[
    {
        "id": 215933,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 232,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "166\n\noff from distant airfields and alerted possible targets. Previously the British had depended on runners and letters delivered by junk: the advantages of tapping on to the Chinese system were obvious.\n\nChiang was enthusiastic, and eager to talk. British policy seemed engineered towards appeasing the Japanese. Protecting trade and British economic interests were paramount, and the fate of China and its people were seen only in the light of that primary concern. In the deafening silence of British efforts to help the Chinese, Boxer's visit, and the recent reopening of the Burma Road, must have seemed like a breakthrough in British attitudes. Boxer sensed that Chiang was 'apparently envisaging a great deal wider form of liaison than we actually had in mind.' Later, British organisations were to claim that it was Chinese hostility and the Americans who stymied their efforts in China. There is plenty to negate this assumption. Dai Li, a shrewd judge of character and not a man to suffer fools, undoubtedly had had Boxer closely observed, and would have smoothed the way for his introduction to Chiang Kai Shek. The warmth of Boxer's reception shows the Chinese were not implacably opposed to the British. Indeed, far from being anti-western per se, General Dai gave enthusiastic support later to Americans such as Captain Miles, and indeed some British SOE related agencies, who were prepared to work with the Chinese on Chinese terms.\n\nThe wireless sets were duly sent to China and installed by a Cantonese speaking SOE officer, Major Hector Chauvin, who had been attached to Boxer in December 1939 for this purpose. Chauvin travelled extensively in China setting up the stations and meeting the Chinese personnel involved. This network was a prototype. It was the first serious intelligence system in the Hong Kong region. Most importantly, the arrangement was based on trust: the Chinese had full operational control. Although the Chinese might have a different agenda to the British, it was an implicit acknowledgement that, in China, the Chinese were paramount, and that Chinese could and did run a most efficient system. The arrangement worked: The evening before the Japanese attacked Kai Tak, Phyllis Harrop, a civilian police adviser, was at a dinner party with British intelligence personnel. At 10:30 hours, they were interrupted by a sudden telephone call, advising all staff to return immediately to headquarters. Major L left immediately and Captain Bush half an hour later. Bush was an expert on extremist secret",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215936,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 235,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "169\n\nindependently of each other, with little communication. History is written about those who create documents, not by those whose duty was to leave no trail. Nonetheless, it does appear that there were several groups quietly focussing on different aspects of resistance, not all military, should the day come when the Japanese took over.\n\nUsing his cover as a businessman working for Butterfield and Swire, where his \"manager,\" Mike Turner, also seems to have had SOE connections, Kendall also travelled through China, setting up contacts and listening posts, including those installed by Chauvin and Chinese intelligence. Indeed, because SOE tapped into an existing Chinese network, the intelligence it was able to access was far more sophisticated and accurate. SOE continued to fund another Chinese organisation, the RII (Research and Information Institute) throughout the duration of the war. This was a Chinese operated service using British equipment and a small British staff, working for, not in charge of, the Chinese. Many of its reports still exist, showing just how detailed was the information they gathered: exact ammunition supplies and strengths of Japanese units, area by area, names of officers, postings and movements. When, later in the war, efforts were made to amalgamate various British agencies operating in China, SOE managed to insist that RII was to remain separate and unaffected because it was a Chinese force.\n\nDespite what seems to have been a working relationship between the SOE and various forms of KMT intelligence, it is evident that Kendall also cultivated strong links in the hinterland of Hong Kong where KMT influence was weak. These areas were relatively remote and fiercely resistant to central government influence. The villagers were clannish, and their communities closed, united internally by family and traditional ties. Many of these villagers had emigrated overseas to work in places like South America and Malaya. They also had traditional systems of defence and security, but piracy and banditry were endemic, almost part of the economy. These regions were alien territory to urban Hong Kong people, European or Chinese, who as outsiders would have been treated with suspicion. Political loyalties varied, and before Hong Kong was attacked, people had no automatic regard for the British who were not yet ‘Allies, and whose record in China was not edifying. In many ways, this work was much easier after the occupation when locals and British forces, though humiliated by defeat, shared common ground. Kendall went into these areas, often alone, meeting and talking\n\n+",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215938,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 237,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "171\n\nCommunists and the China coast for Major Egerton Mott of the SOE. * Holmes referred to guerrillas who would be known to Kendall. He was convinced that the expansion of the Communists into British territory in the New Territories 'was planned in some detail before the Japanese attack on the Colony,' so working with this group required uncommon discretion and diplomacy on the part of any Britisher trying to win their support. Holmes, working with Kendall before the war and with the guerrillas later, would have been unusually well informed. He identified the Communist leader in the Hong Kong area as Tsoi Kwok Leung, a man ‘formerly connected with minor Chinese industrial enterprises in Hong Kong and Amoy and...consumptive.'\n\nSome form of SOE organisation was clearly in place in China, covertly, awaiting the Japanese attack before becoming fully activated. Col Chauvin had been removed from Hong Kong on 18th December, on the very day that the Japanese landed on Hong Kong Island, and sent to the British Military Mission in Chongqing. As the battle raged around them, Kendall, Talan and McEwan were stood by for special orders. Col. Harry Owen Hughes who had ostensibly been seconded to liaise with Chinese Armies in the 7 War zone, moved back to the Hong Kong area to await the arrival of something important. This was the arrival, in deep secrecy, of perhaps the most important escape party to ever leave occupied Hong Kong.