[
    {
        "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": 215942,
        "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": 241,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "175\n\nHong Kong shipyards to do marine engineering could also be used to make armour cladding for ships and vehicles. Hong Kong was also the base from which British aircraft manufacturers wanted to penetrate the Chinese market - the Far East Flying School wanted to train Chinese to fly so they would buy British rather than American or German planes. Hong Kong was also a centre for financial transactions both within and outside the banking system, a source for remittances and money transfers, more secure than Shanghai after the Japanese conquest. A large KMT community operated out of and lived in Hong Kong: almost a parallel government. While there was sympathy for the Nationalists, the colonial administration was uncertain how to maintain a balance between the Japanese and the Chinese Government. Riots against Japanese living in Hong Kong had been suppressed, and no protests made against Japanese attacks on the junk fleet. When the St Johns Ambulance wanted to send an ambulance to bombed Canton, the Colonial Office refused permission. Groups of Chinese 'terrorists' were arrested and deported from time to time. As late as May 1941 the colony's police force raided premises at 98 Robinson Road and destroyed a wireless transmitting station which had been operating for three years. The leader of this group was Chan So, an agent of General Wu Te Ching. When Governor Northcote sought guidance, the Colonial Office was advised by the Foreign Office that British policy had to vary according to circumstances, and support for China should be rendered 'compatible with the safety of Empire and avoidance of actual hostilities with the Japanese.'xix Nonetheless, there was a significant understanding between the Goumindang and the British when it came to matters of mutual benefit. When war officially broke out, their clandestine relationship could come out into the open. When Phyllis Harrop,\n\na civilian consultant working with the police reported for duty right after the outbreak of hostilities, she was assigned to work with the KMT who had already started to occupy offices with the police.\n\nThe Japanese were all too aware of the importance of Hong Kong to the KMT. The Japanese Foreign Minister had softly but firmly reminded the British Ambassador to keep the KMT under control. Even before their push to the south, the Japanese had identified KMT activists and targeted educated, articulate overseas Chinese as a threat and source of resistance. In Malaya and Singapore, they were to massacre thousands of Chinese in the wake of their advance, a fact obscured by the emphasis on the sufferings of Europeans interned in camps. In Hong Kong, on",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215943,
        "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": 242,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "176\n\n22nd December, in the midst of some of the most savage fighting on Hong Kong Island, the single largest atrocity involving civilians of the entire battle period occurred. Much has been made of atrocities that affected Europeans, but this incident is worth analysing because it gives us hints on what the Japanese knew about Hong Kong. Ma Tso Yuen recounted how, while his family were having dinner, they heard shots and found that their building, No 42 Blue Pool Road, was surrounded by Japanese. The inhabitants of the building and its neighbour, No 44, were systematically rounded up and herded together. Through a door, Ma saw a neighbour being beaten for resisting. The women were separated, many raped, and then killed. The men were taken down near the nullah and bayoneted, with Japanese stabbing the bodies to make sure all were dead. Ma survived, although he suffered nine separate wounds, because he lay hidden. When the danger was over, he realised he was surrounded by the bodies of 30 men, including that of his own son. **The number of men, women and children killed in other parts of the building is unknown; the buildings were small, low-rise apartments, but crowded: in one flat, some fourteen people were sheltering. Phyllis Harrop, through her KMT contacts, estimated that at least forty persons in her building alone were killed. No other atrocity against civilians was as systematic, organised, or as savage as this. Normal battle mayhem was not the motive. Kempeitai agents travelled with battle units, even though they were not part of the normal military structure. Under cover of fighting, they could settle other opposition. Blue Pool Road was targeted because it was where KMT officials and agents lived with their families. It was no random massacre. Among the dead included men from the Ministry of Communications and the Central Trust, a front organisation for the KMT, whose offices had been searched by the British and whose members had been arrested and sometimes deported. Ma himself had been an employee of the Central Trust.\n\nThe relationship between the KMT, the colonial government, and individuals involved in undercover work might bear further investigation. Phyllis Harrop mentions in her private diary that 'at the request of Chinese members of the Dai Li organisation who had been left behind in the colony, (she) was asked to go to Chongqing with the complete details of the guerrillas' arms and ammunition, which was buried in various homes and gardens in the island, to deliver information and arrange for instruction to be given to the men remaining in Hong Kong to carry on their work. My escape was engineered by the Chinese.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]