But there is another story: the Chinese guerrilla forces who harassed the Japanese throughout the occupation played a crucial part in the escapes from Hong Kong's prisoner of war camps and in rescuing Allied airmen. This neglected part of Hong Kong's war is Chan Sui-jeung’s topic in this pioneering book informed by his many contacts with participants in the guerrilla warfare. The guerrilla group usually described as the East River Column gathered momentum in 1937 after China and Japan embarked on full-fledged war. Chan reports on its precursors and the formation of more formal structures that provided the basis for the guerrilla activities in Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945. Just as the guerrilla's story starts before the Second World War, so it goes on after 1945 and is entwined with the civil war and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. An important and valuable part of this book recounts how the leaders of the East River Column fared in the period up to and after the Communist victory. The book also sheds new light on the struggle between the Guangdong party members and the cadres from the north and "the problem of Guangdong" as it was characterized by Mao Zedong. This book thus finally gives due prominence to the role of the Chinese guerrillas in Hong Kong during the war, while at the same time setting that struggle into the broader contexts of Guangdong province, the long war between China and Japan, and the victory of the Communists and the early years of their rule in the South.
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622098509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Hong Kong's story in the Second World War has been predominantly told as a story of the British forces and their defeat on Christmas Day 1941. But there is another story: the Chinese guerrilla forces who harassed the Japanese throughout the occupation played a crucial part in the escapes from Hong Kong's prisoner of war camps and in rescuing Allied airmen. This neglected part of Hong Kong's war is Chan Sui-jeung’s topic in this pioneering book informed by his many contacts with participants in the guerrilla warfare. The guerrilla group usually described as the East River Column gathered momentum in 1937 after China and Japan embarked on full-fledged war. Chan reports on its precursors and the formation of more formal structures that provided the basis for the guerrilla activities in Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945. Just as the guerrilla's story starts before the Second World War, so it goes on after 1945 and is entwined with the civil war and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. An important and valuable part of this book recounts how the leaders of the East River Column fared in the period up to and after the Communist victory. The book also sheds new light on the struggle between the Guangdong party members and the cadres from the north and "the problem of Guangdong" as it was characterized by Mao Zedong. This book thus finally gives due prominence to the role of the Chinese guerrillas in Hong Kong during the war, while at the same time setting that struggle into the broader contexts of Guangdong province, the long war between China and Japan, and the victory of the Communists and the early years of their rule in the South.
Clash of Empires in South China
Author: Franco David Macri
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made a formidable stand that produced a veritable quagmire for a superior opponent--a stalemate much desired by the Allied nations. In the first book to cover this southern theater in detail, David Macri closely examines strategic decisions, campaigns, and operations and shows how they affected Allied grand strategy. Drawing on documents of U.S. and British officials, he reveals for the first time how the Sino-Japanese War served as a "proxy war" for the Allies: by keeping Japan's military resources focused on southern China, they hoped to keep the enemy bogged down in a war of attrition that would prevent them from breaching British and Soviet territory. While the most immediate concern was preserving Siberia and its vast resources from invasion, Macri identifies Hong Kong as the keystone in that proxy war-vital in sustaining Chinese resistance against Japan as it provided the logistical interface between the outside world and battles in Hunan and Kwangtung provinces; a situation that emerged because of its vital rail connection to the city of Changsha. He describes the development of Anglo-Japanese low-intensity conflict at Hong Kong; he then explains the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong and southern China for the period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Opening a new window on this rarely studied theater, Macri underscores China's symbolic importance for the Allies, depicting them as unequal partners who fought the Japanese for entirely different reasons-China for restoration of its national sovereignty, the Allies to keep the Japanese preoccupied. And by aiding China's wartime efforts, the Allies further hoped to undermine Japanese propaganda designed to expel Western powers from its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As Macri shows, Hong Kong was not just a sleepy British Colonial outpost on the fringes of the empire but an essential logistical component of the war, and to fully understand broader events Hong Kong must be viewed together with southern China as a single military zone. His account of that forgotten fight is a pioneering work that provides new insight into the origins of the Pacific War.
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made a formidable stand that produced a veritable quagmire for a superior opponent--a stalemate much desired by the Allied nations. In the first book to cover this southern theater in detail, David Macri closely examines strategic decisions, campaigns, and operations and shows how they affected Allied grand strategy. Drawing on documents of U.S. and British officials, he reveals for the first time how the Sino-Japanese War served as a "proxy war" for the Allies: by keeping Japan's military resources focused on southern China, they hoped to keep the enemy bogged down in a war of attrition that would prevent them from breaching British and Soviet territory. While the most immediate concern was preserving Siberia and its vast resources from invasion, Macri identifies Hong Kong as the keystone in that proxy war-vital in sustaining Chinese resistance against Japan as it provided the logistical interface between the outside world and battles in Hunan and Kwangtung provinces; a situation that emerged because of its vital rail connection to the city of Changsha. He describes the development of Anglo-Japanese low-intensity conflict at Hong Kong; he then explains the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong and southern China for the period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Opening a new window on this rarely studied theater, Macri underscores China's symbolic importance for the Allies, depicting them as unequal partners who fought the Japanese for entirely different reasons-China for restoration of its national sovereignty, the Allies to keep the Japanese preoccupied. And by aiding China's wartime efforts, the Allies further hoped to undermine Japanese propaganda designed to expel Western powers from its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As Macri shows, Hong Kong was not just a sleepy British Colonial outpost on the fringes of the empire but an essential logistical component of the war, and to fully understand broader events Hong Kong must be viewed together with southern China as a single military zone. His account of that forgotten fight is a pioneering work that provides new insight into the origins of the Pacific War.
