A Japanese lesson in cruelty
World War II arrived at Hong Kong on the morning of 8th December 1941, only a few hours after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The colony was attacked from both air and ground at the same time... Surprising air strike destroyed most of the British warplanes, while they were still on ground, and gave the Japanese air force superiority, right from the first day of the battle.
On the ground, Japanese infantry, sixty thousand in number, attacked the colony from its Northern border with a heavy artillery barrage... The British defence force, including Canadian and Indian soldiers, alongside with local volunteers, had to retreat to the island and continued to defend the colony from there. However, the Japanese forces, who enjoyed superiority with a larger number of better trained soldiers, managed to land on the North shores of the island on the night between 18th and 19th December.
On Christmas Day, 25th December 1941 (symbolically named "Black Christmas"), British defence forces surrendered and the governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Aitchison Young, handed over the control of the colony at the Japanese headquarters on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon.
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Although their story is not as known as the story of the Jews in the holocaust, the Chinese of Hong Kong were victims of some of the worst atrocities in the world, committed by the Japanese forces during World War II
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The period of the Japanese occupation, known as "Three years and eight months", was the most devastating time in Hong Hong's history... Some estimate that as many as 10,000 women were raped in the first few days after Hong Kong's capture and large number of suspected dissidents were executed. The economy crashed and food shortage, as well as political harassment and diseases, became the norm of daily lives.
Some local Chinese residents joined the guerilla forces that were involved in Anti Japanese activity but, at the end of the day, it was Japan's surrender to the Americans, on 15th August 1945, that put an end to their merciless reign over Hong Kong.
By the end of the war, in 1945, the population of Hong Kong shrunk to 600,000, less than half of its pre-war population.
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Post-war years and economic boom
