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severe slump. For a short time, the Colony reached what was described as 'an over-built position', and many tene- ments were left vacant. Unwittingly, Hong Kong had to some extent prepared for the tremendous influx of some 600,000 people which began in 1937. Earlier experience of immigration had provided no formula for handling such numbers, and the Colony now had its first experience of giving asylum to refugees en masse-this time to fugitives from the Japanese invasion of China. By 1941 Hong Kong was somehow or other sheltering 1,600,000 people. On 8th December Japan entered the World War as the ally of Germany; Hong Kong, attacked by greatly superior forces across the land frontier, ceased to be a passive looker-on at warring armies and, after a brief but severe struggle, the Colony fell to the Japanese on Christmas Day, 1941.
The regime of General Rensuke Isogai was marked by destruction and decay. With the Japanese occupation Hong Kong died. Her free port and entrepôt trade, sole reason for her existence, had ceased, and, accordingly, everything else ceased. Possessed of no natural resources, Hong Kong could only feed, clothe and employ her population through imports from overseas. These imports were no more. Unable to feed and maintain the swollen population, the Japanese conquerors encouraged a return of people to China. By the end of the war the Colony's 'population had dropped back to less than 600,000-perhaps a third of whom were the farmers and fishermen of the New Territories who alone had been able to win for themselves the means of subsistence. It is not surprising therefore that Japan had neither the intention nor the wherewithal to keep Hong Kong in repair, let alone develop it. The only practical construction done was at the Airport, which was extended in area and where two paved runways were laid. A less conspicuous survival of the Japanese occupation is the massive foundation work on the top of Mount Cameron which now supports several apartment blocks. These foundations originally carried a
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