[ { "id": 206960, "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-1974", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Paper Chase\n\n25\n\nSo far, we have received transfers of records from 27 different government offices, the whole now occupying nearly 6,000 feet of shelving. We have therefore passed the storage capacity of our present premises and have had to resort to additional temporary accommodation on the old naval dockyard site.\n\nWhen I came to Hong Kong I was told that practically all of the government's pre-war records had perished during the Japanese occupation. It is true that pitifully little remains of the very large accumulations which must have been in government offices in 1941, and what records did survive, with a few notable exceptions, tend to be fragmentary and unrelated to one another in time or content.\n\nNevertheless the dearth is not as great as is sometimes supposed. The Rating and Valuation Department's Rates Collection Book series, which we now hold, is practically complete from 1858 to 1952, and several large and exceedingly valuable series of 19th and pre-war 20th century Land Office records have been transferred to us from the Registrar-General's Department. These include series of correspondence files dating from 1866 to 1940, Crown and Village Rent Rolls from 1843 to 1958 and 1856 to 1960 respectively and some 90-100,000 Surrendered Title Deeds, many of which date from the middle of the 19th century, and possibly earlier.\n\nOther pre-war records have reached us from the Prisons Department, Audit, the Supreme Court, the Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers), and the Official Receiver's Office and they are still coming. Only a few days ago some twelve volumes of Judicial Department correspondence dating from 1844 to 1903 were unearthed from a great pile of lumber and rubbish in a government record store and as my staff are still quarrying in it I have no doubt that more of them will come to light.\n\nThere is no knowing what treasures may lie in the many dungeons of government's archival limbo. Some of them are so cluttered as to be virtually inaccessible, except by emptying them, and it will be years before we have prospected them all—that is, if we succeed in finding them all. Twelve years ago a very large crate of mid-19th century records was discovered quite by accident in the roof of the Supreme Court.\n\nThe loss of Hong Kong's pre-war records is regrettable but the situation is not entirely irretrievable. As many of you know, a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207239, "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": 7, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CORRIGENDA\n\n(i) Readers may find the following list of sub-heads in Dr. Bowie's article on The British Military Hospital Hong Kong 1942-1945 useful for reference purposes.\n\nIntroduction\n\nPrelude: up to 8 December 1941\n\n8-25 December 1941\n\n26 December 1941-7 August 1942\n\nThe Period of the Infections\n\nThe Period of the Deficiency Diseases\n\nThe Period of Slow Decline\n\nFood\n\nJapanese Rations\n\nAdditions to Japanese Supplies of Food\n\nGifts from Friends in Hong Kong\n\nSupplies bought with Officers' Money\n\nRed Cross Food Supplies\n\nEffects of Supplements on General Diet\n\nFeeding the Patients\n\nFeeding the Staff\n\nDeliveries of Japanese Rations\n\nStoring the Food\n\nCooking the Food\n\nDistribution of Food\n\nArrangement made by our Friends in Hong Kong\n\nBody Weights\n\nJapanese Administrative Staff and Guards.\n\nTrading\n\nSupplies of Drugs and Dressings\n\nEntertainment\n\nAugust-December 1942\n\nThe Year 1943\n\n1 January 1944-23 March 1945\n\nReasons for the Move of the Hospital in 1945\n\n24 March-9 September 1945\n\nCasualties and Evacuation of Wounded During Hostilities\n\nResponsibility without Power\n\nSex\n\nThe Atomic Bomb", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207392, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "152\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nWhen I started to write this account I intended to concentrate upon the experiences of staff and patients, and to restrict reference to myself to trying to cast a little light on situations which otherwise might seem obscure. My diary notes, though voluminous, were for the most part phrased in what I thought then discreet language in case they were discovered by the Japanese. I had a healthy respect for the Japanese capacity for dealing out punishment to anyone who failed to obey their orders to the letter. This discretion, allied to a tendency to refer in cryptic terms to events which filled my mind at the time but which have now faded from my memory, has left me with masses of statistics and information of a kind which I have found difficult to weave into a coherent story which will do justice to patients and staff. I have lost touch with nearly all my colleagues and friends whose own memories might have stimulated me, and in this account I am therefore relying far more on personal recollections and experiences to round off the story than I ever intended originally. I hope that those who shared these years with me will, if they read the story, forgive the change in emphasis which these considerations have made necessary. Looking back over my diaries now I am glad that I never had to explain some of the entries to the Japanese. I learned enough then to understand now that a quite truthful explanation of a simple description of an event might not be accepted. Practised interrogators were known to use methods against which the truth finds it hard to prevail. Fortunately I never had to submit to such an ordeal.\n\nThis then is the story of the British Military Hospital, Hong Kong. I did not see any prisoner of war camps until I lived in Sham Shui Po for a few days in March 1945 when conditions had, as they had also in the hospital, become much more stable. I am in no position to write the stories of the camps, and any references I may make to conditions there are based on hearsay only. Their medical and administrative problems were different from those we met in the hospital.\n\nAfter considering in a prelude the general situation in Hong Kong as I saw it, I refer briefly to the period of hostilities and then to the early months of captivity up to August 1942. I then deal in more detail with events from that date onwards fortified by the notes in my own diaries.\n\nThe story of the Army Medical Services in Hong Kong is contained in Volume 11 of the Official Medical History of the Second", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207400, "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": 168, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "160\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nside used gas in our short campaign. In a later section I shall refer in more detail to the casualties. I have noted earlier that Shackleton's war-time command in the hospital was splendid. As in all beaten armies there were some less stout-hearted soldiers; some of these, uninjured, sought shelter in the hospital in the last stages of hostilities, but Shackleton overcame this hazard effectively as he did the many others that arose. He was never a man tolerant of weakness.\n\nThe nursing service was first-rate, led by the Matron, Miss E. M. B. Dyson (the Q.A.'s did not have service rank at that time), and the wounded enjoyed a splendid standard of care right up to the end when the hospital was practically in the front line. The members of the R.A.M.C., R.A.D.C., and attached R.E. stuck to their jobs manfully. The Chinese drivers of ambulance and other cars disappeared into the civilian population as our defeat came nearer, and none should blame them.\n\nIn the hospital, we heard Japanese shells fired from the mainland pass overhead and watched them burst on houses on the Peak. We saw boats bringing Japanese troops from Kowloon in broad daylight to land at North Point. They passed unopposed across the harbour, for apparently our guns could not be brought to bear on them while our defences in the North Point area had been silenced. I saw the harbour crossings made under flags of truce by Japanese officers carrying demands for the surrender of the Colony. These were rejected. In the last stages, we watched the Japanese shelling of Magazine Gap just above the hospital, and we had to keep under cover when moving about the hospital to avoid mortar and small arms fire. It is, however, one of my treasured memories to recall the reaction of Miss G. Colthorpe, one of the Reserve Q.A. sisters, to the surrender of the Colony. She would have hanged the Governor and the General Officer Commanding on the spot. The urgency of the surrender was soon only too evident, for we saw long columns of Japanese troops pass along Bowen Road immediately below the hospital, and the front line could not have been more than four hundred yards or so from the hospital at the time of our capitulation. I believe that it was the fact that we were not overrun in battle that saved patients and staff from the rape and murder which disfigured the campaign in Stanley, Happy Valley, and elsewhere.\n\nEarlier in this account, I said that the topography of the Colony left our troops little or no room for manoeuvre in defence. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207416, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "176\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nTHE PERIOD OF SLOW DECLINE\n\nThe year 1943 began with 341 patients in hospital and there were 30 deaths during the year. A number of our own staff had to be admitted for treatment of early deficiencies. Of the 234 patients remaining on 31 December 1943, deficiency diseases accounted for 120, dysentery for 13, pulmonary tuberculosis for 8 and war wounds for 25.\n\nThe year 1944 followed much the same pattern as 1943. The hospital admitted 229 patients, discharged 304 and at the end of the year retained 145 patients. Fourteen deaths occurred during the year and the staff admission rate continued to rise.\n\nThe hospital closed in Bowen Road on 23 March 1945 and re-opened in the Central British School, Kowloon, on 10 April. Earlier we had been required by the Japanese to reduce the total of patients and staff in the hospital to two hundred. When the hospital moved, therefore, it had only 119 patients and 3 deaths had occurred in 1945 up to 23 March. Sections describing the years 1943 and 1944 will be added later to this account and a short section will cover the last months from April to September 1945. This last few months was what I have called the Period of Relative Stability. It will be convenient to deal with the rationing problem as a whole and a separate section follows devoted to this subject.\n\nFOOD\n\nOf all subjects of general conversation and general interest, the most common was food. The receipt of stocks was carefully watched by patients and staff, and storage issue, preparation, cooking and distribution were always subjected to close scrutiny. This interest with its undertone of slight suspicion was particularly developed in some men and was not at first understood by those who had any responsibilities for food and was the cause of some resentment by the latter. The common interest of all in making the best use of food and in its even distribution led to methods which brought about a diminution of suspicion though opinions were never lacking in all aspects of food economy. Men with special knowledge used to tell of succulent dishes characteristic of different countries and regions and many vowed that they would pay greater attention to such delicacies as pigs' trotters when they were free again.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207417, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n177\n\nOur food came from four sources; the Japanese rations, food sent in by our friends in Hong Kong, supplies received from the Red Cross Society and food purchased with funds contributed by officers mainly those in the hospital but also those in the camps from time to time. These contributions were made from pay received from the Japanese by these officers.\n\nJapanese Rations\n\nI have prepared tables (Appendix A) to show the kinds and the amounts of foods issued to us from Japanese sources and used on behalf of patients and staff who were on a full diet. Notes given in the tables give additional information and include details of certain additional Japanese food received and how it was used. The amounts in these cases were very small and while they must be recorded, especially the milk, it was rare for any to appear in the general diet and then only as a treat when supplies allowed. Since this is not a scientific treatise, I intend the tables to present a broad picture of our food situation. The daily quantities of food therefore are shown as averaged over five months in 1942, rather under three months in Bowen Road in 1945, rather over three months in Kowloon in 1945, and over the whole years of 1943 and 1944. These averages should be read in conjunction with specimen daily menus I set out in tables at Appendix B. There were many, many days on which our diet consisted of boiled rice and vegetables.\n\nIn these tables, I make no allowances for losses resulting from poor quality, preparation, and cooking in the case of vegetables and fish. These losses were usually high, and on occasions reached a level of 30% in the case of vegetables, which were sometimes rotten when received. We were not choosy when deciding when food was fit to cook and eat. The fresh vegetables, in addition to the more usual varieties, which practically never included Western-type potatoes, though we had sweet potatoes more often, did however include such unusual varieties as chrysanthemum leaves, Chinese lily root, tara root, and so on. The fish varied greatly; on 10 October 1942, I noted that we had received \"long thin fish, shark flesh, baby sharks, and heaven knows what, most of it a little old\". Sergeant Seino, of whom I shall have more to say later, warned the quartermaster that some fish was perhaps poisonous and advised us to be careful using it. I believe Seino's intention was to be helpful, though...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207420, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "180\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nchases made using funds voluntarily subscribed by officers of the staff and officer patients. A first charge upon all receipts was to provide what we called \"extras\" for patients in need and only the surplus after this prime need was met was issued for general use. The true value to the hospital of the gifts received is therefore much greater than appears in the records I am able to give here, which reflect only that portion used for general issue.\n\n(b) Supplies bought with money, contributed by Officers, Staff and Patients.\n\nI recorded earlier how sometime in 1942 before the departure of our nurses the Japanese began to pay commissioned officers, both staff and patients. In these days members of the Q.A.I.M.N.S., as it was then, were not commissioned and were not paid. I also recorded how Colonel Shackleton started funds from which to finance purchases for the general good. When I succeeded him the funds were reorganised and responsibility for administering them was spread more widely. A Hospital Central Fund was set up and managed by an executive committee of two officer patients and one medical officer with myself as chairman. This received money, still on a voluntary basis, from officers in the hospital and occasionally from those in P.O.W. camps in North Point and in Argyle Street, Kowloon. Disbursements were made to four sub-funds; one to provide extra diets for patients, one to supplement general messing, one to provide necessities and comforts e.g. electric bulbs, cigarettes etc. and lastly a small C.O.'s Fund. The first three were run by sub-committees and I was left to apply the minor resources of the C.O.'s Fund to support any enterprise for the general good.