HONG KONG DEBACLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 10

HONG KONG DEBACLE

This is the third of a:series of articles specially written for "The Listener" by

JAMES

BERTRAM

NE morning I saw a familiar silhouette in the harbour of Hong Kong. It was the former New Zealand greyhound Awatea, which had just arrived with a couple of battalions of Canadian troops. The Canucks marched to barracks ashore in fine fettle; their equipment was to come "later." But that ‘was too late: the Nips beat them to it. Pearl Harbour Day What factors decided the Japanese to strike just when they did? This, I know, is my cue for a bit of "expert" analysis --the state of the war in Russia, President Roosevelt and General Marshal, the temperament of Mr. Kurusu and other little men in top-hats who were speeding by plane to Washington to take tea with Mr. Cordell Hull. At the risk of deflating the experts, let’s forget all that and recall a single not unimportant fact in the sailing orders of the U.S. Pacific Fleet-which will, one hopes, be a little less accessible in future than they were in 1941. There were three main battle squadTons, of approximately equal strength in capital ships, based on Pearl Harbour. Naval policy demanded that only one of these should be in the .anchorage at "Battleship Row" at any given time; the other two were to be at sea, on patrol or exercises. Sometimes it happened that two of the fleets overlapped for a few hours, when one came in to fuel or refit before the other left, But there was only one day. in the whole naval year when all three fleets would be in Pearl Harbour together, and the sailing orders made this clear for months in advance. 5 Can anybody guess the date? Yes, it was a Sunday morning in early December; and you know that American Sunday breakfast. ... The Siege of Hong Kong Hong Kong was the most exposed of all our Far Eastern positions, and the inadequacy of its defences is now a familiar tale. I don’t want to go into all that again; nor do I wish to review the military operations there. It isn’t quite the same thing describing a battle in which one has taken part-however in-significantly-as a combatant. Tolstoy knew this; and the chief merit of the unforgettable battle-pieces in War and Peace is the way in which the viewpoint shifts, like a clever and sensitive camera, from the plans of the commanders to the little self-centred bit of action seen by any given soldier or officer in the field. I could fill this whole set of articles with pungent comments on the Battle of Hong Kong, comments as caustic as Tolstoy’s when concerned with details of fortifications and ammunition, or the antics of brasshats safely buried in their "battle-box" 50 feet underground. But that is too easy; and the commander has seldom the right of reply. Nobody really expected much from Hong Kong. It held, when all is safa, for 17 dayswhich isn’t as good as the three months called for, but is still better than the four days the Japanese gave it. No one would deny the importance of those 17 days, in containing and crippling a couple of divisions of crack Japanese assault

troops who went on from there to Singapore and the Indies: who might (who knows?) have gone on to New Zealand, one bright day in 1942, if the 17 days had been four. To achieve whatever was achieved at Hong Kong, brave men died and inflicted losses far beyond their own. The credit of the siege belongs to them. The appalling muddle and waste and ignominy of the surrender is a bad debt at the door of something much older and more vicious than any military bonehead: the British colonial system. Prophet on a Limb Meantime, to pick up my own story. I must begin with an. abject admission of the downfall of the prophet. After persuading a good many people to clear out.of Hong Kong (and the Philippines and Singapore and Rangoon) because the war was coming, I got caught in Hong Kong myself. Back from Chungking with the China Defence League, I had suddenly come down with typhoid through drinking Dairy Farm milk (the Dairy Farm, any Hong Kong resident will tell you, is the modern European establishment whose pedigree cows and ultra-hygienic plant catered for the Olympian Peak-dwellers. I had travelled’ for years all over the unhygienic interior of China, and never had typhoid). For a couple of months I languished in the Queen Mary Hospital, next to Sir Arthur Blackburn from the Chungking Embassy, who had been wounded in the leg during‘ the summer bombing. On the floor above, Mickey Hahn (whose China to Me will give you all the gossip you want about’ Hong Kong before and after the Japanese occupation-any number of libel actions pending) was having her wonder baby, Carola, holding receptions like a modern Maintenon while the Peak reeled beneath a blow more shattering than any the Japanese could contrive. Out of hospital but still feeling the effects, I-worked hard to get out a C.DiL. Report for 1941: this went to the printers just over the week-end the war. broke. Meantime, Mme. Sun had had an urgent cable from her brother,"T. V,

