[ { "id": 204780, "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-1964", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "72 \n\nJ. W. HAYES \n\nbe shown for inspection to prove ownership at the land settlement which followed the British lease and, though opinions differ on this point, many old villagers have said that their deeds were handed in to the Government and not returned. This would, in part, account for their being in very short supply today, at any rate throughout the area with which I am familiar; that is the islands and the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay districts. Following widespread enquiry over a number of years, I am convinced that another factor of great importance in explaining their scarcity is the Japanese occupation of the Colony in 1941-45. Many villagers say that their papers were destroyed at that time, in many cases by themselves, since they feared the questions which might result if the Japanese authorities got their hands on them. The less they knew the better, was the prevailing view, and therefore many families destroyed their papers, to our present loss.\n\nFortunately, to set against this background of loss and decay, there are the valuable records of the land settlement carried out within a few years of the lease of the New Territories to Britain in 1898. These consist of records of a ground survey, carried out mainly to a scale of thirty-two inches to the mile, in which individual lots are set down and numbered, and their ownership listed in an accompanying schedule certified as correct by an officer of the Land Court.2 These constitute a modern \"Domesday\" of all titles to land in the leased territory. Their usefulness to the historian is obvious and apart from their intrinsic value as a contemporary record they provide many clues to the past and enable detailed checks to be made on some of the persons and organisations whose names appear on commemorative tablets and others dated items such as furniture and fittings, which are to be found in the many temples which dot the countryside.\n\nThere are also the recollections of elders, particularly those over eighty years of age, who were young men at the time the territory changed hands. The memories of the oldest men are sometimes good and when this is the case they can do a great deal to fill in the bare bones of the land records and the genealogical trees. Since certain changes overtook the region within the first decade of British rule,3 their testimony is of the greatest importance to a realisation of manners and attitudes and an understanding of the system of civil and military administration which obtained", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205128, "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-1966", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n79\n\ntions, he spent the first year on language study in Tokyo, then a year at Otani University, and a final year at the Mampukuji outside Kyoto, which is the most Chinese of Japanese Zen monasteries. He was very politely treated. When I asked (perhaps tactlessly) whether the Japanese Government did not have a policy of trying to use Buddhism to subdue China, he replied with some sharpness: \"I was not utilized by them. That was not the way they behaved towards me.\" He said, however, that other monks who had gone to Japan were looked on as collaborators when they returned, and some had had to change their names. Other informants have stated that after victory in 1945 several high-ranking monks in Shanghai were imprisoned for collaboration with the Japanese and one was executed in Canton.18\n\n33\n\nQuaritch Wales in an article written at the height of the war summarized the Japanese use of Buddhism as follows. “Buddhist propaganda has for several years been carried on by the New Asia Bureau of the Dai Nippon Buddhist Association, which is under the joint control of the Japanese Education and War Ministries. It is responsible for all missionary work in East Asia and long before Pearl Harbour was already deeply entrenched in north China. There, the more systematically to further its ends, the New Asia Bureau had established Sino-Japanese Buddhist Associations at Hangchow, Amoy, and Nanking, subsidized by the Special Service Section of the Army, naturally not with purely religious motives.”19\n\nMost of this, sensational though it may sound, is confirmed by the semi-official Japanese source already referred to in the notes, that is, the 1943 Yearbook of the Great Harmony Religious Alliance of Central China. The Great Harmony Alliance had been set up in accordance with a religious work policy formulated by the Japanese Military Intelligence Bureau in October, 1938.20 It was \"under the direction and supervision of the military authorities.\" Throughout a series of bureaucratic changes over the next four years, its purposes remained the same: 1) to coordinate and control Japanese religious groups in central China; and 2) to promote their cooperation with Chinese counter-parts. To this latter end the Alliance set up at least a dozen Japanese-Chinese Buddhist associations, of which those that existed in November 1940 formed the Japanese-Chinese Buddhist\n\n21", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205144, "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-1966", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n11 Yin-shun, T'ai-hsü, p. 213.\n\n12 Eastern Buddhist 3.2 (July-September, 1924), 190.\n\n95\n\n13 Chinese lay devotees went to Japan to learn Tantric Buddhism from Shingon masters. Chinese monks went for academic study (two in 1936 and two more in early 1937; see Chinese Year Book 1937, Shanghai, 1937, p. 73.\n\n14 That is, the Chung-jih fo-chiao hui. At about the same time the Sino-Japanese Tantric Association (Ching-jih mi-chiao hui) was established. See Chinese Year Book 1937, p. 73.\n\n15 Takada, p. 14.\n\n16 Takada, p. 24-36, lists a total of eleven temples established between 1876 and 1937, but on p. 14 he speaks of ten temples having been set up before 1937 and of forty-nine (not forty-six) being in operation as of December, 1942. It seems clear that he does not include temples that have gone out of operation, like those in Nanking and Changsha (see note 2), and possibly those in Fukien. The only temple outside Shanghai that survived from the era before 1937 was the Honganji temple in Hankow, established 1906, which in 1942 had 1,200 Japanese and 150 Chinese parishioners.\n\n17 For example, in 1942 at the original Honganji temple in Shanghai the number of Japanese parishioners was 4,930 and the number of Chinese was zero. This temple was obviously not engaged in missionary work, but exclusively in serving the Japanese community.