\n\nAs a side light on human nature it is interesting to recall that one or two British officers were reluctant for a time to support the Central Fund. They feared, from past experience no doubt, that the British army's accounting system would seek to recover from their pay at home the value of the military yen they were receiving from the Japanese. They knew that when they became prisoners, marriage and other allowances ceased and they foresaw that their wives and families might be able to draw only upon their basic pay. This view was ridiculed by the majority who held that we were faced with a situation in which immediate action was required and the reluctant ones soon abandoned their position and made their contributions valiantly. Readers in the 1970s will find it hard to believe", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207421, "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": 189, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n181\n\nthat the fears of the reluctant officers were justified. A monthly deduction of the order of £14 was made from the home pay of officers who were prisoners of the Japanese. This, added to the uncertainty in all cases of their husbands' fate, caused great concern to wives. Fortunately, at a later date a wiser and more generous course was taken and by the end of the war all money thus deducted had been refunded,\n\nIn addition to their contributions to the Central Fund, officers gave support in money to individual other ranks, patients and staff, and some were particularly generous. It is pleasing to record the generous gifts made from their pay by officer prisoners.\n\nThe greatest contribution to our energy requirements was undoubtedly made by the rice in our diet. As an aside on this, my wife told me that when listening to the daily broadcasts on food by the Radio Doctor at that time, Dr. Charles Hill, she heard him say that rice was not a good diet. (It was probably in short supply at home at the time). Incensed, she wrote to him saying that his statement was most disheartening for families who had relatives who were prisoners in Japanese hands, knowing that rice was their staple diet. Needless to say she got no reply but ended up wiser in the arts of propagandists. Because of our dependence upon rice, that part of money spent and gifts devoted to general messing was used on purchases designed to make the wearisome rations more palatable, and also to provide a supplement on the lean days when boiled rice and vegetables were the only food available. If judged solely by calorie values the proportion of energy supplied in the general diet from money contributed by officers and from the gifts of our Hong Kong friends was not large. The money, though, bought substances which were invaluable in giving men some interest in their food and thus in making better use of it.\n\nAdding together the value of gifts received from visitors and purchased using money contributed by officers my records show the following additions to the daily of all receiving general rations\n\nProtein G Fat Carbohydrate G.\n\n1943. One week in Jan.\n\n7.9 12.6 28.6\n\nAverage for June.\n\n3.0 2.0 9.0\n\nAverage for Dec.\n\n2.0 3.0 6.0\n\n1944. - Average for March.\n\n1.6 3.6 12.6", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207422, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "182 \n\nDONALD C. BOWIE \n\nMarch 1944 was the last month in which I kept records on the above lines. Earlier a system of bi-monthly intakes of Red Cross supplies, some acquired locally, was started, and these intakes added hugely to the value of the gift parcel system. The new system is described more fully in the section on Red Cross Supplies. Purchases to improve general messing using voluntary contributions of money continued unchanged. I repeat that much of the specially purchased foods and gifts of food from visitors were used to provide for extra and special diets for very sick patients. The figures I give are concerned only with general diets and fail completely to indicate the value to sick patients of these gifts and purchases.\n\n(c) Red Cross Food Supplies \n\nThe value of the contributions made by the Red Cross Society to the well-being of patients and staff can hardly be overestimated. Morale had already been seriously shaken by the removal of our nurses in August 1942 and by the outbreaks of dysentery and diphtheria by the time the deficiency diseases appeared. The burning feet which reduced men to tears, the visual defects which prevented reading, the staggering gait due to defective balancing power of those who were able to get up at all, the emaciation of so many and the weight loss of all were known by all to be due to under-nutrition. There seemed no escape from a steady deterioration and this, together with shortages of fuel and other supplies produced an atmosphere in the hospital not far short of gloom. A little improvement was just beginning to show as the high incidence of the infections declined when on St. Andrew's day 1942 Red Cross food parcels were delivered in the proportion of one per head of the 392 inhabitants of the hospital. As was usual with most Japanese actions we had no warning beforehand. Each parcel contained 12 tins of assorted foods, tea, sugar, soap, and a bar of chocolate. All but 10 were, except for minor deficiencies, intact. Of the 10, eight showed more than minor deficiencies and these along with one intact parcel were issued to the nine members of the medical officers' mess who agreed to accept them. The defective parcels were shown to the Japanese interpreter without much hope, and true enough they were not made up. A month earlier a newly arrived interpreter had told me that Red Cross parcels were being delivered to Sham Shui Po P.O.W. camp but our expectations subsided as time went on and none arrived in the hospital. When our parcels did arrive", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207425, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n185\n\nreceived from Japanese sources, (Appendix A) will show that fresh milk was also received from time to time and this, of course, as is noted, was used practically wholly for the ill patients. It was only occasionally that a little was allowed to others in order to keep up their morale.\n\nFeeding the Staff\n\nI do not here include the officers who were members of the staff, for these received pay and could use what was left of this after contributions had been paid and friends supported to supplement their general messing, though the extra thus obtained was very small. The problems with other staff can also be stated simply. These men's work was essential; deprived of it, the hospital could not function. Some of this work was hard if intermittent, e.g., carrying patients or stores, felling trees for timber; some was hard and regular, like the work of the laundry squad, particularly during the dysentery outbreak; some was exacting and often provoking, like that of the nursing staff. On the other hand, the lamentable conditions of acutely ill patients had to be rectified at all costs.\n\nThe principle adopted was that when a member of the staff began to show signs of early deficiency, as some were doing as early as August 1942, he was admitted to hospital, when he had all the rights of patients to extra diets. In the case of staff members who had, for example, put in a heavy day felling trees or moving 100 kg sacks of rice, I made to each man a small extra issue, maybe an egg, maybe some peanut butter, and so on. This was a token rather than a major contribution to their nourishment and was never resented by patients.\n\nIn the early days of the Hospital Central Fund in 1942, the executive committee, on which officer patients were represented, recognised the special position of the working staff, and small, very small cash payments were made to these monthly from the Fund. At a later date, in 1943, staff were given working pay, again in very small amounts by the Japanese, but it was not till 6 March 1945 that the needs of working staff were recognised by a formal entitlement to extra general rations. We had long known that in the P.O.W. camps, men employed on camp duties got increased rations, and we got the immediate example we required when in January 1945 a working party from Sham Shui Po was accommodated in Bowen Road while employed on preparing land in Happy Valley", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207431, "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": 199, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n191\n\nof course I was responsible. Only on one occasion was I accused of a misuse of stores myself. In a community the size of ours, in the disturbing atmosphere of the early year or two, I suppose I was lucky not to meet more accusations of my own shortcomings. Anonymous letters diminished and eventually disappeared as the policy of spreading responsibilities took shape and of course as conditions improved.\n\nIn this account I have given much space to the problems of general messing of patients and staff for this was the most important general matter which affected everybody. Ordinary complaints as to quantity and quality of food were openly and freely made and as speedily forgotten by most of our population. There were some, a few only, whose recurring complaints made life miserable at times for all those in the supply line.\n\nArrangements made by our friends in Hong Kong\n\nEven now I do not know the whole story about the food supplies which arrived at the hospital as gifts from our friends in Hong Kong. I repeat here the hope that Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke will find it possible to relate this in detail for it was he who originated the system. A short account of this remarkable man is necessary. He was Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong at the outbreak of war and was deeply committed to the welfare of Hong Kong Chinese citizens of all classes. He had reorganized the medical services in the Colony and had a formidable reputation as an advocate in any cause that he took up. He sought nothing for himself; he liked his own ways of doing things and often enough these did not commend themselves to others. Courage, pertinacity and not a little guile allowed him usually to carry the day. His wife and very young daughter were in Hong Kong with him, and were not evacuated to the Philippines and later to Australia with other service and civilian wives and families in July 1940. His view was that if the families of Chinese and other races for whom the Hong Kong government was responsible were not to be evacuated then his own family would also stay in the Colony. In this decision his wife backed him up fully.\n\nBefore the Far East war, following representations by the Japanese Foreign Office a Japanese doctor named Eguchi came to study on the spot the medical and health arrangements in the Colony. Colonel T. Eguchi next appeared as the Director of Me-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207441, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n201\n\nin the recreation room and put disinfectant in a bowl outside the Japanese office. The general spoke to nobody. Two months earlier, in March I had been ousted from my office in the front of the building and this pleasant room henceforward became the headquarters office of the Japanese within the hospital. I was surprised that they had not seized this earlier.\n\nOn 23 August 1943 the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society, Prince Shimatsu, inspected the hospital. At all times the appearance of the hospital was good, but at this as at all inspections the Japanese laid great stress on having the recreation room looking specially well. In addition to white cloths on the tables and vases of flowers all the musical instruments and equipment for indoor games had to be laid out on display. As usual the inspecting officer had no parley with patients or staff.\n\nI have records of only three occasions on which British doctors from P.O.W. camps were allowed to visit Bowen Road. Major Ashton Rose, Indian Medical Service, was the doctor accepted by the Japanese as being in administrative medical charge in Sham Shui Po camp. I believe he had considerable influence with them, in so far as any prisoner could have influence. On 5 March 1943 he visited the hospital bringing with him some patients for admission and came again on 23 March with an officer patient for specialist eye examination. On the second occasion he stayed to lunch, a phrase which of course indicates a higher degree of sophistication than in fact we deserved. It was however something for us to be able to entertain a guest at all. We learned from Ashton Rose that the general state of prisoners in Sham Shui Po was improving and that the men were fitter. On 13 May Captain Woodward, an Australian serving with the I.M.S., came over from Kowloon to have medical advice about himself and on this occasion Saito came too.\n\nIt seems curious now to look back upon such things, but up to March 1943 the bomb and shell damage to the hospital inflicted fifteen months earlier had gone substantially unrepaired. The top floors were badly damaged and as I reported earlier the kitchen in the middle section connecting the two blocks of wards was completely destroyed. Rain poured in at these places as well as at other damaged areas and the recreation room below the kitchen was unusable in wet weather. The fact that we did not carry out repairs earlier probably resulted from our preoccupation at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207453, "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": 221, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n213\n\nservice, thirty-two women members of the Nursing Detachment of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps and two women nursing auxiliaries. By December 31 we had 341 patients, slightly over half of whom were Canadians, attended by six medical officers including myself, one dental officer, one Church of England chaplain, one quartermaster R.A.M.C., 81 other ranks including seven engineers and nine Canadian combatant soldiers who served as orderlies. In these five months we admitted 546 patients of whom 42 died, 31 of these were Canadians.\n\nUp to about 19 December 1941 we had buried our dead in Happy Valley, but when this site became unapproachable we used large bomb and shell craters close to Bowen Road immediately below the hospital to form common graves. When this site was full we prepared another cemetery by the main gate of the hospital. In August 1942 we had to prepare a new cemetery within our wired perimeter on the bank to the north of the hospital and between the hospital and Bowen Road. We had, of course, no coffins and at first we used sheets as shrouds. The mounting number of deaths compelled us to substitute well-worn blankets as shrouds and this practice continued up to the end of 1942. Our funerals were dignified affairs and I attended in every case. We usually had a few patients and staff as well and at first, remarkably enough, the Japanese were always represented by Sergeant Seino or others and they came bearing wreaths and sheaves of beautiful flowers. They did not keep up this practice very long and I think they had ceased to attend well before we had buried the last of our 42 men before the end of the year. Funeral parties were always guarded.\n\nIn August 1942 we began to give thiamine by injection regularly to staff while all in hospital received yeast drinks. Each member of the staff received two yen from the Central Hospital Fund and I was given a copy of the Japanese \"Rules for P.O.W. Camps\", and I was told that though these were not wholly applicable to a hospital, we were required to conform to the rules in a general sense. I have no idea now what these rules were, but I do know that they did not introduce any new feature into our daily life.