The Battle for Hong Kong 1941–1945
Hostage to Fortune
Other books by Oliver Lindsay CBE FRHistS
The Lasting Honour: The Fall of Hong Kong 1941
At the Going Down of the Sun: Hong Kong and South-East Asia 1941–1945
A Guards General: The Memoirs of Major General Sir Allan Adair Bt (Editor)
Once a Grenadier: The Grenadier Guards 1945–1995
Whither Hong Kong: China’s Shadow or Visionary Gleam? (with others)
THE BATTLE FOR
HONG KONG
1941–1945
HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE
by
Oliver Lindsay
With the memories of John R Harris
This edition first published in 2005 by
Spellmount, an imprint of
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2016
All rights reserved
© Oliver Lindsay 2005, 2007
© Maps Denys Baker 2005, 2007
The right of Oliver Lindsay and JohnR. Harris to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’srights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 8054 8
eBook converted by Geethik Technologies
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Foreword
Part 1: The Beat of Drums
1 The Beat of Drums
Part 2: When Time Was Young
2 When Time Was Young
3 The Outbreak of War in Europe
4 An Ocean of Change
5 Visions of Delight
Part 3: Remember Them with Pride
6 The Vulnerable Outpost
7 Battle Stations
8 Shingmun Redoubt: The Vital Ground 8th–10th December 1941
9 Nothing but Darkness Ahead 10th–13th December 1941
10 “Clay Pigeons in a Shooting Range” 13th–17th December 1941
11 Triumph or Disaster: The Japanese Landings 18th–19th December 1941
12 Hell’s Destruction: 19th–20th December 1941
13 Slaughter and Manoeuvre: The Japanese Advance West and South 20th–24th December 1941
14 The Surrender of Hong Kong: Christmas Day 1941
15 Truth is the First Casualty in War
Part 4: Hostage to Fortune
16 Shamshuipo POW Camp and the Escapes
17 Argyle Street Officers’ Camp
18 The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru
19 Operations Most Secret
20 The British Army Aid Group and Fresh Disasters
21 Sinister Developments: Stanley Internment Camp, the Japanese Occupation and the Privileged Nightmare
22 The Calm after Thunder: Returning Home
23 New Worlds to Find: An Architect At Last
24 Retribution
25 “Good and Gallant Leadership”
Bibliography
Despatches
War Diaries
Reports and Notes
Selected Articles
Diaries
Files
Websites
The Confusion of Events
Oliver Lindsay CBE FHistS is a military historian, lecturer on the war against Japan and Editor of The Guards Magazine. After a career in the Army, he was a fundraiser for disabled youngsters. In keeping with the family tradition, he is a member of the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland.
His previous books include Lasting Hour: The Fall of Hong Kong 1941 and At the Going Down of the Sun: Hong Kong and South East Asia 1941–1945.
John R Harris TD is the only survivor at the time of writing of the small band of prisoners of war of the Japanese who smuggled top secret information to the British spying organisation in China in 1943. After the war he became a successful architect with an international practice.
Front jacket illustration: Colonel Tanaka at Lei Mun Strait, across which his Japanese regiment launched their attacks on 18 December 1941. (Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum)
Back jacket illustration: The view, painted by John Harris, from Argyle Street POW camp beyond the electrified wire, looking north. Below Lion Rock are huts containing survivors of the two Indian Battalions. In the foreground is a vegetable patch where secret messages were hidden. The Japanese aircraft have taken off from Kai Tak nearby. © John Harris 1943
To all those Allies who fought and died in the Far East 1941–1945.
Each of them was a hostage to fortune.
“I submit that although I and my forces may have been a hostage to fortune, we were a detachment that deflected from more important objectives, such as the Philippines, Singapore, or perhaps even Australia, an enemy force that consisted of two first line divisions, one reserve division, corps artillery, about 80 aircraft, and a considerable naval blocking force. Strategically we gambled and lost, but it was a worthwhile gamble.”
The post-war report of Major General Maltby CB MC
General Officer Commanding British Troops in Hong Kong in 1941
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to John Harris for allowing me to edit his memoirs. I have known him for 25 years and have great admiration for him. His wife, Jill, gave me invaluable and astute guidance and support for this exciting project. I alone am responsible for any errors.
I must express my warmest thanks to Field Marshal Lord Bramall for writing the Foreword. I had the privilege of serving under him in Hong Kong in the mid 1970s. He has been a friend of John for many years too.
My scruffy, illegible drafts, covered by Tipp-Ex and confusing changes all stapled together, were turned into an immaculate format fit for the best of publishers. For this and more, I am greatly indebted to Marilyn Thompson, John’s secretary.
Special thanks are due to my wife, Clare, for her love and patience, not only when I was researching and writing this book, but also over the last 40 years of our very happy life together.