\n\n18 Two officers of the Ching-an Ssu in Shanghai are said to have been arrested and in Canton the abbot of the Liu-jung Ssu, T'ieh-ch'an, was executed.\n\n19 H. G. Quaritch Wales, \"Buddhism As an Instrument of Japanese Propaganda\" Free World 5.5 (May 1943), 428.\n\n20 Takada, p. 1, states that the alliance was set up in April 1937 in accordance with the policy formulated in October 1938. Perhaps the first date is a misprint.\n\n21 Takada, pp. 1, 4, 5. The changes in the bureaucratic status of the Great Harmony Religious Alliance appear to have been as follows. After being set up under the military authorities, it was transferred to the liaison office of the Central China Liaison Office of the Office for the Resurgence of Asia (Koain), which had been set up in December 1938 directly under the Cabinet in order to formulate policy on and handle relations with China. In April 1942 the Alliance was placed under the supervision of the Foreign Ministry through its representatives in Shanghai. In November 1942 it seems to have been returned to the Office for the Resurgence of Asia, when the latter was integrated into the Ministry for Great East Asian Co-Prosperity.\n\n22 Takada, pp. 24-36.\n\n23 The most significant absentee was Yüan-ying, the national head of the Chinese Buddhist Association (Shanghai, 1929).\n\n24 H. Hackmann, A German Scholar in the East, pp. 118-119. John Blofeld, who visited Wu-t'ai Shan in 1937, describes a monastery with several hundred monks where \"the main pavilion... was arranged in the Chinese way, but many services were held in a smaller building where purely Tibetan rites were performed\" (Jewel in the Lotus, London, 1948, p. 97).\n\n25 Fa-p'u, a disciple of Ta-yung, is stated to have reached Lhasa and earned a ko-hsi degree. Yin-shun, T'ai-hsü, p. 17.\n\n26 Chinese Year Book 1937 (Shanghai, 1937), p. 73.\n\n27 Shirob Jaltso, for example, was a member of the People's Political Council (1938-1949); an alternate member of the Kuomintang Sixth Super-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207140, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n205\n\nThe roof is also of considerable interest, being again provided with the pottery frieze so common in temples in Southern China, dated Kuang Hsü 33rd year (1907-08). Again this comes from the Shek Wan kilns.\n\nThe temple is also remarkable for a very large image which has somehow found its way there, though it is much older than the building. It is, in fact, of the Ming dynasty and carries the following inscription —\n\n大明萬曆三十一年歲次癸卯季秋吉旦建\n\nwhich dates it to the end of 1603.\n\nTerrace Houses and Individual Buildings en route\n\nIn the course of the visit, members will have the opportunity to see individual old buildings and in some cases whole terraces of houses. These appear to vary widely in date. Some belong to the late 19th century while others date from the early decades of this century. In all cases, however, they are of considerable interest and appeal, though their number has sadly diminished in the post-war years.\n\nFurther Information\n\nMr. Henry James Lethbridge, who has researched into the history of 19th century Hong Kong, informs me that a large number of the married European policemen, turnkeys and minor Government functionaries lived in Wanchai before 1900, cheek by jowl with Chinese (unlike the senior European officials who generally lived apart from them). Many of these persons moved to Kowloon when this was developed for residential purposes early in this century.\n\nMr. Lethbridge also states that many Japanese lived in Wanchai from the early 1900's. They included girls and brothels and during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong 1941-45, the military authorities designated it as a 'red light' area.\n\nNotes on the Nineteenth Century Development of Wanchai*\n\nThe first land sale in Hong Kong in June 1841, consisted of a continuous line of Marine Lots marked off from the Chinese section of the Lower Bazaar (Sheung Wan) eastward to Hospital Hill (now the site of the Ruttonjee Sanatorium) at the east end of Wanchai. Individuals and firms bought lots in the Wanchai area and built\n\n*By Carl Smith.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207157, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "222\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n2. the tunnels and execution ground used by the Japanese military authorities during the Occupation 1941-1945.\n\n3. the small exhibition of photographs to be shown in the staff room. (from the School and from the Anglican Bishop's House in Hong Kong)\n\n4. the very long history of this multi-racial major educational institution of Hong Kong.\n\nLa Salle\n\n1. the excellent all-round vistas formerly enjoyed from the school site before the extensive redevelopment of the past 15 years. They included a view straight down the Lye-mun passage and the main runway at Kai Tak.\n\n2. the high quality of the Chapel and its fittings, particularly the furniture.\n\n3. the excellent record of the Salesian Brothers in local educational work since 1875.\n\nFor Both\n\n1. The buildings were designed as schools, and by the same firm of architects (Messrs Little, Adams and Wood, Hong Kong).\n\n2. the faith and vision of the founders who placed the schools in their present locations in the 1920s at a time when (as Carl Smith's note shows) this part of Kowloon was wholly rural and undeveloped.\n\nDiocesan Boys' School, La Salle College and their Neighbourhood - Carl T. Smith\n\nThe Diocesan Boys' School (D.B.S.) is situated south of Boundary Street and west of Waterloo Road. La Salle College is north of Boundary Street and east of Waterloo Road. Thus, D.B.S. is in Old Kowloon and La Salle College in New Kowloon. Both schools are built on hills. The D.B.S. site was behind the old Mongkok village. The La Salle site adjoined the paddy fields of Kowloon Tsai Village which was situated to the north-east of the present College. Somewhat more distant to the two schools was the Chinese village of Kowloon Tong facing south-west at the foot of the hills upon which the present Yau Yat Tsuen is located. The site of the village is now the Police Recreation Ground on Boundary Street.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207451, "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": 219, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n211\n\nnews he had a switch to allow him to broadcast his musical records to patients during the permitted hours. Usually he was careful, but one day when I was visiting a ward I was startled to hear on the ward loud speaker a part of a British bulletin on events on the Russian front. A speeding messenger to his bunk got this stopped and the Japanese showed no awareness of what had happened.