\n\nAbout this time all in the hospital were required to complete a form showing their previous experience especially as car drivers, members of the medical profession, those experienced in manufacturing processes and mining, communications experts, agriculture etc. One splendid question was \"In what occupation you want to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207456, "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": 224, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "216\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nhospital. As a result our wards were crowded to a greater extent than ever before.\n\nEarlier all in hospital were required to sign a statement undertaking not to escape. Few of us, patients or staff, felt any compunction about signing such a document under duress and only two officer patients refused their signatures. Early in November, Colonel Tokunaga, no less, came himself and saw both officers. One thereupon signed while the other was removed and kept overnight in a small cupboard-like room in a building in Kowloon. I understood that he was not ill-treated, and it was explained to him that our British General Officer Commanding had ordered officers to sign. He then signed and was returned as a patient to our hospital.\n\nMost of our patients had lost all their kit and many did not possess even a drinking mug at this time. They were using tins which had contained tinned food, but the rims of these tins were jagged and caused much pain especially to patients whose lips and tongue were raw from deficiency diseases. Our engineers set to work and fitted empty tins with handles and smoothed out the rims and acceptable drinking mugs were soon issued to all patients. The engineers also turned out badly needed fly-swatters in large numbers.\n\nIn November we received 198 books from the Red Cross for our library, and in December another 400 library books arrived. Also in December a number of musical instruments, indoor games, packs of cards etc. were received through the Red Cross from the Pope. In November we had a stock of 270 gramophone records and these were listed and we were even able to provide requested programmes of music. From time to time we received a number of copies of the Japan-produced English language Japan Times in one of which an indignant account was given of the torpedoing by an American submarine of the \"Lisbon Maru\" which was carrying British prisoners to Japan. In this disaster when the torpedo struck, many of our men were battened down in the holds and prevented from trying to save themselves. Some were fired upon while swimming. The Japanese indignation should properly have been directed against the guards.\n\nNormally we had two check parades daily, one about eight a.m. and the other about five p.m. and about once a month on average", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207467, "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": 235, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n227\n\nlera, and dysentery using Japanese material was completed in the same months.\n\nIn mid December the first move was made to restrict the area round the hospital in which we were allowed to move and the wire was brought closer in to exclude us from the peacetime N.A.A.F.I. block, the senior warrant officers' quarters and the tennis court. Christmas passed quietly, marked by the issue of extra food which had been prudently accumulated over a long time. The wards were decorated and carols were sung on Christmas Eve. We returned to reality with a night search by Seino in which he confiscated all electric heaters he found.\n\nI JANUARY 1944 23 MARCH 1945\n\nThe British Military Hospital remained in Bowen Road till 23 March 1945 when it moved to the Central British School in Kowloon. It will be convenient therefore to cover the whole of 1944 and the first three months of 1945 in this section, and to leave the remainder of 1945 up to our release in August to be considered in a later section. Conditions in Bowen Road and in Kowloon were quite different.\n\nOn 1 January 1944 we had 234 patients, but by 31 December the number of patients had dropped to 145 and the staff had fallen to 55. During 1944 deaths numbered 14, and between January 1945 and our move to Kowloon in March a further two patients died. For the last ten days of January 1944 we had no patients on our dangerously ill list for the first time since our capture. This happy position did not last.\n\nThe decline in the number of patients was the result of two factors. Firstly, prisoners of war who had survived thus far had constitutions which had become better adjusted to the type of diet which was alone available to them while no further outbreaks of infections disease occurred. The general condition of our patients and staff upon whom our observations were made drifted slowly down, and in 1944 and early 1945 more of our staff were admitted for hospital treatment than at any other period during our imprisonment. The second cause was a Japanese order to me by Saito on 19 November 1944 to reduce our total of patients and staff to 200, and during that month two drafts totalling 9 staff and 96 patients left for camp. The timing of this decision should be seen against our predicament in Bowen Road resulting from growing shortages", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207468, "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": 236, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "228\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nof electricity and water supplies and firewood, increasingly frequent air attacks and I suppose the general problems faced by the Japanese in retaining a small unit isolated from other P.O.W. camps which they had to supply and guard.\n\nThe fifteen months which remained to us in occupation of Bowen Road proved to be a long drawn-out test of our endurance. We knew from the local newspaper about the Normandy landing by the allies and thereafter we traced on our school atlases subsequent progress in Europe. We gauged progress on the Russian front from the place names, while the names that appeared in the accounts of the Pacific war betrayed the progress being made there against the Japanese even though they always emphasised the staggering losses claimed to have been inflicted on their enemy in all their encounters.\n\nProgress was more rapid than I for one had thought possible, but our own existence in Bowen Road became increasingly circumscribed as the boundary wire was brought even closer to the main hospital building. In January 1944 our staff were removed from their barrack block to occupy the fair-sized Ward 3 on the top floor of the hospital. Gates in the wire allowed our men to get to their own gardens for a few hours by day; by November the wire was brought even closer so that all buildings were excluded from us except for the cookhouse and the mortuary,\n\nDuring January 1944 we had to cut the rice ration from 383 to 354 in order to conserve stocks, and by now rice was being weighed out at the steward's store into the utensils of each ward and mess. All staff under commissioned rank began to receive Japanese pay, 25 sen for a warrant officer, 15 for a sergeant or corporals and 10 for a lance corporal or private, so it had taken three years before our captors allowed this trivial right. Pay for commissioned officers arrived pretty regularly and in June all received their Japanese banking accounts to check. All contributed fixed proportions of their pay to the Central Hospital Fund from which small monthly payments of five or six yen were made to staff and N.C.O.'s in charge of wards. Disbursements continued to be made from the fund to provide extras for patients in need, supplements to improve the general diet and cigarettes or cash instead to all except commissioned officers. Small purchases of various stores needed in the hospital were also made. In April 1944 the contributions to our fund which had been coming from our officers in P.O.W. camp in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207487, "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": 255, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n247\n\nrun by as entirely separate institution. After the Canadians moved from North Point we drew our patients only from Kowloon and I suppose that the prestige of adhering to the Geneva Convention outweighed in Japanese minds the administrative drawbacks of our site in Bowen Road.\n\nAs time went on the need to supply and guard a unit widely separated from the main body of prisoners must have become more onerous. Increasing shortages and difficulty in supplying electricity and water to Bowen Road were probably instrumental in finally bringing about our transfer to Kowloon.\n\n24 MARCH -- 9 SEPTEMBER 1945\n\nWe now moved into the last few months of our captivity. At first, staff and patients were accommodated in Sham Shui Po camp and from there working parties of our staff went out daily to prepare the hospital. It was on that day that I got my only view of the Heep Yunn School and I did not like what I saw, but the same day I learned that we were to have the Central British School for use. This looked and proved to be a suitable building and we began to move our gear there. A little later Saito told me that the staff would be reduced to 40 all ranks though previously he had said that there would be 40 other ranks. On 9 April 6 officers and 34 other ranks moved in to the Central British School. Besides myself there were Major G.F. Harrison, Major J.W. Anderson, Captain A. Coombs, Lieutenant (Q.M.) F.J. Campbell and the Rev. James Squires our padre. There were five Royal Engineers, M.S.M. Sims, Q.M.S. Tyas, and sappers Samways, Carvell and Climo, and there were 29 other ranks R.A.M.C. and R.A.D.C. headed by Sergeant-majors Muxlow and Bartley. On 10 April 62 patients of whom 58 had been in Bowen Road and four were newly arrived in the hospital. There were at first no non-medical workers though these had been promised. On 12 April a further 62 patients arrived, 31 of these being crippled but in fair general condition and a further 31 being what we then called old men (i.e., unfit for service by reason of age). Two army officers and some American and British merchant navy officers were included, but we had no special accommodation for officers. The Japanese ordered that all patients were to have white beds, another example of window dressing. The hospital provided for 34 beds for patients on the ground floor and 81 on the first floor which also housed the operating theatre, X-ray room and laboratory.\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207489, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n249\n\nhow these were employed. We had four gardens. The quarter-master and the padre slept in the former's office, three doctors slept in the small room we used as the staff officers' mess, while I was again fortunate and had a tiny room, enough to take my bed directly behind the main hospital office, an arrangement which was very convenient for all concerned. We re-started our meteorological observations on 14 April in lovely weather and I see that we had a small putting course and a croquet lawn in action both laid out over pretty rough country. The generator was successfully repaired and we tried to get cement to make a secure base for the engine. We were employing ten workers temporarily on various jobs while another ten were regarded as on permanent duty so long as they remained suitable. It was encouraging to receive two patients suffering from malaria and peptic ulcer respectively from Sham Shui Po since it looked as though we were going to be used as the local hospital for the camps. By 24 April the kitchen even began to accept private dishes for cooking from patients and staff. This sounds very grand, but in fact the dishes consisted of saved-up rice flavoured in various ways according to the resources of the owners. We now had a total of 176 people in the hospital and there were many spontaneous expressions of pleasure at our vastly improved conditions. The general spirit in the hospital was excellent, though we still had one patient on the dangerously ill list. The building was suitable for our use, our numbers were reduced, we were eating better and though we had some pretty ill patients they were being cared for in airy wards into which poured plenty of sunshine. I think this in itself, contrasting so markedly with the dull and rather gloomy wards with their sad associations in Bowen Road had a stimulating effect upon us.\n\nThe stairs leading from our part of the hospital to the Japanese quarters were blocked by wooden frames made by our carpenters on Japanese orders. The Hongkong News arriving very irregularly and we had to replace the white beds in the ward for the blind because they took up too much space.\n\nBy 26 April we had one garden ready for planting and we had decided that bully chow fan was a waste of good corned beef and that this was better made into rissoles. We washed out and thoroughly oiled all our drains but we could not obtain putty to repair broken glass in our metal frame windows. We were allowed to use the church piano up to 7 p.m. daily but the Assembly Hall remain-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207501, "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": 269, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n261\n\nI was straban while Ashton Rose was preparing a medical report on Sham Shui Po. At this time we were being asked by the British Military Administration to submit lists of our kit which had been taken by the Japanese but I imagine that this only added to the papers with which they had to deal at that time. The Colonial Secretary was installed in the French Mission at Battery Path and heads of government departments followed shortly afterwards. Commander Craven and Major Boxer left us for staff duties in Hong Kong and I arranged for two barbers to come and stay for a few days. Six of our Q.A. sisters arrived and another six came late at night accompanied by very necessary male escorts from Stanley. We were delighted to see them and put them all up and fed them but it was early morning before I got to bed.\n\nOn 27 August Saito came back and I pressed him again for our medical records and he excused himself by saying he had been so busy. The Indian hospital had 259 patients and 45 staff and I arranged an X-ray session for Indian patients including a number suffering from tuberculosis. Selwyn-Clarke sent us a gift of brandy and cigarettes, showing that though he did not use these comforts himself he would not deny them to others. Miss Dyson now back in her rightful position as Matron set about getting overalls for her sisters, a splendid boost to the morale not only of these ladies but of the patients and staff as well. Madame Lebon made these and our army promised payment.\n\n1\n\nWe finally closed our compradore's shop and agreed a business settlement with the compradore on the basis of him taking out cash plus goods to the total of $8831.06 yen. We had an excellent concert provided by Sham Shui Po, and some of the Hong Kong Volunteers, particularly those of mixed race, were slightly built and made up very attractively as girls. Members of the Indian camp and the Internee Camp at Ma Tau Wei attended and as usual in these days I was very late to bed. We found it necessary to control visiting hours in the hospital because of the very large numbers of people we had roaming about.