[ { "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": 207764, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "Tehgchuan \n\n甘肅 \n\nGANSU \n\nPaschi \n\nSHANSI \n\nSlau \n\n= \n\n成都 \n\nSZECHMAN \n\nCheng tu \n\nHUBEI \n\n重度 \n\n演练 \n\nChungKinE \n\nLushien \n\n贵州 \n\nKHEICHOW \n\nPichieh Kweiyang \n\nTali \n\nAnshun \n\nKutsing, \n\nTu yun \n\n下面 \n\n南庄 \n\nUstakuan \n\nPaoshan \n\n昆明 \n\nNactan \n\nKunming \n\n河池 \n\nHochih \n\nTUNNAN \n\n源涟 Yuinling, \n\n長沙 \n\nChangsha \n\n兴遠 Xingyuan \n\n○ 柳州 \n\nLiuchow \n\nKWANGSI \n\n湖南 \n\nHUNAN \n\nFig. 1. Map of China showing FAU Transport Main Routes \n\nA ROAD TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN WEST CHINA 1942-46 \n\n137", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208706, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "136\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nFathers Downs and Madison, with Sister Paul and four of her Sisters, journeyed on by bus to Liuchow, then by train to Kweilin.\n\nAt Kweilin, we met the members of the first group and here left Sister Paul and her Sisters. As it was the time of the Chinese New Year, we had to remain in Kweilin for about a week, then Fathers Downs, Siebert, Gaiero and Madison set out by train and bus on the long hike to Kaying. We reached Kaying on the 19th of February, just one month to the day after stepping aboard the steamer at Hong Kong, and just in time to attend Kaying's First Synod. From Kaying, a few hours by bus brought us to Siaoloc, where the Language School once more resumed its oft-interrupted classes, and here at Siaoloc this chronicle of the wanderings of the Stanley Maryknollers comes to a glorious end! Laus Deo!\n\n(By Father William J. Downs)\n\nPART III: FATHER MEYER ON INTERNMENT: JANUARY 12, 1942 - AUGUST 15, 1945\n\nNearly sixty priests, Brothers and Sisters were interned at Stanley in January, 1942. Within a year, all but three priests and four Sisters had left on exchange repatriation or been released into Hong Kong and gone back to their Missions. In September, 1943, occurred the last repatriation, when Father Murphy, a Canadian missioner who was ill, and the four remaining Sisters left for Canada.\n\nA special cable had come through the Swiss Consul in Tokyo, \"All Maryknollers are to leave occupied areas.\" When Father Hessler and I told Mr. Maejima, the Camp Superintendent, that we chose to stay, he seemed nonplussed. Weren't we ordered by the cable to return? We explained that in the Catholic Church such an order was always contingent on providing for the needs of souls, and that since the Italian Fathers of Hong Kong were not permitted to come into the Camp, we had volunteered already a year ago to remain.\n\nNothing more was said, but our names did not appear on the repatriation lists, and we learned later that Mr. Maejima and his colleagues of the Hong Kong Foreign Affairs Office had been impressed by the Catholic position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209655, "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-1982", "page_number": 312, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\ninclude all manufactured goods. In addition Yarn and Metals including Tin were to be admitted. All the other items of the Tariff were to be excluded in the mean time. Possibly none of these are of any great importance except cotton of which however the import into Pakhoi is between 20 and 30,000 piculs per annum. The larger portion of this is North China Cotton, and I was informed that one reason for the exclusion of cotton was that it was not of Foreign origin. This objection does not apply to Indian Cotton, but it is excluded along with the other. The objection also is inconsistent with the fact that Sugar from Hong Kong is allowed to enter under pass on the Yangtze.\n\nAlong with the proclamation above mentioned Export Passes for Sugar were declared procurable, but as the production is small this concession is worth little. The Viceroy has also authorized passes for Cassia but there is some hitch with the prefect of Yuelin or as it is called locally Watlam and the Chinese Customs Commissioner has proceeded to his prefecture to explain matters to him. Should he continue to hold out the Commissioner has to proceed to Kweilin where the Governor of Kwangsi has his seat of Government to put matters straight with him. You will thus see that in regard to cassia there is no certainty of an immediate issue of passes and all other items in the Tariff are excluded from the benefit of them.\n\nBy far the largest portion of the Exports from Pakhoi come from the prefecture of Leeiuchow in which Pakhoi itself is situated, and in regard to them Transit Passes are scarcely required as the various taxes as a rule do not exceed the half duty payable for a pass. Goods from Kwangsi however would be benefited by a pass. These are of no great importance except Cassia, Anniseed and Anniseed Oil. With passes business could be done. In addition there is Cassia Oil but the Duty of $9 is prohibitory, seeing the Duty by Junk is under $3. There would appear to be some mistake in the duty as the price of the Oil is only about", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210786, "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-1986", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "120\n\nD.L. MICHALK\n\nTaxes levied on imports were just as crippling since the rates were fixed according to the size of the vessel that ferried the goods to Hainan, regardless of the value of the wares it carried. This meant that because the greatest profits were obtained from luxury goods such as expensive furniture, fine silks, silver vases and gold-en hairpins for the privileged rich, these imports took precedence over cargoes of livestock, cooking pots and bags of rice which returned negligible profits (Schafer, 1969). The lack of necessities of life led the poet Su Shih to lament in verse that a \"grain of rice was like a pearl”.