\n\nI have often asked myself why I ran this risk. While I was then, and remain now, pretty sure that our own Japanese authorities sought for their own sake if not for ours, to keep all disciplinary problems in the hospital within their own hands and not report any of these to the Kempeitai or gendarmerie they would hardly have dared to suppress evidence of wireless communication between us and the outside world. No explanation by us that this was a simple and harmless gathering of news would have been accepted. Inevitably we would have been accused of operating a transmitter to broadcast to our side information about Japanese military matters. I, as head of the hospital, would have suffered the fate which overtook certain British officer prisoners in Kowloon who had been in communication with mainland China and who were executed after suffering so much that it was reported that they were unable to walk to the place of execution. I knew the risks perfectly well and yet for a long time I did not stir.\n\nI think now that I did not realise that we were getting a broad picture of the way the war was developing from the local paper though the emphasis here of course was on Japanese successes. I suppose I always hoped for some news of special significance to us. Certainly the hospital looked forward to the news and I was unwilling at that time to do anything to interrupt the flow. And so our news bulletins from British sources continued to come in for a very long time.\n\nEventually a decision was forced from me when certain officer patients represented to me that if found out it would not be only me who would suffer. The whole hospital could easily be closed down and certainly the privileges we enjoyed would be withdrawn. This argument was presented to me formally and I recognised the force of it and ordered the dismantling and destruction of the wireless receiving set.\n\nI did not supervise this personally; it was certainly dismantled but it was whispered that it had been reassembled elsewhere in the hospital and that it continued to be operated. If this was so my ignorance of its existence would not have saved me had it been discovered, but the story may well have been one of the rumours on all subjects", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207455, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n215\n\nmuch space as possible. The raiding plane on 26 October had therefore been seen by many of our population in the hospital. The sequel came on 3 November when, in the middle of afternoon, all up-patients and all staff were ordered to parade on the tennis court. Sentries had been posted overlooking the court and Lieutenant Saito and Mr. Hasegawa, an interpreter from Japanese Headquarters, were present. Two days earlier Sgt. Seino had told Major Charles Boxer that the Japanese navy had reported to the Japanese army that our men had been seen on the hospital verandahs during air raids. The intense rivalry between the two services was well known, and after Boxer's warning I saw to it that all staff and patients were ordered to keep off verandahs during air raids. The precaution came too late, however, and at the tennis court parade Saito made a speech interpreted by Hasegawa to the effect that many people in the hospital had laughed at and criticised the Japanese Military Authorities during and after the air raid. All on parade who had not laughed or criticised were ordered to hold up their hands and all did so. Hasegawa then said he did not believe this and I was called further forward from the head of the parade and asked if I knew who had laughed or criticised. On replying that I did not know I was dealt a buffet on each side of the face by Saito. His fist was not clenched but he was quite a powerful man and my cap was knocked askew and the inside of my cheek was cut though I suffered no real injury. Boxer was then called forward and asked why he had not signed an undertaking not to escape about which I shall have something to say later. Boxer replied that a Japanese officer would not have signed such a document and he then received two blows on the face from Saito. The parade was then dismissed and Saito went to No. 3 ward at the top of the building where up-patients were paraded on the verandah. These were mainly men recovering from diphtheria and any who had been on verandahs during raids were ordered to stand forward. When none did all were slapped. A new interpreter to the hospital, Takeyama, had just taken over and the latter told me formally that any further complaints of this nature would be followed by the closing of the hospital. We therefore arranged that verandahs on the harbour side would be policed by us during raids and that no one would even go on the verandah on the harbour side to get to lower floors where shelter was better. Shortly afterwards, on Japanese orders all beds were removed from verandahs on the harbour side of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207513, "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": 281, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n273\n\noccupied and privacy was non-existent. Privacy during sexual play was essential thirty years ago except in certain centres which were catering for unusual tastes; my observations suggest that privacy seems to be not essential at the present time.\n\nAfter the sisters and auxiliary nurses left I wondered if we might discover some homosexual manifestations. The sexual instinct is one of the last to be submerged by physical deterioration due to hunger and this is shown by the reproduction rate remaining high in countries where the population is often on the verge of starvation and is always undernourished. In my many conversations throughout the hospital I never heard any talk of homosexual practices going on.\n\nI set out to confine this account to events in the Military Hospital but I must include a short tale about the Civil Internment Camp in Stanley where both men and women were held. I understood that the Japanese authorities there issued an order which ran in the following terms. \"Sexual intercourse is prohibited except between husband and wife or close friends\". This story may be apocryphal but the language in which the order was supposed to be couched is typical of the rendering of our language by many, perhaps most of the Japanese interpreters I met and could well be true. Anyway it is a good story and perhaps worth telling.