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The aftermath of the typhoon of 18 September 1906 which, the Hong Kong Telegraph reported, 'laid the great part of the city in ruins, annihilated the fleet of shipping'.



estimated 1 0,000 dead, and a waterfront reduced to rubble and matchwood. During the onslaught, one of many tragedies caught the public interest - the drowning of the Anglican Bishop, Dr. C. J. Hoare, who was on board a mission vessel with his trainees and who lost his life trying to save one of them from the sea.

Nathan departed after scarcely three years in office in April 1 907, two months after receiving the Duke of Connaught who came to see for himself the completed Chater reclamation whose beginning he had marked 17 years previously in laying the foundation stone. Once again F. H. May took over the government until the arrival in July of the new Governor, Sir Frederick . Lugard, who came from a highly successful career in Africa - to which he returned after his stint in Hong Kong.

He was greeted by both good and bad news. The good news was that May had just opened the first section of the Tai Tam Tuk waterworks which, with its capacity of 200 million gallons, made a recurrence of the 1902 water shortage seem unlikely in the near future. Yet, in the drought of 191 0, the cry for water was heard once again as more Chinese poured into the colony from the unsettled conditions on the mainland.

The bad news was the report of Nathan's Sanitary Commission. Lugard's remedy for the situation and its problems was to substitute, for the President



Sir Frederick Lugard poses on the steps of Government House with the Viceroy of Guangdong and his party. Sir Paul Chater and other members of the Legislative Council are in the background.



of the Sanitary Board who was a medical practitioner, a layman from the cadet service, with the Medical Officer of Health as professional adviser. He saw this as replacing curative policies with preventative ones.

As ever, events outside Hong Kong were followed in the colony by perceptible movement in its commercial barometer, and by the reactions of a Colonial Office accustomed to trouble in its most troublesome charge. In an edict of 1906 Guangxu emperor (who reigned in name at least from 1875 to 1908) required all his subjects to cease smoking opium, and set a term of 10 years from 1 January 1907 in which the habit was to be broken. In Hong Kong the legitimate trade in the drug was still considerable. In a memorandum for the Legislative Council, Lugard put the figure at over

£ 5 million in 1906. There was a big local demand over and above the

opium sent out of the colony. The home market was supplied by the opium concessionaire who prepared the drug for the licensed divans, significant

212 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

revenue deriving from this source. In 1 901 the concession had been let for

$75 0,000 per annum, rising in 1 904 to $ 2,040,000. In 1 907, the Chinese and British governments concluded an agreement to run for a three-year trial period from January 1 908, in which India undertook to reduce her export of opium to China by one-tenth of the current annual total (5 1 ,000 chests). This meant that by 191 7 the trade should have ceased altogether. On 6 May 1 908 the Secretary of State announced that steps must be taken to close the divans in Hong Kong, the Chinese government having closed those in China.

On the first of March 1 909, 26 divans were closed. Licences were not to be renewed after 28 February 1910. To compensate for the loss of revenue a duty was imposed on imported liquor, tobacco, perfumed spirit, and light hydro-carbon oil, and an ad valorem licence fee was instituted on the first registration of an imported motor vehicle. The British gov:ernment granted compensation - £9,000 in 1910 and £1 2,000 in the following year. In 1914 the opium concession was taken over by the government and a policy for the extinction of the trade was pursued, no appreciable disturbance to the colony's trade and financial stability being felt.

Thus ended officially, and to a large extent in practice, that miserable commerce by which the British and others had made vast fortunes from the process of slowly poisoning the Chinese, and on the profits from which the very existence of Hong Kong had been based. Opium use in the colony was not fully prohibited until World War II.

A bare five months after he arrived in Hong Kong Lugard delivered a speech in which he strongly advocated the foundation of a university. The 'high water mark of educational facilities' was Queen's College, and of course the College of Medicine turned out degree students, but Lugard had in mind an institution on a broader educational basis. And there was, too, an idea in certain circles that such a facility offered the chance of introducing Chinese youth to both philosophical and scientific areas of Western thought. The example of the College of Medicine was there for all to see. In the Alice Memorial Hospital - built in 1 887 as a memorial to his wife by Dr Ho Kai

J.

- the college had successfully weathered the death or retiral of the founders, . Drs Patrick Manson, W. S. Young, Candie and the Revd Dr Chalmers. With the aid of the London Missionary Society, and a $5 0,000 grant from a Chinese business man named Ng Li Hing for a new building, the College was the colony's most advanced educational establishment, by 1 901 having 12 licentiates and 23 students in training. Most graduates had found jobs in Malaya and Singapore, and one, as we noted, in the New Territories administration. Others worked in the free dispensaries for Chinese that were being set up about this time. There was every hope, therefore, that a university might spread its graduates far and wide - even to China itself - to further the Western dream.

The First Two Decades of the New Century 213

At the St Stephen's College speech day in 19 07 Lugard threw out his suggestion for a university. His other thought was that Western learning might, through the graduates, eventually be spread in China unattached to Christian teaching, as a thing worthy of respect in itself. One of Lugard's admirers, H. N. Mody, offered $15 0 ,000 for the building and an endowment of $3 0,000. But, typically in Hong Kong, the men with most money, the merchants, were less than enthusiastic about it, and the Chinese were still hesitant about endowing a seat of Western scholarship. Mody, the director of so many companies that he was known as 'the Napoleon of the Rialto', retained his enthusiasm and was eventually knighted for his generosity.

J. H. Scott, a former taipan of Butterfield and Swire, persuaded the com­ pany to endow a chair of engineering for $40,000, and in 1921 a further

$1 00,000 was donated towards engineering equipment. By the time the foundation stone was laid in March 19 10, over one and a quarter million dollars had been promised, and in 191 6, Sir Robert Hotung endowed a chair of surgery.

Lugard thought the university should have two parts - one to incorporate the College of Medicine and the Technical Institute, with an Arts faculty to be added later. The Colonial Office reaction was cool. They dubbed the scheme 'Lugard's pet lamb'. But personal appeals from Lady Lugard brought in more cash, and the university opened in September 19 13, with the then Governor, Sir F. H. May, as chancellor and with 72 students (3 1 engineering, 21 in medicine, and 20 in arts), drawn not only from Hong Kong but from the Straits Settlements, Guangzhou, and the Treaty Ports. The British govern­ ment, less cool when it saw the institution was more or less self-financing, provided a few scholarships, and Sir Charles Eliot, 'scholar and Orientalist', agreed to be its first Vice-Chancellor. Despite appearances, however, the university was insufficiently funded.

With the turn of the century, the death of the old Queen, and the accession of Edward VII in 1901, the peak of empire had been reached. The worlds of Europe and of the Orient were fast changing in political, commercial, and industrial aspects, and the clouds of a European war that was to be the first world war were crowding the horizons - horizons by now no longer discrete but strung together by telegraphic communication and fast ships. Action in one hemisphere now brought, swifter than ever before, its reaction in an­ other. In the East, Japan had risen to the status of a considerable power and was to demonstrate - first of all the oriental nations - that she was capable of trouncing the might of a Western power, Russia. Japan went on to demon­ strate with great aplomb and diplomatic finesse that in terms of remorseless greed she was not to be left behind in the 'scramble for concessions' in which the Western powers were indulging at the expense of a supine China.

Lugard and his successors up to the time of World War I were governors

acting against a background of world tension unparalleled in history because



I



Sir Henry May during his time as Colonial Secretary, with his wife, a Chinese official, and others on the track of the Kowloon-Canton Railway, somewhere in the New Territories, 19 10.



nations had never before been so conscious of what others were doing at any given time. Hong Kong, that tropical plant, reacted to each breath of cold, disturbed, hostile air that swept in from any point of the compass, its com­ mercial pulse ever on the edge of missing a beat. But the colony continued, by and large, to prosper.

Lugard's time is not distinguished by much in the way of public works but several important schemes were on the way to completion and several more were finished. The typhoon shelter at Mong Kok progressed, the Kowloon waterworks was completed, as was the British section of the Kowloon­ Guangzhou railway. In 19 1 1 the new Post Office, which also housed govern­ ment offices, was opened in all its splendour of red brick and turrets, and the domed Supreme Court on Statue Square was ready for occupation, stolid alongside the rather feminine charms of the Hong Kong Club. Chater's Jubilee celebration in the form of the Victoria Hospital for Women and Children eventually came into being. Edward VII's accession was marked by . the intended conversion of a military area in Kowloon into a public park. But the military obstinately refused to grant the facility and a miserable little recreation ground was all that could be managed.

One reaction to the new knowledge that malaria was disseminated by the anopheles mosquito was yet another demand for separate residential areas for Westerners and Chinese. Western opinion averred that the Chinese could not be trusted to obey the rules for the prevention of mosquito breeding

- the draining of stagnant water and the spraying of breeding grounds. The recommendation of a sub-committee of the Sanitary Board was to reserve 20,000 acres between Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon City for Western use, on



The new Post Office on Pedder Street was completed in Lugard's time, a handsome building in local granite and red brick. This drawing was made more than a century later, just before its demolition.



the grounds of malaria control and because wealthy Chinese were forcing up rents. The New Territories Land Court also agreed to resume 1 19 acres previously claimed in that area. Chamberlain in London agreed that a reservation was needed 'where people of clean habits will be safe from malaria'. But he objected to the exclusion of Chinese of good standing so that Europeans could enjoy low rentals. He wanted the reservation open to all persons approved by the Governor. The Peak area came to be reserved on similar conditions under the Hill District Reservation Ordinance of 1 904.

Far away to the north, in Beijing, the Old Buddha - the Empress Dowager

died on 15 November 1 908, the announcement accompanied by another which gave news of the death of her prisoner, the Emperor Guangxu. The coincidence left much to the imagination since the Emperor was reported normally to enjoy good health. Before she died the Old Buddha had decreed that her three-year-old grandson, the hapless Puyi, should inherit. His father the Regent, with other ignorant and arrogant Manchu princes, did all they could to turn back the now remorselessly ticking clock and halt reform. With the revolution of 191 1 there came an end to two thousand years of dynastic authoritarian rule in China and the demise of the Confucian ethic as sanction and underpinning of the state's authority. Entering the scene was the concept of a republic with its innate democratic ideas, inserted into the minds of a nation which had never in all its long history evinced a vestige of democracy or any tendency to democratic thought.

For Hong Kong the most obvious and immediate result was yet another

flood of refugees seeking its comparative stability.

216 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

In the spring of 1911, Sir Henry May was promoted from his post as Hong Kong's Acting Governor and left to govern Fiji. His replacement was Warren Barnes who died on the polo ground shortly after assuming his duties, and he in turn was succeeded by Claude Severn, a civil servant from Malaya. The Governor, Lugard, left in March 1912, announcing as he did so the impend­ ing return of May who had been appointed Governor. The appointment broke new ground - it was the first time that a local cadet office r had risen to be Governor. May had been appointed a cadet in 1881, a decade later becorping private secretary to Major-General Digby Barke r, whose daughter he married. From 1893 to 1902 he was Captain-Superintendent of Police, rendering conspicuous service in the 1894 plague and, along with Stewart Lockhart, in the take-over of the New Territories in 1899. His vigorous purge of corruption in the police force was also favourably remembered. As Colonial Secretary he had twice administered the government - at the departures of Blake in 1903 and Nathan in 1907 - for which he had been knighted.

The most visible alteration in Hong Kong between the time when May

left for Fiji and the time of his return is neatly defined by Sayer: 'Whereas in the spring of 1911 a Chinese discarded his queue at the risk of losing his head, in the spring of 1912 he risked his head who kept his queue. With this abrupt change of fashion Western clothes and e ffects were now much in demand . . . '. The old order had gone - or, if not exactly gone, had yielded place to disorder, 'and while young China in its foreign cap saw no inconsistency in vociferously denouncing the foreign treaties, old China, in the person of the scholar and official, crept silently away and the immemorial pirate and brigand ventured from his hiding place again'. 4

Sir Henry and his wife stepped ashore at Blake Pier and were borne away in

their sedan chairs by eight scarlet-clad bearers. No sooner had his chair approached the Pedder Street flank of the new Post Office than a shot rang out and an assassin's bullet whizzed past him to lodge in the chair occupied by his wife Helena. The Hong Kong Telegraph carried the story the following day, 5 July 1912.



All records of crime in this colony were eclipsed yesterday when a daring attempt, miraculously unsuccessful, was made . . . to assassinate His Excellency Sir Henry May . . . The red-coated coolies bearing the Governor's chair had just got into their stride when a man was seen to pass rapidly between the soldiers in front of the Post Office . . . He fired point blank, about 3 feet range . . .



The would-be assassin was at once seized and almost throttled, and beaten by witnesses. 'Sir Henry preserved a composure which, in the circumstances, was truly remarkable . . . The bullet whizzed under the cover of the chair . . . splintering the bamboo frame of Lady May's chair. ' Sir Henry jumped out at



Sir Henry May replaced Lugard as Governor, arriving in July r9r2. Disembarked and in his chair of state, he had just passed the statue of the Duke of Connaught near Blake Pier and was passing the new Post Office when a would-be assassin fired. The scene was captured by a photographer in Union Building opposite as the assailant was wrestled to the ground.



once and 'brushed down his coat . . . On sitting down again he turned a half­ contemptuous, half-sympathetic glance at his assailant. ' And the procession continued to the City Hall and the address of welcome. The gunman, Li Hong Hung, turned out to be a man harbouring a grudge against May from his days in the police.

There was no connection between the incident and the growing turmoil on the other side of the border, which had prompted the setting up of a line of military posts there. May was to re-lay the foundations of the system of deportation under wide emergency powers.