\n\nOn 28 August we got smoke flares from our people for touching off by day to guide our aircraft when they were dropping supplies and the Japanese also sent in smoke cylinders for a like purpose. They also sent in 3 bottles of whisky, 4 of peppermint for the dispensary, 8 of brandy, 50 of port, 6 of gin and 20 of sherry. I at once arranged a general issue of 2 ounces of port per head, a meagre ration which I thought was wise at the time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207514, "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": 282, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "274\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nand I doubted very seriously whether any prisoners would get out of Hong Kong. Having reached this conclusion it seems strange that one just carried on. I do not recall discussing the situation as I saw it with any other person in the hospital, for it was my job to try to keep people cheerful rather than inspire feelings of gloom. I suppose the truth of the matter is that with the blessing of work to be done it became possible to shut one's mind to the dark thoughts that crowded in.\n\nIn 1944 the effects of the blockade on the Japanese began to become evident to us, though after April 1945 when the hospital reopened in Kowloon our conditions were improved and my own depression and I believe that of others lifted very considerably.\n\nThe military situation was such that in April 1945 the Japanese expeditionary force in China which had recently been reinforced numbered about one million men, though by this time neither the training of the troops nor their equipment were good and their efficiency was not high. Responsibility for the Canton area was laid upon the Japanese 23rd Army which consisted of six divisions, two independent mixed brigades, two independent infantry brigades and the defence force allocated to Hong Kong. In May 1945 the 23rd Army was reduced from six to three divisions, but its task was still to hold Liuchow Peninsula, the Hong Kong-Canton area and Swatow in order to repel an American invasion.\n\nWhatever plans may have been made or even considered, our Official History contain no suggestion that an American or British attack on Hong Kong was contemplated in 1945. Lieutenant General Wedemeyer, the American Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek and commander of the American forces in China, hoped to have a force of 13 Chinese armies, each of three divisions for operations in the Hong Kong-Canton area. Wedemeyer's plan was to attack the Hong Kong-Canton area in the last quarter of 1945, and the assault on Canton was to be made on 1 November. Sixteen out of Wedemeyer's 39 divisions had American training and were fully equipped. None of the other 23 was either fully equipped or trained. At the time of the Japanese surrender 20,000 troops and civilians laid down their arms in Hong Kong. It would seem therefore that the battle for the relief of Hong Kong would have been fought between Japanese and Chinese troops. All operations of course were halted after the atom bombs were dropped.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207552, "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "312\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe Deputy Commander at Taipang was the highest ranking officer in the locality of Kowloon during the Ch'ing Dynasty. At that time, the headquarters was set up within the Kowloon Walled City. This office, which also served as a garrison, still existed before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, but had been converted into a Home for the Aged run by a Catholic Mission. In accordance with the [Kwangtung] military system adopted in Ch'ing Dynasty, there were altogether 6 battalions of armed forces under the Kowloon garrison commander. The reason why the Kowloon headquarters was named the Taipang Garrison is that the geographical name of Kowloon was once alternatively called Taipang Shan (⚟) and was politically under the sovereignty of Po On (then San On) District Magistracy.* Besides, there is also a very good harbour by the name of Taipang Bay located at the southeastern part of Po On District and east of Kowloon. In Taipang harbour the water runs to 5-10 fathoms deep where large warships can cast anchor. It was partly due to the importance of local coastal defence and partly due to the necessity of civil administration that such a garrison was established at Taipang Bay. The post of Deputy Commander was normally held in a 3 years' term; and among all the previous commanders, General Cheung was the most important in terms of historical significance.\n\nCheung Yuk-tong, alias Hon-sang,† was born in Wei Yeung District, Kwangtung, and for many generations the Cheung's family lived in the Peach Garden in the capital town of the Wai Yeung District. In the 4th year of Hsien Feng (A.D.) (1853) he was appointed as Deputy Commander at Taipang, being promoted from staff officer at the Chin Shan Checkpoint [near Macao]. For four successive tours of service, in all a total of 13 years Gen. Cheung had been holding this post, and in those days the local inhabitants enjoyed a very peaceful time.\n\nIt was not until the 5th year of Tung-chih reign (1866) that General Cheung retired from the military service at the age of 72. When the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded to Britain as a consequence of the signing of the Peking Treaty he was still in office. As the Treaty was signed by the Imperial Court,\n\n*This is not so, but the Taipang garrison force served in and controlled Kowloon and district. Except where stated footnotes are supplied by James Hayes.\n\n†", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207642, "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-1976", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n15\n\nThe modernizing activities of Li and others were never coordinated by the central government. Nor were any efforts made to integrate the \"regional\" armies of these leaders into the dynasty's \"regular\" military system. At the time of the Sino-Japanese War, the Ch'ing army was little more than a motley collection of diverse armies at various stages of development. There was no standardization in arms, dress or training, no unity in command, and only the most rudimentary commissariat, transport, medical and other services.17 China's two small, uncoordinated provincial military academies did little to improve the situation. China had no draft system and no General Staff. Funding for most modernizing projects (including the armies of Li and others) was irregular and unpredictable. Meanwhile, the \"regular\" military forces of the empire—some of which had undergone cosmetic surgery to become \"re-trained troops\" (lien-chün) or members of the Peking Field Force (shen-chi ying)—continued to consume about two-thirds of the national \"budget.\"t\n\nChina's failure to reform her military institutions in the nineteenth century prevented the emergence of a modern, Western-trained Chinese officer corps. In the eyes of most foreign observers in China, this was the key deficiency of the Chinese army.19 Lacking sufficient numbers of competent Chinese officers, individual Ch'ing officials found it necessary to continue employing foreigners not only to instruct and drill Chinese troops, but also occasionally to lead them.20 The presence of these individuals in Chinese armies often produced or exacerbated anti-foreign feelings, encouraged foreign interference, and created security problems.21 The existence of neutrality laws and other legal obstacles complicated the problem of employing foreigners in a military capacity after the breakdown of the \"Cooperative Policy,\" and the absence of central government guidelines for the employment of foreign nationals encouraged rivalry and intrigue among the Western powers for heightened influence in Chinese military affairs.22 In all, the experience of using foreign military assistance was humiliating, expensive and frustrating.\n\nThe contrast with Japan is striking. Although no less anxious than the Chinese to maintain control over foreign military employees, and to avoid surrendering administrative authority to them, the Japanese treated foreigners far more regularly, rationally, and regally.23 Extremely careful in its centrally-supervised hiring\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207643, "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-1976", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "16\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\npolicies, the Meiji government managed to avoid most of the difficulties that had plagued the Chinese effort to use foreign assistance efficiently.\n\nBuilding on the foundation of pre-Meiji experience, Western-trained and Western-oriented leadership,24 and strong central government direction and support, Japan made rapid strides in the modernization of her military after 1868. A leading figure in this effort was Yamagata Aritomo, who became Vice Minister of Military Affairs upon his return to Japan after a year-long tour of Europe in 1869-1870.25 With French advice and assistance, the Meiji government created an Imperial Guard in 1871, which not only made possible the abolition of the feudal han in the same year, but also set the stage for the introduction of conscription in 1872. By 1875, the Japanese had established a centralized military academy at Tokyo, with branch schools in veterinary medicine and other subjects.26 At the same time, numerous officers were sent abroad for further military education.27 By 1893, Japan had a total of sixteen military schools instructing over 2,600 students per year.28 Overseas-educated officers returned in a steady stream to assist in teaching these individuals.\n\nIn 1878, following the Satsuma Rebellion (1877), the Japanese established an independent General Staff on the German model. This marked the eclipse of the French in Japanese military affairs and the rise of Germany. Presseisen attaches profound significance to this development: \"So long as French influence prevailed, Japan's army remained under unified civilian control, her law code owed much to French legal opinions, and her government might have evolved toward a liberal, parliamentary system. After Germany's triumph the command structure, the constitution, and the Imperial Court followed the German ideological style.”\n\n19\n\nThe outstanding contributions of Jacob Meckel's German military mission to Japan in 1885 have been described in detail by Presseisen,30 The salient point is that by the early 1890's, Japan had built a modern, centralized army and had eliminated the need for further foreign military assistance. China, meanwhile, had done neither. The Sino-Japanese War underscored the stark contrast between the Chinese and Japanese reform efforts.31\n\nArmies, like individuals, can both reflect and effect change in society. Sir Lewis Namier has offered the opinion that \"the social", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207650, "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-1976", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "STUDY OF MODERNIZATION IN CHINA & JAPAN\n\n23\n\n23 See Umetani Noboru, \"Foreign Nationals Employed in Japan during the Years of Modernization,\" East Asian Cultural Studies, 10.1 (March, 1971).\n\n24 Ibid., 5-6.\n\n25 See Roger Hackett, \"The Meiji Leaders and Modernization: The Case of Yamagata Aritomo,\" in Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization (Princeton, 1965).\n\n26 Yamagata Aritomo, \"The Japanese Army,\" in Okuma Shigenobu, comp., Fifty Years of New Japan (New York, 1909), 206.\n\n27 Ibid., 206.\n\n28 Ibid., 206-208.\n\n29 Presseisen, vii; also chapters 2 and 4.\n\n30 Ibid., esp. 135-136. As a professor at the Army Staff College and an adviser to the General Staff, Meckel helped to reorganize the Army Ministry, refine the General Staff, improve the system and content of Japanese military education, and develop the Japanese system of logistics and medical services. In addition, he helped restructure the army into divisions and taught the Japanese \"the demands of full-scale mobilization, which included a strategic railroad network, a new conscription act, and improved staff exercises.\"\n\n31 Mary Wright, The Last Stand, 220-221; Rawlinson, 167-204; Presseisen, 139-143; Hsü, The Rise of Modern China (New York, etc., 1975), 418-420; Yamagata Ariyoshi, \"The Army,\" in Albert Stead, ed., Japan by the Japanese (London, 1904), 107-109; etc.\n\n32 Cited in Roger Hackett, \"The Military: Japan,\" in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964), 328.\n\n33 Ike Nobutaka, \"War and Modernization,\" in Robert Ward, ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, 1968), 209.\n\n34 Hackett, \"The Military,\" 346-348.\n\n35 See, for example, Ike, 196; also Shibusawa Keizo, ed., Japanese Life and Culture in the Meiji Era (translated and adapted by Charles Terry; Tokyo, 1958), 303-309, esp. 308-309.\n\n36 Hackett, \"The Military,\" 335.\n\n37 Ogawa Gotaro, The Conscription System in Japan (New York, 1921), chapter 3.\n\n38 Shibusawa, 306-307.\n\n39 H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture: A Short History (New York, 1973), 163-164.\n\n40 Donald Keene, \"The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan,\" in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971).\n\n41 Ogawa, part 2.\n\n42 See Harry T. Oshima, \"Meiji Fiscal Policy and Economic Progress,\" in William Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1968), esp. 372. See also Shibusawa, 305, 315; Fairbank, et al., 199-200; Ike, 205.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208318, "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-1978", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "26 \n\nRICHARD J. SMITH \n\nweaknesses. Inspired by a vibrant form of nationalism, the Japanese were assured of widespread popular support at home, and heroic dedication on the part of both officers and men in battle. It was a truly national war. Overseas Japanese also rallied to the cause, establishing patriotic associations to discuss the issues, collect contributions, and even to train brigades of student soldiers.68 China's immediate response to the conflict, which has not been as fully studied,69 appears to have been less uniform and extensive, both in China and abroad. To be sure, patriotic voices could be heard even prior to news of China's humiliating capitulation, and Chinese forces occasionally performed heroic deeds on the battlefield. But in the main, China lacked the national cohesiveness of Japan, and her officers were not inspired by the same sense of national duty and self-sacrifice.70 \n\nOwing partially to abysmal lack of preparation and poor internal communications, but also to the natural hesitation of \"province-minded\" Chinese officials, the mobilization of China's military forces during the war was agonizingly slow. Many Chinese troops summoned from the south arrived in the north only tardily or not at all. Li Hung-chang complained bitterly that \"one province, Chihli, is dealing with the whole nation of Japan.\" Ch'en Pi-kuang's effort to secure the release of the captured warship Kuang-ping after the battle at Wei-hai-wei, on grounds that the ship belonged to the Canton squadron which had not taken part in the war, is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of Chinese provincialism; but it is not the only one.72 The preponderance of Ch'ing forces sent against the Japanese in Korea, Manchuria and China Proper were individual yung-ying, each with its own particularistic loyalties and provincial identifications. These diverse military forces, differently armed, trained and led, often had difficulty cooperating with one another.73 In the navy, provincial rivalries and lack of cooperation between Admiral Ting and his subordinates obviously hindered operations at sea, in addition to adversely affecting morale.74 Uniform military and naval education undoubtedly would have diminished these problems. \n\nJapan's rapid and demoralizing offensive drive into Manchuria and China Proper was aided immeasurably by an extremely efficient General Staff, excellent transport facilities, and a well-organized commissariat service.75 China, however, lacked all three. