Download or read book Prisoner of the Turnip Heads written by George Wright-Nooth and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1994-07-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a police officer in pre-war colonial Hong Kong, George Wright-Nooth was studying for his Chinese language exams when the Japanese invaded on Christmas Day, 1941. He spent the next four years incarcerated in the Japanese Military Internment Camp at Stanley. Daily life became marked by hunger and appalling suffering at the hands of the guards. He regularly witnessed death and torture, and his account of a multiple execution by sword is as moving and horrific as anything one is ever likely to read. While many of his fellow prisoners cracked beneath the terror of such atrocities, the author repaid such treatment with subversive activities, such as the running of secret radios, and the smuggling of food and messages to and from some of those held by the dreaded Japanese Gendarmerie. Perhaps most remarkably of all, the author kept a diary throughout his incarceration which, miraculously, was never discovered by his captors.
Download or read book Prisoner of the Turnip Heads written by George Wright-Nooth and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 1999 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It took endurance beyond belief. On Christmas Day, 1941, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese Army, and George Wright-Nooth--along with many other British soldiers and personnel stationed there--became their prisoner. This is their shocking story, captured in Wright-Nooth's secret diary, kept at great risk. What unfolds is the horrifying tale of near starvation, cruel beatings, and massacres. The term "turnip heads" comes from the nickname that the Chinese called the Japanese, their long-time enemies.
Download or read book Race War written by Gerald Horne and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan’s lightning march across Asia during World War II was swift and brutal. Nation after nation fell to Japanese soldiers. How were the Japanese able to justify their occupation of so many Asian nations? And how did they find supporters in countries they subdued and exploited? Race War! delves into submerged and forgotten history to reveal how European racism and colonialism were deftly exploited by the Japanese to create allies among formerly colonized people of color. Through interviews and original archival research on five continents, Gerald Horne shows how race played a key—and hitherto ignored—;role in each phase of the war. During the conflict, the Japanese turned white racism on its head portraying the war as a defense against white domination in the Pacific. We learn about the reverse racial hierarchy practiced by the Japanese internment camps, in which whites were placed at the bottom of the totem pole, under the supervision of Chinese, Korean, and Indian guards—an embarrassing example of racial payback that was downplayed by the defeated Japanese and the humiliated Europeans and Euro-Americans. Focusing on the microcosmic example of Hong Kong but ranging from colonial India to New Zealand and the shores of the U.S., Gerald Horne radically retells the story of the war. From racist U.S. propaganda to Black Nationalist open support of Imperial Japan, information about the effect of race on U.S. and British policy is revealed for the first time. This revisionist account of the war draws connections between General Tojo, Malaysian freedom fighters, and Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam and shows how white racism encouraged and enabled Japanese imperialism. In sum, Horne demonstrates that the retreat of white supremacy was not only driven by the impact of the Cold War and the energized militancy of Africans and African-Americans but by the impact of the Pacific War as well, as a chastened U.S. and U.K. moved vigorously after this conflict to remove the conditions that made Japan's success possible.
Download or read book Blood on Their Hands written by Cecil Lowry and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-04-04 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its invasion of Manchuria through to the Allies’ victory in 1945 the Japanese Imperial Army was guilty of widespread atrocities against its enemies and, in particular, the civilians of occupied countries. Massacre, human experimentation, starvation, forced labour and even cannibalism were commonplace during that period. It has been estimated that the number of deaths which resulted from these atrocities range from anything from three to fourteen million people. Using this appalling record the author explains in graphic detail the cruelty of Japanese military forces, drawing attention to the impact on ordinary people. He explores the possible reasons why people committed such horrendous acts. Seventy-eight years have passed since the surrender, yet the Japanese government has never squarely acknowledge their crimes, nor has it made an official apology. Over the years since, a handful of extreme right-wing elements in Japan has depicted the war and the atrocities as ‘the liberation of backward nations.’ They have attempted to reinterpret bloody massacres as 'a self-defensive holy war.' As his father Hugh Lowry suffered grievously as a Prisoner of War on the infamous Thai/Burma Railway, the author knows first-hand of the lasting psychological and physical wounds suffered by victims of Japanese brutality. This disturbing book should serve as a warning that such extreme and widespread behaviour should never be repeated.
Download or read book The Occupation of Hong Kong 1941 45 written by Philip Cracknell and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four years of fear: escapes, resistance, internment, occupation and finally - liberation. Philip Cracknell brings his unrivalled knowledge of Hong Kong during this time.
Download or read book Hong Kong s War Crimes Trials written by Suzannah Linton and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 1442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British military held 46 trials in Hong Kong in which 123 defendants, from Japan and Formosa (Taiwan), were tried for war crimes. This book provides the first comprehensive legal analysis of these trials. The subject matter of the trials spanned war crimes committed during the fall of Hong Kong, its occupation, and in the period after the capitulation following the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but before the formal surrender. They included killings of hors de combat, abuses in prisoner-of-war camps, abuse and murder of civilians during the military occupation, forced labour, and offences on the High Seas. The events adjudicated included those from Hong Kong, China, Japan, the High Seas, and Formosa (Taiwan). Taking place in the same historical period as the more famous Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the Hong Kong war crimes trials provide key insights into events of the time, and the development of international criminal law and procedure in this period. A team of experts in international criminal law examine these trials in detail, placing them in their historical context, investigating how the courts conducted their proceedings and adjudicated acts alleged to be war crimes, and evaluating the extent to which the Hong Kong trials contributed to the development of contemporary issues, such as joint criminal enterprise and superior orders. There is also comparative analysis with contemporaneous proceedings, such as the Australian War Crimes trials, trials in China, and those conducted by the British in Singapore and Germany, placing them within the wider history of international justice. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of international criminal law and procedure.
