coming a major military base, and when the Japanese attack finally came both British strategy and the forces designed to implement it were found to be woe- fully lacking. It must be stressed, too, that Britain insisted on defending Hong Kong purely colonial manner. In no way was the defence of Hong Kong linked to the wider interests of China. As one authority has trenchantly written: "If Hong Kong had been an ordinary port in South China under the control of Chinese forces... any competent commander would have... conserved his forces and supplies for regular or guerrilla activities in the Kwangtung-Kwangsi region."7 More- over, the British refused to arm the Chinese population and operated a racist evacu- ation policy.The Colony by this time had a population of probably about 11⁄2 mil- lion, of whom some 500,000 had fled thither after the Japanese capture of Canton in 1938. This influx included for the first time a sizeable group of Chinese capital- ists.
But the looming contradictions between active Chinese capital and the entrenched racialist powers of the British were frozen by the Japanese threat to the Colony, and then by the Japanese occupation (1941-1945). Unlike most of Southeast Asia, the Japanese ruled Hong Kong as a colony, under a military Governor, Isogai Rensuke, governing essentially by decree. Although the Japanese brought far more Chinese into the administration than the British had, they, too, ruled in an imperial manner and apart from a few rather uninspired and instrumental attempts to capitalise on anti-British sentiment they did nothing to promote the ultimate liberation of Hong Kong from British rule.
Winston Churchill and the British "commitment" to Hong Kong, 1941
Churchill to General Ismay, Commander-in-Chief, Far East, 7 January 1941
"This is all wrong. If Japan goes to war with us there is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of increasing the garrison it ought to be reduced to a symbolical scale. Any trouble arising there must be dealt with at the Peace Conference after the war.
and less than one year later:
Prime Minister to Governor, Hong Kong
1
21 December 1941
"We were greatly concerned to hear of the landings on Hong Kong Island which have been effected by the Japanese. We cannot judge from here the conditions which rendered these landings possible or prevented effective counter-attacks upon the intruders. There must however be no thought of surrender. Every part of the island must be fought and the enemy resis- ted with the utmost stubbornness."
››2
1. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 3, p. 157. 2. Ibid., p. 563
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