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208329, "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-1978", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895\n\n59 Ibid. (Wang), 8.\n\n37\n\n60 Ibid. Wang notes that branch schools of the Tientsin Military Academy were established at Shan-hai-kuan and Wei-hai-wei.\n\n61 Ibid., citing LWCK, Memorials, 74: 25.\n\n62 Ibid., 8-9.\n\n63 Ibid., 7. On Li's financial difficulties, consult Wang, Hual-chin, 275-290; Spector, chapter 7.\n\n64 Wang, \"Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang,\" 9-12. The major problems, according to Wang, were: (1) The administrators of the academy were not well suited to their tasks (non-specialists); (2) the foreign instructors were arrogant, overpaid, unappreciative, and remiss in their teaching responsibilities; (3) heavy reliance on interpreters was inefficient and confusing; and (4) both academic and practical training tended to degenerate into formalism. Other problems included capricious grading, reports of cheating, and shortages and lack of standardization in equipment. For problems in China's other military and naval schools, consult Ayers, 108-113, 179-180, and John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), passim.\n\n65 Rawlinson, 163, 169; Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression (Tucson, 1965), 140-141; NCH, September 21, 1894.\n\n66 For a summary of the fighting on land and sea, consult Liu and Smith, \"The Military Challenge.\"\n\n**\n\n67 See, for example, E. Bujac, Précis de quelques campagnes contemporaines (Paris, 1896), vol. 2; N.W.H. Du Boulay, An Epitome of the China-Japanese War, 1894-95 (London, 1896); Lieutenant Sauvage, La guerre Sino-Japonaise 1894-1895 (Paris, 1897); Richard Wallach, \"The War in the East,\" Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, 21, 4 (1895); T. A. Brassey, ed., The Naval Annual (Portsmouth, 1895); Vladimir (pseudonym for Zenone Volpicelli), The China-Japan War (London, 1896).\n\n68 On the Japanese response to the war, see Donald Keene, \"The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan,\" in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971); also Jeffery Dorwart, The Pigtail War: American Involvement in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (Amherst, Mass., 1975), 94-96.\n\n69 Professor Samuel Chu of Ohio State University is currently studying the Chinese response to the war, and has produced several illuminating but as yet unpublished papers on the subject. For the time being, the best available discussion of Chinese attitudes is Kuo Sung-p'ing, \"The Chinese Reaction to Foreign Encroachment\" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1953).\n\n70 See Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's critique, cited in Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 111; consult also Kuo, 49-50, 81-83, etc.\n\n71 Cited in Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China 1840-1928, translated and edited by S. Y. Teng and Jeremy Ingalls (Princeton, Toronto, London and New York, 1956). See also Japanese Imperial General Staff, eds., History of the War between Japan and China (Tokyo, 1904), 1; 30-32.\n\n72 Rawlinson, 190.\n\n73 Liu Feng-han, \"Chia-wu chan-cheng shuang-fang ping-li ti fen-hsi,\" Chung-kuo i-chou, 829 (March 14, 1966) and 830 (March 21, 1966); CJCC,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208330, "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-1978", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "38\n\nRICHARD J. SMITH\n\n1: 15-24; Japanese Imperial General Staff, History of the War between Japan and China, 1: 26-29; Vladimir, 255; Wallach, 718.\n\n74 CJCC, 1: 63; Japanese Imperial General Staff, History of the War between Japan and China, 1: 30-32; Rawlinson, 174-177, 180.\n\n75 See, for example, Presseisen, 140-141; Vladimir, 112, 118, 164, 242-243, 260; Wallach, 718-719.\n\n76 Wang Chia-chien, \"Ch'ing-chi ti Hai-chün ya-men (1885-1895),\" Chung-kuo li-shih hsüen-hui shih-hsien chi-k'an, no. 5; Rawlinson, 186; Vladimir, 281.\n\n77 See, for example, Chang Yin-lin, \"Chia-wu Chung-kuo hai-chün chan-chi k'ao,\" Ch'ing-hua hsüeh-pao, 10.1 (January, 1935); also CJCC, 4: 72-82, 166-244, 245-271, etc.\n\n78 See Dorwart, 112-113; Cavendish, 717.\n\n79 NCH, January 14, 1898; Vladimir, 267-268,\n\n80 NCH, January 14, 1898; Vladimir, 243.\n\n81 For the participation of Tientsin Military Academy graduates in the early stages of the war, consult CJCC, 1: 18.\n\n82 Vladimir, 126, 193, 248.\n\n83 For criticisms of China's officer corps by foreign contemporaries, consult Du Boulay, 8, 11, 160; Bujac, 217; Brassey, 128-129, 139, 143; NCH, October 19, 1894; etc.\n\n84 Cavendish, 722.\n\n85 Vladimir, 124, 153-154, 192, 198-199, 208, 217, 277; also Wallach, 695, 719; CJCC, 1: 236, 256, 276, etc.\n\n86 Wallach, 709, 712-713; Vladimir, 109, 150, 231, 256; Sauvage, 221.\n\n87 Brassey, 139,\n\n88 Cavendish, 721.\n\n89 Brassey, 127.\n\n90 Vladimir, 251-252; Du Boulay, 73.\n\n91 See Rawlinson, 174-185; CJCC, 1: 34, 63-69, 239-245.\n\n92 Rawlinson, 188-190.\n\n93 See ibid., 175-187; Brassey, 90, 92, 99-101, 110, 115, 120, 124, 127; NCH, February 1, February 8, and March 22, 1895.\n\n94 NCH, January 25 and February 1, 1895.\n\n95 See Powell, 71-72; WCSL, 101: 6b-10; Liu Feng-han, Hsin-chien fu-chün (Taipei, 1967), 45-46.\n\n96 Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 108, 232.\n\n97 Roswell Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press 1800-1972 (Shanghai, 1933), esp. chapter, 8.\n\n98 Cited in NCH, October 2, 1896. See also Wang Erh-min, Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang shih (Taipei, 1977), 122-123, 124.\n\n99 Ayers, 130-136.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208544, "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-1979", "page_number": 1, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "190\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nof gendarmes was stationed at what is now the Lok Yuk Seminary. After this, there was no more trouble from the bandits.78\n\nAccording to Mr. Lei Shiu Yam, Hui was an interpreter for the Japanese. According to Mr. Uen Chiu Ming of Mok Tse Che, who worked for Hui during the War, Hui was a former school teacher, who then began to work in a seamen's recruitment house. At the formation of the K'ui Ching Shoh, Mr. Uen was asked by Hui to join his staff, and he worked there throughout the War. According to Mr. Uen, this district office was divided into four sections, under the Director, Mr. Hui, and the Deputy Director, Mr. Lei Yung Shang. The four sections were: Economic Section, responsible for rationing; Registration of Households Section; Hygiene Section; and General Affairs Section. Altogether, there was a staff of about twenty-one or twenty-two people. At first, the Director had authority to appoint his staff, but soon the Japanese Government required that all local staff be selected through an examination held at the New Territories headquarters in Tai Po.\n\nWhen Mr. Uen began his service at the K'ui Ching Shoh, he was paid forty dollars Military Currency per month.79\n\nAt the time of the establishment of the K'ui Ching Shoh, the Japanese Government also instituted the appointment of village heads. In some villages, these village heads were responsible for collecting the ration for the entire village. When the Japanese Government needed labour for its construction projects, it was also the responsibility of the village heads to produce the labour.80\n\nIt is important to point out that members of the K'ui Ching Shoh were not looked upon as collaborators with the Japanese. Rather, it was widely recognized that members of the K'ui Ching Shoh were caught in a difficult position between the Japanese Government and the anti-Japanese forces. The K'ui Ching Shoh, by and large, concentrated on local administration. Only those people who worked for the gendarmes were considered collaborators.\n\nMeanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce continued to function, in fact if not in name. It came to be responsible for purchasing provisions for the Japanese Government in Sai Kung from local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208547, "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-1979", "page_number": 4, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE U.S. AND THE QUESTION OF HONG KONG 1941-45\n\n15\n\nurgent consent of the United States Chiefs of Staff to detach a British naval force from the British Pacific Fleet to accept Japan's surrender and assume full powers of military administration in the colony.63 The Japanese accepted defeat on 14 August. However, the British Pacific Fleet assigned for service at Hong Kong, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, did not arrive until 30 August. During this interval of a fortnight, the question of Hong Kong sorely tried the British government and placed the United States government in an uncomfortable position.\n\nHong Kong again became a serious point of contention between Britain and China. This time the argument was not whose sovereignty was to be set up but who was to receive Japan's surrender there. Despite the assurances given by Chiang Kai-shek on 16 August, and repeated on 24 August, that China had \"no territorial ambitions\" in Hong Kong and regarded it \"as a matter which would require eventual settlement through diplomatic channel\", the British Foreign and Colonial Offices insisted that Sir Cecil Harcourt receive Japan's surrender on behalf of Britain by virtue of her sovereignty over Hong Kong.64\n\nThe prime minister, now C.R. Attlee, appealed to the American president for assistance. Fortunately for Britain, Truman, who had assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death in April, was in favour of a cautious policy. While being conscious of his predecessor's views regarding the future status of Hong Kong, he, however, decided to adhere to the \"recognition of the established rights\", although he told both Britain and China that such recognition \"did not in any way represent U.S. views regarding the future status of Hong Kong.\" General Douglas MacArthur was therefore instructed to arrange for the surrender of Hong Kong to the British commander.65 Again fortunately for Britain, MacArthur was known for \"his support for the cause of the British Empire in the Far East.\" In fact in October 1944 he had specifically expressed that he \"fully appreciated the need for British forces to recapture Hong Kong.\"66\n\nChiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, insisted on his right to accept Japan's surrender at Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of the China theatre. He was therefore most distressed by Truman's agreement with the British. To avoid embarrassing Truman, Chiang now suggested that the Japanese forces in Hong Kong should surrender to his representative in a ceremony in which both", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208593, "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-1979", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS REMEMBERED\n\n23\n\nrecalled that while in charge of the Pakhoi Customs (Kwangsi), he was assigned an official residence that spread comfortably over 32 mou of land. Finally, on a light-hearted note, the interviewees readily agreed that those in the Service usually had pretty wives, simply because they could afford to be choosy!\n\nJob security, good pay and other benefits of a Customs career, however, had their demands. Customs officials were expected to meet the high standard of efficiency that had distinguished the Service since its early days. All three had been conscientious workers, we were assured, and one of them stressed that their sense of duty was also strong. He related an incident in which his life was threatened by some local rowdies demanding the release of some confiscated goods. Even at gun-point, he did not give in. In another, during the second Sino-Japanese war, he refused to hand over the Customs buildings in his charge to enemy troops, despite the pleadings of some han-chien (i.e., traitorous Chinese working for the Japanese). His argument then was that unless proper orders were issued and received from his superiors, he would not allow any interference with Customs property.\n\nWhen asked about the integrity of the Service, the interviewees were of the opinion that Customs officials could in general pride themselves on their honesty. A distinction, however, might be drawn between the Indoor and Outdoor staff. The latter were logically susceptible to outside influences as their duties involved actual inspection and appraisal of cargoes, whereas the former as office workers were not exposed to the same degree of corrupt practice.\n\nThe efficiency and integrity of the Chinese Maritime Customs were attributed by the former officials to its foreign style of administration. Of the Inspectors-General under whom they had served, F. Aglen (1911-28) and F. Maze (1929-43) commanded their greatest admiration. Instead of disparaging the foreign Inspectorate as a tool of Western imperialism, as their nationalistic compatriots have, they saw it in a more favorable light. It would in fact be ludicrous to expect that they would have seen it in any other way, having given the prime years of their lives to serving it. This aside, their appraisal was derived also from a close familiarity with its functions and achievements. As one of them put it, the foreign inspectorate “did do good work for China,” and did so, it might be added, during those tumultuous decades to which they themselves still bear personal witness.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208643, "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-1979", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n73\n\nand soon the Holy Sacrifice is being celebrated on four makeshift altars, each of us taking his turn. After Mass, Father Troesch manages to get a little fire going in our kitchen and soon we have a cup of coffee and a dish of oatmeal. We have already been informed that the Japanese authorities will give us rice, meat, vegetables, tea, salt, and sugar—all of which will be strictly rationed and that we may be allowed to purchase other foods, such as fish and vegetables from hawkers who will come into the Camp. We are to have two meals a day, from the Camp kitchen, now merely a large rice caldron set up on some cement blocks in an area-way on the ground floor of our Block. Our cooks in this general kitchen seem to be some stranded American sailors, whose captain scuttled his ship when the war began.\n\nAs we take stock of our surroundings, we find that there are already some two hundred Americans here, and more expected. Some of these who arrived early began, with typical American aggressiveness, to clean up the place, and when we arrived, our rooms were in a very presentable state. In the other Blocks, there are over a thousand British, and more arriving, in trucks and buses, with more or less baggage. We likewise find five Maryknoll Sisters in Block \"G\". These are the Holy Spirit School staff, who in the beginning of hostilities had been evacuated to the Queen Mary Hospital, where they also served as nurses. The Japanese have taken over the Queen Mary Hospital, also all the other British Hospitals in the Colony and the staffs are rapidly being brought to Stanley. Our sick, Father Bauer and the two Brothers, have also arrived in Camp, Father Bauer being not much improved. In the course of this afternoon, nine Canadian Immaculate Conception Sisters arrived, and were given quarters in one of the British Blocks. We suppose the Kowloon contingent of Maryknoll Sisters will soon appear as well, along with Father Feeney. We are saving a cot for him.\n\nImmediately upon our vacating the House, the Japanese Gendarmerie moved in, and at night, we can see a few lights in the building.