218 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

The perennial problem of silver coinage surfaced again - devaluation caused by the flood of these coins from the Chinese Mint at Guangzhou. Things came to a head when several public utility companies complained they were losing money by being forced to accept the coins. The tramway company refused to take them, and a public outcry ensued since passengers were forced to use other legal tender and were in effect paying more. The Chinese felt their country was being insulted by the boycott of Chinese coins

even if they did bear the name of the now deposed emperor. Such was the new �pirit of nationalism. They boycotted the trams. The company appealed to the Governor, and May treated the situation as an attack on his government. In one district of Victoria where the trouble appeared to have started he imposed the provisions of a boycott bill, inflicting a punitive rate on property there. This un-British imposition of collective responsibility for an offence - a traditional Chinese measure - worked like magic. Within days of the bill's publication the Chinese members of the Legislative Council boarded a tram en bloc, demonstrating to the little world of Chinese Hong Kong 'that tram-riding was fashionable again'.5 The tramway company received a cash handout of $45 ,000 in compensation. The following year saw the passing without protest of an ordinance forbidding the circulation of foreign coins and notes; and the Guangzhou 20-cent piece and the familiar Banco Marino of Macau one dollar note vanished. By 1919, $26 million in small coins had been withdrawn and demonetized.

Lugard had had the satisfaction of having added, as it were, the piano nobile to the mansion of Hong Kong education with his university: May was confronted with chaos on the ground floor and basement. The Board of Vernacular Chinese Education set up by Lugard had failed to function, perhaps because its tasks were novel, its guidelines vague. Conservative ideas on vernacular schooling now came face to face with ideas from over the border generated by the revolution. A feeling was growing in Hong Kong civil service circles that this might be an appropriate moment to secure control of the hundreds (the number was not precisely known) of vernacular schools, and decide what they should teach and how they might teach it. May con­ demned the Board as an 'absolute failure', and the situation was chaotic. His _ prescription for the malady was clear cut. 'Perhaps in the dim bye and bye', he told the Legislative Council as he introduced the Education Bill of 1913 , 'Government may listen to those who wish for an Education Board . . . but [government] considers that it can best deal with this matter with its own strong hand. '6 Every school was now required to register with the Director of Education, to conform with the regulations laid down, and to submit to official inspection. Whatever thoughts of revolutionary radicalism may have simmered in Chinese scholastic minds, the tight new regulations must have nipped them in the bud.

Hong Kong was in the process not so much of change - that was the

The First Two Decades of the New Century 219

disorder of the day in China - but of its own kind of consolidation. The words of Sun Yatsen, spoken in reminiscence, come to mind : 'Afterwards I saw the outside world [outside China] and I began to wonder how it was that

. . . Englishmen could do such things as they had done, for example with the barren rock of Hong Kong . . . within 70 or 80 years, while China, in 4,000 years, had no place like Hong Kong. '7

The first motor car in the colony is said to have been imported by the

successful American dentist Dr J. W. Noble, but he may have been forestalled by a Chinese whose name has not survived in this connection. Others soon followed despite the fact that there were only a few miles of motorable road. The syndrome is still apparent today, when thousands of cars capable of speeds of 150 m.p.h. are imported to be driven on roads not one of which is safe for travelling at that speed. By the time of May's return as Governor, streets that had previously known only horse-drawn carriages (long vanished anyway), chairs borne by teams of panting coolies, the bicycle, the rickshaw, and latterly the tram, now had to withstand the more demanding wheels of the internal combustion-engined chariot. A circular road for the island was planned to link the existing stretches, and another was to follow the rickshaw path to Tai Po in the New Territories. On the island, the western road which already reached the Dairy Farm site in Pok Fu Lam continued on to Aberdeen and was to reach Deep Water Bay in 1915 and Repulse Bay two years later; that between the new reservoir at Tai Tam and Tai Tam Gap was finished in 1918. On the peninsula the corniche from Kowloon to Castle Peak was begun

Ill 1917 .

Just as in the Western world, the horizons opened up by such develop­ ments in Hong Kong were numerous, although they along with their social and infrastructural implications were at the time scarcely considered. It became increasingly practicable for families whose bread-winner worked in town to live in the suburbs. Places of recreation such as beaches and country­ side formerly accessible only by boat offered opportunities for leisure and residence. The Repulse Bay Hotel opened on the first of January 1920, its purpose to exploit the fine sandy beach at its feet. The beach at North Point

- far enough away from town - was readily accessible by tram (special trams were laid on in summer, and even military band concerts by moonlight on that long-vanished beach were advertised). The intrepid golfers of the colony had established a course at Fartling in 1889, reached until the advent of the railway to Guangzhou by a bizarre variety of means - boat, two-man rickshaw, vvalking, pony, and chair. The Deep Water Bay course was access­ ible only by boat until the coming of the road in 1915 , or more adventurously by foot from Aberdeen, or over the gap from Happy Valley - together with a retinue of coolies carrying tiffin.

One old Hong Kong landmark fell victim to the motorized age - the clock tower at Pedder Street and Queen's Road. It had stood there since

2 20 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

J.

1863. As early as 1884 a member of the Hong Kong Club, then diagonally opposite, was urging the removal of the structure, suggesting alternative sites for what he saw as a traffic hazard. A year later the same petitioner, M. D. Stephens, tried again, remarking that apart from the obstruction to traffic, because of new buildings the clock was barely visible. Ten years later still the persevering Stephens 'ventured' to write to the Director of Public Works about the now acute traffic congestion, suggesting that as the donor of the clock, Douglas Lapraik, now had a stained glass window in the cathedral his memory was adequately perpetuated without the offending clock tower. 'When the time arrives . . . the wonder will be how it was not removed before. ' Presumably Stephens then gave up in disgust (or perhaps died in the attempt), and the clock tower lasted another 29 years before it fell to the breaker's hammer. Mr Stephens has no memorial.

Governor May, a keen sportsman, in his former capa�ity as Colonial Secretary had stocked the colony's reservoirs with fish in order 'to keep his hand in with the rod'. As Governor he took up golf and encouraged the development of the Fanling course. He went to the Christmas and New Year race meetings and attended the annual cricket match against the Shanghai Cricket Club, fostering Chinese interest in sport. But race meetings at Happy Valley were more to Chinese taste than cricket, and the sport there was



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The disastrous fire at the racecourse in February 1918 .

The First Two Decades of the New Century 221

gambling. Racing started in the 1 840s, quickly becoming popular. In the February 191 8 meeting May and his party were witnesses to a disaster there. From the matsheds, some several stories high, in which the wealthier Chinese installed themselves and where the midday meal was cooked, panic-stricken Chinese were seen rushing out as the afternoon racing was about to commence. Then followed an explosion and collapse of the matsheds as fire broke out. In under half an hour about six hundred persons met their death, trapped, burned alive, trampled underfoot. The disaster wiped out approx­ imately o. 1 per cent of the population, which stood at the time at something over 561 ,000.

Since the end of the nineteenth century revenue had gone up, from the 1 898

total of $3 .62 million to $ 8.6 million in 1913, and - a huge leap - to over

$1 8.6 million in 191 8 - despite a decline in revenue from the opium con­ cession. As well as the public works already noted, the Mong Kok typhoon shelter was finished by 191 5 and had already proved its usefulness in a typhoon. The second half of the Tai Tam Tuk waterworks scheme was begun, including a dam designed to hold more than one and a half million gallons of water. It took fiye years to build and was opened by Sir Henry on 2 February 191 8. The Governor remarked in his speech:



When one sees so much fresh water around, one cannot help reflecting what a pity it is that the residents of this Colony . . . do not adopt water as a beverage instead of something stronger. It would surprise some of you people to learn the terrible casualties . . . inflicted upon the civil servants by too free use of alcoholic beverages

. . . Out of every two men who arrive here, whether as policemen, overseers on works like this [reservoir], a_s Sanitary Inspectors, or as Revenue Officers, not more than one lives and remains in the service to earn a pension. . . . I do not include the upper ranks [of civil servants] for I have no figures to go on. 8



The reservoir and other major works (with the exception of the railway to Guangzhou) were financed from public revenue. Conversely, it was left to a group of Chinese to form the Kaitak Land Investment Company Limited to reclaim land in Kowloon Bay, the name Kaitak formed from the names of the directors, Sir Kai Ho Kai and Mr Au Tack, land upon which some time later the first airstrip was built, and which is still the site of the colony's airport.

A facility of a different kind was offered to Hong Kong in 1914 by Mr (later Sir) Ellis Kadoorie. He had heard of the Governor's wife's interest in the welfare of working non-Chinese women, for whom little suitable accom­ modation existed. Kadoorie offered $ 1 5 ,ooo 'for the purpose of erecting a Women's Institute or Hostel . . . provided that within two years . . . an equal sum of mon'ey be realized'. He eventually donated much more, and the Helena May Institute for Women rose on a fine site on Garden Road a little

222 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

way up and across the road from the Cathedral. Other generous contributors (oddly enough for an institute for Western women, and benignly) were Mr Ho Korn-tong, Mr Chan Kai-ming, and Mr Lau Chu-pak. 9

Sir Henry's administration was bisected by World War I. In Hong Kong most European nationalities were represented by groups employed there, and with the outbreak of that war, overnight, German business associates and friends became the enemy; and Europeans, formerly classed together by the Chinese, were now seen by them to be divided among themselves. Watched by the Chinese, British merchants and the Volunteers marched their former colleagues and friends to internment. There were similar emotions among the British as they saw German neighbours from the Anglo-French concession at Guangzhou leave to defend the German port, Qingdao (on the Shandong Peninsula), against the Japanese who were allied to Britain in the war.

Japan, anxious to gain further rights in China, presented what came to be termed the Twenty-one Demands to the Chinese government 1n January 191 5 with the request that the contents be kept secret and only published when agreed. Of the five sections, the last was aimed at turning China into a kind of Japanese protectorate. Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic, had no option but to publish the document in the hope of gaining foreign support. But, sadly, China had no real allies. In the end she had to agree to a watered-down version of the demands with the exception of those in the fifth part which was, euphemistically, 'postponed'. The British, allied to Japan and with a fleet thinly stretched in the Far East, could scarcely afford to protest, and most British in Hong Kong appear to have brushed the matter aside. So long as the Japanese did not interfere in the British sphere of interest in China - the whole Yangzi Valley - they were not about to stretch themselves on China's behalf.

Hong Kong followed with avid interest the daring exploits of the German cruiser Emden, whose movements read like some adventure story as she disguised herself as a Russian cruiser, and contrived in view of the Penang Club to sink a Russian ship in Penang Harbour. The Emden had taken a considerable toll of British shipping including the cruiser Monmouth. There was great relief when the news of the sinking of the cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Battle of the Falklands was received in November 191 4. With the destruction of the German Pacific fleet, including the Emden, Hong Kong slept more comfortably.

Hong Kong people contributed generously to war charities, raising $ 5 million as a gift to the British government. In 1917 the Hong Kong Defence Corps was formed from the Volunteers and military service became compulsory. British shipping up and down the China coast was taken over by the British government and normal commercial activity virtually ceased until peace returned. Imported goods became progressively dearer but as if in compensation the value of silver rose in relation to gold, trebling or

The First Two Decades of the New Century 22 3

quadrupling the assets of many a local entrepreneur. But with the war dragging on and British reverses in battle coming one after the other, with the lengthening casualty list, the gloom of Britain settled on the colony. China eventually declared war on Germany on 14 August 1917, her main con­ tribution to the Allied cause being the 200,000 Chinese labourers sent to work behind the lines in France at the expense of the Chinese government.

Sentiment in the colony turned very strongly against the Germans as the situation worsened in Europe. In 1917 the British Chamber of Commerce voted that Germans be excluded for a decade from the colony. It was a melodramatic if understandable gesture with not the faintest hope of gaining official support, and the motion was later reversed without acrimony. The spring of 1918 brought no relief from the carnage in France, and the mood of the colony grew darker. In January a gang of youths were trapped as they robbed a tenement in Gresson Street, Wan Chai. Cornered, the armed robbers decided to shoot it out, taking heavy toll of the police. In the following month came a huge conflagration in the Cheung Sha Wan shipyard, and soon after that the racecourse matshed fire shocked the colony. As if to crown a chapter of horrors, an epidemic of cerebro-spinal meningitis ran through the Chinese tenements like those of Gresson Street with the speed and finality of fire. Meanwhile the daily press published the latest casualty figures from France.

In September 1918 the Governor, who had served a continuous term of six years in the colony, left on a brief vacation. He retired the following January, and a joint meeting of the Executive and Legislative Councils was held to pay tribute to him. (This was the second joint meeting in thr�e months, the previous one having been held to celebrate the end of the War.) The occasion was a memorable one with two principal spokesmen, Mr Lau Chu Pak and Sir Paul Chater, voicing what were certainly the sentiments of the majority of people in Hong Kong. It was a highly charged moment, and speeches tended to be emotional: but the character of Sir Henry May was summed up with fair accuracy. 'Sparing of speech and sparing of smiles', said Mr Lau, 'but he never spared himself in the execution of his duty to the colony.' Chater had the final word: 'As Governor he made a mark which will be indelible from the colony's history.' He had certainly devoted the greater part of his working life to Hong Kong.

With the ending of the war there ended not only an epoch in world history,

but a term in the. political, social and commercial history qf the colony; and it began to be clear that another and sharply different age was dawning, in East and West alike.



I8. Inter-war Years the Twenties



SIR Reginald Stubbs took up office as Governor in Hong Kong in September 1 919. He had visited the colony nine years previously to arrange details of a scheme to pay civil servants in sterling instead of dollars. He was therefore slightly familiar with it. But by now, imperceptibly at first, various emphases in Hong Kong life had begun to alter in the light of changing attitudes in Britain in its post-war mood, and partly in response to events over the border in China; and also consequent on the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the later Washington Treaties of 1922.