\n\n[\n\nAt the very moment that Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese, a car was hurrying towards Aberdeen harbour. Inside sat Admiral Chan Chak, the Chinese Nationalist government's chief representative in Hong Kong, and a number of his KMT assistants. The group was led by DM MacDougall, an official seconded to Hong Kong from London to work on political affairs. He had been assigned to look after the Admiral personally, and maintained twenty-four-hour contact with the Admiral's party during the hostilities. They were to rendezvous with five boats of the 2nd Motor Boat Flotilla, who had been held back in battle. Reaching the pier an hour after the surrender, they found the boats gone. The only functioning vessel they could find was a fifteen-foot launch but the party piled in, knowing that the Japanese would be on them at any moment. Hardly had they gone 500 yards when they were fired on by Japanese occupying a post on Brick Hill, opposite, on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. The boat's engine disintegrated under the heavy fire, killing several men and wounding others, including",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215945,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 244,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "178\n\nClarke resistance circle during the occupation. Another member of the group was Emily Hahn, later the wife of Charles Boxer. Relationships between this left-wing branch of the Guomindang, with their strong Communist connections, and key figures in the British establishment may shed more light on the relations between the British and the Communists.\n\nWhen the War Office authorised the creation of a Chinese Machine Gun Unit, it pondered where the men for this group would come from. Who did they call on for advice? None other than Rewi Alley, the journalist who had lived in Yenan and knew the Chinese Communists well.xxii He even went so far as to suggest that the War Office consult a Communist guerrilla leader from the north on setting up the unit, and recruiting men from China. This was tantamount to establishing, in Hong Kong, a unit of left-influenced fighters. Even more significantly, the unit was designed specifically to be a Chinese unit with minimal British input. The first batch of trainees were supposed to form an elite officer corps in what eventually might be an all-Chinese unit. The War Office was prepared to go along with this idea and detailed Chauvin, who had set up the wireless network, to organise the unit. This was in line with SOE's record of training and arming local men for a resistance and sabotage role, although the details of the training these men received is unknown, and officially they were a 'machine gun company.' By this stage, SOE had two separate guerrilla training units in China itself: the Danish Commando Company staffed by Danish businessmen under cover of Danish neutrality, and another force known as Mission 204, a much larger-scale and better-established organisation created to assist specifically in the Chinese war effort and operate in the hinterland of Shanghai. Chauvin was able to recruit and train fifty men for this Chinese battalion. Whether he used men with Communist leanings or men recruited through his contacts with KMT guerrillas is unknown. Photographs of the passing-out parade of the unit show that they were unusually tall men, possibly northerners. Unfortunately, they graduated from their training barely a week before the Japanese attacked.\n\nJust as war is an extension of politics, so is politics essential for the continuance of war. In a situation like Hong Kong, the political aspects of resistance were even more complex than in other places because of the proximity and the supremacy of China. No amount of intelligence gathering and sabotage skills would have counted without",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215948,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 247,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "181\n\nSignificantly, this party was the only escape group without a regular military officer in their midst, and to have a Chinese to organise their escape and travel with them. All three Europeans were academics, without experience of up-to-date, modern military thinking. Moreover, given the nature of colonial society, they were used to being treated with deference. It would not have occurred to them to question why the Chinese along their escape route had been so helpful, or why they were met by Europeans in this very remote area, still bandit country, where few ventured, who were not only expecting them, but 'who were quite conversant with the route back to Kowloon and were assistants to FW Kendall, another member of the same organisation whose address... was c/o Col Chauvin, British Embassy, Chung King.'\n\nLt DF Davies, formerly a Lecturer in Physics, solemnly advised that he understood 'Col LT Ride of our party was to attempt some sort of underground railroad back to the Camp...(and) if they could be persuaded and/or allowed to carry out this work, I would suggest that the Cloak and Dagger Group be approached.' Since the Cloak and Dagger Boys they met were Z Force, this was in fact one of the jobs they had long been trained for.\n\nThe trip from Hong Kong had been stressful, not least because a commanding officer had told Ride in no uncertain terms before departure that he should be court-martialled on arrival in Chongqing for deserting his troops. From Lt Davies' report, we know that the group had talked with Z Force members about their organisation. Grimsdale was later to refer to Ride blaming Kendall as a 'complete failure' for delaying his departure from Kukong, then a safe town with Chinese Army presence. Ride himself makes no mention, describing the men later as mere escapees with the Chan Chak group.\n\nWhile still in Kukong, after meeting MacEwan and Talan, the group met Col Chauvin and Dr Wan Wan Yik Shin, a doctor who had served both in the Chinese Army and in the British RAMC. It was at this stage that Ride appears to have outlined his proposals to set up an elaborate escape and evasion organisation. By the time he arrived in Chongqing a few days later, he had formulated an elaborate proposal. Operational details were sketchy, to be left to others to sort out, naming Dr Wan and General Yu Mo Han, commander of Chinese forces in the area. On one point he was unequivocally adamant: that 'the section should be under the command of Lt Col Ride.' It was an absolutely essential prerequisite that the British authorities provide him with a letter confirming his",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    }
]