70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Tony Banham gives a concise explanation of the military developments that are going to unfold from now until the surrender:

As they remove the defenders from the north-south road, the Japanese, are simultaneously pushing westwards towards Central {then Victoria}, and south towards Stanley.

Stanley Fort, of course, is a major British strong point. Nevertheless, Banham tells us clearly that the main objective was Central/Victoria, capture of which would lead to almost immediate surrender, while 'Stanley was simply a sideshow'. But it's in the southern part of the island that a group are about to undergo what was to become one of the best-known civilian experiences of the Hong Kong fighting.

At 9.30 a.m. the troops and civilians in the Repulse Bay Hotel come under attack. Second Lieutnant P. Grounds (Middlesex) is in command, and his orders are to hold the hotel at all costs, as it guards the coast road. Later in the day Grounds is killed leading an attack to free five prisoners in a garage opposite.

It's a large and varied bunch of civilians who are inside the hotel:

And inside the hotel, too, were a hundred and fifty civilians - young mothers with babies and young children, their husbands fighting with the volunteers, the dowager duchesses of Crown Colony society and Gwen Dew, free-lance American girl photographer from Detroit; the wealthiest Chinese merchants of the Far East and their families; a few Chinese houseboys who had followed their British masters to refuge; eighty-three-year-old Dr. L. C. Arlington, the famous author and authority on Chinese culture; courageous Americans employed by the British-American Tobacco Company who wanted to fight, and retired European rentiers who didn't.

At the other end of the island, Joan Crawford and the survivors of yesterday's siege of the North Point Power station are taken out of the garage in which they've spent the night:

Next day we were lined up once more, the men in uniform separated from the civilians. We were marched down to Ming Yuen to the refugee huts {built for refugees from the Sino-Japanese War}....

Once more we were sorted out, questioned and allocated to huts which were filthy dirty. Some of the bunk beds had been used as lavatories, and we were ordered to clean up as best we could, using our hands and whatever rubbish had been left behind. As we finished, we were ordered out to even flithier huts and the whole process of cleaning again.

Strangely enough, all through the previous two days, having been in the front line so to speak, I had no feeling of fear, as though completely detached from the whole thing. But the cleaning up of this filth finished me off....

We were joined by other civilians, and the mysterious process of organizing life began to stir. Beds were allocated, latrines dug - one for the ladies being modestly screened.

The Daily Mirror's page 1 headline:

Hong Kong Defenders Hold Out - Our Penang Garrison Goes

But the report admits the situation is 'serious' and describes Japanese landings on the north-east of the Island on the night of 17/18. That's a little early, and the report of Japanese successes on the back page is exaggerated:

By 11 a.m. most of the island was in Japanese hands...The remainder of the British withdrew to Victoria Peak while Victoria city was occupied intact by the Japanese.

The whole of Victoria was never to be occupied, but only because surrender came first. The front page of The Daily Express carries a similar story:

Hongkong, fighting to the death with swarms of Japanese who landed yesterday at many points on the island, rejected with scorn a third offer of surrender terms and then came silence.

Citing Japanese sources, the paper claims that British troops had withdrawn to the Peak, where a last stand was expected.

Sources:

Military developments: Tony Banham, Not the Slightest Chance, 2003,  165-166

At 9.30 a.m.: Banham, op. cit., 175.

Civilians: Jan Henrik Marsman, I Escaped From Hong Kong, 1942, 36-37

Crawford: Austin Coates, A Mountain Of Light, 1977, 148-149

Note:

For Bennie Proulx's arrival at the Hotel, see yesterday's entry.

The next day and onwards we recieved frequent visits but on each occasion we went out in a body out onto the lawn, The behaviour of the Japanese was insulting and threatening. On the 20th December we heard men on the path and on swiching on all lights went into the hall and were there threatened by Japanese with bayonets.

We were searched and robbed of all jewellery and money and then thrust into a small room off the hallway and the door was locked. The following morning we found that all food had been taken. Whenever I saw a Japanese Officer I asked for the protection of all non-combatants.

A very foggy morning, brightened by the appearance of a hawker selling milk. We did not ask its source. Distantly, the battle in the hills went on all day, but it is a strangely quiet night.

It is now difficult to get food. A hawker sold bread at $1.50 a pound and a little pork could be got at $5 per pound limited to a quarter pound to each customer. The newspapers noted that there is no fresh fish in the central market, only dried fish. Firewood is also hard to get, and the Food Control is distributing cooked rice. 

A shop up town which had been hit by a bomb was looted. The police fired on the looters and killed several of them. Government has warned that in future the police will shoot to kill on sight. A police reservist called, presented a requisition and took our motor-car, in which a load of street guards immediately began a local patrol around the district.

Our neighbours all had the same thought in mind and asked the same question: what will happen when the final moment comes? The looting at Kowloon is taken as a warning; it would also be our lot on the Island. A neighbour and I went into frequent council of war. We would bar doors and windows. What else? He revealed himself a man of property; he has two new pistols and has given me one, with two tins of ammunition, all disguised as a tin of biscuits.

In the meantime, Colonel Tanaka was sending his advance party along the Wongneichong reservoir catchwater, above the Ridge.  They reached a point above Repulse Bay Hotel soon after dawn on the 20th;  they attacked, and by 9.30 the same morning, the hotel was surrounded and the garage was in enemy hands. 

((Source - a dramatization of the history of the Hong Kong Volunteers, which was broadcast over Radio Hong Kong on 31st May 1954 as part of the HKVDC Centenary Celebrations))

A queer jumble of a morning. We began by accompanying A.S.P. Searle, one of the police who went out and did things, on an anti-sniping raid at Happy Valley. All this proving another rumour we returned and almost at once set off on an anti-looting expedition. This was taking place at the French Store in Queen’s Road but the shooting of one and arrest of another, a member of the A.P.S. who, in company with the Police, were having as much as anyone under the guise of escorting it into lorries stowed that. Apart from this the Western District seemed quiet and there was nothing to support the stories at P.H.Q. of looting in Western Central; the streets being deserted practically in the Des Voeux Road area and, in Queen’s Road, far from busy.

After tiffin where I met Gray Dalziel, thoroughly disgusted and properly so at his job of superior nurse to ratings’ wives, we got orders which seemd to point to something good at last. A P.B. of the Middlesex had been cut off at Causeway Bay by a few Japs. Who were allegedly sniping from roof tops and side streets. The news, coming as it did from G.H.Q., was authentic and as no volunteers were allowed from the police, the three of us with Petro, a good enough fellow but who talked like bloody hell proceeded to the area in question. Arrived there I did a reconnaissance over Jardine’s hill but even with the help of the headmaster of the school there I could see no signs of activity. Proceeding further there were still no signs of Japs. Anywhere nor for that matter of our troops either. The P.B. certainly seemed deserted but at the distance 3-400 yds. it was difficult to be sure. Dusk was setting in and we had to be moving quickly if anything was to be done so Mike moved us back while he went to see if any change in the situation had been reported. There certainly had – the P.B. had been evacuated some hours before and we had been playing at soldiers in no man’s land.

In addition, orders now came to move to Aberdeen the following morning ready to move to Shatuakok. The evening was spent in feeding and argument – we, having contacted Betty’s roommates at the Gloucester, (indecipherable name/s written by hand above this: Lynn Harmond(?) Mrs….Cantas(?)) and after a fairly lively evening, culminated in Tai and and I heaving our bedding all over the hotel which was crammed even more to the corridors and finally going to sleep in Police quarters again.