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its installations and parked aircraft. Around a hundred structures, all told, were demolished at Ta Kwu Ling, among them 14-15 large village houses. The people had been told to move out in October-November 1943, and were not offered houses in Model Village. In lieu of resettlement, they were given 75 catties of rice per adult and 35 catties for children - clearly with the intention of providing some assistance in an emergency for those concerned. Nonetheless this must have been a time of great hardship, with winter coming on. It was reported that the village headman, who had held office since about 1925, had died of starvation.
This removal, together with Shek Wu Lung and Tai Hom, was said by the Nga Tsin Wai elders to have been unnecessary, caused by greedy Chinese contractors working for the Japanese authorities (and perhaps in collusion with some of their people), who had coveted the building materials and saw this opportunity to force people from their homes. According to the elders, the Chu lineage of Tai Hom were too frightened to object to the Japanese about this, for fear of being executed, and had said nothing.
During the main clearance, the Nga Tsin Wai leaders averred, they had had the courage to visit the Japanese officer in charge, and even to call upon the military governor. He had asked them to return to their native village in China, whereupon they had explained that they had none, having lived in Kowloon for six hundred years. Thereafter, a diversion was arranged for the light rail track carrying the earth wagons used in the nullah excavation and construction, whereby the main village - but not its outlying houses and structures - was saved from the planned demolition.
If even part of the above can be believed - its reliability is surely strengthened by the fact that it came directly from the mouths of affected parties - it will be seen that the Japanese authorities were not completely ruthless in their behaviour towards those Kowloon villagers affected by the airfield extension, or in their treatment of those men, women and children who laboured on the various public works projects undertaken by them during their wartime occupation of Hong Kong.
Finally, as reported by Patrick Hase, cash compensation was paid by the returned colonial administration after the war to those village