The motor car began to be a more visible element in Hong Kong in the 1920s. Looking west in Chater Road in the early 1920s, the tram, the rickshaw, and the handcart are the sole vehicles, with the exception of the one par½ed car.

Inter-war Years - the Twenties 225

Britain's financial and commercial position in the world had suffered drastically from the pressures of four years of total warfare. Long accepted presuppositions about her place in the world were severely shaken. The war had eliminated Germany's colonial and commercial clout in the Far East, and for a time Russian influence there was weakened by the Communist revolution of 1917 and its aftermath. But Japan was a rising sun, Britain's chief rival - something that could have been predicted in the wake of the Twenty-one Demands of 1915 which sought to make China a Japanese dependency.

The Washington Naval Limitation Treaty of February 1922, signed by the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy stipulated that battleships and first-class cruisers held by America, Britain, and Japan were to be respectively in the ratio of 5: 5: 3. Those of France and Italy were to conform to a ratio of

r. 75: r. 75. This meant that while Japan had her fleet concentrated in the Pacific, the larger fleets of America and Britain were much more thinly spread around the world. Japan was thus the strongest naval power in the Pacific. The treaty was to remain in force until 193 6.

For China, the Nine-Power Treaty in the Washington Agreements perpetuated the Open Door policy with its equality of opportunity for foreigners to trade in China, while preserving her integrity as a state. Such provisions were not accompanied with the means to enforce them. The upshot of what was for China a sad and tangled story of international intrigue and big-power rivalry was that she emerged in much the same state of bondage to the treaty powers as she had been before the war.

The re-emergence of Sun Yatsen's Guomindang at its First National Congress in Guangzhou, in alliance with Soviet Russia in 1924, came at a time of endless warlord rivalry and combat. Faced with country-wide warlord depredations and internecine warfare, Marxist ideology seemed to offer hope, its attractions highlighted by the success of the October Revolution in Russia. Marxism was seen to be more attractive than Western democracry, in part because like Confucianism it was not religion-based. And the Chinese saw themselves, like Russia, defeated by Japan. Moreover, the same imperial powers who had forced on China the Unequal Treaties were seen now by the Chinese to be attacking the revolution in Russia. When Western intervention in Russia was defeated, the Chinese were naturally enthusiastic.

Yuan Shikai's aspiration to be emperor at the head of a new dynastic regime ruling from Beijing came to nothing, and no formula was found there for a workable form of democratic government. Sun Yatsen in the south had the capability of inspiring his followers, but his idealism was not matched by a corresponding strength of political leadership. He called for advice from Russia, and ieceived among other advisers Michael Borodin, who was to train party political cadres. Sun hoped, by linking the nationalism of the

226 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Guomindang to socialist ideas, to make it into a truly revolutionary organization. Under his tutelage efforts were made to harass the Western powers.

In Hong Kong the effects of these events were felt soon enough. Europeans were not totally unaware of the implications. They sensed, if dimly, the new Chinese pride in being a nation and not just (as formerly) a race.

Confronted in early 1919 with a full-blown strike in Hong Kong, Westerners were slow to understand its cause. In fact the strike was about the price _of rice which had risen dramatically, in a city where rice and not bread was the staff of life, in response to scarcity caused by the shortage of shipping and the shortfall in the wheat and potato crops in the West. Westerners had turned to rice. Price rises in other commodities in Hong Kong during the war had not been matched by wage increases; and the threat even to the rice supply was seen by the Chinese as insupportable.

Westerners, seldom great rice eaters, scarcely realized the gravity of the situation for their Chinese employees. The large numbers of engineers and fitters employed by various businesses, faced with rising rents, food costs, and now a shortage of rice, politely asked for a 40 per cent wage increase. Their realization of the potential power they wielded was still embryonic; they requested rather than demanded.

Taikoo Docks, one of the largest employers of skilled and semi-skilled labour in the engineer and fitter categories, had also to face the Hoi Yuen or Seamen's Union which was developing under the eye of the more extreme elements in the political context of the Guomindang. The man behind the action taken by the engineers was Hon Man-wai, an educated man with a command of English and a forceful personality . He had begun his career as a teacher in the engineering faculty of the university. · By 1916 he had left and set up his own machine shop, a successful business which he ran for the next four decades. His personality was one considerable asset in potential leadership. Another was the fact of his being self-employed. He was not subject to the threat of dismissal. As head of the Chinese Engineering Institute in 1920, his right-hand man was chief of the meter installation department in the Hongkong Electric Company, Li Cheng, who also had some English.

These two well-balanced activists were a phenomenon startlingly new in Hong Kong. Both were capable, responsible men, sharing views on the need for improvement in working environments, not least those of apprentices who toiled in conditions resembling those in the factories of the early Industrial Revolution in Britain. Hongkong Electric was, however, one of the better employers, and Li Cheng spent his entire 5 0-year working life in their employ.

At first the employers did not take the request for a 40 per cent wage rise seriously. But soon they were forced to face the fact that it was backed by an organized work-force. At a meeting held to discuss what they could do the

Inter-war Years - the Twenties 227

employers decided to increase the rice allowance. In the hope that trouble would go away, they had not seized the core of the problem - the gene ral rise in the cost of living. In a letter from their lawyer, Lo Man-kam (later an Executive Council member, and knighted for his services), the Chinese Engineering Institute rejected this offer. When the employe rs ignored the letter deadlock was reached. Employers simply could not credit the fact that they were no longer in a position to control their work-force at will, far less to dictate to the Engineering Institute. It was a shock.

The Secretary for Chinese Affairs, E. R. Hallifax, insisted on a second meeting of employers. At this it was decided to ask the Secretary to negotiate a settlement on their behalf, with the engineers' and fitters' representatives from ·au dockyards, binding on all other employers of engineers and fitters. Mr Hallifax's prime mistake lay in not realizing that it was with the Institute he ought to negotiate. Austin Coates writes in his book on the history of Hongkong Electric:



What the Europeans had overlooked was that the following day . . . was Ching Ming, the annual festival of remembrance of the ancestors . . . At five o'clock closing time, and at various shift changing times, 40 per cent of all fitters in the dockyards, and 2 5 per cent of the fitters at Hong Kong Electric, politely informed their immediate bosses that they were leaving for their villages to give respect to their ancestors . . . Off they all went by night train to Canton. 1



Several days later, afte r the festival was over and no one had returned to work, many more fitters in other businesses began to leave also. The major supplier of soft drinks, A! S. Watson, stopped production and hotels lost their engineering staff in charge of boilers and mechanical devices. The docks were silent. Only the telephone and gas services continued operating, although their employees too were asking for a 40 per cent rise.

At this point Ho Man-wai did two highly responsible things. He put out a notice explaining the workers' point of view; and he sent to Guangzhou to persuade the workers to return. The success of his organization - the Institute - had perhaps surprised even him. The workers were not keen to come back. Wages were higher in Guangzhou and the cost of living lower. The Canton Times cautioned: 'If the strike goes on, many will find permanent employment in Canton, and Hong Kong will be the loser of a class of men which have [sic] taken so long to qualify for their avocations, and whose places will have to be filled by untrained and ine xperienced men - to the detriment of their employers.' And in Hong Kong itself the editorial opinion of the Hong Kong Morning Herald was: 'The Chinese cannot put up with living in this way any longer, and are compelled to strike for higher wages.' Chinese e mployers offered to conce de the 40 per cent, but the Europeans would not budge. An affiliate of the Hong Kong Institute - the Fitters' and

228 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Turners' Guild of Guangzhou - then offered to reduce their workers' claim to 3 7 per cent, and Hallifax urged the European employers to accept this - but they declined, the Jardine representative being the most obdurate in refusing to agree. Finally the employers offered 3 2 per cent, which was promptly rejected. It was now a question of face. The engineers had started the conciliatory process by their offer of 3 7 per cent, and now it was the turn of the employers to do likewise and raise their own offer. The employers, with ill grace, offered 3 2 I/2 per cent and settlement was immediately made on 19 April. In a matter of hours the workers were returning from Guangzhou by train.

So ended the first major strike in the colony. Its importance in the history of labour relations in Hong Kong cannot be exaggerated. For the first time Europeans were forced to recognize the needs of the labour force. For the first time they realized that they could not any longer rely on a supply of unquestioning cheap Chinese labour - a point of view taken by much of the local press in an attitude unusually at variance with the temper of Western employers. The modern age of labour relations had, belatedly, arrived in the colony.

From the European point of view, worse was to come. In 1922 the Chinese Seamen's Union, the Hoi Yuen, influenced by revolutionary nationalism and the newly established Communist Party of China's Labour Secretariat (whose job it was to organize industrial trade unions), came out on strike, joined by 1 2 other trade unions. At this point Hong Kong experienced its first general strike, the life of the colony being at once paralysed. The Hoi Yuen took its place as the leader of 70 unions in the Hong Kong Federation of Labour, an organization which listed the struggle against imperialism and capitalism among its objectives.

With a general strike on his hands, Governor Stubbs must have felt his appointment was far from a sinecure; and when the thorny legal problem of mui tsai once more raised its head, it must have seemed obvious that a new and abrasive era in human relations in the colony had dawned. This time the question came up with the formation of a Society for the Protection of Mui Tsai, and with the combination of the Anti-Mui Tsai Society and a decision of the left-leaning trade union leaders in favour of its abolition. Winston Churchill, at the time Secretary of State for the Colonies, telegraphed the Governor on 22 February 19 22 demanding that he issue a



proclamation immediately, making it quite clear to employers and employed that the status of mui-tsai, as understood in China . . . will not in future be recognized in Hong Kong and . . . that no compulsion of any kind to prevent girls over age from freely leaving . . . their adopted parents or other employers will be allowed.



In the teeth of the united opposition of the Legislative and Executive Councils

Inter-war Years - the Twenties 229

an ordinance was passed (No. 1, 1923 )2 to accord with Churchill's wishes. But it was to remain a dead letter until in the latter part of the decade interest quickened in 'child slavery'. The Nationalist government in Guangzhou later (in 1927) issued a proclamation emancipating all slaves and mui tsai, and in Hong Kong in 1929 the Governor was instructed to register all mui tsai. The problem, however, proved obdurate. A commission sent out to Hong Kong in 193 6, and numerous other measures taken, failed to eradicate the practice. There were still over one thousand mui tsai registered in the colony, and probably many more unregistered. Even in the 1970s, cases were still

coming to light. 3

Stubbs' six long years in Hong Kong were among the most socially and politically vexatious in its history to that date. The engineers' and the seamen's strikes were followed by a larger and much longer strike and boycott in 1925 -6. In essentials this stemmed from a popular political movement against the privileged status of foreigners in China. The trouble began in Shanghai in May 1925 when an anti-Japanese demonstration developed into a general anti-foreign one; this in turn changed into an anti-British demonstration because of the great preponderance of British commercial interests in China, particularly in Shanghai. The police of the International Settlement, who happened to be British, opened fire on a crowd which they felt was threatening to get out of hand. The incident was exploited by the Chinese. At this time the Guomindang were co-operating with the Communists in fomenting labour unrest in foreign-held settlements, and Hong Kong came in for its share. In the colony the trade unions had de­ veloped as a kind of co-operative in such a manner that they were partly trade union, partly under the influence of the Communists, and partly an extension of the traditional Chinese secret societies, their general complexion being nationalist and anti-foreign. The strike and boycott were in large measure politically inspired and concerned the antagonism between the government of Guangzhou and that of Hong Kong. The fact that when a more conservative element gained the upper hand in Guangzhou the two sides were prompt to negotiate a settlement (on 10 October 1926), almost sixteen months after the strike began, makes that point clear.

In the meantime, until the boycott was lifted in October 1926, the position

of the colony was grave indeed. A total boycott of British goods was accompanied from 30 June 1925 by the withdrawal of all Chinese workers. The essential servi.ces were maintained by volunteers, the armed forces, and by the Hong Kong Volunteer Corps. While the actual strike gradually collapsed, the boycott of British shipping and goods continued.

One noteworthy incident in the strike was the initiative of a well-known Chinese, Dr Co Sinwan (Ts'o Seen-wan) who more or less commandeered an office in the City Hall and publicly called for Chinese volunteers to assist in running services. The response to Dr Co's call was immediate. In three days

230 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

,

he had 5 00 volunteers, and in the next 20 days about three thousand - more than were required. The astonishment of the 'old China hands' was intense. When the strike was at its peak, the Governor made a speech to the Legislative Council in which he declared (without referring to the Russian influence in Chinese politics of the time) : 'This is not a strike but a deliberate attempt to destroy, in the interests of anarchy, the prospects and the very existence of the community.'4 He was wrong about anarchy - never a Communist policy. Hallifax referred to the strike when it ended as 'the failure of the Moscow-Canton attack', 5 which was nearer the mark. The general effect on Hong Kong was a new feeling of solidarity, which was precisely the opposite of the instigators' intentions. There are no available figures to show the effect of the boycott on trade, but shipping returns reveal something of

the picture (see Appendix 5).



Sir Reginald E. Stubbs (front row, far right) with the members of the Legislative Council and others on the steps of Government House. In the centre of the front row is Sir Claude Severn, Colonial Secretary. Sir Paul Chater stands in the second row to the left (white moustache). Albert and Reuben Sassoon are

Jin.

the second row to the right of Severn, and the well-known dentist and early motor car owner,

W. Noble, is in the second row to the left of Severn.



. _............:..�-

�·..,;q...;.._:



The residence of the Lieutenant-Governor, Major-General D'Aguilar. Murdoch Bruce, r84os.



Chinese nursemaids with their charges on the Parade Ground. Charles Wirgman, r8 56.



Happy Valley racecourse and the colonial cemetery. Chinese school, late 1840s.