\n\nTHE ATOMIC BOMB\n\nIn Kowloon we had no idea that two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan and had provided the final weighty argument which forced the Emperor to assume responsibility on 15 August 1945 for ordering his forces to surrender. I have recalled earlier that I had no doubt even in the early days that the power of the Allies would eventually overcome the Japanese, but the only picture I could conjure up to myself was that of a long slogging series of attacks up the coast of Asia and against the multitudes of islands in Japanese hands, all fiercely defended. I thought that this process would take many years and would certainly be reinforced by a tight blockade by the Allies. Huge tracts of Chinese territory round Hong Kong were in Japanese hands and as the situation for the Japanese deteriorated, such was their reputation that I could not imagine them allowing a large number of prisoners to consume valuable food. I thought the outlook was dismal in the extreme", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208649, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n79\n\n8-Sunday Masses, as usual, with Fathers Keelan, Bauer and Charles Murphy officiating. It rained in the afternoon, but a fair crowd attended Rosary, Litany and private Benediction at St. Stephen's Great Hall; Bishop O'Gara spoke. Seventy Communions in the morning at Masses. An attempt is to be made to start some sort of school tomorrow for the children, but with the lack of desks, chairs and books, not much can be done. The Sisters also plan a catechism class. So far, we have five Maryknoll Sisters in Camp, as also nine Canadian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, but at five this afternoon during a drizzle, some 18 more Maryknoll Sisters, with Sister Paul at their head, arrived by truck, with bag and baggage as only Sisters know how to travel. As the American Blocks were pretty well filled up, temporary quarters were found for them in one of the British blocks. They find two or three rooms at their disposal, and the 18 promptly unroll their blankets and stretch out on the floor, for the night. The Portuguese and Chinese Sisters remain in Kowloon, but not in their own convent, which has long since been taken over by the Japanese military as a hospital. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved temporarily in the Maryknoll Sisters' apartment in the American block. Maryknoll again wins a softball match.\n\n9-Mr. Gullinan, former Hong Kong Police sergeant and a good friend of ours, goes to Tweed Bay Hospital for treatment. He had been in the Queen Mary Hospital for some months previous to the war. The American Community meets at 2.00 p.m. in the Club House Rooms and hear various reports read. The question of bank accounts in the Hong Kong banks came up and it seems the Japanese authorities have offered each one with a bank account the sum of $50.00 for his food. This offer was refused by the Americans. Our newly-built kitchen finally opened.\n\n10-The blackout is over and we again have electric lights in the evening. Today also there is a change in our meal hours. The first repast is 9.30, with a cup of soup at 12.30 and the second meal at 5.00 p.m. It has turned cold and rainy and our meager rations of rice and fixings leave us hungry. A robbery is reported in the Dutch quarters.\n\n11-Another attempt to open a canteen in the American Club, and each person is limited to the purchase of one article. As there wasn't very much, the supply was soon sold out. One could buy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208676, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "106\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nHospital. Funeral at 3:00 p.m. with Father Charles Murphy officiating.\n\nJUNE\n\n1- Father Haughey and Brother Bernard Toohill, Salesians, sign their papers and are allowed to leave Camp. The British do not yet believe that we Americans are going to be repatriated, but at the same time, they are hoping for some news about their own release. There are rumors, of course, but nothing definite as yet. The Canadians, too, are also hoping, and are even now trying to join the Americans. Swimming was supposed to start today, but no permission has yet been received. As the weather is beginning to get a little warm, the language school goes on vacation schedule of but one class a day. Strictly speaking, with all the interruptions and distractions of Camp life, we haven't made much progress on the language, but a start has been made.\n\n2- As it is now quite definite that the bulk of the Americans will be repatriated (some forty or so remaining voluntarily) a meeting was held today in which new officers were elected. Consequently, Mr. Bennett becomes Chairman of the Council; Father Meyer Vice-Chairman, Mr. Gregory, Secretary and Mr. Kiley, Treasurer. A tiger cub was reported seen around the Camp. At last, the first parcels of that $300,000.00 food loan are beginning to come in. Each internee had been instructed to make out a list of what articles he would like and individual parcels containing these items are made up in town and sent out to the Camp.\n\n3- Fathers Moore and Madison, again, slightly indisposed.\n\n4- Feast of Corpus Christi. Benediction at 6:45. Report has it now that the newspaper men among the repatriates are to receive one thousand yen from the Japanese authorities for the trip. Incidentally, it may be chronicled that shortly after taking possession of Hong Kong, the Japanese Army introduced the Military Yen, one yen being on a par with two Hong Kong dollars. Later on, this was boosted to one yen for four Hong Kong dollars, and as food prices have risen considerably, this has been a great hardship on the populace, especially those who had Hong Kong money. Then the further discount on high denomination bills made it still more difficult.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209979, "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-1983", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "216\n\nThe popularity of the Kwun Yam temple must be seen in relation to the followings and reputations of the other village temples of the area from which the temple drew its patrons. There was a long-established Tin Hau temple (A) inside Nga Tsin Wai village, a mile or so to the west over towards Kowloon City and its suburb Kowloon Street. According to a late 19th century tablet in the temple, this had existed at least as early as 1727. It had long provided the normal place of worship for the residents of the seven villages of the League of Seven (1) centred on Nga Tsin Wai, and some of the elders of these villages described their villages to me as 'coming under the rule of the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai'. Other old villages had their own temples, including another dedicated to Tin Hau in the large old village of Po Kong. Another well-known temple outside the north-west corner of Kowloon walled city, dedicated this time to Hau Wong (E), had its followers from Kowloon Street and the villages nearby. However, if my informants are to be believed and their natural bias discounted, in the early years of this century none of these commanded such wide support as the Tung Shan temple and its Kwun Yam image, and none enjoyed the wide territorial support shown by the existence of chik li chosen from, and the circulation of subscription books within all of the thirteen main villages of Kowloon. Herein lies the importance, and the interest, of the combined Tung Shan and Kwun Yam temple of east Kowloon.