I have been extremely fortunate in being able to interview over 100 veterans of the campaign and former civilian internees, largely in the late 1970s onwards. This book is their story. They faced bitter adversity. Nevertheless the story reflects some glorious deeds, great loyalty and proud endeavours. It has been a privilege to have the opportunity to write about them. I hope you enjoy the book.
Oliver Lindsay
Sherborne
August 2005
List of Maps
(Drawn by Denys Baker. For consistency, the spelling of place names has been kept to that of 1941)
1. Hong Kong and the Far East
2. Hong Kong and the New Territories 8th–12th December 1941
3. Hong Kong Island
4. Repulse Bay and Stanley Peninsula
Foreword
by Field Marshal The Lord Bramall KG, GCB, OBE, MC, JP
Volume I of the official history, The War Against Japan published back in 1957, devoted only 44 of its 568 pages to the defence of Hong Kong. This tended to obscure the fact that unlike some other defeats suffered, in those early years, by the Alli
es at the hands of the Japanese, no shame or disgrace whatsoever could be ascribed to the inexperienced, ill-equipped and often untrained British, Canadians, Indians and local Hong Kong garrison, when they heroically held up the overwhelming Japanese attack for nearly three weeks.
Now, to help put matters in their proper perspective and to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Hong Kong, we have this new book by Oliver Lindsay. This is an authoritative, detailed and exciting account of the whole of the campaign using hitherto unpublished material.
In the 30 years that Oliver Lindsay has been studying the war as it affected Hong Kong and the events surrounding it, he has interviewed many of the survivors in Britain, Canada and in Hong Kong itself; he has been able to meet veterans in the Colony who could explain to him exactly what happened on the precise ground over which they fought. For many years he also ran battlefield tours for Servicemen in Hong Kong. All of this has given him a deep insight into the problems confronting the Canadian Brigade, the Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers, the British and Indian Infantry Battalions, the Hong Kong Volunteers and some of the small Royal Navy and RNVR units, all of which had to face the ferocity of the Japanese attack as, later, did the nursing sisters who suffered appalling atrocities.
In the central part of the book Lindsay gives a graphic and revealing account of the ‘nightmare’ battle itself, leading to the surrender on Christmas Day 1941 of the first British Colony to fall to the enemy in the Second World War. All of which was indicative, he believes, of the fundamental weakness of democracies hoping above all things to avoid having to go to war, leading to deficiencies in force levels, equipment and training. But this informative book also contains the authentic, vivid and hitherto unpublished reminiscences of John Harris, a young architectural student who served in the Royal Engineers. He is the only survivor today of that small group of prisoners of war who smuggled secret information to and from the British intelligence organisation in China in 1943. They were operating with great gallantry under the very eyes of the inquisitive and brutal Japanese guards. The hardships and indignities of life in both the prisoner of war camps and the civilian internment camp were endured with fortitude and stubborn good humour despite the horrors of cholera, diphtheria and deficiency diseases. This throws new and heartrending light on the sacrifices made by those who defended Hong Kong.
Above all, this very readable book reflects supreme courage. I commanded the British forces in Hong Kong in 1970 and began to take a great interest in the battle that had been fought there 30 years before (pointing Oliver Lindsay in the direction of his subsequent research). I visited the military cemeteries there on a number of occasions and saw the graves of those who made the supreme sacrifice, including five recipients of the George Cross.
Those who read these chapters today can truly, I believe, remember those who fought and suffered in the defence of Hong Kong with considerable pride.
Dwin Bramall
Field Marshal
Part 1
THE BEAT OF DRUMS
by Oliver Lindsay
CHAPTER 1
The Beat of Drums
Hong Kong, Saturday 6th December 1941. The day of bright sunshine started no differently from any other relaxed weekend in the Colony’s long history. Yet it turned out to be a day nobody there would ever forget.
The newly arrived Governor, Sir Mark Young, attended a fête at Christ Church in Waterloo Road. Happy Valley racecourse was crowded, as usual. The Middlesex Regiment played South China Athletic at football. In the evening at the massive Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon both ballrooms were packed for the ‘Tin Hat Ball’ which hoped to raise the last £160,000 to purchase a bomber squadron which the people of Hong Kong planned to present to Britain.
It could have been a typical weekend – but on that same day, following secret instructions from Tokyo, a large number of Japanese civilians left the Colony, most of them by boat to Macao and then on to Canton.
* * * * *
Some 3,700 miles to the east of Tokyo, Japanese midget submarines planned their approach to eight battleships of the American Pacific Fleet at anchor at Pearl Harbor. Beyond them lay another 86 American ships. The American aircraft nearby, and also in the Philippines southwest of Hong Kong, “were all tightly bunched together, wing tip to wing tip, for security against saboteurs,”1 despite orders to disperse them.