Sir Boshan Wei Yuk, a wealthy business man. Unknown Chinese artist, early twentieth century.



""-



A crowd on the way to the races. Charles Wirgman, 1858 .



A street stall and its patrons, still a common sight throughout south China. William Prinsep, 1839.



Hong Kong coolies in the rain, wearing straw coats. Unknown artist, mid-nineteenth century.



A view of the north shore of Hong Kong island. To the left are the naval docks and in the centre are the business district and, behind this, Mid-Levels. Serried ranks of tall buildings stretch on to West Point, far right. Frank Fischbeck, 1989.



Almost all arriving and departing cargo in 19 24 was still handled by lighters and crew, and by gangs of coolies, most of them still wearing traditional clothing.



The pre-boycott number of British steamers entering Guangzhou harbour in the months of August and Setember 1924 varied between 240 and 160: in the same period of 1925 the number varied between 27 and only 2. Hong Kong's share of the China trade fell to just over 10 per cent and continued below 20 per cent until the Sino-Japane se War.

The colony made a slow recovery. Political upheavals within China

reduced purchasing power there, but imports from China still ran high. The pattern of the colony's trade altered considerably in the years immediately after the War and until the commencement of World War II in Europe. The old entrepot trade with China was diminishing in relation to the growing importance of the total colonial trade. And trade with the western Pacific and with South-east Asian countries was on the increase. The trade figures have to be viewed in conjunction with the changing value of the dollar. In 1919 the Hong Kong silver dollar varied between 5 s. 2d. and 3 s.¾d. In 1920 the fluctuation was even wider, and after 1921 the value never exceeded 3 s.od. The 193 1 trade recession caused it to drop below one shilling.

The need for currency reform brought, eventually, a commission appointed in London. It recommended that Hong Kong should adhere to the silver standard as loµg as China did, that banknotes should be convertible into silver bullion, and that note issue be in the hands of a Hong Kong Currency Board, as should the silver bullion reserves. The Chamber of Commerce

23 2 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

agreed with this assessment which seemed to consider that the colony was still very closely linked with China in trade, and that it would be advantageous to retain China's silver standard rather than take advantage of a currency based on gold. The Chamber of Commerce, however, argued that since about two-thirds of the Hong Kong note issue was held in Guangzhou, Government control of currency was not desirable.

The impossibility of Hong Kong as an entity - colonial, administrative, or even social - pursuing a course wholly its own has been encountered previ_ously. Hong Kong was, and today remains, very much a reflector of world currents - of the needs of other places in material goods, of the trends in their politics, and even of their social emphasis. At the end of the 1914-18 war, Britain, the 'land fit for heroes', was in the grip of disillusion and social change. Doctrines such as socialism were hotly e spoused and equally vehemently denied and vilified. From the human sacrifice that had been exacted by the most terrible of wars there emerged a bitterness as society did not accord those heroes what was said to be their due. And if the age of nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism had not vanished, it had cooled in the face of left-wing home truths. Hong Kong, the early Victorian child of just such untrammelled private enterprise that put personal and corporate aggrandizement first, had become the prime Asian example of its success, reflecting in the twenties both the British past and also its post-war com­ plexion. Like Britain, it had trouble adapting to the new mood: unlike in Britain that mood came upon Hong Kong society from above and not from the grass-roots, all-classes trauma of human sacrifice in war. It · was as artificial in the colony as the fragile British bravado of the 1920s attempts at female emancipation.



The unveiling of the memorial to the Hong Kong dead of World War I, 24 May 1923.



,t,

_;:J=..-:.. - 71,� j

In 1920, Bernard Shaw and his wife, on a visit to China, passed through Hong Kong where they were entertained by Sir Robert Hotung. From left to right: Mrs Shaw, Ho Shai Lai (Sir Robert's son), Sir Robert, Mrs Simpson, Shaw, Professor R. K. Simpson of Hong Kong University, Lady Hotung.



The formerly self-assured British view in Hong Kong of the Chinese became a little less arrogant with increasing doubts about Britain's role in the post-war world. The growing financial dominance of the United States and the upsurge of Japan's commercial and naval power were but two of the new factors in world change, in which the colony was the merest pawn.

Stubqs was doubtless relieved when his term of office ended. The boycott was not yet over and he had had a hard time as Governor, politically rather out of his depth when it came to dealing with the complexities and crises induced by the metamorphosis in China. He was succeeded by a man who had every qualification to be called the colony's most intelligent Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi. He had been chosen by the Colonial Office in one of its more rational, even inspired, moments as the man most likely to match the subtly, yet in some ways radically, altered circumstances in Hong Kong. Sir Cecil had begun his diplomatic career as one of that select group of cadet officers from whom mucl\ that was worthy in Hong Kong's administrations had come. Arrived in the East, the cadets were expected to gain a mastery of the Chinese language at Guangzhou during their first couple of years. Their task was to



Sir Cecil Clementi, KCMG, LL D.



convert themselves in language - spoken and written into Western versions of traditional Chinese gentlemen. Clementi succeeded better than the others in those tasks and was acclaimed by the Chinese for the excellence of his calligraphy. Both he and Lady Clementi were persons of charm and culture, Sir Cecil described by the Bengal poet and savant Rabindranath Tagore after a lunch at Government House in 1928 as 'one of the most cultivated Europeans I have ever met in the Orient'. 6 Others were to react in much the same fashion.

An administrator of more than usual skills, Sir Cecil was also (what Stubbs

was not) a diplomat of some brilliance. It was through his patient efforts in establishing friendly contacts in Guangzhou at the highest level (thanks to his fluency in Chinese) that normalization of Sino-British relations was achieved in the area. During a visit to Guangzhou, Clementi announced British recognition of the Guomindang as the National Government of China; and this was far from his only diplomatic success. In the decade which followed Clementi's term as Governor, practically every important advance in the progress of Hong Kong may be traced in its initiation to him. To Clementi was due the clearance of the slums - those insanitary, inhuman terraces whose sole windows opened on the front and which were built back to back, enclosing a series of airless, windowless cubicles, worse even than the slums of Guangzhou. To Clementi was due the building of Queen Mary Hospital at Pok Fu Lam, opened in 193 7, overlooking the Dairy Farm's herds on the airy slopes above the sea. The Shing Mun reservoir, the first major water storage facility in the New Territories, was begun under Clementi.

Inter-war Years - the Twenties 2 3 5

The Governor was a man before his time - like Hennessy, but infinitely more diplomatic and cautious - on the subject of race relations. His acquaintance with Hong Kong, he wrote in 1926, and with things Chinese, extended over a quarter of a century. One of his major worries was that the Chinese and European communities in the colony, in daily contact as they were, moved in different worlds and had no comprehension of each other's way of life and thought. This, he thought, retarded social, moral, intellectual, and even commercial progress. There were few enough people in his or any other time in Hong Kong who thought in this way. And Clementi was too early in the century to be able to effect a rapprochement in any but business relations. It was to require future dire events in the Orient to nudge the process along.

In 1929, on Clementi's initiative, the Hong Kong Flying Club was formed. The year before had seen the arrival of four flying boats from Singapore, but it was to be another six years before Kai Tak was in regular use for commercial planes. By March 1 93 6 the Hong Kong-Penang flight was inaugurated, linking with flights from Britain which terminated there. A year or so later the South China Morning Post was carrying advertisements for Imperial Airways: 'Fly to England for the Coronation . . . Hong Kong to London in 10 days. Twice weekly.' In the same year, 1 937, Pan American linked Hong Kong to Manila, and it was then possible to fly from the colony to San Francisco in six-and-a-half days. In 193 8 Kai Tak airport handled almost ten thousand passengers. The journey to Britain by rail through China, and via the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia, took 18 days; and by steamer five weeks; but the cost of air travel was still prohibitive. In 1 939 the single fare to London was £1 60, compared to the return steamship fare of

£105 first class; and a one-way ticket on the Trans-Siberian was a mere £5 7.

Among other memorable events of the Clementi years was the death of Sir Paul Chater, so long a leading figure in business and in philanthropy, at his baroque residence Marble Hall on Conduit Road. It is open to doubt whether Sir Paul ever realized the mocking connotation which attached to that name as a synonym for the worst in bourgeois pretension, and surely he was ignorant of the next line of that early Victorian music-hall ditty, 'I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble Halls', from which it came - 'With vassals and serfs at my side'. 7 Instructions in his will decreed that his death was to be followed by burial within 12 hours. It was presumed that his wish was to avoid public expense, eulogies, and the like. But the stipulation on timing caused near chaos. No radio service was available to inform the numerous persons who should know, and Chater's death at 5 a.m. missed the morning papers. But somehow the Dean of the cathedral got together a service at 11 a.m., attended by a large co,ngregation. Flags flew at half-mast, the Stock Exchange opened only to close immediately. And by 5 p.m. Sir Paul's wish was granted, and he was interred.





.

- ,..,..,.1' . � .. . . \



Chater's home, Marble Hall, No. I Conduit Road.



With the passing of Chater the last but one of the grand barons of nineteenth-century capitalism in the colony had gone. His was the style of business on a grand scale which combined the pursuit of personal gain with public service and, latterly, with philanthropy in a thoroughly British nineteenth-century manner. His fortune accrued from many an enterprise which added to Hong Kong's ambience and facilities - as did that of his friend and partner Hormusjee Mody who was to die before the next war broke out.

I9. Inter-war Years

the Thirties



THE month of May 1930 brought the next Governor of the inter-war period, Sir William Peel, who was to serve for exactly five years. It was to prove a time of financial difficulties in a rapidly changing world.

In 1931 Britain had to abandon the gold standard and the policy of free trade, and in 1 93 2 came the introduction of imperial preferences for manufactured goods using a minimum of 50 per cent of material of Empire origin or labour. The system had to be modified in order to be applied to Hong Kong, which was a free port and had almost no raw materials. The colony itself imposed an import licence fee on cars not of Empire make. However, its free port status was not seriously compromised, and it stayed outside the sterling area until 1941 .

In 193 4, in the face of the sharply rising value of silver caused by heavy United States buying of the metal, China was forced to abandon the silver standard and Hong Kong followed suit, with the result that all silver specie was called in and the export of silver was stopped as a preliminary to an overall reorganization of the currency. The Currency Ordinance of December 193 5 spelled out the principle of a managed currency linked to sterling, the note issue backed by gold bullion, and by foreign exchange and sterling securities. The dollar levelled out at 1 s.3 d. Cupro-nickel coinage replaced silver, and three issuing banks were to furnish notes of $ 10 and upwards, the government issuing those of smaller denominations.

This was the first time the colony's currency was not linked to that of China. The new situation soon proved advantageous. For the first time its trading ties were • stronger with other countries than with China. In 1928 China had at last managed to recover tariff autonomy, severing a long tradition by which the revenue from its customs had been paid into three Hong Kong banks, latterly into the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank only, with the Customs ,Service itself always headed by a British commissioner.

Housed in its stately pillared halls, domed, with the solid grace of a sturdy

· Victorian taste, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank continued until 1934 in



""""''"'·',-#'i.,.. >

In r 9 3 5 when China went off the silver standard, shipments of silver arrived by boat in Hong Kong in straw bags which often broke. The silver - coins or even ornaments, since it was valued by weight - had then to be boxed and manhandled ashore.



the old building, functioning as it had from the inception as one of the greatest promoters of Hong Kong trade and industry. Its comprador during this period was Ho Sai-wing, an adopted son of Sir Robert Hotung. A Eurasian like his adoptive father, his natural fathe r had replaced Robert Hotung as Jardine comprador; and Ho Sai-wing's brothers were compradors · of the Mercantile Bank, E. D. Sassoon and Company, and Jardine and Arnold Company.

In Ho Sai-wing's time the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank worked still on old-fashioned lines, the ledger entries being made in Chinese brush instead of pen and ink, the abacus still clicking. The Chief Manager, the grandly named Sir Vandele ur Grayburn, however, in the early 1930s urged- the need to build new premises, and r93 5 saw the new headquarters opened.

Designed, as had been its forerunne r, by the local architectural firm Palmer and Turner, this building conveyed an overall e ffect of up-to-the-minute modernity inspired by examples in the Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et

THE HONGK ONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION



COMPRADORE'S STA FF 1928



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The seventy-strong comprador's staff of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in 1928.



Laying the foundation stone of the new Hongkong and Shanghai Bank which was to open m 19 3 5, the third building to house the Bank.



Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.



Industriels Modernes of 1925, and by rising skyscrapers in New York. The interior was in art deco style, with what at the time was the largest con­ tern porary mosaic, consisting of 4 million glass tesserae, and made in Venice to a design by a Russian emigre named Podgoursky. His creation, 'a pastiche of classical, modern industrial and commercial, Oriental, and Western themes', was intended to reflect the spirit of the thirties. The poet W. H. Auden, in one of his less memorable verses, writing about the colony, refers to the bank:



Here in the East the bankers have erected A worthy temple to the Comic Muse.



Sir Vandeleur, accused of wasting the shareholders' money, hesitated before finally agreeing to install the then ultra-modern air-conditioning. 'My own impression', he wrote, 'is that air-conditioning . . . tends to diminish disease and certainly renders the staff very much more comfortable and more able to do work efficiently.' Little did he know it then, but within a few years he was to suffer imprisonment without a vestige of air-conditioning in the dire conditions of Stanley internment camp under the Japanese; and, weakened by ill-treatment, to die of meningitis. Ho Sai-wing, his chief comprador, also died of the effects of maltreatment by the Japanese in 1946. The 193 5 building was to serve the Bank until 1982, when it was demolished in favour of one which the forward-looking Sir Vandeleur would surely have approved of for its use of today's up-to-the-minute architectural style,



- -



The view of Statue Square from the Bank's new headquarters, the statue of Queen Victoria in its domed shrine in the very heart of the colonial city. The three parked cars date the picture to before World War II.



as interpreted by Sir Norman Foster. The new bank building was opened in 1986.

