[
    {
        "id": 207457,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 225,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n217\n\nwe had sudden night checks which would be carried out about midnight or one a.m.\n\nOne of the most disagreeable tasks in the hospital was that of the washing squad. We had to have a system of washing bed linen for those unfit to wash their own sheets. Most of the work was carried out on badly stained sheets which had come from the dysentery wards and which had to be washed in cold water. The four men under Corporal R. Thompson R.A.M.C. who did this work deserve unstinted praise, but it was not until December that I was able to buy a pair of rubber boots for the washing squad.\n\nIn the same month Seino gave me 25 grammes of nicotinic acid and all Canadians received ten yen each from home,\n\nPatients and staff decorated the wards at Christmas time and it was remarkable what a gay effect was produced by the bright colours of a few empty cigarette packets. We had a little extra for Christmas dinner carefully hoarded for many weeks beforehand. We even had a concert on Hogmanay but I was glad to reach the end of 1942.\n\n1943\n\nThirty years after the event it is possible to look back and see that 1943 was the turning point for the better in the affairs of the hospital and its inmates. It was less easy to discern this at the time.\n\nWe had known of the naval battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway in June 1942. They were fought over four thousand miles from Hong Kong and seemed remote to us. The Japanese accounts claimed them as decisive victories, and it was not till the history of the campaigns became available long after the war that I saw these battles clearly as having imposed the first check on the Japanese advance in the Pacific. It would have been immensely encouraging to have known this at the time.\n\nIn 1943 we knew of the Russian successful defence of Stalingrad, we knew of the victory in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini. The placenames on the Russian front showed how that terrible campaign was going. We knew of the island battles in the Pacific; we knew of Guadalcanal; but all the Far East news published in the Hongkong News was presented to show the huge losses inflicted on the Americans by the Japanese defenders of positions which in the end remained safely in their hands. The impression conveyed was one of enormous American losses from\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215802,
        "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": 101,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "34\n\nBETWEEN THE NINE DRAGONS AND A DIVINE WIND: HOW HONG KONG'S WEATHER MIGHT HAVE AFFECTED AN ALLIED INVASION TO RETAKE THE TERRITORY*\n\nCHOHONG CHO\n\nSynopsis\n\nIn the War in the Pacific during World War II, the question of whether or not to engage Japan directly in China was a major one for Allied planners. If the Japanese weren't enough of a problem, an age-old factor - the weather - certainly would have provided the Allies with additional concerns. The Pacific and Asia are home to some of the most extreme weather in the world.\n\nHong Kong, a possible target in any Allied campaign in China, played host to some of this extreme weather. What this study attempts to do is to consider how Hong Kong's adverse weather conditions could have affected an Allied operation to recapture it from the Japanese.\n\nBackground\n\nAfter Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941 and Great Britain was expelled from the Pacific, only the U.S. was left to face Japan in this theatre. The U.S. itself was in bad shape, as most of its Pacific Fleet had been mauled at Pearl Harbor. On the Asian mainland, Japan was still busying herself with China and Britain. A stalemate had developed with the former, while the latter was being pushed out of Burma into India.\n\nHowever, the U.S. Navy's (USN) aircraft carriers were not caught in the Pearl Harbor debacle, and during much of 1942, they bore the brunt of the action against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the Pacific. In a series of three engagements with the IJN (at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal), with inferior numbers accompanied by\n\n*The author would like to thank Mr. Ko Tim-keung for bringing a draft of this article to the attention of the Hon. Editor, and Professor Elfed Roberts for his comments on an early version of the draft.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215803,
        "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": 102,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "35\n\nheavy losses, the USN stemmed and then turned the tide of Japanese conquest by early 1943.\n\nAfter evicting the Japanese from Guadalcanal, the Allies (mainly the U.S. and Australia) took advantage of this opportunity to move north against other Japanese positions in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. This was the Southwest Pacific Area.\n\nThe USN, while assisting the Allied drives in the land-dominated Southwest Pacific, continued to wait for a chance to launch its own offensive in the Central Pacific Area, which was dominated by ocean. Such a drive was not opportunistic like the Southwest Pacific drive, but had been envisioned for almost 35 years prior to the war in the form of War Plan Orange (WP Orange).\n\nThe origins of WP Orange could be traced even further back to the last years of the 19th Century. During this time, many Japanese emigrated to the continental U.S. and Hawaii, and incurred the hostility of White Americans. In time, such acts aroused Japan's fury, who considered herself a great power after her defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Alarmed over Japan's growing influence in the Pacific, American war planners began to draft the forerunners of WP Orange in 1907.2\n\nIn brief, WP Orange pitted the U.S. (Blue) against Japan (Orange). Orange planners expected the U.S. to lose the Philippines early in the war (which was what happened). The USN would steam all the way across the Pacific to recapture the Philippines, defeat the IJN in a decisive battle, and lay siege to Japan, eventually forcing her surrender.3 As for China (and Hong Kong), Orange planners had cautioned against trying to establish an American presence there. The Japanese were expected to have firmly planted themselves in and around China by the start of the war, and it was advisable for the U.S. to not undertake a campaign on the mainland.4\n\nThe reality in 1943, however, was that there were other participants in the war, like Britain and China. Both had interests on the Asian mainland, and they could not be ignored. A common interest was Hong Kong, which both China and Britain wanted to recover after the war. At the start of the war, Hong Kong was a British responsibility, but",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]