Some four weeks earlier, on 5th November 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the C-in-C Combined Fleet, was warned by Imperial Japanese Headquarters that war was feared to be unavoidable.
General Douglas MacArthur in Manila remained convinced that there would be no Japanese attack before the Spring of 1942. As the commander of the American and Filipino troops in the Philippines, and a man of immense prestige, few contradicted him.
The Japanese regarded the Philippines as a “pistol aimed at Japan’s heart”. An intercepted coded message from Emperor Hirohito’s Foreign Office to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin referred to breaking “asunder this ever strengthening chain of encirclement which is being woven under the guidance of and with the participation of England and the United States, acting like a cunning dragon seemingly asleep”. This was a surprising and rather silly claim because the Japanese had already seized every port on the Chinese coast except Hong Kong.
On 27th November the US Navy Department sent out a message which began most ominously. “This despatch is to be considered a war warning… an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days… the number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai or Kra Peninsula, or possibly Borneo.”2
J C Grew, the US Ambassador in Tokyo, believed that the Japanese negotiations with the Americans in Washington were “a blind to conceal war preparations”. He warned his Government that Japanese attacks might come with dramatic and dangerous suddenness. The Ambassador’s estimate of the situation was confirmed by intercepted secret messages from Tokyo to Washington; they stressed the urgency of bringing the negotiations to a favourable conclusion by 29th November since “after that [date] things are automatically going to happen”. Roosevelt gloomily concluded that America was likely to be attacked within a week.
On 29th November British, American and Dutch air reconnaissance was instituted over the China Sea; Malayan defences were brought to a higher state of readiness. The Japanese had earlier received intelligence of the arrival of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in the Far East.
All Japanese forces were notified on 1st December that the decision had been made to declare war on the United States, the British Empire and the Netherlands.
Four days later Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, the Commander in Chief of Britain’s Eastern Fleet, flew back to Singapore from Manila after conferring with MacArthur and Admiral Tom Hart, MacArthur’s naval counterpart. Phillips, who had four days to live, left empty-handed; the Americans could spare neither men nor weapons.
Hong Kong and the Far East
That weekend Churchill was at Chequers with Averell Harriman. He was President Roosevelt’s ‘defence expediter’ in England, who later became the American Ambassador in Moscow and then London. They discussed the progress of the Germans on the Russian front, while awaiting news of the British forces in Libya. But the difficulty of discovering Japanese intentions was to the forefront of their minds.
Meanwhile on 6th December President Roosevelt in Washington started drafting a personal appeal to Hirohito in a final attempt to avoid war. George Marshall, the US Army’s Chief of Staff and senior general, prepared a dispatch to MacArthur with a final warning that war seemed imminent. His vital information subsequently went astray; radio communication with the Pacific broke down the next day.
Marshall’s opposite number in London, General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, had been in post six days. Brooke that same day was enjoying his first quiet morning, hoping to slip home to his family later that afterno
on. “However, just as I was getting ready to leave, a cablegram from Singapore came in with news of two convoys of Japanese transports, escorted by cruisers and destroyers, southwest of Saigon moving west,” he wrote in his diary. “As a result the First Sea Lord at once called a meeting of Chiefs of Staff.” They examined the situation carefully but, understandably, could not decide whether the armada was sailing towards Siam (Thailand), Malaya or “whether they were just cruising around as a bluff. PM called up from Chequers to have results of our meeting phoned through to him.” A second message came from Singapore shortly afterwards. “It only said that the convoy had been lost and could not be picked up again.”3
At 7.20 p.m. Singapore sent an immediate signal to the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong ordering them to adopt “No. 1 degree of readiness”. Wing Commander H G Sullivan, who had arrived in Hong Kong six days earlier, gazed at the signal with dismay for he had nowhere to conceal his three obsolete Vildebeeste torpedo bombers and two Walrus amphibians. All of them were over ten years old with a maximum speed of 100 mph. “It had been suggested that dispersal bays be carved out of the hills, but like everything else in Hong Kong these did not materialize,” he later reported.4 The RAF aircraft remained at Kai Tak airport.
That evening Major G E Grey 2/14 Punjabis, who was commanding the troops on Hong Kong’s mainland frontier, “received a police message stating that three Japanese Divisions (38,000 men) had arrived at To Kat, eight miles from the frontier on the previous evening”, recorded the second entry in Hong Kong’s War Diary.5
Major General C M Maltby, the recently arrived General Officer Commanding British forces in the Colony, wondered whether the report was nonsense or if he should mobilise the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, order all his 12,000 troops to their battle stations and start activating the demolition plans. Should he ask the Governor, Sir Mark Young, to summon a meeting of the Defence Council for a lengthy discussion at Government House the following day?
The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945 Page 1