GOVERNOR'S BROADCAST MADE ON
THE EVENING OF 30TH APRIL, 1946.
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Enclosure No. 1.
Today
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the day of my return to Hongkong after so long an absence is for me a day of many memories. I want to say a very few words to you this evening about some of those memories.
Tomorrow and in the time to follow we shall be looking forward hopefully andpurposefully to the future. Tonight let us for a few moments look back.
It is natural and right that our first thoughts should be of those who fell in the defence of Hongkong four and a half years ago and of those who since that time have given their lives in the service of their country while prisoners in the hands of the enemy. And it is natural and right that my first words should be said in remembrance of them and in their honour.
The cause for which their lives were given has at length prevailed, and it is our part, while we enjoy the freedom and the fruits of victory, to remember with pride and with thanksgiving the courage and devotion of those who shared in the struggle and did not live to see the victory.
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Other memories crowd in on me as I find myself once more in Hongkong. None is more vivid than the memory of the fine spirit, the willing service, and the comradeship that lit up those dark days of 1941. I want to take this opportunity - the first since my separation from the Colony and its inhabitants of expressing to you all, members of the Volunteer Defence Forces, members of the Civil Defence Services, and generally to the countless men and women of Hongkong who bore their share in the burden that was laid upon us, my admiration and my thanks for all that you did and my sympathy for all that you have endured.
Of the brave deeds that were done in the day of battle and in the long period of enemy occupation many passed unrecorded, but many are known and will not be forgotten. And besides all the individual acts of gallantry and endurance there will remain in men's minds this enc uraging memory from those bitter closing days of 1941 the memory of unity of effort by men and women of every class, of wide-spread and devoted service to a common cause, and of a courageous spirit which no endeavours and no successes of the enemy were able to quell.
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It is to this spirit that I wish, at the earliest possible moment after my return, to pay tribute; the spirit displayed both by Hongkong's glorious dead and by the living who in the years to come will be helping to build up the future to which in hope and confidence we are all looking forward.
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