\n\nJanuary 22nd—A call for able-bodied seamen on deck for manual labor; some to help in the kitchen, cutting wood and preparing food, others for carrying baggage of new arrivals, and others are set to work carrying cement blocks for the construction of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208672, "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-1979", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "102\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\n8-Mr. Southare and Mr. Bourne, the former, American Consul General, the latter our Council Secretary, to go to Hong Kong, presumably on repatriation business and while in the city, they met Sister Paul by chance. We understand that we Maryknollers may have a choice of either repatriation or to go to Hong Kong but will not be allowed to proceed to our missions in the interior, at least directly, and this, on condition that we can support ourselves or that someone will vouch for us, and guarantee our support. Thereupon we considered the question: there were many minds on the subject. Some were for direct repatriation, others wanted to stay in Hong Kong; some wanted to stay in Camp. Finally a list was made up, or rather two lists: Fathers Bauer, Quinn, Walsh, Callan, Reardon and Allie, and Brothers Michael, Lawrence, Anselm and William to be repatriated, and Fathers Toomey, Troesch, Meyer, Downs, Keelan, Hessler and the nine new language school students to go to Hong Kong. Later we learned that there will be no choice: that is, if we are not repatriated, we must remain in Camp. Another hurried meeting was held at 9:30 in the evening and further steps taken. At this meeting, a vote was taken and the majority decided on repatriation. Some of the minority were willing to abide by any decision reached by Father Toomey, as Superior, while others wanted to remain in Camp if necessary. Fathers Troesch and Hessler would try to get to Hong Kong as third nationals if possible. Accordingly, a second list was made out and handed in to our Council officials, only to be informed that our first list had already been submitted to the Japanese and that we had to await further developments.\n\nDuring the day, Mr. Bourne succeeded in contacting Bishop Valtorta at our request, and we learn that the Bishop is opposed to the repatriation of all Maryknollers and he is willing to guarantee the support of 14 of us, that is the House staff and the language school men, until Bishop Paschang or Maryknoll can assume the burden. The Maryknoll Sisters still in Camp, in the absence of any further instructions from Sister Paul, contemplate remaining. Incidentally, we later understood that Maryknoll had cabled to the effect that we all should be repatriated, but this message did not reach us until too late.\n\nFirst Communion and Confirmation at 8:30 on the ninth, when some 21 persons, mostly children, received the Sacraments, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210202, "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-1984", "page_number": 173, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "152\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\n28\n\nThis report was sent to Hong Kong for comment; a committee was appointed by the Governor which naturally refuted the more extreme of Mrs. Neville-Rolfe's strictures, and disagreed with her recommendations. Correspondence between the Governor and the Colonial Office on the matter continued for several years. Stubbs strongly supported the established system of regulation and the only suggestion that he was prepared to implement was the provision of free outpatient treatment for venereal diseases at the government hospital. Meanwhile in London the National Council for Combating Venereal Disease and other women's organizations continued to badger the Colonial Office to put pressure on Hong Kong, and the report by Mrs. Neville-Rolfe and Dr. Hallam provided a fine source of material for questions in the House of Commons, particularly from a small group of newly elected women M.P.s, led by Viscountess Astor.\n\nThe main focus of parliamentary attention, however, was not on Hong Kong but Singapore. The government of the Straits Settlements had repealed its contagious diseases legislation in 1894 at the same time as Hong Kong and had set up a similar extra-legal system of tolerated houses. As in Hong Kong, newly arrived prostitutes were interviewed by the staff of the Chinese Protectorate, lists of known brothels and their inmates were maintained and brothel mistresses arranged for their girls to be inspected by private doctors under the implicit threat of the closure of their premises. But this system of control had become less effective and comprehensive by the 1920s. All European prostitutes had been deported in 1916 as a wartime measure, and the Japanese brothels had been closed and their inmates repatriated to Japan at the instance of the Japanese consul-general in 1919. Their clientele then turned to the growing number of sly brothels staffed by Chinese and Malay women who were not subject to any form of control and who were, it was alleged, normally infected with disease. This led to a rapid increase in venereal disease among both the European and Chinese population. Exact figures were not available but various doctors estimated the incidence at between 50 and 75 per cent among the local Chinese and possibly at as high a ratio among the Europeans. In 1923 the Governor appointed a small expert committee of medical men to investigate the problem. After painting a grim picture of the situation the committee", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211687, "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-1989", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "HONG KONG, DECEMBER 1941 — JULY 1942\n\nA. D. BLACKBURN*\n\n77\n\nThe following is an account of the personal experiences of my wife and myself at Hongkong during the Japanese attack and afterwards.\n\nI was still in Queen Mary Hospital when hostilities began. My leg had so far recovered that I was able to hobble about on crutches and the doctor had decided that he could now safely proceed to operate on my ear which had become completely obstructed with scar tissue. The operation was fixed for 8 a.m. on December 8th. I was waiting to be taken to the theatre when, almost exactly at 8 a.m., the wailing of the sirens and the noise of planes announced the beginning of the blitz and the operation had to be abandoned.\n\nMeanwhile my wife was at the War Memorial Nursing Home recovering from an operation for appendicitis. All patients whom it was possible to remove were evicted from the hospitals to make room for war casualties. My wife was turned out on December 10th and I on December 12th and Witham (Tea Adviser to the Chinese Government and a friend of ours) arranged for us to be billeted with him and his wife in their flat on the Peak, which the Hongkong Government had declared an evacuation area. There we stayed throughout the hostilities.\n\nThere was fairly heavy artillery fire and air bombing but the Japanese seemed to be concentrating on military objectives (particularly Mt. Austin barracks and two field gun batteries in our neighbourhood), and civilian property around us was not\n\n* Editor's Note. Sir Arthur Blackburn was Counsellor of the British Embassy in Chungking in 1941. On June 29th, 1941, his house there was totally destroyed by a Japanese bomb. Two people were killed, and fifteen injured, including Sir Arthur, who received injuries to his knee and ear. The injury to the ear required operation, as did the injury to the knee, which had become infected. Sir Arthur and his wife were evacuated to Hong Kong to enable these operations to take place, arriving at the end of November, 1941. Sir Arthur was a witness to the Japanese attack on Hong Kong in December, 1941, and he and his wife were interned from January 22nd to the end of July 1942 in Stanley Camp. He and his wife with other captured diplomatic staff were then repatriated, leaving Shanghai on August 17th, 1942. Sir Arthur was asked by both the Foreign Office and the Red Cross to report on conditions in Hong Kong and in Stanley Camp. These reports were completed by the end of September, 1942, even before the Blackburns docked in England. Because of the general interest of these reports, and particularly because of their contemporary character and absence of post-war hindsight, it is felt useful to print them here. The Journal owes copies of these interesting documents to the kindness of Mr. C. Blackburn.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211691, "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-1989", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "81\n\nwhich had been allocated for that purpose, but as they had to start with exactly nothing it was difficult. I was dumped off my lorry in front of the hospital-to-be at about 1 o'clock, and it was 5 p.m. before the staff had cleared a room and found enough beds to get the most elementary of wards going. There I stayed exactly two months. Meanwhile my wife had found a corner for herself in a room with three other married couples and a baby. She got on very well with two of the other couples (and the baby), but the third couple were very disagreeable and behaved in an almost incredibly disgraceful way towards the other people in the room, but particularly to my poor wife. So when I was fit to be moved from the hospital we tried to get quarters elsewhere but the billeting committee couldn't fix us in anywhere and the Japanese Chief Supervisor was unhelpful, so I just had to make one more in an already overcrowded room. And there we stayed, with one brief excursion to the French Hospital to have my knee X-rayed, until the Americans were repatriated early in July when we were moved into the block vacated by them where we shared a room with Mr. and Mrs. Witham and their baby and one other couple. Here we were perfectly happy and were facing with equanimity the prospect of internment for the duration when on July 20th we were told that we could, if we wished and if we paid our own fares, go to Shanghai. No further explanation was forthcoming and the permission did not extend to the rest of the Embassy and Consulate personnel in the camp. Of course I said we would go (the Swiss Consul sent in enough money for the fares) and we were shipped to Shanghai with some 60 other people who had also been allowed to leave the camp. I assumed that once I was in Shanghai I would be entitled to be repatriated with the rest of the Embassy people; but as soon as the ship berthed in Shanghai a Japanese Vice-Consul came on board and told me that though I had been allowed to come to Shanghai I was not going to be repatriated. It looked as if I was going to share with Sir Mark Young (who is interned at Woosung) the melancholy distinction of being the only British officials in Japan and occupied China. We were taken to the Cathay Hotel where the outport Consulate staffs and other persons destined for repatriation were being collected. We were given a comfortable suite and, except for the restriction in our movements, had nothing to complain about. I telephoned to Mr. Le Rougetel who had not been told that we were coming. He got the Swiss Consul-General to inform the Foreign Office and it seems that a special exchange agreement was made for me and my wife. So on August 17th we embarked on the \"Kamakura Maru\".\n\nAs regards conditions in Stanley Internment Camp I wrote a few notes,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211694, "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-1989", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "84\n\nanti-aircraft fire, but as far as I could see, they were completely unscathed. The bombing seemed to me to be directed entirely against what were, or might be taken to be, military objectives, and this indeed may be said of the artillery fire also. During the 18 days fighting Queen Mary Hospital, 400 yards from Mt. Davis Fort, did not receive a single direct hit. The two hospitals on the Peak (i.e. the Matilda Hospital and the War Memorial Nursing Home) were repeatedly hit by shells, but I think this was due to the fact that the Japanese were searching for two field batteries which were located uncomfortably close to the two hospitals: this, at any rate, was the explanation given by a Japanese officer who came to the War Memorial Nursing Home while I was there after the surrender. One point which struck me very forcibly was the small size of the bombs and shells which the Japanese were using. I saw many direct hits by bombs on buildings on the Peak but in no case did I see any building completely demolished as my house in Chungking was; and the shells, which I am told were mostly from field guns and trench mortars, did not seem to have much penetrating power: they hardly scarred modern reinforced concrete buildings such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building and the block of flats where my wife and I were living. I am told that the Japanese were using heavier weapons elsewhere, but my general impression was that the Japanese were mainly using what I think Mr. Hore-Belisha called “Woolworth” material.\n\nAs regards the behaviour of the Japanese in Hongkong I think I must distinguish between two phases, i.e. the actual attack and afterwards. There are many well-authenticated stories of the shooting or bayoneting of British prisoners during the attack, though how general the practice was I have no means of judging. (A Commissioner of Customs, Mr. Flanagan, who is in the \"Narkunda\", told me he had seen a number of corpses of British soldiers still with their hands tied behind their backs). There was also a very nasty affair at Stanley where two doctors, three nurses and a number of Canadian officers and possibly others were massacred. There were also apparently numerous cases of rape including a few European women and girls. The situation however was quickly brought under control and there was nothing at all resembling the licensed disorder which followed the capture of Nanking in 1937. We were indeed told by people who were in Kowloon when the Japanese came in, that the behaviour of the latter towards European women was good though numbers of Chinese and half-caste girls were taken off, obviously for ...\n\n* The staff repatriated via the \"Kamakura Maru\" were transferred to the \"Narkunda\" in Lourenço Marques. (Editor's Note)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212331, "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-1990", "page_number": 273, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "250\n\ngenerating their own supplies, switched to Hong Kong Electric.\n\nIn 1924 there were 1,369 gas street lights, compared to 469 electric. By 1936, few gas lights remained.\n\nDuring the invasion, in December 1941, a small group of Hong Kong Electric engineers and other staff, a few of whom were veterans of Britain's past wars, held the Japanese at bay in the epic defence of the North Point Power Station. Casualties were heavy. Of these, Vincent Sorby, the general manager, later died of wounds in prison camp.\n\nExcept for early days and the war years, blackouts have totalled only two hours 50 minutes. One was caused by a fire at North Point Power Station in 1930, and another when a shoal of fish was sucked into the cooling system in the same year.\n\nChina Light and Power\n\nChina Light and Power is younger than Hong Kong Electric, and until it was established, apart from a few lamps, the streets of Kowloon went lightless at night. Robert George Shewan registered the company in 1900 (some records say 1901). His main business was as a partner in Shewan, Tomes and Company. Its predecessor was Samuel Russell and Company (liquidated in 1879), which started business in Canton in 1818, an American trading firm originating in Boston which merged with Perkins and Company, another American company, in 1842.