\n\nBy contrast, the post-war neglect of this temple, and the fact that it has not been rebuilt, is, at first glance, hard to reconcile with its relatively recent rise to fame and period of glory. Elders give various reasons, and there is no doubt that a number of factors were at work. Firstly, the privations of the Japanese Occupation were more felt in Kowloon than in most places, because the military authorities razed Po Kong and other old villages nearby to extend the airfield, and this is said to have shaken villagers' faith in the gods. Secondly the high cost of the necessary repairs in a period of general impoverishment after the war are given as another factor. Thirdly, the removal of the Kowloon villages one by one for redevelopment purposes, before and especially after the war, was clearly another factor. The degree of disruption and personal struggle involved for the village families in these removals", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211702, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "92\n\nrecent concession) to the limited extent of replying to a message which must originate with a neutral. No communication with the various prisoners-of-war camps or hospitals in other parts of Hongkong was permitted, so that wives in the camp could neither send messages to, nor receive them from, their prisoner-of-war husbands. Some were unable to find out whether their husbands were prisoners or not. This seems a quite unnecessary cruelty.\n\nDr. Selwyn-Clarke. I have made a passing reference to Dr. Selwyn-Clarke (Director of Medical Services in the Hongkong Government), but he deserves more than that. The Japanese found it worth their while to allow him and his wife and a small group of British relief workers under him to remain outside the camp and they were primarily engaged on relief work in the Colony. But he had secured the confidence of the Japanese Military Authorities and was allowed to visit the camp frequently on the strict understanding that he gave no news and discussed nothing but medical and relief matters. He visited the camp once or twice a week, talked to the doctors and the Welfare Committee's representative, found out what wanted doing and then in Hongkong tried to get it done. Everyone in the camp knew that almost all the improvements in diet and other matters were the result of untiring efforts on his part, but not so many knew that he had been equally untiring in his efforts to relieve distress among the Chinese population of Hongkong whose plight was immeasurably worse than anything the Stanley internees had to endure.\n\nL\n\nCamp management, discipline, etc. When the camp was first opened, the Japanese put in a number of English-speaking Chinese as block supervisors. Their duties were never clearly defined, but they formed the only channel of communication between the Japanese and the internees. Then the internees elected Communal Councils (one for each of the three communities British, American and Dutch) and these Councils, working in cooperation, ran the camp and were recognised by the Japanese as the spokesmen of their national groups. Later a Japanese Superintendent was appointed (Mr. Nakazawa). He lived in a separate house in the camp and had two or three Japanese satellites. About the same time Mr. Gimson (Colonial Secretary) and Mr. Alabaster (Attorney General), who had hitherto been allowed to remain outside and to act as liaison officers with the Japanese, came into the camp. This brought to a head a conflict which had been going on subterraneously between the Hongkong Government officials and the rest of the community. For reasons which I need not go into here, the community", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212214, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "133\n\n1935, and probably exceeds 30,000 today\n\nthe Japanese secured a\n\nsecond seat in 1927 and since that date, with one or two exceptions, the proportion of Foreign Councillors has been five Britons, two Americans, and two Japanese,''\n\nIt was from amongst the managers of the large firms that the foreign Municipal Councillors were selected, by a process of back-stage negotiation. There was, it is true, a form of straw vote through which nominations could be contested, but as the large firms could swing the votes that process was not democratic in operation. In point of fact the suggestion that the Council was a democratic body had long been discarded. The Council represented the interests of the large firms and, while it had to explain its actions to the foreign land-renters of the Settlement, it preferred, as such committees will, to avoid having to make explanations, by doing its work away from the limelight. That was, indeed, a necessary precaution, in so far as the delicate political negotiations in which it was frequently involved with the Chinese, and Japanese, authorities were concerned.\n\nThe Council was an international body, a diminutive League of Nations, incomparably more effective, though on a small scale, than that larger body at Geneva. The comparison lends it international significance and underlines the importance that men, who are appointed to such positions of responsibility, should be carefully selected.\n\nOn the expiration of my home leave I was appointed to Shanghai, where I arrived in July 1939. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia that Spring had increased international tension, and a series of incidents was bringing it home to the optimists, who had so cheerfully accepted the Japanese influx, that their early anticipations were so much smoke. Apart from a number of local outrages, including the bayonetting of a Briton, named Tinkler, inside the grounds of his own mill, there was the case of the British Military Attaché, who had been arrested in May in Kalgan, and was still held incommunicado, the mob attacks on the British consulate at Tsingtao, the heavy bombing of British property and shipping at Ichang, and the degrading treatment to which British nationals were being exposed at the barriers, erected by the Japanese to the exits of the British Concession in Tientsin.