Soong, in Washington, telling her to get out of Hong Kong. We had always had an arrangement with the friendly head of the Kaitak Airport to keep a plane for this emergency; and I wanted Mme. Sun to go then-to my mind, her safety was worth more than Hong Kong, though here I admit to being prejudiced. We talked it all over with Vincent Sheean-a man of deep responsibility in this last decade, for it was the phenomenal success of his Personal History that first started journalists writing their memoirs. Sheean left Hong Kong on the last Clipper that made it before Pearl Harbour: before the plane left I sat up all night with him in his room at the Peninsula Hotel, drawing sketch-maps of Chinese guerrilla zones and making a very poor effort to keep up with his Special Correspondent’s capacity for whisky-sodas. Though one may not have the greatest respect for his political judgment, there is a romanti¢ touch in all Sheean’s writing that is rare in modern journalism, and an occasional limpidity of vision that is very appealing (see his portrait of Mme. Sun Yat-sen and Hankow in 1927.) He was very excited about China at this time and was taking his report straight back to President Roosevelt, with a not-too-serious notion of himself returning to Chungking as U.S. Ambassador. All visiting American publicists, including Henry Luce and Ernest Hemingway, seemed to have had this same idea. Ascent of a Balloon Against our advice, Mme. Sun did not go; and I slipped off for the week-end to Lantau, the bare hilly island with its Buddhist monastery where the mf§sionaries go for the summer holidays. I came back on the Sunday night, so tired that I went straight to bed in my lodgings with a North China family near the university. Next morning I was having breakfast, brought by a large and friendly amah with bound feet, when the sirens went. I hadn’t heard the early morning radio, with its news of the declaration of war, "Ai-yah, Mr. Po! Japanese planes!" she shrilled suddenly from the window,

as our guns began a meagre barrage. Paralysed over a grapefruit, I watched the silver planes with the red markings swooping gracefully over Kaitak. That famous delayed-action balloon was up at last. Night Flight My first thought was of Mme. Sun, who was living over on the Kowloon side to be near the airport. I couldn’t get through to her on the phone, so I went down to the C.D.L. office to bang out my own story on the war. The typewriter keys felt good; curious the reassurance one finds in the tools of one’s trade, in moments of crisis! Then the telephone rang. A familiar quiet voice came over the wire (contrast, please, with some of Emily Hahn’s comments about Mme. Sun’s nervousness during air-raids in Chungking). She had been at the airport -first main objective of the Japanese in their attack-to meet her sister, Mme. Kung, who had flown down from Chungking that night; and they had been right in the middle of the bombing. I got her eye-witness account of this, and a strong general statement on the war that was very important for Chinese consumption. So the South China Morning Post on Tuesday had a scoop, in a rare signed article by Sun Yat-sen’s widow on China as an ally of the United Nations, After that, of course, it was more important than ever that the Soong sisters should get out, for Mme. Sun’s statement had told the world that she was in Hong Kong. But the raid on Kaitak had been’ very effective; not only the total air strength of the R.A.F.- a couple of ancient Wildebeestes-but the two CNAC commercial Douglases had been strafed and burnt. The only chance of a plane out was if something could get through from China by night. , Meantime the sisters were stranded in Kowloon, for the ferry service had closed down for. Chinese passengers; and there were enough Fifth Columnists about to make it highly unwise for them to return to any Soong house. Through Dr. Selwyn-Clarke I managed to arrange for a private launch from the Hong Kong Government; but that evening they got. across by ferry, and took rooms quietly in the Gloucester Hotel. The air situation was doubtful until the CNAC Douglases, beautifully piloted by veteran American fliers who had learnt during the China war to feel their way in and. out of Hong Kong through the Japanese , blockade, made the airport safely and left again without accident, That settled it: we had an emergency — meeting of what remained of the C.D.L. : Committee (majnly Chinese members) and it was unanimously decided that the Chairman should leave Hong Kong. Mme. Sun didn’t like going that way, but it was obviously the only thing to do. The Committee records, with all the lists of supporters of the League, were (continued on next page)