\n\nEnticed by an abundance of rich cargoes, bands of pirates formed and pillaged, almost unchecked, shipping along the entire southern seaboard of China. The problem reached such epidemic proportions in the seventeenth century as to preclude safe navigation on the open sea between the east coast of Hainan and the mouth of the Pearl River (Mayers, 1872). The only secure trade route between the mainland and Hainan was to cross the narrow straits which separate the island from the Leichow Peninsula with strong military escort and thence, trek overland to the provincial capital, at quickest a journey taking one month. As a consequence, commerce virtually ceased and Hainan was immersed again in the poverty and deprivation for which it was noted in medieval times (Schafer, 1969).\n\nDenied their source of revenue, pirates turned their ravages landward, and repeatedly sacked towns and villages in the north and east of the island, in spite of the presence of Imperial garrisons (Mayers, 1872). Although the destruction in 1684 of the pirate kingdom in Taiwan restored safe navigation to the Guangdong coast, Hainan still remained a haven for buccaneers, and pillage continued almost unabated until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was the combination of a growth in foreign shipping interests in China, the use of steam power in ships and the opening of a treaty port in Hainan, which led to the demise of piracy as a lucrative pastime in the South China Sea.\n\nAlthough the Chinese had previously established rudimentary navies such as the \"Sea-Patrolling Water Army\" (Hsun-hai shui-chun) to control piracy (K’iungchow fu chih, 1920 ed.), it was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210795, "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-1986", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "129\n\nproclaimed in October, 1948, it was almost a year later that units of the People's Liberation Army from the Leichow Peninsula joined the 10,000 Communist guerillas already on Hainan in routing the KMT forces and liberating the \"Shore of Pearls\" (Fairfax-Cholmeley, 1963).\n\nDue to twenty-seven years of civil unrest and Japanese occupation, the island was in a terrible mess: there was no industry to speak of because post-war forays between the KMT and Communist guerillas destroyed many of the enterprises established by the Japanese. Communication and transport networks were in tatters with highways and ports in a state of dilapidation, while the railway link between Ba Suo and the southern port of Yulin was completely destroyed.\n\nThe situation on Hainan improved somewhat after Liberation. Like the mainland, mass land reclamation campaigns were the hallmark of the post-1949 regime in Hainan. Teams of land reclamation specialists dispatched to Hainan developed 120 state farms and 308 communes with the help of the local people and the 100,000 Chinese who returned from overseas to build the “New China”. Over a thirty year period, investment by the Central Government in agriculture and industry totalled 4.33 billion yuan (US$ 2 billion) for which the island has returned an abundance of iron ore, timber, salt, pepper, rubber and coffee (Wu and Zhi, 1981). Some 14,000 km of roads were built to link all but one remote commune (Chin, 1962), and the surviving sections of the Japanese railway grid were converted to standard gauge in the late 1950's (Anon., 1982a).\n\nOf the agricultural activities commenced, rice growing was emphasised in the hope that self-sufficiency in grain production could be quickly attained. By 1958, a total area of 190,000 ha was under paddy (Iskoldsky, 1958) which increased to 157,000 ha of early rice and 225,000 ha of late rice by 1965 (Kirk, 1965). The remainder of Hainan's arable land was used for production of sugar, rubber, coconut, sisal hemp, cotton, palm oil, jute and tropical fruit. Rubber trees occupied the largest area of cultivated land after rice with the estimated tree population of 4 million present in 1965 doubling since 1954 (Kirk, 1965). The new gov-\n\n--- ---", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212200, "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": 142, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "119\n\nLiuchow where one of Colonel Chennault's schools for training Chinese pilots was at that time established. I arrived just in time to observe the results of a Japanese air-raid on the field, when they succeeded in shooting up two of the latest type of Curtis Hawk fighters, the only two at that time in China, concealed in some trees on the edge of the field. Training under such conditions was not easy and the school soon had to move west again into Yunnan province.\n\nThree hundred kilometres a day is good going on these lightly metalled roads. I reached Kweilin on the evening of the third day after leaving Wuchow, and put up at the government hostel. From time immemorial the idea of travel has filled Chinese with apprehension, induced not only by fear of the ubiquitous bandit, but also by the abomination of the fetid roadside inn. With the advent of the motor car, the need for better hotel accommodation became evident, and the various provincial governments opened official hostelries at key points. While these left much to be desired by western standards, they were a prodigious improvement on the old-style inn.\n\nKwangsi is one of the more progressive provinces, for long controlled by Generals Li Tsung Jen and Pai Chung Hsi, who rank next to the Generalissimo himself. The hostel at Kweilin was better than average. There was a wireless in the lounge, and a small crowd of us sat and listened to the news as it came in. It was the period before Munich. A young German amongst us, flushed with arrogance, gloated over Hitler's successes. My first contact with the aboriginal Nazi spirit left me angry and dismayed.