\n\nI was sitting on the verandah of the Country Club one day in September, after a game of tennis, when the boy called me to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212824, "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-1992", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "118\n\nassistance which it might be possible to provide, and, soon after, the Myosa left to return to his country.\n\nIn August 1943 British troops were poised on the Assam border at Imphal, Tamu, and Tiddim, awaiting sufficient replenishment of equipment and the cessation of the rains to undertake the return advance into Burma; and there was activity down in the Arakan: while General Stilwell's Chinese divisions, retrained, reinforced, and re-equipped in India after their withdrawal from Burma, were just beginning to feel their way forward from Ledo, away up at the northern end of Assam, down the road which later was to become famous as the Ledo road. General Wingate's first expedition into Burma had just been completed, with heavy loss on our side, but with much success in confusing the enemy and disorganising his effort to consolidate his positions. The shape of future operations depended on the enemy's dispositions, so that any information which could be collected in eastern Burma would be useful: and in Kokang it might also be possible to organise patriot parties to assail his communications.\n\nIt was not an easy matter to obtain the consent of our allies for the passage of a British party to Kokang. The Chinese have unfortunately imitated the Japanese in a predilection for red tape; formalities are extended ad infinitum. It was fair enough that any British officer who entered China should require a pass issued by the Chinese authorities - though no such restriction attached to the presence of Chinese officers in India - but was it really necessary that the power to issue the pass should be retained by the highest authority in the land, the Military Affairs Council which would correspond with our Committee of Imperial Defence and that it should have to carry the personal chop of the Generalissimo? It did not make for speed in administration. It should also be remembered that the Chinese refused to serve in Burma under British command: that is how General Stilwell first came on the scene; and I think it is fair to say that our American allies had come to look on the Far East, and perhaps more particularly China, as their own special sphere of operations, where there was no room for any British.\n\nMy appointment was from the Army in India, which in those days, before the South East Asia Command had been established, was responsible for the operations in Burma. The proposal for assistance to the Myosa was submitted by the British representatives in Chungking to the Chinese government with a request that the necessary passes be", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213333, "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-1994", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "137\n\nKowloon Walled City, February 1989 and After\n\nThe Kowloon City tour was again very different. Some background is required. Excluded from the New Territories' lease in 1898, but in de facto British occupation since 1900, the \"Walled City\" had always presented problems for the Hong Kong Government, arising largely from its contentious legal status. No longer \"walled\" - its rectangular wall had been demolished by the Japanese during their wartime military occupation of the Colony - the enclave had soon after become a tightly-packed warren of unauthorized buildings without water supply, roads, or sewerage. In the 1970s - again without proper authorization - most of its four and five-storey structures had been replaced with high-rise buildings of twelve and fifteen storeys, greatly worsening its already unsatisfactory condition. The \"Walled City\" was notorious for drug-trafficking and other illegal or criminal activities. Most European residents of the Colony, and probably many middle-class Hong Kong Chinese too, kept well clear, and few of them had any real idea what it was like.\n\n22\n\nAfter signature of the Sino-British Joint Agreement in 1984, and with the agreement of the Mainland Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government had undertaken to remove, compensate, and re-house its population, and to demolish the buildings and replace them with a public park within the same boundaries. Here was a chance to show our members this rather infamous place that few had seen, and at the same time - as on the Chai Wan visit a few years before - let them know what was being done by the Government. By good fortune, one of my friends and former colleagues from the District Office, Tsuen Wan, was the officer in charge of the complicated negotiations with the City's business people and domestic residents, and he was very willing to make arrangements for a Royal Asiatic Society visit.\n\nIn the end, the tour's extreme popularity with our members entailed three separate visits, each attended by well over 100 persons. On each visit, after a general briefing, the government officers who acted as our guides - they included two young police women inspectors - talked to us about their work as they led small groups through the twisting, narrow, and confusing thoroughfares to meet our own RAS tour speakers at a few places en route where points of interest were explained. In my case, I had stationed myself in the courtyard of the former military yamen (government office) whose pre-1898 buildings had survived many fires as well as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214743, "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": 158, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "122\n\nThose who are resting in peace in the military cemeteries in Sai Wan and Stanley and those not buried there have not just earned for themselves a reputation for obedience and courage, but also won a way of life for the future generations of Hong Kong. Above all, they served their home countries and mankind by making a contribution to a war that was a crime against humanity.\n\nThe Performance of the Hong Kong Garrison\n\nWhile politics and good will may be controversial, an objective assessment of the actual performance of the defenders vis-à-vis the invaders is not impossible.