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Conditions in the Colony.
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from them when the order was given. Law and order were apparently being satisfactorily maintained by the Japanese military and police forces, and the officials of the Japanese administration, with a surprising fatalism, were becoming accus- tomed to providing such assistance and information as was asked of them. In these circumstances the initial tasks of the new Administration, namely the transfer of the maintenance of law and order to British control, and the organization of services and supplies essential to the welfare of the Community, were under- taken more effectively and expeditiously than might otherwise have been the case. By the 1st September all Japanese, whether military or civilians, had been cleared from the island of Hong Kong and had been concentrated in Kowloon where they were later interned. On the 13th September the Hong Kong dollar was re- established as legal currency and on the same day provision was made for the setting-up of Military Courts under Proclamation No. 8.
3. Initial enthusiasm, however, and the absorbing business of improvisation did not long obscure the magnitude of the task which lay ahead. It needed no penetrating insight to appreciate the time and the human effort and resource which would be necessary to allay the effects of years of neglect, misgovernment and abuse which were everywhere apparent. There were universal signs of malnutrition among the excited crowds. The main streets were cleared only to reveal the havoc of looting and neglect behind them. The elementary principles of public sanitation had long been in abeyance, thereby facilitating the possible spread of disease among a population ill-equipped to resist it. Supplies left by the Japanese, and the slow appearance of looted or hoarded goods in the shops, could at best provide a temporary palliative for the huge needs of a thoroughly exploited and exhausted popula- tion. Electricity was generated by a haphazard supply of fire- wood; but it made possible the lighting of all the major parts of the town, the propulsion of the few serviceable tramcars over such tracks as had not been wrecked, and the maintenance of a practicable, if intermittent, telephone service. Salvaged ferry- steamers provided an overcrowded and inadequate cross-harbour service, and the dilapidated alcohol-driven motor transport left by the Japanese was patched and cannibalized to meet the most vital needs of the essential services. The early excitement of the
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population gradually settled into that resourceful optimism which is characteristic of the whole Chinese race. But, contrasting with this, there were sporadic signs of unfamiliar and more serious habits of mind, manifested most noticeably, perhaps, in a new assertive nationalism, which combined with the legacy of gangsterdom left by the Japanese to foment and precipitate the bewildering cross-currents of recrimination and denunciation which were the direct outcome of the occupation period.
4. It appeared that for the gradual amelioration of post- occupation conditions three considerations were of immediate importance; the stimulation of the enthusiasm and resilience of the Chinese population itself; a continuance of the early respect for law and order and the absence of serious epidemic disease; and the regular arrival of promised supplies and of trained person- nel in sufficient numbers to enable the Administration to develop and extend its control as circumstances required.
5. The native qualities of the Chinese population were, Morale. perhaps, from the beginning, the Administration's most notable asset. At no time during the whole period under review did the public mind waver from its initial confidence in a golden future for the Colony and its people. The various restrictive measures by which the early days of the re-occupation were characterized were accepted cheerfully, and their eventual relaxation proved to be no more than the local population had foreseen and prepared for. Thus the opening of the Colony to normal trade on the 23rd November, the relaxation of the Moratorium Proclamation to allow the banks to accept new deposits and make new advances, and a further relaxation to allow certain dealings in land, were greeted as welcome, but long-anticipated, innovations and were generally construed as constituting greater advances towards normal conditions than was, perhaps, justified,
6. The correspondence columns of the newspapers early demonstrated a healthy concern on the part of the ordinary citizen for the way in which the Colony was being governed. Renewed contact with the outside world stimulated this interest by an inevitable comparison between local conditions and conditions in contiguous and less fortunate areas.
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