During the whole inter-war period, while most colonies raised revenue by means of indirect taxation in the form of a customs tariff, among other means, Hong Kong, a free port, was unable to do so. Yet colonial e xpenditure rose in a fairly steady curve. Until the very end of this period it was thought undesirable to introduce direct taxation, partly because to have done so would have stirred the proverbial hornet's nest in the form of fierce opposition from the merchants and every other element of the business community. Revenue was to a very large e xtent derived from rates, land rents, land sales, licences, postage stamps and estate duties, and taxes on betting.

Colonial revenue showed a quite steady increase, year by year, except during the 193 1 slump. The figure for 1921 was $1 7,728,000, rising to

$3 3,5 49,000 10 years later, and to $41 ,478,000 in 1939. War taxation imposed in 1940 boosted the receipts to $70, 175 ,ooo. Expenditure in these years also increased: in 1921 it was $15 ,73 9,000 and by 1939 it had more than doubled to $37,949,000. Military expenditure over the period also rose, from $ 2,3 18,65 4 to over six million dollars; at the same time police costs

242 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

doubled. The cost of the social services rose steeply from something not much over half a million to almost two and a half million dollars. Spending on sanitary services doubled to $1,148,000.

The heaviest item of spending was that for defence, amounting to 20 per cent of the total revenue. In a typical year (193 9) claims on the revenue after defence were: 91/2 per cent for police, over 10 per cent for public works, 5 1/2

per cent for education, and nearly 10 per cent for sanitation and medical facilities. The remainder - something over 40 per cent - went on ad­ ministration, pensions, and sundry small items. The total revenue in 193 9 was $41. 5 million and expenditure ran to $ 3 8 million - figures almost ten times those of 1901.

The evolution of the educational system in Hong Kong has been char­ acterized as continuing with 'typically British flexibility'. 1 The facts would appear to support the interpretation 'muddled pragmatism'. After the ap­ pointment of a Director of Education in 1909, little was done until the setting up in 1921 of an advisory body of officials from the Education Department and representatives of the· community. At the end of 1921 the system of grants for voluntary (missionary) schools was terminated except for five schools with specially recruited foreign staff under European management. This type of school later increased in number to 12. Monthly subsidies were paid to other schools needing help, provided they had good reports from the Inspectors. Missionary and secular institutions were treated alike.

Only about 10 per cent of the colony's peasant population could read or write. The majority lived in the New Territories and compulsory registration of schools was extended there in 192 1. Medical inspection of schoolchildren had begun in the following year, and a school medical officer was appointed in 1926. The breakdown of schools by type showed in 1923 a total of 471 urban schools with an enrolment of 24,000 pupils. Of these, 164 estab­ lishments with 9, 397 pupils received subsidies. Rural schools amounted to 192 with 4,665 pupils, one half of them subsidized. European children over nine years attended the Central British School, later to be renamed King George V School, in Kowloon - still in being today. The general pattern thus

established continued with gradual improvements until the outbreak of · World War II.

Teacher training was carried out at the Technical Institute, and for teachers who would work in vernacular schools, at the Man Mo Temple and the Belilios Public School. New Territories teacher training began at Tai Po in 1925 and on Hong Kong island the Northcote Training College started up in 1939, training teachers for both the Anglo-Chinese and the vernacular schools. On Hong Kong island Chinese boys of well-to-do families went to Queen's College where the demand for places became so heavy that King's College was opened in 1926. A SuP.erintendent of Physical Education was appointed in 1927.

Inter-war Years - the Thirties 243

The unive rsity, started with such high hopes, was insufficiently funded - a common Hong Kong predicament in places of learning and art. A com­ mission recommended government assistance, and this was approved in 1920. A grant of $1 million enabled the university to pay its debts. The university's share in the Boxer Indemnity (money e xacted from China following the siege of the Beijing legations) was £ 26 5 ,ooo, to which the Rockefeller Foundation added half a million dollars in 1922 for the endowment of three chairs, of medicine, obstetrics, and surgery. One further significant gift was the Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library, built and endowed by a Chinese banker of that name , which was later changed to a museum of Chinese antiquities. Female students were enrolled in 1 921; and in 1 93 9, tardily, a science faculty was added. But the only honours degre e courses were in the engineering faculty which for many years continued to be, as Lugard had wanted, the largest of the faculties. By 1 93 8 the unive rsity had 5 3 6 students, of whom, commendably, 118 were women. Just prior to the Japanese occupation a new science building opened, while the technical college and the evening institute offered elementary engineering courses and courses on commercial subjects.

The waving of an administrative magic wand over the Sanitary Board, in

1 93 6, converted the former locus of dispute and disrepute into the Urban Council: but since the wand had failed to confer on it any new powers, the exercise was initially more cosmetic than significant. The new council had five official and eight unofficial members, of whom two were pe riodically elected on a franchise based on the jury lists, and six (three of whom were Chinese) were nominated by the Governor. The council was to remain for the time being almost toothless in a civic situation requiring considerable mastication. Its officials were salaried government servants, its deliberations resulting in by-laws which were subject to the approval of the Legislative Cou ncil which retained the real power in questions of public health. The urban areas were divided into 28 districts, each in the charge of a sanitary office r. For all the urgency of past cries, when even this degre e of municipal government became a reality, only one candidate was nominated at the first election in 1 93 6. The first contested election was another four years away in 1 940, when two opponents from the Portuguese community stood. Electoral enthusiasm was scarcely striking.

In the 1 920s there were three types of hospital in Hong Kong: government

hospitals sadly inadequate in services and number of beds; mission hospitals; and the Tung Wah hospitals. Government hospitals came under the Medical Department headed by the Director of Medical Services from 1928 on­ wards. The incidence of plague had fallen by the early 1920s, but from causes unknown thfre was a rise in 1922 when over one thousand cases were recorded. But from then on the incidence dwindled rapidly, so that by 1925 plague had all but disappeared from the colony. There were small outbreaks

244 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

of cholera, while malaria, which had killed off thousands in earlier times, was prevalent only in parts of the New Territories.

A new post of Labour Officer was created in November 193 8. Attached to the Secretariat of Chinese Affairs, his duties were to investigate labour conditions in factories and to enquire into trade union activities. In trade disputes he would act as arbiter of wages in relation to the cost of living. He was also charged with applying the Workman's Compensation Act. For reasons unknown, the designation 'protector of labour', held by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, was transferred not to the Labour Officer but to the Chairman of the Urban Council, under whom the Factory Inspectorate also worked, thus compounding an already muddled chain of responsibility.

British policy towards devolution of power was, and continued to be in the pre-war years, one of reluctance and caution. A Constitutional Reform Association had been launched in 191 7, its aim to promote greater repre­ sentation of the public in the Executive and Legislative Councils, and to press the home government to give Hong Kong a voice in deliberating post-war trade policies. The Association did little until after the war, when it proposed changes in the Legislative Council including allowing more Chinese into the Council. All its suggestions were dismissed by the Secretary of State.

No change was made in the principle that official majorities should control both councils. But the tempo of Chinese nationalism over the border, and the increasing disparity between the numbers of Chinese and of British residents slowly brought about a feeling for minor changes. The mid- 19 2os strikes pushed the process on. In July 1926 the first Chinese member of the Executive Council, Sir Shouson Chow, was appointed by Clementi, following the death of Chater. This brought the number of unofficials to three, with six official members, of whom four were ex officio. Until the Pacific War no further changes were made. The 193 1 slump and economic depression in Europe seriously affected Hong Kong, bringing contracting trade and diminishing revenues for two years. No sooner had trade begun to recover in 193 3 than open hostilities began in China as the Japanese attacked.

The Legislative Council was augmented in 19 29 by the addition of two

unofficial members to a total of eight, and also by two official members, to make 10. Of the unofficials two were elected by the Justices of the Peace and two by the Chamber of Commerce; three were Chinese, and the Portuguese community had one representative. The term of service of an unofficial in the Legislative Council had been reduced in 1922 to four years and in the Executive Council to five.

In concert with the variously expressed community desire for fuller representation in the affairs of Hong Kong, there was an increasing demand for more local people to be appqinted to senior government posts. In part this was abetted by the need for retrenchment, and a committee of 19 3 2 came out in support of the idea, suggesting that opportunities for the employment

Inter-war Years - the Thirties 24 5

of Asians existed in the Medical and Sanitary Departments, which might be filled by graduates from the university. The employment of trained Chinese nurses was suggested. The policy was ardently championed in the Legislative Council by Sir Man Kam Lo, and was accepted by the then Governor, Sir Andrew Caldecott, in 193 5. 'Government', said the Colonial Secretary in the budget debate, 'has fully and frankly accepted the policy of replacing wherever possible European by Asiatic employees.' But it was not until well after the then approaching war that large numbers of Chinese came to occupy senior posts.

Other aspects of the administration were modified, often because of growth, in the inter-war period. The Colonial Secretariat affords an example. By the end of the r 93 os the Colonial Secretary was assisted by four cadets in place of the one or two formerly required; sometimes there had been none. The right of direct approach to the Governor was shared by the Colonial Secretary and two others - the Financial Secretary and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, all three holding ex-officio seats on the Legislative and Executive Councils. The Treasury remained under the Financial Secretary's control. It was administered, however, by heads of three sub-departments - those of the Accountant General, the Assessor (for the assessment and collec­ tion of rates), and the Superintendent of Inland Revenue, who administered revenue- ordinances such as stamp and estate duties, entertainment tax and betting tax. In the latter part of r 93 8 the accounts and stores section of the Public Works Department was made into a separate department under the Financial Secretary.

The S-upreme Court consisted of two judges - the Chief Justice and the

Puisne Judge, with the -occasional appointment of a third. Cases were committed to the court by Magistrates, two in Hong Kong and two in the New Territories, the District Officers acting in the New Territories as Magistrates in their divisions.

During those inter-war years the Police Force was made up of Europeans, Chinese, and Indians. The title Inspector General (formerly Captain­ Superintendent) was changed in r 93 5 to Commissioner of Police. He had under him r 2 superintendents, one police cadet, 270 European, 843 Cantonese, and 296 Weihai constables, numerous Indian constables and a special force (including some Russians) of anti-piracy guards. The security system also included numbers of Chinese and Indian watchmen, selected by the police but paid and controlled by private individuals or companies, who also employed private registered watchmen. There was also the useful District Watch Force, working in Chinese areas in some degree of co-operation with the police. The Commissioner of Police was usually head of the prisons and fire services as well. The much-needed new gaol was built at Stanley on the southern coast, but from its inception it was too small.

The remaining major departments of the government were the Audit

246 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Department (paid locally but reporting to the Auditor-General in London), the Harbourmaster's Department, the Civil Aviation Department, and the Botanical and Afforestation Department. The Postmaster General had charge of broadcasting and telecommunications other than the local telephone service, which was run by private enterprise. On the outbreak of war in Europe in September 193 9 temporary war departments were set up - the Controller of Enemy Property, Controller of Trade, Controller of Food, and Censor and Detaining Officer. In the previous year an Air Raids Precautions Officer had been sent out from London. 2

Sir Andrew Caldecott governed briefly from December 193 5 until April 1 937, encountering renewed demand for the appointment of more local men to more senior posts in 'government. But the pace of implementation remained slow. Outside the Medical and Health Department little was done until after the war. Caldecott was succeeded by Sir Geoffry. Northcote who figures among other 'grotesquely famous newspaper-characters - the British Ambassador, the Governor, Sir Victor Sassoon', in Auden and Isherwood's book, Journey to a War, revealing how superficial was the judgement of the two young writers. Northcote arrived in November 193 7. A year later, with the Japanese just over the border, the first emergency regulations were issued (on 28 September, the day on which, at Neville Chamberlain's urging, the



The Fanling Hunt flourished in the inter-war years, the hounds following the scent laid by trailing a bag of aniseed along the ground prior to the event. Major H. C. Harland, Royal Scots, was a member of the Hunt, which continued to meet until a few days before the Japanes� occupation.

Inter-war Years - the Thirties 247

Czechoslovak President Eduard Benes virtually offered to sacrifice his country to Hitler to ensure peace). The regulations were designed to secure the colony's neutrality in the Sino-Japanese war. Repair and victualling of Japanese and Chinese ships engaged in that war was forbidden. Powers to ban meetings and processions suspected to be seditious, and to impose censorship on Chinese newspapers, were taken. The government assumed powers to control food prices, and later to intern Chinese and Japanese combatants should they take refuge in the colony. Another ordinance of March 193 9 required the registration of all European males of 18 to 5 5, and this was followed by conscription in July 1940. In August 1940 came the Hong Kong Defence regulations, and in September the Defence (Finance) regulations. The first Compulsory Service Tribunal sat on 28 August 1939, hearing 250 cases, but conscientious objectors were few. With the first black­ out exercises the colony began to feel the effects of the war, yet such was the prevailing nonchalance that as late as spring 1941 air observers note d that Hong Kong was 'a mass of lights'.

Over all the preparations for the unpredictable future, Sir Geoffry pre­

sided. Three months before his retirement, in February 1940, he opened the China Light and Power Company's new power-station at Hok Un (Ho Yuen - the Garden of Cranes) in the Hung Hom district of Kowloon. The company had shown itse lf over the years prepared to invest against higher future demand for electricity, and was now installing new plant with a capacity of 60 MW (the demand in 1940 proved to be only 13 .8 MW). Sir Geoffry ended his speech at the opening ceremony with a question which he then, with all the resonance of prophecy, answered: 'What is it that the vision [of the company] foresees? . . . Obviously it is to a great manufac­ turing future for this town of Kowloon that the China Light and Power Company is looking, and I readily take my stand beside them in that con­ fidence. ' 3 Events of a catastrophic nature were to overtake the prediction - but the vision of Kowloon as a great manufacturing centre, then a pipe dream, was to come true.