\n\nAll authors referred to in the literature above pointed out that the Hong Kong garrison was, militarily, facing a hopeless situation on 8 December 1941. The Colony was isolated, with virtually no air cover or naval support, outnumbered three to one by the Japanese, and largely without combat experience, adequate training, sufficient ammunition or even winter uniform. Furthermore, it was an assortment of nationals who spoke different native languages; English, Cantonese and several Indian dialects. It was thrown into a battle against well-prepared and veterans of the Japanese Imperial Army, which had at least five years of combat history in China and was well supplied with detailed intelligence and mapping information about the Colony. During the Battle, Japanese agents and Chinese collaborators living in the Colony also assisted the invaders. The British forces also laboured under the impression that the offer of assistance by the Chinese forces and other Chinese groups was reliable. The final collapse of the resistance happened not only earlier than the London authorities had expected - 17 days instead of 9012 - but also far ahead of schedule for the Japanese, who contemplated that half a year13 would be required to conquer the Colony. Thus, many commentators argue that the defence of Hong Kong was a shambles. However, no author has actually attempted to measure the \"fighting power\" or effectiveness of the Hong Kong garrison or made a comparative study of the tactics of the defender vis-à-vis the invaders.\n\nI argue that it is unfair to pass judgement on the performance of the garrison by solely comparing the actual and planned duration of the battle or any other military dimension of the fall of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215209, "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-2000", "page_number": 305, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "269\n\nMODEL VILLAGE, KOWLOON TSAI, HONG KONG\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nDr. Patrick Hase made mention of Model Village in his article Beside the Yamen: Nga Tsin Wai Village, published in Vol. 39 of the Journal, pp. 1-82. As stated therein, this was a village created by the Japanese military authorities during their wartime occupation of the Colony for families displaced by the extension of Kai Tak airfield from the central Kowloon area near Nga Tsin Wai.\n\nIn 1966, I went to Model Village, and spoke with a number of persons living there. Some had been among the original inhabitants, whilst others had moved there after the war. Their accounts throw further light on this interesting place, and its wartime origins. Together with photographs taken at the time of my visit, they fill out the information given to Dr. Hase by the Nga Tsin Wai elders. On the basis of notes taken during our conversations, I have let the Model Village people speak for themselves. Ages are given by the Chinese reckoning, usually one or two years less than by Western computation.\n\nMy Informants' Account of Themselves and of Model Village\n\n'I am Yip Choi, a Hakka, born in April 1897 in Tam Shui of Waichow County. When I was five or six years old, my father took me to Po Kong Village in central Kowloon. At the time of the extension of the airfield, I was living in a stone house in the village. It was ordered to be demolished and we were told to go over to Model Village. We had to help the contractor who was given the job of building the houses there by the Japanese authorities. There was no pay, but those persons who worked on the site got one catty of rice per day. This area was originally known as Shi Ling Village (Lion Ridge Village) but the Japanese commander in charge of the rehousing operation said this was not a peaceful name, and changed it to Model Village. I also have a vegetable field at the village, and am still farming.'\n\n'I am Madam Ng Lin Tai, Cantonese, aged 77. My father's family (Ng) was originally from Ng Uk Village, near Nam Tau, but I know that my father and grandfather were born in Kowloon Tsai Village (I am not sure about the older generations). We kept up the Nam Tau...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215212, "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-2000", "page_number": 308, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "272\n\non the events of that time\n\nIt seems that the Japanese authorities, strict though they were, did take the initiative which led to the provision of Model Village, and that it was they who had appointed contractors to carry out construction, and had allowed those involved to work on the project and to receive a payment in rice for a day's work.\n\nSuch payments were received on other projects of the time. One such was the construction of the new stormwater nullah that ran alongside Nga Tsin Wai - referred to in Patrick Hase's article on the village. Two ladies from Ngau Tau Kok village in East Kowloon, interviewed in 1967, had both worked as earth coolies on it, and also on the demolition of houses and the lowering of small hills for the extended airfield. Stones from the houses had been used to build the nullah. The two had carried the 100 piculs of soil and stones needed to earn one catty of rice, but said that men who could manage 140 or 150 piculs would earn proportionately more. The working day was 7 am until 12 noon, and then 1-5 pm.\n\nAt that time, rice was precious, and more useful than money. As one village woman told me (born 1880), 'you could buy 40 catties of rice for a dollar when I was young, but during the Occupation, one catty cost two dollars - if you could get it.' Another villager, one of the elders of Nga Tsin Wai, born in 1884, said that 'people would sell a whole roof of tiles and wooden beams to contractors, for two dollars.'\n\nI also spoke to two ladies at Chuk Yuen Village in 1963, who had described the removal of the large and old village of Po Kong, in its entirety, along with the nearby hamlets of Ta Kwu Ling, Shek Kwu Lung and Kak Hang, to make way - as they said - for a road and the airfield extension, adding that the Japanese built new stone houses for them and gave rice compensation instead of cash; which 'was much more useful to us at that time, when money was worth very little.'\n\nOther information was available that embellished the account of this difficult time. A man of 52, born at Ta Kwu Ling in 1915, told me in 1966 that part of the village was demolished, not for the airfield extension but because they were too close to it; the Japanese military authorities thinking that it might harbour guerillas who could damage", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215213, "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-2000", "page_number": 309, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "273\n\nits installations and parked aircraft. Around a hundred structures, all told, were demolished at Ta Kwu Ling, among them 14-15 large village houses. The people had been told to move out in October-November 1943, and were not offered houses in Model Village. In lieu of resettlement, they were given 75 catties of rice per adult and 35 catties for children - clearly with the intention of providing some assistance in an emergency for those concerned. Nonetheless this must have been a time of great hardship, with winter coming on. It was reported that the village headman, who had held office since about 1925, had died of starvation.