(continued from previous. page) . consigned to the flames, and the Soong sisters got away the next night, on the last, plane of all before the airfield was taken. Chinese Not Wanted During all this, I had again been trying to fit myself usefully into a war. I had begun with the Ministry of Information, where David MacDougall was busy, like most Government officials, burning code-books and documents and getting out the military communiqués. The weak point of Hong Kong, from the viewpoint of a siege, was its million-and-a-half Chinese; what I wanted to do was invite their dirett co-operation in our defence. I knew enough newspapermen, writers, and theatre people to get a mass propaganda drive going--and at this time nothing whatever was being done in Chinese to reach the people. But at once we were up against the old Hong Kong prejudices. It was still the prevailing view in the colonial government that the gravest danger of all was from "Chinese mobs"; and any suggestion of arming the local people was greeted with strained incredulity. Didn't we know about the Fifth Column-and what they had been up to already? It was clear to me that what Fifth Column there was-Wang Ching-wei Chinese and local malcontents-would be armed alréady; what we could do was issue arms to experienced and reliable groups and set them on the trail of the Fifth Column, which was a job Chinese could do so much better than our own or Indian police. But all this, as you may guess, got precisely nowhere. All I succeeded in doing was to gather a pretty Bohemian-looking bunch of playwrights and intellectuals who were willing to come in on any scheme we could get going (they included some of the leading writers and artists of China). They hung around patiently in cafés and restaurants while I strove to secure official sanction for at least the propaganda part of our programme, and they looked so odd that I was afraid before long we'd all be arrested on sight. There just wasn’t anything in the defence plan of Hong Kong to cover this sort of thing, though four years of war in China-to anyone who had eyes to see-had proved its value. The Army That Never Was A more serious part of this effort concerned the organisation of guerrillas. I had a fat, deceptively sleepy-looking Chinese friend in Hong Kong who was the representative of the 8th Route (Communist) army, in which he held the rank of colonel. He was a veteran of the Long March, and he knew his business: he was besides a Cantonese with considerable local prestige, being the son of one of Sun Yat-sen’s closest associates. Fatty had about 3,000 guerrillas already organised on one of the islands across the bay; what he wanted was small arms and ammunition and a boat -or boats-to get to them. After many wasted hours, involving a personal call at Flagstaff House, I was able to bring him together with the head of the British Intelligence in Hong Kong, Major Boxer was sympathetic, and he saw the point; with 3,000 men, even partially armed, we could have made a diversion in the rear of the Nips on the mainland that might have drawn off a considerable part of their offensive

strength. But nothing came of that either, unless it was the official communiqué issued subsequently-to the bewilderment and scorn of British troops on the island-that "the Chinese Army" was approaching the border to relieve the hard-pressed garrison. Fatty and I knew that the nearest regular Chinese forces were in Hunan, and could not possibly get to Hong Kong in strength under two months. Well, if there was nothing doing with our guerrillas there remained the Hong Kong Volunteers. I had been actively encouraging the Chinese to fight the Nips for four years; I could hardly walk out on ‘this show, when at last the Nips had come to us. Reason told me that I would be more use in China: but a deeper instinct insisted that this was the first battle in the defence of New Zealand, and that every man would be needed. None of us then, you see, dreamed of a surrender. The Chinese didn’t surrender to the Japanese; why should we? Gunner Inglorious So Fatty slipped out of Hong Kong in disguise, and was promptly arrested by General Yu Han-mou in Kwangtung (this was the hero of Canton, who hardly fired a shot at the Japanese then or since). I took the card Boxer had given me to the Adjutant of the H.K.V.D.C. and that night (December 11th) found myself, still wearing corduroy slacks and a grey tweed overcoat, manning a Bren gun to cover the waterfront in case the Nips should come over-they had already broken through to Kowloon. Next day I got a uniform, and was transferred with a dozen other new recruits-mostly Chinese boys from the university-to Second Battery of the Volunteers at Stanley. From this point my story is the story of the battle of Hong Kong; and this, with commendable restraint, I have promised not to re-tell. The Stanley guns were able to do some useful work; and at the finish we were thrown in as infantry in the defence of Stanley Village, By that time I had managed to collect a Lewis gun-the only weapon I really knew anything about, thanks to cadet and territorial training in New Zealand!-and we had our own miniature International Brigade, with a young Pole as No. 2 on the gun, and a Norwegian merchant seaman’as spotter. We were in action continuously through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; late that evening we were relieved. The surrender had already been arranged, though in Stanley we knew nothing about it. That hight I got back to the Fort, and slept as one only sleeps after a battle. It was a lovely clear morning when Jan shook me awake. At the door) of the guardhouse, the light from the > sea was swift and blinding. There it was-the channel our guns had kept empty for just as long as Warsaw held Hitler. Now three Japanese destroyers were moving inshore, making across from Lama. Further off, the water was alive with junks and sampans. A Japanese seaplane roared overheard, zooming low over our silent guns. We had made our brief gesture at Hong Kong. To the victors the spoils: to the vanquished-what? Well, we would know soon enough. : (To be continued). ">