The enterprise of the power company was its response to the tentative industrial growth then j ust becoming visible. The beginnings of industry went back many years but it had scarcely been a significant factor in Hong Kong's traditional entrepot economy. In the late 193 os, however, the start of wool­ knitting and piece-goods manufacture could be discerned, along with the making of rattan• furniture. As goods became harder to find after the begin­ ning of World War II in the West, local entrepreneurs set up factories to supply confectionery, biscuits, cigarettes, and perfumes. Other new manufac­ tures were leather and rubber-soled footwear, hats, vacuum flasks, torches, and batteries_. An economic commission in 1934 had reported a total of 166 factories on the island and 25 3 in Kowloon, all of them small, the total capital just over fifty-one million dollars. This Commission, unlike the

248 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Governor when he ope ned the new power-station a few years late r, was pessimistic about the future. The depressed state of world trade at the time and unce rtainties within China led it to the conclusion that the industry of Hong Kong could not develop much beyond its present stage except inasmuch as it might form an e conomic part of the whole industrial development of South China and even to some extent of North China.

Against the odds enumerated by the Commission, industry did grow, in large part due to the dogged persistence of Chinese business men, as the world depression lifted in the mid-193 os. Exports grew modestly, and e stablished lines - knitwear, footwear, rope, cement, preserved ginger and soya products, and electric torches (these last in an Asia for the most part still without electric lighting) - all built quite strong markets. New industries arose - the manufacture of paints, and the umbrellas e ssential in tropical rain.

Not all those ente rprises were well founded - 1 93 5 saw the closure of 5 3 registered factories, but also the registration of 60 new ones. A fundamental change in the pattern came at the outbreak of Sino-Japane se hostilities in 1937, when there began a slow shift of mainland Chinese companies out of China. They started to move away from threatened areas to the stability of Hong Kong whose markets, in a period when Japan was increasingly tending to supply its own military needs, and when China's goods were less in evidence, e xpanded into the South-east Asian area. These new industries included steel-rolling, enamel wares, needle-making and allied small metal manufactures. The war in the West provided scope for others - steel helmets, gas masks, water-bottles, field telephone equipment, entrenching and other tools, army radio transmitters. The list soon branched out into bicycle s, nails, medicine in tablet form, toothbrushes, and buttons.

The 1 93 8 figure for factory worke rs stood at 5 5 ,ooo - a total which

included only those in registered factories. There were many unregistered. Three years later in 1 941 the count was 90,000.

Prior to the war in the Pacific, however, Hong Kong remained what it always had been, a trading centre. Only about 10 per cent of e xported goods were of local manufacture. This general picture , one of piecemeal light industrialization, remained unchanged until some time after the end of World War II. There was no government control, no labour relations mechanism for conciliation in industrial disputes or industrial accidents, nor any provision in cases of sickness or old age. Many of the factories were little more than cramped workshops overfilled with outmoded machinery. Working condi­ tions were abysmal and only the small scale and absence of heavy industry made the picture different from that of conditions in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

With the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, what had become over the years a complex pattern of trading routes with a whole gamut of corn-

Inter-war Years - the Thirties 249

modities traded along them, was slowly but inexorably eroded. The maj or sea lanes connecting China and the rest of the world were cut at Shanghai, Tianjin, and Qingdao; only Guangzhou and Hong Kong served as the coun­ try's outlets and inlets for sea-borne trade. While the colony's share of trade with that part of China not over-run by the Japanese (an area continually contracting) increased, by October 193 8 coastal trade with the mainland was virtually at a standstill; for it was at that point that China prohibited all imports from Japan or areas controlled by it. The embargo was withdrawn, however, in June 19 39 when it became urgent for China to obtain essential commodities by almost any means. Such goods were shipped to Hong Kong for re-export to Free China once relabelled. China's seaports, all under Japanese control, were once again open to ships from Hong Kong, and momentarily trade revived. The colony took advantage of trade with both Free China and that sector occupied by the Japanese, but as one part of the country after another fell to the Japanese, the merchants began the laborious process of exploring alternative routes for their shipments. This continued until the end of 1941 and the occupation of Hong Kong.

In May 1940, a few months after opening the power-station, Northcote, now ailing, left for home. Spanning the end of that year and part of 1941 a 'military governor', Lieutenant-General E. F. Norton held the reins, appointed to administer the government and tighten defence. His successor, the hapless Sir Mark Young, arrived in September. The Colonial Secretary,

N. L. Smith, also left and was replaced by F. C. Gimson, who arrived in Hong Kong on 7 December - the night before the Japanese attack on the colony. Both he and the Governor were to be made prisoner for the duration of the occupation.

20. Invasion and Occupation



HONG KONG on the brink of the abyss was a troubled place. In the two years since the declaration of war with Germany in September 1939 the course of life and business in the colony had altered very considerably.. Apart from the disruption of trade and the uncertainties of the international situation - East and West - the British in Hong Kong were not slow to discover that they were effectively sealed off from Europe, from the home shores of Britain, for the duration of a war whose length there was no way of calculating. Britain, with its forces necessarily concentrated in the West, was in a weak position in the East, forced to be polite to Japan while at the same time attempting to defend treaty rights in China which the Japanese were in the process of over­ running. Japan was in a position of strength. Whatever she did in and around China could be and was, for the most part, done with impunity. Hong Kong people noted uneasily the bombing of HMS Ladybird on the Yangzi in December 193 7, and the casual Japanese apology, which contrasted sharply with the payment of an indemnity and the profound admission of guilt over the sinking of the USS Panay in the same attack. It was clear that British power was a vanished dream.

Then came the Japanese violations of the Hong Kong frontier, first in October 193 8 and again in February 1939 when Lo Wu on the border was bombed. In June the following year the border was briefly closed by the Japanese in a gesture of contempt for Britain's sovereignty. It was a matter of luck that the colony was not taken by the Japanese in the summer of 1940 - that it did not happen was a question of logistics; the supply lines via the Hanoi-Kunming railway and the Burma Road were seen to be more import­ ant than that through Hong Kong, and the Japanese turned their attention to them instead of knocking out the colony. Britain had been forced to grovel to the Japanese in signing the Craigie-Arita Agreement in July 1939 in which, after the blockade of the British Settlement at Tianjin, it was agreed that Britain would take no action prejudicial to the Japanese in China. These and other events of a similar nature brought it home to the people of Hong Kong, Chinese as well as Western, that Britain was in eclipse. An editorial in the South China Morning Post on 20 August 1940 summed up popular reaction:

Invasion and Occupation 25 1

'A poll . . . would disclose that the Hong Kong outlook is compounded of reaction, faith, determination, nervous anticipation, evasion and simple fatalism.'

The flood of refugees from China which poured across the border prior to July 193 8 , in flight from the Japanese occupation of China's southern provinces, numbered a quarter of a million - cause enough in a city of 1,650,000 people for anxiety. The problems of sanitation and public health, always fragile issues, and even the question of how to provide food and the barest shelter for such an influx, were added and, in the short term, insoluble conundrums.

As far back as mid- 19 3 8 the government had proposed setting up three camps for refugees. But soon it became evident that such proposals were ludicrously inadequate. Camps were then hastily organized. The Tung Wah group opened reception centres in their hospitals. But, with overcrowd­ ing, conditions were as bad in many ways as in the pre-plague years in Taipingshan. An Immigration Department was set up under a cadet officer, but partly through mismanagement and partly through corruption, this body sparked near panic in the Chinese community over the question of certificates of residence. The cadet officer 'retired' and left Hong Kong - one of very few instances when an allegation of corruption was levelled at an otherwise exemplary body of men.

Whitehall had issued guidelines on measures to be taken by the colonies in

relation to the war, and these were enlarged by the Emergency Regulations of September 1939 , which were spelled out from the Secretariat by the Governor acting alone as representative of the Crown, not as Governor in Council. Censorship, the· mining of the harbour, powers to requisition ships and aircraft, the defining of areas to be reserved for defensive purposes, the repossession of buildings, measures to prevent a drain of hard currency, and not least the interning of enemy aliens and the liquidation of their property - all these had to be done quickly. It proved impossible to control the colony's entrepot trade, but efforts were made to corner the supply of scarce metals from China used in munitions, thus depriving Japan of such supplies. The anomalous situation of the Hong Kong dollar which circulated in large quantities in the southern provinces of China - now under enemy Japanese rule - was brought under control in June 1941 by strict exchange measures linking the dollar for the first time with sterling.

Starting in 1939 , Hong Kong was the first colony to introduce conscrip­

tion. Men between 18 and 41 who were fit for active service were allocated to the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC), or to the Hong Kong Naval Defence Force (HKNDF), while others in reserved occupations were given some , training but forbidden to volunteer for the forces without perm1ss1on.

In this process friendly European nationals volunteered in considerable

25 2 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

numbers, and the HKVDC was put under a professional soldier and regular army discipline. Men over 5 5 with military experience were formed into a defence unit under their commander A. W. Hughes, manager of the Union Insurance Society of Hong Kong, and soon came to be known as the 'Hughesiliers' or, more amusingly, as the 'Methusaliers'. Auxiliary police, nursing, fire, and air raid precautions services were formed, the last expand­ ing rapidly after the decision not to build public shelters for the populace was reversed in June 1 941. Numerous Chinese joined the Volunteers and the British regular forces as drivers and orderlies, while Chinese students with some command of English joined the auxiliary defence services. There were proposals to arm the local Chinese, but British policy was against this in order not to offend the Japanese. The Chinese as a whole stood somewhat apart from all the preparations, leaving it to the foreigners, knowing what happens to civilians who assist armed forces when these forces lose the fight. For the Europeans the threat of a Japanese attack in mid-1 940 brought drastic changes, one being the sudden evacuation of women and children - 3 ,474 of them - to Australia. This move proved highly unpopular and was followed, as usual in Hong Kong, by backbiting and accusations of favouritism, racial discrimination (which could scarcely be contested), and of unfeeling bureaucratic inefficiency. The order for this evacuation had in fact come from London. And, true to form, one of Hong Kong's sporadic erup­ tions of scandal then came to light in the Air Raid Precautions Department. The decision after all to provide air-raid shelters for everyone meant that now the work had to be done at break-neck speed, and a virtually new organization created almost instantly. Huge sums were involved and the urgency led to graft, especially in the architectural branch of the ARP Department. A commission of enquiry under a Puisne Judge was set up in August 1 941 as the result of the discovery that the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation had managed to complete the blacking out of its headquarters in Queen's Road for the total sum of $ 87 and not the $ 5 00 which had been allocated. The Bank, suspecting some irregularity, claimed its $ 5 00, duly received it, and reported to the government. The ARP Depart­ ment architect was asked to give evidence. When he failed to attend, it was discovered that he had shot himself. Another British official in charge of the many air-raid tunnels being dug into the hillsides was admitted to

hospital suffering from severe poisoning.

The commission met in the period between 14 August and 7 November 1941, attracting a blaze of media attention. But its findings were never published. The Judge presiding, P.E.F. Cressal, carried the draft report into internment in Stanley camp a month later, where he died in 1944. The draft vanished: after the war the enquiry was quietly dropped.

In spite of massive preparations by both old and new departments of government in the period before the Japanese invasion, there must be a strong

Invasion and Occupation 25 3

suspicion that in some ways these operations were hampered by the unusual turnover in the upper echelons of the government just before the fateful attack. A new Commissioner of Police and a new Defence Secretary were appointed in February and April 1941 respectively. The General Officer Commanding the garrison left in August and his successor, Major-General

C. M. Maltby, took over. And the Colonial Secretary and the Governor were also new to the colony.

Funds to pay for the swarm of emergency measures were derived from emergency war budgets, the money coming from direct taxation on salaries, business and corporation profits, and from levies on property. In October 19 3 9 two budgets were announced - the normal one and an additional war budget to enable the colony to fulfil its obligations to the home government as part of the Empire. On instructions from London, income tax was to be considered as the best source of additional taxation revenue. The tax, it was stated, softening what for Hong Kong merchants had always been seen melodramatically as a mortal blow, would be light, and a profits tax was envisaged at a later date. Yield from this source was to be an annual $10 million, of which $7 million (after meeting defence expenditure) would be available as a gift to the United Kingdom.

The outcry was immediate and anguished. Both Chambers of Commerce protested, while all the unofficial members of the Legislative Council condemned the measure. The principal arguments advanced against it were: that flight of capital would result (a possibility) ; that the Chinese would resent such an inquisitorial tax (probably true) ; and that all Chinese account books would have to be translated into English ( easily circumvented by the employment of Chinese auditors).