\n\nThis removal, together with Shek Wu Lung and Tai Hom, was said by the Nga Tsin Wai elders to have been unnecessary, caused by greedy Chinese contractors working for the Japanese authorities (and perhaps in collusion with some of their people), who had coveted the building materials and saw this opportunity to force people from their homes. According to the elders, the Chu lineage of Tai Hom were too frightened to object to the Japanese about this, for fear of being executed, and had said nothing.\n\nDuring the main clearance, the Nga Tsin Wai leaders averred, they had had the courage to visit the Japanese officer in charge, and even to call upon the military governor. He had asked them to return to their native village in China, whereupon they had explained that they had none, having lived in Kowloon for six hundred years. Thereafter, a diversion was arranged for the light rail track carrying the earth wagons used in the nullah excavation and construction, whereby the main village - but not its outlying houses and structures - was saved from the planned demolition.\n\nIf even part of the above can be believed - its reliability is surely strengthened by the fact that it came directly from the mouths of affected parties - it will be seen that the Japanese authorities were not completely ruthless in their behaviour towards those Kowloon villagers affected by the airfield extension, or in their treatment of those men, women and children who laboured on the various public works projects undertaken by them during their wartime occupation of Hong Kong.\n\nFinally, as reported by Patrick Hase, cash compensation was paid by the returned colonial administration after the war to those village", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216126, "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": 425, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "359\n\n'Half dizzy, I feel myself pass under the big ship, caught in the swirl of its screw, and finally I emerge, carried by the terrible current. I have never felt such intense fear. I felt I was close to death.\n\n*\n\nLouis clung to an oar and then spotted the sampan some 20 metres away where all but one of his companions were aboard. The remaining man had reached the shore. He notes quaintly that he lost a treasured pen. 'I lost my Parker but kept my life after being but a thread away from losing it,' he wrote.\n\nJapanese bombing continued and Louis concluded he had a 50 per cent chance of surviving. ‘Should there be a lightning advance by the Japanese, the worst is to be expected. This will end, no doubt, in a massacre of the Europeans, of the population.*\n\nIn his previous post, his first outside Belgium, Louis had been in Berlin, where he had met some of the Nazi leaders later to become notorious. His son Marc says he was impressed by the Nazi regime, though later changed his view.\n\nWhile in Germany, Louis trained as a glider pilot at Grunau in Silesia, probably in machines launched by an elastic bungee, rather than being towed aloft. Grunau was then part of Germany and easily reached from Louis's post in Berlin and it was perhaps the greatest centre for gliding in Europe. Thousands of the machines were made there, notably in the Schneider factory, and production was supported by the German government. Today Grunau is called Jezów Sudecki and is in Poland.\n\nWhen his next posting came he had no expectation that he would be able to maintain his interest in the sport in wartime China.\n\nHe describes how his secretary one day in 1940 drew his attention to an item in a newspaper saying the Chinese military had acquired two Rhônsperber gliders and were to give a public demonstration. The military pilot who flew the first went into a dive from 100 metres for unexplained reasons and was killed.\n\nIt seems that Louis did not hesitate when the authorities asked him if he would fly the remaining machine the next day. He says the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216439, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "148\n\nChinese on the Bund at Shanghai. The Russian Consul-General refused to try the men on the ground that theirs was a military offence. The Chinese community, especially in Ningbo where the murdered man came from, was incensed. The Shanghai Daotai (Qing dynasty mandarin - a Circuit Intendent), acting on orders from the Chinese Foreign Affairs Department, insisted that the accused be turned over to him. Finally, they were tried by court-martial at the Russian Consulate-General, and 1st Class Fireman Terente Ageef was sentenced to transportation for four years with hard labour and the other to five days for resisting the police. The Chinese authorities were not represented.\n\nThe Russian despatch boat the Ryeshitelni\n\nAnother somewhat similar incident occurred at the end of August at Chefoo (Zhifu, though nowadays Yantai) in Shandong province where the Russian despatch boat, Ryeshitelni (Retchielni), carrying important dispatches, had taken refuge in Chinese territorial waters having been cornered by Japanese destroyers. When the Russian vessel failed to emerge within 24 hours the Japanese sent a boarding party under Lieutenant Terashima.\n\nWhile the Russian Consul in Chefoo was discussing the temporary stay of the Russian destroyer to repair her engines with the Chinese Daotai, the commander of the Retchitelni, acting on instructions from the Russian Rear-Admiral, entered into negotiations with the Chinese admiral on the subject of disarming the destroyer and the handing over of the breech-blocks of guns and rifles, to the Chinese. The Japanese naval Lieutenant, who understood the Russians were about to blow up their vessel, boarded the Russian vessel and was attacked by the Russian commander who threw him overboard. The Japanese immediately took over the Russian destroyer and towed it out of the Chinese port. The Russian note demanded that the Chinese recover the Russian destroyer and downgrade the senior Chinese naval officer in Chefoo. It added that unless the vessel was recovered by the Chinese, into whose protection it had been given, China would stand convicted of acting in complicity with Japan. The Chinese as usual adopted their masterly habit of doing nothing. They gave out that they hoped Japan would restore the destroyer to Chinese custody of their own volition, observing at the same time that though Russia had constantly violated Chinese neutrality in the territory between the Great Wall and the Liao River, at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]