\n\nLawrence (now Lord) Kadoorie, Hong Kong's first peer, was born in Hong Kong and raised in China. His father, who became Sir Elly Kadoorie, arrived in Hong Kong, via Bombay, in 1880 from Baghdad where his was one of the leading Jewish families. Lawrence Kadoorie joined the board of China Light and Power in 1930. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces in the company.\n\nChina Light and Power commissioned its first power station, at Hung Hom, in 1903. In 1989, the company supplied electricity to nearly 1,400,000 customers in Kowloon, the New Territories, Lantau, and some outlying islands. 'China Light' is not dealt with at such length here as Hong Kong Electric because it did not come into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212614, "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-1991", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "148\n\nnormal form of exercise was the evening stroll. There is, perhaps, nothing which so readily distinguishes the Chinese from their lugubrious neighbours to the west, the Indians, as their cheerful spirit. That evening the scene was more animated than usual. I could read in the happy faces of the crowd the joy they felt at finding themselves at last no longer alone in the struggle.\n\nArrangements had been made to send the officers of our little group to various parts of the Chinese front to study war conditions. The others had already left, and I was due to leave by air for Kweilin next day. I went down to the island air-strip early in the morning to find several planes just in from Hongkong, with the families of the C.N.A.C. staff who had been living there. The American crews had flown to Kaitak from a field in China, loaded up, and flown out again all at night. Over a cup of bad Chungking coffee they described the events in Hongkong, the bombing of the airfield and the destruction of the majority of the C.N.A.C. planes, caught on the ground by the sudden Japanese attack.\n\nBy and by the covers were taken off the three engines of the old Junkers 52 plane, in which I was to fly, and mechanics started them up. The plane was the last of those belonging to the Eurasia Aviation Corporation, a Sino-German company, the only competitor of the C.N.A.C. The German pilots had been replaced by Chinese. There were a dozen passengers; we clutched our seats a little nervously as the heavy-looking machine accelerated down the runway towards the river only to rise from the ground just before we hit the water. We spiralled up above the Chungking escarpment and flew away over the Szechuan mountains at a steady hundred miles per hour, until we dropped back through a gap in the clouds to see below us the sabre-toothed hills of Kweilin. I was taken in hand by an efficient \"Fu kuan\" (Adjutant) of General Li Tsung Jen's staff and motored into the city, where I found Michael waiting.\n\nMy destination was the 3rd War Zone, the most important of the nine war zones in China. It covered the greater part of the richest provinces, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei, Kiangsi and Fukien: bounded by the Yangtze to the north, the sea coast in the east, Fukien to the south, the area of the 3rd War Zone reached west as far as the Kan river. General Ku Chu Tung, famous for his defence of Shanghai in 1937, was the Commander.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212615, "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-1991", "page_number": 169, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "I should like here to explain that the Japanese intelligence service is efficient; very little that goes on in China is not quickly known to it. But obviously considerations of security, no less than a courteous regard for a great Ally, require a severe discretion in what may or may not be mentioned while a war is still in progress; unperceived by the reader there will be gaps in the story which follows, a story of some minor assistance given to our Chinese Allies in the 3rd War Zone by the British, when themselves hard-pressed during 1942. For similar reasons, where persons are concerned, I propose to refer to them by their Christian names.\n\nI had asked that the Chinese government should provide me with an interpreter for my trip; but Michael was much more than that. He had been educated in Peking and at the Chelu University in Tsinanfu, and was the type of modern young Chinese patriot, on whose enthusiasm, integrity, and sense, the future of China depends. The horizon of these young Chinese is only too often limited by the fact that not only have they never travelled outside China, so that their knowledge of the foreigner is confined to the few they may have met in their schools or in their immediate environment, but also they know so little of their own enormous country. The displacement of schools brought about by the Japanese aggression has helped much to overcome the second difficulty; and it is to be hoped that far more extensive opportunities will be provided after the war to enable the youth of China to visit foreign countries. In the past, by reason of proximity, Japan has received most Chinese students; followed by the United States, where special endowments, arising initially from the excessive claim made for indemnity at the time of the Boxer trouble, and the facility of “earn while you study”, have attracted students. A few, far too few, have come to England.\n\nMichael spoke fluent English, had seen much of his own country, and for his years carried a wise head on his shoulders; he had, moreover, a most engaging personality. For a year he was my constant companion, on whose advice I came to rely much. I found also awaiting me at Kweilin members of General Ku Chu Tung's staff. We left for Hengyang by train, and thence motored a thousand kilometres to Shangjao, the headquarters of the 3rd War Zone. I was the first foreign officer, Russian liaison officers apart, to visit the 3rd War Zone in two years: I was, in fact, a visible token of the assistance which China might now expect from her new allies, and my reception was correspondingly cordial. I was shown everything; the Arsenal, in a cave; The Prisoners of War cage, where some twenty Japanese were kept pending transfer further west;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212630, "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-1991", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "164\n\nafter the Tokyo raid and were now being taken to Chungking. That evening we reached Yingtan - in the event we were several days ahead of the Japanese - to be astonished on arrival at the hostel by the sight of a beautiful American girl, nicely turned out, waiting on the doorstep to greet us with a large chocolate cake. She was a newspaper reporter who had escaped from Shanghai and spent several months with the guerillas: she was now on her way to the rear, had heard that some American pilots were due to pass through, and had arranged with the Irish Roman Catholic Father, who was attached to the Mission there and who happened to have some very rare supplies, to make a cake. We explained that the Americans had already passed by on another road, and she then offered us the cake. She was worried lest we should \"steal her story\"! What she thought we would do with it I do not quite know, but we certainly enjoyed the pleasure of her company and the taste of her cake. I never discovered her name, she left along the road by which we had come.\n\nNext day it started to rain; a great advantage as the clouds kept the Japanese aircraft away. On arrival at Shangjao we found that our friends were all absent at their battle stations; we drove straight on to a village to which we learnt our own particular commander, the Army Group Commander, had withdrawn his headquarters. Owing to fifth column activities Chinese generals in the field are always careful to conceal their whereabouts, and it was long after dark before we located him. He welcomed us; I sat in his room as the reports of the fighting came in over the 'phone and a staff officer by candle light marked the enemy's movements with flags on a large map. There had been severe fighting at a key place, called Showchang, where the Chinese troops had successfully resisted for three days but the Japanese were now reported to be using tear gas. The general had had little sleep for several days and was obviously tired; we withdrew as soon as we could after receiving his instructions. We were still 200 kilometres from our camp; the road ran parallel to the front and about twenty kilometres from it. We had heard reports that the road ahead had already been cut, a likely possibility, as the front was by no means continuous, and the Japanese practice was to infiltrate bodies of plain-clothes men well ahead of their troops to seize tactical points and cut communications. However, I was relieved to hear from the general that according to latest reports the road was still open.\n\nThe morrow was our longest day. The road followed along the hillside above a mountain river, and we had not got far when we found the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213634, "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-1995", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "205\n\nEXPERIENCES AS A WAR CRIMES PROSECUTOR IN HONG KONG\n\nPETER VINE\n\nFifty years ago I caught my first glimpse of Hong Kong through the perspex window of a DC3. I was in transit from Singapore to take up the post of War Crimes Prosecutor in Hong Kong. I was 24 and a Major in the Royal Marines in which I had served for the previous five years.\n\nMy last war-time appointment was as Gunnery Officer aboard a landing craft which mounted a 104 millimetre gun. We had made the journey from Plymouth, England to join up with other units of the Support Squadron assembled in Madras. Lord Mountbatten had planned \"Operation Zipper\" to reconquer Malaya down to the last detail when the announcement came through of Emperor Hirohito's broadcast surrender following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since it was not then clear that the Japanese military would respond to this call, Operation Zipper went ahead as planned, and this brought me to Singapore. My landing-craft never sailed again, and I was appointed to the staff of the Flag Officer Malayan area. I had free time at my disposal and I sent for the text-books and arranged with the English Law Society to have the Solicitors Final papers sent to H.M.S Sultan, Singapore where I sat the exam in March 1946. The announcement that I had satisfied the examiners came through in June, and a report appeared in the \"Straits Times\". I then received a telephone call asking me whether I would be willing to undertake War Crimes prosecution. I agreed readily as it offered me an opportunity to get in some legal work before demobilization, and I was appointed Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General. I cut my teeth as prosecutor on a case which arose out of atrocities in the Andaman Islands, and which ended with a death sentence, and several terms of imprisonment.\n\nLists had been prepared of major criminals in Germany and Japan to be charged (mainly) with plotting aggressive war, and these major trials took place in Nuremberg and Tokyo. At the 1945 Potsdam Conference the procedure for all war crimes trials was worked out in detail. A modified military law would be followed procedurally allowing some flexibility for the introduction of affidavit evidence. For the major", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214309, "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-1998", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "131\n\nNot only did he write many of the Journal's editorials but also in each edition a number of miscellaneous articles on subjects ranging from hunting in Manchuria and boating as a holiday to the Hall of Antiquities in the Hude Museum in Shanghai - a pet project of his, as well as Scientific Notes and Reviews. His editorials ranged from Shanghai's Position in the World to China's New Industrialisation. A typical editorial described the colossal task facing the leaders of China's Republic and, as the years passed, so his editorials became more and more anti-Japanese. In the great age of European self-confidence these editorials reflected the general mood of expatriates not only in the Treaty Ports but also within the hinterland of China. None of this necessarily precluded a measure of genuine interest in Chinese culture though he, himself, appears not to have been a convinced ‘Orientalist.' He covered a vast range of subjects under broad-brush headings Engineering, Industrial and Commercial Notes; Scientific Notes and Reviews; Educational Notes and Intelligence and Travel and Exploration Notes.\n\nA number of articles written by people whose names have come down to us as authors of well-known books such as Florence Ayscough, L.C. Arlington, Juliet Bredon and James Hutson appeared in the Journal over the years. It would be impossible to list here many of the articles and papers printed issue by issue ranging as they did from tea to river craft, secret societies to criticisms on the Shanghai local artists exhibitions as well as descriptions of expeditions into the interior With Kua-tzu and Camera in the Yangtze Gorges by H. Foote-Carey and in 1923 - Investigation of the Thermal Dissociation of Hydrated Alumo-silicates, Prehnite, Zoisite and Epidote by E. Norin of the Nystrøm Institute, Taiyuan Fu, Shansi.\n\nIn early 1938 Arthur and his wife, Clarice, sold their interest in the China Journal to a new company called \"The China Journal Publishing Company Limited\" based at 117 Hong Kong Road, Shanghai, accepting part of the purchase price in shares of the new company. There were now three directors, H.J. Timperley, A. de C. Sowerby and H.J. Freyn. The manager at that point was a Mr. W.V.D. White with Clarice Moise no longer referred to on the staff of the Journal. Then, on 7 December 1941, after Pearl Harbour, men of the Japanese navy broke into the offices and destroyed everything, including the files, mailing lists, back numbers, and that was the end of the China Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214570, "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-1998", "page_number": 428, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "397\n\nas, post 1945.\n\nOne would expect, bearing in mind that many of Hong Kong's records were destroyed during the Japanese occupation (1941-1945), that these last two would be the easiest of the seven to trace. The help of the staff of the Urban Services Department was again sought. They searched the registers of the Jewish and Muslim Cemeteries, and further searches were again made in the Hong Kong Cemetery and the Catholic Cemetery. But still we were unable to locate the two missing graves. A search was also made by Mr Derek Cheng, cemetery attendant at the Stanley Cemetery, but without success.\n\nIn addition a search was made in the Government Public Records Office, at Kwun Tong, for the birth certificates of Knox and Moss. Again we were unsuccessful. A discussion was also held with an Immigration Department Officer in the Government Births and Deaths Registry. He informed me that unless more information could be obtained, including places of death (for example a hospital), it was extremely unlikely that the death certificates of the two could be traced. Search fees of HK$140.00 for the first and HK$680.00 for a second more general search would be charged for each person. This information has been passed back through BACSA to the relatives.\n\nThe seven dead persons were all British and it is therefore unlikely that they would have been buried in the delightful little Chiu Yuen (meaning bright and faraway) Eurasian Cemetery, on Hong Kong Island, or in one of the many Chinese cemeteries. Although cremation was rare until more recently (in 1958/59 only 1.65 per cent of corpses in Hong Kong were cremated1), it is just possible these two dead persons' bodies were disposed of in this way. Their ashes could have been scattered (very few are in Hong Kong) or placed in an urn, in a niche, in a columbarium. It is even more unlikely that the bones of these persons, being Europeans, would be placed in an ossuary. Again, it is unlikely that either of the two would have been buried on the China Mainland (although Moss, having died 'post 1945, could have been) after the People's Republic Government came to power in 1949.