The government capitulated. A War Revenue Committee was set up and

proposed the imposition of four new taxes: a property tax of 5 per cent of the rateable value; a salaries tax, on the first $ 5 ,ooo of taxable income, of 4 per cent, and 10 per cent thereafter; a corporation profits tax and a business profits tax of 5 per cent on profits from $1 0,000 to $1 00,000, and 10 per cent on profits in excess of that. It was estimated that these new measures would yield six million dollars - $2 million to cover the administrative costs of wartime departments, the remaining $4 million to be spent on building ships for Britain. The taxation came into effect on 1 April 1940. In that year the Legislative Council made two gifts of £1 00,000 each to the British Government. In the Council's budget debate the following year it appeared that the estimated revenue from those new taxes had been correct, but the estimate of expenditure for the war turned out to be $ 1 2 million, not the two million dollars anticipated. The rates were then raised from 5 and 10 per cent to 6 and 1 2, per cent; and while the government continued to threaten full income tax, the Japanese overran Hong Kong before it could be introduced. Questions of the defence of Hong Kong during the inter-war years were

2 5 4 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

touched with an aura of unreality in the light of the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty of February 1922, which precluded any extension of the colony's installations. The treaty was denounced by Japan in 1934, with effect from 193 6; Hong Kong was no longer bound by its provisions. But it was recognized in the colony and in Britain that Hong Kong could never be a strong base so long as the Japanese, established in Taiwan, could neutralize or even knock it out more or less at will. The garrison was in a tactically no­ win situation. Churchill's summing up of the situation in a letter of 7 January

1 941 to General Ismay, the British Chief of Staff, was: 'If Japan goes to war with ·us there is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. '

Meanwhile it was important to deny the use of its harbour to unfriendly ships. The Japanese occupation of Hainan Island and the Spratlys, and its advance into French Indo-China meant in effect that Hong Kong was surrounded. In his history, The Second World War, Churc_hill amplifies the statement in his letter: 'I had no illusions about the fate of Hong Kong under the overwhelming impact of Japanese power. But the finer the British resistance the better for all.' Hong Kong was to be fought for not on strategic grounds but pour encourager les autres.

A defence plan had been formulated in 193 7 based on holding Hong Kong island and enough of the opposite shore to protect the harbour. Protection from sea-borne attack was to be afforded by artillery on the southern coast. A land offensive was to be confronted by a line of pill-boxes running from Gindrinkers Bay (Tsuen Wan) in the west of the Kowloon peninsula to Tide Cove off Tolo Harbour, and over the hills to Port Shelter. These were to be manned by heavy machine-guns of the Middlesex Regiment so placed to give a connected line of fire. Supplementary light infantry patrols and mobile artillery were to be added. The plan tacitly assumed that the requisite force would be available to man such a line - later known as Gindrinkers Line.

With the landing of Japanese troops at Xiamen and at Bias Bay, a fresh look was taken at this plan in 193 8. A new one was drawn up which envisaged a limited availability of forces in the colony should war in Europe break out, and only the island being defended. The New Territories were to be the scene of delaying tactics so that military stores, installations, bridges, ·

and public utilities could be removed or inactivated. This was thought to

offer about 48 hours delay before evacuation to Hong Kong island. The Gindrinkers Line idea was dropped.

The colony's pre-war naval strength normally consisted of four destroyers. On the eve of the Japanese invasion one of those was not in Hong Kong waters and two others had left for Singapore, leaving only HMS Thracian. There were also four gunboats, eight motor-torpedo boats, and a few smaller harbour vessels.

The garrison consisted of four infantry battalions: 2nd Royal Scots, 1 st Middlesex, 2/14 Punjabis, and 5 /7 Rajputs. And there were just over four

Invasion and Occupatio n 2 5 5

artillery regiments: two Coastal Regiments of the Royal Artillery, one Medium Defence Battery manning coastal guns, one A. A. Regiment, and the rst Hong Kong Regiment of the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery. This last was under strength. A small Royal Air Force flight of three obsolete Vildebeeste torpedo-bombers was accompanied by two Walrus amphibians. The infantry was distributed on the island - the Rajputs in the north-east sector, the Punjabis in the south-east, and the two British battalions spread over the rest. Beaches were equipped with pill-boxes, a boom was stretched across Lei Yue Mun, and the beaches and the harbour were mined. In the event of an attack the Punjabis were supposed to operate for some time on the mainland, and then to withdraw to their designated sector on the island. These arrangements having been made, the officer commanding the garrison, Major-General A. E. Grassett, relinquished his post and was replaced by Major-General C. M. Maltby. Grassett, a Canadian, travelled to England via Canada, and while in Ottawa suggested that the government send two battalions to help defend Hong Kong, his argument being that this would assist the forces there to hold out much longer. The proposition appealed to Canada, which was desperately unprepared for war in the Pacific. In London the suggestion was agreed, and the two Canadian battalions,



Major General C. M. Maltby (right), Commander-in-Chief during the defence of Hong Kong - seen here in later years on a return visit with the Governor, Sir David Trench.

2 5 6 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

the Royal Rifles and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, were chosen. Both were unprepared for combat due to a shortage of up-to-date weaponry, and required large drafts of raw recruits to bring them up to strength. Intelligence reports suggested that a Japanese attack would be some time in coming, and this, it was argued, would allow time for training in Hong Kong. The Canadians arrived on 17 November 1941. Their heavy equipment did not.

Maltby received news of the Canadian force in October and revised his defence plans. Three battalions were now to be deployed on the mainland, with another three, as before, garrisoning the island. Maltby now thought that the mainland could hold out for about a week instead of the 48 hours previously envisaged. And this was essential to any return to the pre- 193 8 plan whose principal element was Gindrinkers Line. The Line, partly furnished in 1 93 8, now required a great deal of work to complete. This went ahead, and officers were briefed on the scheme. No troops �ere sent to posts on the Line in case the Japanese thought an attack was feared to be imminent. No one had many illusions about the Line. Its main weakness was that much of it was overlooked· from the vantage point of Tai Mo Shan and from Needle Hill. And it was the first and last line of defence, Kowloon being too near for a second on which to fall back. Another detraction was that the Line was too long to be adequately manned, a problem which Maltby attempted to circumvent in October 1941 by suggesting the recruitment of a battalion of Chinese infantry to man machine-guns. Permission to do this came too late. The battalion would have been the first Chinese battalion in the British Army. On the arrival of the Canadians, Maltby moved the garrisons into position - one brigade of three regiments to Gindrinkers Line under Brigadier Wallis, a second under the Canadian Brigadier J. K. Lawson on the island. The total strength of the garrison was now about 1 2,000 men but other weaknesses were both obvious and inevitable - the lack of air support left the General with no aerial reconnaissance, forcing him to prepare for attack from almost any quarter; no pre-emptive strike could be carried out; and the two anti­ aircraft batteries were pathetically inadequate against air attack. The naval

force was also inadequate to prevent enemy landings.

Perhaps the saddest element in the defence of Hong Kong was the effective . betrayal of the gallant defenders, even as they prepared for action, by the almost totally erroneous British intelligence reports upon which they had to depend. Coupled with the fact that every Japanese officer in the attacking forces had maps of all the British defence positions and details of how they were manned and equipped, this doomed the defenders to a fate which their small numbers doubtless dictated, but which made a nonsense of their sustained bravery in action, and which was in the outcome of very doubtful utility. Among many inspired decisions taken during the course of the war, Winston Churchill's insistence on the last ditch defence of Hong Kong must be seen as a spendthrift, heartless command.

In vasion and Occupation 2 5 7

One example of the inadequacy of British intelligence was that on the eve of the Japanese attack Maltby estimated the strength of the forces opposing him at three divisions. In fact there were four. Other intelligence estimates put the fighting quality of the Japanese as low, and probably even lower against Western troops than against Chinese. They were said to be ill-equipped, their air force inaccurate in its bombing, the pilots unused to night manoeuvres. Reports of the British military attaches in Tokyo, and of others with first­ hand experience of Japanese fighting in China, were passed over. The men of the Hong Kong garrison, on the flimsiest of grounds (to put it mildly), were mostly convinced that the island was impregnable. In 194 1 every senior officer was boosting the morale of his audience by the claim that 'Hong Kong is a fortress '.

Against this cardboard fortress whose weaknesses every Japanese officer

knew in detail, the enemy threw an irresistible force. Their 3 8 th division under Lieutenant-General T. Sano comprised the 228 th, 229th, and 23 0th infantry regiments, each having three battalions under Major-General Ito, backed up by 'mountain artillery, anti-tank guns, field artillery, howitzers, mortars, heavy artillery, engineers, landing craft and [not least] overwhelm­ ing air support'. 1 This force was protected at its rear from the Chinese, and although it did not outnumber Maltby's force it could call on three more divisions and was outstandingly better equipped. The Japanese were also masters by sea. Almost every detail given by British intelligence about them proved the exact opposite of the truth. Maltby faced an army of well­ disciplined men, intelligently led, flexible in tactics - and in conquering form. The Japanese from the first took the initiative and despite minor local setbacks kept it for the -17 to 18 days that it took to force the colony's surrender.

Winter 194 1-2 was one of the darkest periods of the war for Britain and the Allies. Japan planned her attacks on the unprepared base of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, on Hong Kong, and on the Philippines and Malaya, as simultaneous surprise actions whose sheer daring would gain for her an initial strong advantage. The strategy proved correct almost to the last detail. In Hong Kong insistent Chinese reports had told of Japanese troop movements on the other side of the border, and these had been heeded by Maltby. By the evening of 7 December he had moved his troops into positions both in the New Territories and on the island. The Volunteers were mobilized, the harbour defences manned. The recall of service personnel had been demanded on the radio and even on the cinema screens that evening.

Before dawn on 8 December a signal from Singapore brought news of the

invasion of Malaya. Maltby and his staff then entered what was called the 'battle-box', an underground headquarters dating from 1940, 50 feet below Victoria Barracks in Central. Dawn brought news of heavy Japanese troop movements just over the Hong Kong border. At 7.30 a.m. the order to

25 8 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

blow up the frontier bridges went out and roads were made impassable as the Punjabis retired towards Tai Po covering the demolition squads. At 8 a. m., 12 Japanese bombers with an escort of 36 fighters put all five RAF planes and eight civilian aircraft (which were on the ground, at Kai Tak, having no air cover and no warning of approaching enemy planes) out of action. Simultaneously the Japanese crossed the Sham Chun River on temporary bridges. They advanced eastward towards Tide Cove and a vulnerable section of Gindrinkers Line, their regiments making speedy progress. The summit of Tai Mo Shan was occupied from the west and the Japanese were poised to attack the below-strength Royal Scots at the key point of Shing Mun redoubt. In a brilliant and unorthodox move the Japanese descended on the redoubt from above and tossed grenades down the ventilation shafts. Five hours' fighting later it was theirs. The way to Kowloon was open. The





DEEP



MIRS BAY



(I



N



t



0

6



0 I 2I I I4I I

0I 2 4 6 B

DEFENCE LI NE - - JAPANESE ADVANCE

7. The defensive line (Gindrinkers Line) and the routes of the Japanese attack on Hong Kong. (Source:

Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse, p. 6.)

Invasion and Occupation 2 5 9

outcome was never in doubt, but the delaying tactic had to some extent succeeded. By rr December the order to e vacuate was given, and the speed with which this was carried out seemed to bewilder the enemy, little interference being encountered even as the last troops were ferried to the island in broad daylight on r3 December. The mainland forces survived more or less intact, despite th e abandonment of 1 70 mules, stores, ammunition, and oth er equipment, reaching the island in fair order. The defence of th e mainland had lasted just five days.

The plight of the population of Kowloon was unenviable. No official hint of th e planned withdrawal to th e island had been given, and they had no clear idea of what was afoot, though no doubt most guessed. By r2 Decembe r all ferries from Kowloon across th e harbour were crowded, th e last chances to cross to th e island obviously imminent. The police were withdrawn and looting started, terrorizing those who stayed on. That evening a huge load of dynamite being brought on a barge from Green island to Victoria was accidentally blown up by a shot from a patrolman who had not been told of its arrival. The explosion woke th e whole city and blew out thousands of windows, adding to the confusion and fear. Among other explosions was that at the power-station in Kowloon as employees disabled the main turbine. Yet oth ers echoed from th e docks as installations there were dynamited.

Chaos reigned on the island. Th e explosion of the ammunition unnerved people crowded in makeshift accommodation, sle eping in public rooms of hotels. A spate of rumours spread by the Japanese fifth column (barbers, waiters, employees of Japanese businesse s) which had for years operated in the colony served further to agitate the population.

Thus began five days of suspense before the Japanese assault on Hong Kong island - an island now completely at th eir mercy. A Japanese staff officer in a boat, with three European women hostages, crossed under a white flag from Kowloon bearing a de mand from Lieutenant-General Sakai which read:

Since our troops have joined battle, I have gained possession of the Kowloon Peninsula despite the good fighting qualities of your men, and my artillery and air force, which are ready to crush all parts of the Island, await my order. Your Excellency can see what will happen to the Island and I cannot keep silent about it. You have all done your duty in defending Hong Kong so far, but the result of the coming battle is plain, and further resistance will lead to the annihilation of a million good citizens and to such sadness as I can hardly bear to see. If your Excellency would accept an offer to start negotiations for the surrender of Hong Kong under

certain conditions, it will be honourable. If not, I, 'repressing my tears', am obliged to take action to overpower your forces .2

The offer �as declined, as was a furth er one. Then began the systematic shelling of all military targets on the island. At this point, had it not been for

260 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

Churchill's order, a responsible Governor would have negotiated the surrender. But Sir Mark Young did not have that option open to him. He replied to the second offer from the Japanese:



·-

His Excellency summarily rejects the proposal. This colony is not only strong enough to resist all attempts at invasion, but all the resources of the British Empire, the United States, and the Republic of China are behind us and those who have sought peace can rest assured that there will be no surrender . . . 3



Sir Mark Aitchison Young, Governor from September 1941 to May 1947.