\n\nChinese buildings are flimsy. The rooms are small and dark, and not clean. When you have made allowance for this idiosyncrasy, Kweilin appears a delightful little town. The city wall circumambulates from shrine-crowned hill to hill; the river is full of junks that sail down to Wuchow; the roads are wide and straight, and shop arcades cover the pavements on either side. The little separate hills rise steeply from the plain, in those fantastic shapes seen in Chinese paintings. Their rocky tree-fringed summits staggered drunkenly beneath the sky. The hills are full of natural caves, most convenient for storing war supplies, or to act as shelters in the event of raids. But Kweilin was still far from the war. The Kweilin merchants believed that the Japanese planes would have difficulty in locating their little city snuggling amongst the hills. The excitement was all about the new railway,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212579, "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": 133, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "113\n\nBe born in Soochow; Live in Hangchow; \n\nEat in Kwangchow; \n\nDie in Liuchow, \n\nThe first is noted for beautiful women, the second magnificent scenery, the third tastiest cuisine, and the last durable timber for making coffins.\n\nIn 1988 coffins ranged from about $2,500, for a humble pine ‘box', to $300,000 for one smelling of eucalyptus. The coffin in this study cost $7,200. Coffins, known in slang as 'four half boards' (*), come, basically, in either Chinese or western styles. Timber for western coffins, say teak or rosewood, is often imported from Malaysia. For Chinese coffins, boards can be roughly hewn, up to four or five inches thick, retaining the curved outside of the tree trunk and hollowed out on the inside. Good quality China fir (**) from Luchow, in Kwangsi Province, can last, buried, for up to 100 years as demonstrated by old buildings in Hong Kong with their China Fir, piled, foundations. There are a number of coffin shops, some watched over by Ts'oi Shan the God of Wealth, at the western end of Hollywood Road. Many coffins with their white or yellow cloth linings are imported from China.\n\n23\n\nBy comparison, a British coffin is normally made of English oak (elm was used for cheaper coffins before World War II) with boards one-inch thick.24 This is usually rendered watertight with pitch or mastic and lined with a bed of sawdust, white drapery and a pillow stuffed with fine wood shavings.\n\nBecause of space, in present day Hong Kong it is not practicable for the elderly to have coffins made in advance and stored in an ancestral hall or at home, as was the custom in old China. They were revarnished every year. But if a person is too interested and 'finds the smell of coffins more appealing than the smell of cooked rice' (聞見棺材香過飯) the gods may come after him. (Similar words are occasionally uttered as a curse.) Some believe a small piece of coffin wood, if boiled and the water drunk, will keep away ghosts.\n\nContinuously, from three o'clock the day before to the actual funeral ceremony in this study, relatives and friends visited the hall to give face to the family and the departed. It is a greater offence not to attend a person's funeral than not to attend his wedding. The author recalls", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215826, "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": 125, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "58\n\n1.\n\n1 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: the U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), p.14.\n\n2 Miller, p.21-22, 24.\n\n3 Miller, p.33-36.\n\n(1) Steven T. Ross (ed.), American War Plans, 1919-1941, vol.2 (New York: Garland Publishers, 1992), p.125-126. (2) Miller, p.4-5, 31-32.\n\n• Ernest J. King & Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, A Naval Record (New York: WW Norton & Co., Inc., 1952), p.432. The JCS was the military committee that directed the war on the American side.\n\n6 Charles F. Romanus & Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, 1956 of U.S. Army in World War II: the China-Burma-India Theater, (pt. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1976), p.10.\n\n7 Christopher M. Bell, \"Our Most Exposed Outpost: Hong Kong and British Far Eastern Strategy, 1921-1941,\" The Journal of Military History, 60 (January 1996), p.65.\n\n• Colonel Lindsay T. Ride, \"Memorandum on the Liberation of Prisoners-of-War, Hong Kong,\" 30 Sep 43, p.11-13; Series 2/33, BAAG (British Army Aid Group) Correspondence Concerning Operations, September 1942-November 1943; Personal Papers of Sir Lindsay Tasman Ride (microform); Canberra, ACT: Australian War Memorial, 2001 (hereinafter known as the Ride Papers).\n\n* Unless otherwise noted, information for this section was collected from Weather Information Branch, HQ, USAAF, R&A Report #71087, \"Climate of Hong Kong (China),\" October 1943; Intelligence Reports (\"Regular Series\"), 1941-1945; Research and Analysis Branch Division; Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), RG226; National Archives (NA), Washington, DC.\n\n10 Later, it was reported that an all-weather road ran from Hong Kong to Canton, and the Japanese had improved other roads nearby to the same capacity. See \"G-2 Estimates of the Following Places: Haiphong-Liuchow Peninsula-Hainan Island-Hong Kong-Swatow-Amoy-Foochow-Santuao-Wenchow-Hangchow Bay Region-Laoyao-Chingtao-and the Tip of the Shantung Peninsula to Include Wei Hai Wei,\" 17 Feb 45, p.5; Ch.7-Intelligence, Correspondence, 1945, Folder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]