\n\nIt should be mentioned that all four graves that we found were located in pleasant surroundings close to, or under trees. Again the two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214738, "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-1999", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "117 \n\nA Review of the Literature? \n\nStrategy \n\nIn terms of the strategic and historical aspects of the Battle, the best known works from the British points of view are those of Winston Churchill (Churchill 1950), the Minister who led Britain to final victory, and Liddell Hart (Liddell Hart 1970), the strategist renowned for his theory on the use of tanks in modern warfare and \"indirect approach” (Liddell Hart 1991) as a general war strategy. There are few recent works in English that make reference to Hong Kong at this level of analysis. The common tenor of Churchill and Liddell Hart was that Hong Kong could not be defended. The former, however, held that Hong Kong should be nominally defended to deter the Japanese. In early 1941, Churchill told General Sir Hastings, his Chief of Staff: \n\n\"There is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it. It is most unwise to increase the loss we shall suffer there. Instead of augmenting the garrison it ought to be reduced to a symbolic scale.... Japan will think long before declaring war on the British Empire, and whether there are two or six battalions at Hong Kong will make no difference to her choice.” \n\nIt was true that Churchill's Chiefs of Staff favoured reinforcing the Hong Kong garrison so that it could maintain a \"more worthy” defence or even a degree of deterrence, and Major-General A.E. Grasett, the former General Officer Commanding in Hong Kong, made a contribution to the strength of the defence by arranging for two Canadian battalions to arrive in the Colony in October 1941. Yet, under the dominant influence of Churchill's strategic concept, the Hong Kong garrison was outnumbered three to one by the Japanese when the invasion occurred. \n\nChurchill's position and decision apparently attracted universal criticism after the war. Liddell Hart thought that this was a patent mistake, which was exacerbated by Grasett's contribution, which cost many lives of the garrison. In other words, Liddell Hart considered that as Hong Kong could not be defended, it should not have been defended. In his History of the Second World War, Liddell Hart recalled what he said to General Dill in March 1935 about Hong Kong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215899, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Pottinger Battery: 1 officer + 26 soldiers\n\n3 February 1920 The Chief of Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, considered that Hong Kong could resist Japanese attack for 3 months before relief from Singapore arrived.\n\nWashington Treaty\n\n1920/1921\n\n1922\n\nThe Admiralty informed the Committee of Imperial Defence that it was the authority to advise the scale of attack on ports and that for Hong Kong, the \"status quo applies.\"\n\nRollo, 1992, p.98\n\nRollo, 1992, p.101\n\nRollo, 1992, p.102\n\n1924\n\n\"Devil's Peak Sheet No.3,\" Ordnance Survey 1904, corrected and printed at the War Office 1924, shows road access, including \"roads suitable for man-handled guns\" and detailed land uses in the Devil's Peak area, with boundaries of War Department lands delineated. However, the locations of batteries and the Redoubt are not shown.\n\nPRO100(2)\n\n1927\n\nAerial Photograph No. H19 15 taken by HMS Pegasus.\n\nThe Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee review.\n\nRollo, 1992, p.104\n\n1928\n\nSteel choke caused problems to the 9.2-inch guns at Devil's Peak.\n\nRollo, 1992, p.105\n\n1929\n\nAugust 1930\n\nFebruary 1931\n\nChinese writer/composer, Tien Han, visited Hong Kong and was impressed by the scenic views of Lei Yue Mun, as stated in his poem \"Good Bye Hong Kong.\"\n\nThe 12th Heavy Battery replaced the 9-inch guns with anti-choke pattern.\n\nRollo, 1992, p.105\n\nThe 12 Heavy Battery fired new guns at Gough Battery. \"Gough Battery fired over Hong Kong Island and Repulse Bay.\"\n\nRollo, 1992, p.105\n\n1933\n\nAnnual Review of the Defence of Ports.\n\nRollo, 1992, p.105\n\n22 October 1934 The 12 Heavy Battery practised indirect shots at Pottinger Battery.\n\n1934\n\nA letter from the Military Operation Branch of the War Office indicated plans to modernise two 9.2-inch guns at Devil's Peak in 1936/37 with 35-degree mountings.\n\n1936\n\nThe Hong Kong Defence Scheme\n\nRollo, 1992, p.107\n\nRollo, 1992, p.108, 109\n\nRollo, 1992, p.110, 112\n\n131", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215930, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "163\n\na new breed of intelligence officer. Grimsdale recalled his admiration with the ease with which Boxer could gain the trust of the Japanese.\n\nWhen the Japanese conquered Guangdong in 1938, Boxer arranged an invitation for himself and Grimsdale to visit the Commander of Japanese Forces, General Ando, whom he had known socially in London. To Grimsdale's amazement, Ando showed them round Japanese installations in his own staff car. They were able to inspect troop positions, aerodromes and see the power of the Japanese army at first hand. Perhaps that was Ando's subtle point, but it benefited both parties. At one stage, the general joked to Boxer that the British should stop supporting the Chinese 'then we could finish off this bloody war and all go home.' In the same jesting vein, Boxer answered that the Japanese should stop supporting the Germans.\n\nBoxer and his colleagues made a point of travelling and meeting people. Through personal contacts they were able to extract more information, and get an understanding of context. Boxer and his colleagues were articulate and fluent in Chinese or Japanese, and above all sensitive to the cultures, aware of the place of Hong Kong in the overall Chinese scheme of things. They illustrated the concept that \"well informed is well armed.\" Nor were they the only ones. In 1937/8, the Japanese Army in central China had agreed to take a young Japanese speaking British officer \"on attachment\" for nine months. Although his detailed report was misinterpreted (the atrocities in China were deemed a 'temporary lapse') is the then Military Attache and Foreign Office agreed that a non confrontational approach was more effective in getting information and defusing potential incidents.\n\niv\n\nAlert to the nuances of Japanese politics, Boxer sensed in July 1939, a sharp deterioration in Japanese attitudes towards the British. He interpreted this as a move by the Japanese Army to find a scapegoat for their lack of progress in the China campaign. He reported 'at present there can be no greater error than to assume as is so often done that Japan's military machine is too bogged down in China to prevent it being turned towards us...the only thing likely to restrain the Japanese Army....is the fear of possible complications with the United States of America.\" His warnings however went unheeded: Europe was itself just about to plunge into war, and to the Foreign Office, Hong Kong seemed very far away. Indeed, the note covering Boxer's letter", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215931, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "164 \n\nlaconically states that, even on what was actually his honeymoon visit, Boxer had not lost his 'powers of observation.' \n\nIn accordance with the policy of withdrawing resources to Singapore, supposedly an impregnable fortress, the FECB was downscaled and most of its men and resources moved. Boxer was promoted to Major, with a small staff, which included his close friend and best man, Alf Bennett. Ironically, this gave him greater flexibility to use his own initiative. \n\n4 \n\nUnable to make much headway with London, Boxer flew to Chongqing to see the British Ambassador, Sir Alexander Clarke-Kerr. Boxer then made contacts with key figures in the Chinese military. He was received by none other than General Dai Li, head of the formidable Juntong or Bureau of Statistics and Military Intelligence. After the Generalissimo himself, to whom his loyalty was almost feudal, General Dai was perhaps the most powerful man in China. An extremely shrewd strategic thinker, he was in many ways the power behind the throne. His organisation, fiercely secretive and ruthless, has been described as a sort of Chinese Gestapo, prepared to use any means, including murder, to achieve its aims. Dai was fanatically devoted to Chiang Kai Shek, and shaped the Juntong to be a dreaded political as well as military machine, spying on all perceived enemies of the state, Communists and fellow Guomindang as well as Japanese. The Juntong organisation was highly effective, operating through cells united by family and social bonds, whose members were expected to subsume all private needs to the pursuance of state aims, however lethal. It has been demonstrated that General Dai and his followers modelled themselves on folk heroes from Chinese history who operated through secret societies and who believed that extreme action such as assassination, was justified in the interests of the common good. Dai was known to be anti-western, for he believed that western countries with their imperialist policies were the cause of China's humiliation, and were exploiting its weakness for their own aims. Many assumed that Dai's anti-British stance was on the personal embarrassment of having been mysteriously arrested in Hong Kong, thus conveniently sidestepping questions raised by decades of opium and gunboats. Dai also believed that any western country operating in China should function under Chinese control, an idea anathema to westerners used to extraterritoriality and getting their own terms. Boxer, however, found Dai co-operative and willing to ...\n\nbased", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215932, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "165\n\ntalk, but was well aware of Dai's sinister \"Blueshirts,\" and thought it wise to return somewhat evasive and non-committal replies since terrorist activities would only be a source of embarrassment to us at present. Still, he held open the prospect that Dai's 'local agents may come in useful later as a check on fifth columnists and pro-Wang Ching Wei activists.'*\n\nBoxer also met a Chinese general whom he described as an 'exceptionally well-educated and much travelled individual who speaks fluent German and English in addition to being a famous classical scholar.' This was General Yu Ta Wei, who had amassed a huge store of ordnance seized from the Japanese, photos of Japanese weapons and bases, other material both of a military and intelligence nature, and chillingly, evidence that the Japanese were using chemical warfare against the Chinese. This he candidly showed Boxer, who was concerned enough to recommend that a British technical officer be sent out to examine them. General Yu, a more cosmopolitan man than Dai, had been trained in the Prussian military academy and was an urbane, well-read man, up to date with the latest developments in Europe. He wanted to develop a munitions industry in China and needed foreign help. Boxer was meeting two of the most influential men in the Chinese hierarchy.\n\nOn the evening of 10th October 1939, the Double Tenth, that most sacred celebration in the KMT calendar, a date chosen deliberately to signal how the Chinese viewed the meeting, Boxer was ushered into the presence of the Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek. This was an important meeting, for it was perhaps the first sign that the British were making a concerted effort to help the Chinese in their long struggle with the Japanese. Boxer proposed that the Chinese and British set up a joint intelligence network to get a quicker and more efficient system of exchanging information. He proposed that a network of wireless stations be set up all along the Chinese coast from Hainan to Taiwan. Moreover, it would be financed by the British, but independently operated by Chinese to monitor Japanese troop movements. All information was to be 'equally at the disposal of Chinese and British staff,' although the Chinese could not enter the British military code system. He compounded the tribute to the Chinese war effort by suggesting that Hong Kong could learn from the efficient Chinese system of predicting air raids, whereby agents reported bombers taking", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "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", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216170, "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": 469, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "Staff Quarters\n\nGun Emplacement\n\nTathong Point - General views of the staff quarters and the former Japanese gun emplacement\n\n403", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216432, "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-2003", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "141\n\nOne such snippet dated 12 May, 1904, described how 'when the Russians withdrew from Wafangtien, contemporaneously with the Japanese advance, bands of Hunhuses throughout Manchuria began to show great activity, especially in the region of Yantai, a station between Mukden and Liaoyang, thus adding enormously to the dangers and preoccupations of the Russians. There were reports that these bands were led by Japanese, which were not improbable, since the Japanese had a perfect right to make use of their hostility to the Russians of the population of Manchuria. At the same time, in all directions, attacks on the railway began, under the direction of officers of the Japanese General Staff. Two such officers had been captured by General Kuropatkin in April and, as there was no doubt as to their mission since they had upon them a large quantity of dynamite, fuses and tools for destroying the line, they were promptly executed.' On the page facing this snippet is a photograph of the decapitation of several Hong Huzi with the caption 'How Russians deal with the Hunhuses who destroy the railway.'\n\nAlthough it does not in any way help clarify the employment of Chinese bandits as irregular troops by the Russians, a British observer writing on the horsemanship of the Cossacks, noted that ‘after a comparatively small force of Japanese cavalry at Sha-ho had acted as a sufficient counter-check to the larger masses of Russian horsemen, the Cossack was deficient in courage and staying power, but was well mounted. There was a long and exposed line of the Manchurian Railway for them to guard, and the Russian cavalry had the Hunhutses [sic] always with them, but these marauders on their diminutive horses should not have been able to ride round the horsemen of the steppes in the manner they seem persistently to have done.'\n\nAlthough captions on photographs of captured Chinese claim they were being executed for espionage, mainly spying for the Japanese, it tended to have been more a matter of individual banditry and any resultant monetary reward rather than prisoners having been 'resistance fighters.'\n\nThere is also a photograph of \"The Head Chief of the Hunhuses.' It shows four Chinese and one Japanese (said to have been an Intelligence Officer, who worked in Newchwang [Niuzhuang] during the Russian occupation as a shoemaker). The central figure is described as 'the chief named Chin, said to be in Japanese employ who is a well-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]