How the British took back Hong Kong

[Randy W]

. . . after World War II - and made sure the Chinese didn't get there first. An interesting story in the South China Morning Post

 

One man's covert war mission changed Hong Kong history

In August 1945 Roger Lobo - later a Hong Kong lawmaker - carried from Macau official confirmation war was over, allowing Britain to re-establish its rule and forestall a Chinese takeover, writes Jason Wordie

 

Early August 1945 was a tense time. It was obvious that the Japanese had lost the war, but a time frame for their surrender was deeply uncertain. It was by no means guaranteed that Japanese troops in the field actually would surrender to Allied forces, even if ordered to do so by the authorities in Japan. From Burma to the Pacific, the Japanese reputation for fighting to the death was thoroughly well-deserved; horrific experiences in Okinawa and Saipan, where the civilian population threw themselves off cliffs rather than surrender to the Americans, indicated what an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands might look like.

 

In the days that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, action plans were made. In the case of Hong Kong, it was considered vital that the imprisoned colonial secretary, Franklin Gimson, should be sworn in as the acting governor, and reactivate the formal machinery of the British administration, as soon as a Japanese capitulation had been confirmed.

 

This strategy was designed to ensure that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists did not get to Hong Kong first. In the event, they made no attempt to do so. That it took senior Nationalist commanders – only a couple of hours away by air – more than a fortnight not to arrive, is a story that still awaits thorough examination.

 

. . .

 

In the unstable period immediately after the Japanese capitulation, when peace was fragile, two heavily armed fishing boats departed from Macau. The usual ploy for covert missions going in and out of the city was for one vessel to create a diversion to draw attention (and possibly enemy fire) while the other, more important craft passed undetected. Other fishing boats – manned with heavily armed, vehemently anti-Japanese pirates – escorted at a distance.

 

On arrival in Hong Kong, the document was delivered to Gimson via a third party, and the rest is history.

 

 

[Randy W]

That's an aspect of the war that I'd never thought about before. The South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong-based paper, and is running other articles about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, including this one

 

From Hong Kong high society to a wartime jail: a novel

The privileged life of Siobhan Daiko's grandparents was shattered when they were taken from The Peak and imprisoned by the Japanese in Stanley. Seventy years after the end of the second world war, her novel The Orchid Tree, based partly on their experiences, offers insights into what internment was like