It was starkly apparent to all senior officers that the chances of a long resistance were nil and that in the process bloodshed would be severe, among both combatants and the civilian population. Sir Mark, however, obeyed Churchill's orders. The shelling of Hong Kong began on 12 December and continued on the following day. On the evening of the 1 5 th the Japanese · attempted a landing at Pak Sha Wan but were easily beaten off. The next day shelling intensified and on 17 December another attempt was made by the Japanese to procure the surrender, and again it was refused. In a severe bombardment, the Japanese tried to reduce the coastal defences of the eastern sector of the island. It was plain that it was in this area that they intended to effect a landing. Then, by bombing and shelling Chinese residential areas and the Central district, by dropping leaflets encouraging the Chinese to turn their backs on the British 'expl9iters', the enemy attempted to soften up resistance. On 18 December the bombardment increased all along the shoreline from Causeway Bay to Lei Yue Mun, and that night the Japanese

Invasion and Occupation 26 r

landed at three points, at once surging inland to higher ground. They captured Wong Nai Chung Gap the next day, the defence there cut in two when the enemy advanced downhill to Repulse Bay on the southern shore. The East Brigade was forced back towards Stanley, and despite stubborn and in many a case heroic resistance by pockets of defenders, the courageous, pointless siege of Hong Kong came to a bloody end on Christmas Day r94 r (see Appendix 7).

On that Christmas morning the South China Morning Post carried the headline: 'Day of Good Cheer', under which, almost incredibly, the following paragraph appeared.



Hong Kong is observing the strangest and most sober Christmas in its century-old history. Such modest celebrations as are arranged today will be none the less lighthearted . . . There was a pleasant interlude at the Parisian Grill shortly before it closed last night when a Volunteer pianist, in for a spot of food before going back to

his post, played some well-known favourites in which all present joined with gusto . . .4



In and around Stanley village and in other places on the cold hillsides, men were lying unattended, bleeding to death from wounds sustained in the defence of the revellers in town.

It was then, on Christmas Day, on the advice of General Maltby (who had in fact advised it 24 hours earlier) that the Governor announced the surrender. With the General, he crossed the harbour, white flag flying, and offered unconditional surrender to Lieutenant-General Sakai. The Japanese newspapers reported that 'the historic meeting between victors and van­ quished was conducted in a nice spirit'. And this was later confirmed by General Maltby whom Sakai permitted to stay with his men. Churchill, writing long after in The Second World War, concludes:



Every man who could bear arms . . . took part in a desperate resistance. Their tenacity was matched by the fortitude of the British civilian population [he fails to mention the Chinese] . On Christmas Day the limit of endurance was reached and a capitulation became inevitable. Under their resolute Governor . . . the Colony fought a good fight. They had won indeed the 'lasting honour' which is their due.



And, he might have added, on his orders by their action the war against Japan was carried not one inch forward. Sir Mark was taken prisoner and sent to Wusong in China, and later transferred to Taiwan where he remained until the end of the war. 'I would say generally', he was to write after the war was over, 'that tµe treatment which I experienced at the hands of the Japanese during my captivity was almost invariably inconsiderate, that it was frequently objectionable, and that it was on occasion positively barbarous. '5

26 2 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

It was just a century since the British had taken Hong Kong: now they had lost it. Almost overnight most of that century's achievement vanished. The rule of law, the municipal amenities such as water, gas, electricity, food supply, currency stability, public transport, and the postal service ceased - and with them the raison d'etre of the colony's existence, trade and commerce. Almost overnight Victoria followed Kowloon into the limbo of occupation's woes: normal life was suspended. With that the population began the long years of makeshift, of near starvation, of ragged existence. But the hµman spirit is protean in its capacity to fend for the human body. Without gas and electric power to cook the rice, a start was soon made on stripping every vacant building of its combustible material; doors, window frames, even staircases and parquet flooring, were torn out; paper, too, vanished in heat and smoke under the cooking pots, and much of the record of those past hundred years of turbulent administration and equally rumbustious trading disappeared as the rice was cooked. The streets of Wan Chai wore a dilapidated air, the tin helmets of Chinese who had been in the armed or other services lay cast away for fear of Japanese reprisals if they were to be discovered indoors. In the absence of motive power, enterprising former employees of the tramway company hitched a couple of bogies to a wooden platform, and themselves to the makeshift vehicle - hauling passengers for a few cents along the now disused tracks of the fortunately level route through the city.

The weary remnants of Maltby's gallant army, young and old, were rounded up by the Japanese and marched off to one of the most barbaric of prison camps, in Kowloon at Sham Shui Po. All the British civilians - men, women, and children - were sent by truck to Stanley camp on the island's southern peninsula where the existing prison was located, with a school, a small hospital, and the assorted dwellings of the personnel who ran those facilities before the occupation. Conditions were primitive in the extreme, food appalling and inadequate in quantity, discipline harsh and arbitrary, and the death rate as incarceration went on very high. Some military prisoners were transferred to Japan to camps as barbaric as that at Sham Shui Po, others were lost en route as the Americans sank the boat conveying them. . The Chinese and neutrals not imprisoned subsisted as best they could in conditions as daunting to the body and spirit as may be imagined in a sub­ tropical city shorn of virtually all its amenities. And there, in the decaying urban shambles, in the dastardly camps, all were to remain - those who survived that long ordeal - for three years and eight months until the Japanese defeat and surrender. Until the liberation of Hong Kong.

The half-life of the camps has its literature; but the miseries and endurance of the majority - the mass of Chinese - have no such memorial to life under the Japanese boot. There is not even a casualty list of those killed by Japanese shelling and bombing. Little of substance has been written of the deprivations



February 1942. A group of the colony's bankers being marched to work from the quarters where the Japanese confined them.



European prisoners m Stanley camp, r 94 5.

264 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

of the Chinese people, endured for as long as the foreigners endured those of the camps. Large numbers of Chinese left for China in the slender hope that there they might find means of life better than in Hong Kong - an exodus encouraged by the Japanese whose inept and brutal 'administration' failed to feed the population who had all unwillingly joined the vaunted 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere'. There were prominent Chinese who attempted to alleviate the sufferings of their compatriots by intercession with the conquerors, but their efforts came to little. Japanese conquest was aimed solely at Japanese aggrandizem�nt, and amounted to simple rapine - ruthless and cold. The worst aspects of Western colonial expansion pale into insignificance by comparison.

The end was slow in coming for all those who survived in Hong Kong. On 29 August 1945 Rear-Admiral Harcourt sighted the China coast. On the following day his flotilla was in turn sighted by the internees.in Stanley camp around r r a.m. (and doubtless by thousands of Chinese at the same time). A communique was issued to the effect that the Admiral had arrived. One of his first duties was to visit Stanley camp where he was greeted with intense jubilation. One of the Royal Marines who was present described the inmates as 'walking skeletons'. He failed to mention the plight of the half-starved Chinese whom he must have seen in quantity on the roads as he passed through the island on his way to Stanley.



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30 August 1945. HMS Swiftsure passes North Point after entering the harbour following the Japanese surrender. Admiral C. H. Harcourt landed from Swiftsure at the naval dockyard in central Victoria.

2 I. Rehabilitation and Transformation



THE Hong Kong which the liberators found at the end of August 194 5 and which the internees rediscovered after almost four years of incarceration was a shambles. The tattered remnant of its population, fallen through hunger­ attrition and Japanese emigration policies by about a million from its pre-war 1, 600,000, was in rags, creeping about in a drab city mouldering from the years' neglect. The Japanese had capitulated on 14 August.



Hong Kong people crawled out of the ruins of Japanese occupation dazed, demoralized and destitute, to return to a city that had ground to a halt under alien administration. The population had dwindled to about 600,000 . . . and there was hardly a heartbeat left in the city. Yet as the internees struggled out of Stanley [camp] and the flag went up, first on the Peak on August r8 and then all over, the most obvious thing to do was to set up house again and go back to work. And so within hours of the gates of Stanley being opened, the first small signs of new life appeared. The trams were running [if fitfully] on August 20, followed soon by the ferries. And from then on it never looked back. 1



In the broadest sense this was true. But there was an infinity of things to be done. As far back as November 1942 it had been recognized in London that the best way to resume the administration of liberated areas when the time came was to set up a military occupation. Each liberated area was to have a Chief Affairs Officer who would take responsibility under the military commander until such time as a civil government could take over once more. A small staff was set up under the Civil Affairs (Military Planning) Unit of the War Office. The move was agreed with �he Americans. But in 1 944 the Americans put a different construction on the agreement whereby, were any territory to be liberated as a result of a Japanese surrender (and not as the result of an Allied operation) an American force commander would take over. American opinion and that of President Roosevelt ran strongly against the continuance of colonialism and in favour of building up China as a world

266 An Illustrated History of Hong Kong

power. In 1942 the President stated on the subject of Hong Kong: '. . . let's raise the Chinese Flag there first, and then Chiang Kai-shek can next day make a grand gesture and make it a free port. That's the way to handle it. '2 The absence of a realistic appreciation of the situation was perhaps less apparent then than it is now. Chiang was never a man of the grand gesture, most especially when it concerned the idea of a free Chinese port where customs revenues could not be gathered. Both the Americans and the British had signed a treaty with Chiang's nationalist government in January 1943 , the British treaty returning to China the International Settlements at Shanghai and Xiamen and concessions at Tianjin and Guangzhou. But on the question of the New Territories, raised by Chiang, Britain made it clear that they formed part of the colony and that she was surrendering 'all existing treaty rights relating to the system of Treaty Ports in China',3 which did not include

the New Territories.

Among its problems the Planning Unit needed to recruit personnel with experience of government in the colony. But as most of those were imprisoned, this was hard to achieve. N. L. Smith, a former Colonial Secretary, and D. M. MacDougall, a senior civil servant who had escaped from the colony a few hours after the capitulation, were appointed to the Planning Unit. All members were given army rank. The inner core of eight were all former Hong Kong civil servants.

Thanks to the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, victory over Japan came sooner than had been expected, and the Planning Unit was far from prepared on 30 August 1 945 for duty in the newly liberated colony. MacDougall, Chief Civil Affairs Officer, and a staff of nine reached Hong Kong on 7 September, the remainder arriving later.

In the colony the Colonial Secretary, F. C. Gimson, who had spent the occupation in Stanley camp, left it immediately on the Japanese surrender. A directive from London of 17 August instructed him to assume responsibility for administration. The guidelines were the immediate restoration of British sovereignty and administration until a force commander arrived to set up the Military Administration. On 27 August Gimson replied that he had already done this. 'I have taken up residence in a building near the Hong Kong Bank

. . . With me are all members of the Executive Council as well as other senior Government officials . . . '. 4 Gimson weathered the storm until the arrival of Rear-Admiral Harcourt with the British flotilla on 30 August. Harcourt then assumed the office of Commander-in- Chief, Hong Kong, and head of the Military Government, temporarily retaining the Gimson administration, and Gimson himself as Lieutenant- Governor. The question then posed itself: in the circumstances, was a military administration necessary? Gimson was against it. But when the advance guard of the interim civil government staff arrived there was less urgency for his presence and that of his colleagues

- all of whom sorely needed leave.



F. C. Gimson, Colonial Secretary from 7 December 1 941 to 6 September 1945.



The Military Administration was established by proclamation on 1 Sep­ tember 1945. It was to last eight months until the restoration of civil govern­ ment on 1 May 1946, and during this period most of the problems of getting the colony working again were tackled. Harcourt was to say that the real work of rehabilitation had of course to be done by the Chinese, now given their freedom, food, law and order, and a stable currency. Freedom - yes. Food, in very small quantities - rationing continued into the 195 0s. Law and order was easier to ensure, for on the whole the Chinese wanted only to be left alone to build or rebuild their businesses and make much-needed money. The currency was indeed stabilized, by various means.

The term Military Administration was something of a misnomer, for the

administration was in the hands of pre-war government officials whose natural leaning was to replicate the way in which the pre-war departments had been run.

After the euphoria of liberation the realities of a city resembling nothing so much as a typhoon-battered junk, dismasted, rudderless, in still doubtful weather, and with a starved crew, began to take mournful shape. Some idea of the magnitude of the tasks ahead appears in the policy directive issued to MacDougall from London. This required the establishment of a police force and military courts, and of camps for the relief of the distressed; the control of the influx of ·civilians; the provision of medical facilities and sanitary measures; the restitution of essential public services; the establishment of currency, fiscal, and banking arrangements; and the control of prices and wages. Given the state of affairs in Hong Kong, these instructions must have seemed like an order to remove the Peak with pick and shovel. A further brief adjured MacDougall, the Civil Affairs Officer, to be mindful of the long-term objectives, which would involve him in: reorganization of courts, police,



--------·



The Japanese Admiral signs the surrender with the Japanese Commissioner for Foreign Affairs (in short sleeves) watching.



and prisons; rehabilitation of commerce and industry, and agriculture and fisheries; reconstruction and redevelopment of public and private utilities including postal and air services; reorganization of the hospitals and the public health and sanitary organs; reorganization of the educational system; and, finally, preparations to transfer the administration to a civil government. Reading between the lines, it is possible to discern 'the germs of the social welfare policy which was to be a major part of British colonial policy in the post-war years'.5 A reflection of the Beveridge Report in Britain can be faintly descried, a strange accompaniment to the government's old-fashioned aims of individual responsibility and minimal government interference. Mac­ Dougall's instructions included the statement: 'Programmes of departmental activities should form an integral part of a general plan for social welfare, based on the ascertained needs of the community and so constructed as to give proper weight to the requirements of both urban and rural areas.'6 The fellow-feeling, the humanity induced in the West by the horrors of war, inspired in even the most conservative breast some inclination towards socialist practice, and such measures were to make a brief appearance in

diluted form in Hong Kong.

Rear-Admiral Harcourt delegated by proclamation much of his power to MacDougall as Chief Civil Affairs Officer, who was then made responsible to the Colonial Office in London. By mid-November he reported that only r8

Ilf.iThlL.E N T OF SURREllDF:R .



lie , .,'.a.1or General �i111ekict-J. Okada and Vice

M.miral :tuit aro ;-'ujit&., in virtue of the unconditional surrender to the Allied Pm,ers or all Japanese A:nned

Farces and &.ll forces under Japanese control wherever situ.at�, ILi! proclaimed in .Article Two or the Instrir.,c:nt