New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore, 1941-1945
Author: Yōji Akashi
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9789971692995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Information on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore is sparse, and Japanese-language materials are particularly difficult to find because the Japanese military systematically destroyed war-related documents when the war ended. The contributors to this volume participated in a Forum that spent four years locating surviving materials relating to the Occupation of Malaya. The group has three objectives: to collect primary sources, to interview Japanese military and civilian officials who took part in the military administration and people in Malaysia and Singapore who experienced the period, and to publish the results of the studies. Based on interviews with Japanese, Malaysians and Singaporeans who lived through the war years and materials gathered from archives and libraries in Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, USA, Australia, and India, the Forum has produced a number of Japanese-language publications. This book makes available some of their research findings in English. Topics covered include the Watanabe Military Administration, Japanese research activities in Malaya, Japan's Economic Policies, Malayan Communist Party Leaders and the Anti-Japanese Resistance, the Massacre of Chinese in Singapore, Railway Transportation during the Japanese Occupation Period, The Singapore internment Camp for Allied Civilian Women, and the Japanese Surrender. This volume is a revised version of Akashi Yoji, ed., Nippon Senryoka no Eiryo Maraya/Shingaporu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Publishers, 2001). Book jacket.
Publisher: NUS Press
ISBN: 9789971692995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Information on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore is sparse, and Japanese-language materials are particularly difficult to find because the Japanese military systematically destroyed war-related documents when the war ended. The contributors to this volume participated in a Forum that spent four years locating surviving materials relating to the Occupation of Malaya. The group has three objectives: to collect primary sources, to interview Japanese military and civilian officials who took part in the military administration and people in Malaysia and Singapore who experienced the period, and to publish the results of the studies. Based on interviews with Japanese, Malaysians and Singaporeans who lived through the war years and materials gathered from archives and libraries in Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, USA, Australia, and India, the Forum has produced a number of Japanese-language publications. This book makes available some of their research findings in English. Topics covered include the Watanabe Military Administration, Japanese research activities in Malaya, Japan's Economic Policies, Malayan Communist Party Leaders and the Anti-Japanese Resistance, the Massacre of Chinese in Singapore, Railway Transportation during the Japanese Occupation Period, The Singapore internment Camp for Allied Civilian Women, and the Japanese Surrender. This volume is a revised version of Akashi Yoji, ed., Nippon Senryoka no Eiryo Maraya/Shingaporu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Publishers, 2001). Book jacket.
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.
The Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45
Author: Philip Cracknell
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1398110280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Four years of fear: escapes, resistance, internment, occupation and finally - liberation. Philip Cracknell brings his unrivalled knowledge of Hong Kong during this time.
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1398110280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Four years of fear: escapes, resistance, internment, occupation and finally - liberation. Philip Cracknell brings his unrivalled knowledge of Hong Kong during this time.
The Cambridge History of the Second World War: Volume 2, Politics and Ideology
Author: Richard Bosworth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108406406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 718
Book Description
War is often described as an extension of politics by violent means. With contributions from twenty-eight eminent historians, Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War examines the relationship between ideology and politics in the war's origins, dynamics and consequences. Part I examines the ideologies of the combatants and shows how the war can be understood as a struggle of words, ideas and values with the rival powers expressing divergent claims to justice and controlling news from the front in order to sustain moral and influence international opinion. Part II looks at politics from the perspective of pre-war and wartime diplomacy as well as examining the way in which neutrals were treated and behaved. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of states, politics and ideology on the fate of individuals as occupied and liberated peoples, collaborators and resistors, and as British and French colonial subjects.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108406406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 718
Book Description
War is often described as an extension of politics by violent means. With contributions from twenty-eight eminent historians, Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War examines the relationship between ideology and politics in the war's origins, dynamics and consequences. Part I examines the ideologies of the combatants and shows how the war can be understood as a struggle of words, ideas and values with the rival powers expressing divergent claims to justice and controlling news from the front in order to sustain moral and influence international opinion. Part II looks at politics from the perspective of pre-war and wartime diplomacy as well as examining the way in which neutrals were treated and behaved. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of states, politics and ideology on the fate of individuals as occupied and liberated peoples, collaborators and resistors, and as British and French colonial subjects.
The Fall of Hong Kong
Author: Philip Snow
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300103731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
The definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years, a turning point in the process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from East Asia. This book unravels for the first time the dramatic story of the Japanese occupation and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of Hong Kong. "Magnificent. . . . The clarity of mind Snow brings to his labor of storytelling and contextualizing is] amazing."--John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph "Beautifully written, with many telling anecdotes."--Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs "Very good. . . . Provides] a much more nuanced picture than has appeared before in English of life among Hong Kong's different communities before and during the Japanese occupation."--Economist
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300103731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
The definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years, a turning point in the process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from East Asia. This book unravels for the first time the dramatic story of the Japanese occupation and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of Hong Kong. "Magnificent. . . . The clarity of mind Snow brings to his labor of storytelling and contextualizing is] amazing."--John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph "Beautifully written, with many telling anecdotes."--Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs "Very good. . . . Provides] a much more nuanced picture than has appeared before in English of life among Hong Kong's different communities before and during the Japanese occupation."--Economist