Download or read book Hong Kong Internment 1942 1945 written by Geoffrey Charles Emerson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hong Kong Internment, 1942-1945: Life in the Japanese Civilian Camp at Stanley tells the story of the more than three thousand non-Chinese civilians: British, American, Dutch and others, who were trapped in the British colony and interned behind barbed wire in Stanley Internment Camp from 1942 to 1945. From 1970 to 1972, while researching for his MA thesis, the author interviewed twenty-three former Stanley internees. During these meetings, the internees talked about their lives in the Stanley Camp during the Japanese occupation. Long regarded as an invaluable reference and frequently consulted as a primary source on Stanley since its completion in 1973, the study is now republished with a new introduction and fresh discussions that recognize later work and information released since the original thesis was written. Additional illustrations, including a new map and photographs, as well as an up-to-date bibliography, have also been included in the book.
Download or read book The Fall of Hong Kong written by Philip Snow and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years, a turning point in the process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from East Asia. This book unravels for the first time the dramatic story of the Japanese occupation and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of Hong Kong. "Magnificent. . . . The clarity of mind Snow brings to his labor of storytelling and contextualizing is] amazing."--John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph "Beautifully written, with many telling anecdotes."--Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs "Very good. . . . Provides] a much more nuanced picture than has appeared before in English of life among Hong Kong's different communities before and during the Japanese occupation."--Economist
Download or read book Fortune s Bazaar written by Vaudine England and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely, well-researched, and “illuminating” (The New York Times Book Review) new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis—and whose freedoms are endangered today. Hong Kong has always been many cities to many people: a seaport, a gateway to an empire, a place where fortunes can be dramatically made or lost, a place to disappear and reinvent oneself, and a melting pot of diverse populations from around the globe. A British Crown Colony for 155 years, Hong Kong is now ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. Here, renowned journalist Vaudine England delves into Hong Kong’s complex history and its people—diverse, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan—who have made this one-time fishing village into the world port city it is today. Rather than a traditional history describing a town led by British Governors or a mere offshoot of a collapsing Chinese empire, Fortune’s Bazaar is “a winning portrait of Hong Kong’s vibrant mosaic” (Publishers Weekly). While British traders and Asian merchants had long been busy in the Indian and South East Asian seas, many people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds arrived in Hong Kong, met, and married—despite all taboos—and created a distinct community. Many of Hong Kong’s most influential figures during its first century as a city were neither British nor Chinese—they were Malay or Indian, Jewish or Armenian, Parsi or Portuguese, Eurasian or Chindian—or simply, Hong Kongers. England describes those overlooked in history, including the opium traders who built synagogues and churches; ship owners carrying gold-rush migrants; the half-Dutch, half-Chinese gentleman with two wives who was knighted by Queen Victoria; and the gardeners who settled Kowloon, the mainland peninsula facing the island of Hong Kong, and became millionaires. A story of empire, race, and sex, Fortune’s Bazaar presents a “fresh…essential” (Ian Buruma), “formidable and important” (The Correspondent) history of a special place—a unique city made by diverse people of the world, whose part in its creation has never been properly told until now.
Download or read book The Internment of Western Civilians under the Japanese 1941 1945 written by Bernice Archer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernice Archer's comparative study of the experiences of the Western civilians interned by the Japanese in mixed family camps and sexually segregated camps in the Far East, combines a wide variety of conventional and unconventional source material. This includes contemporary War, Foreign and Colonial Office papers, diaries, letters, camp newspapers and artefacts, post-war medical, engineering and educational reports, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and over fifty oral interviews with ex-internees. Using contemporary personal accounts, the shock of the Japanese victories and the devastating experience of capture are highlighted. This book also covers wider issues such as the role of women in war, gender and war, children and war, colonial culture, oral history, and war and memory.
Download or read book Gendered Wars Gendered Memories written by Ayşe Gül Altınay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315584225 The twentieth century has been a century of wars, genocides and violent political conflict; a century of militarization and massive destruction. It has simultaneously been a century of feminist creativity and struggle worldwide, witnessing fundamental changes in the conceptions and everyday practices of gender and sexuality. What are some of the connections between these two seemingly disparate characteristics of the past century? And how do collective memories figure into these connections? Exploring the ways in which wars and their memories are gendered, this book contributes to the feminist search for new words and new methods in understanding the intricacies of war and memory. From the Italian and Spanish Civil Wars to military regimes in Turkey and Greece, from the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to the wars in Abhazia, East Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Israel and Palestine, the chapters in this book address a rare selection of contexts and geographies from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. In recent years, feminist scholarship has fundamentally changed the ways in which pasts, particularly violent pasts, have been conceptualized and narrated. Discussing the participation of women in war, sexual violence in times of conflict, the use of visual and dramatic representations in memory research, and the creative challenges to research and writing posed by feminist scholarship, Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories will appeal to scholars working at the intersection of military/war, memory, and gender studies, seeking to chart this emerging territory with ’feminist curiosity’.
Download or read book Never Surrender written by Mark Felton and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there have been many fine books covering the appalling experiences and great courage of the many thousands of POWscaptured by the victorious Japanese during late 1941 and early 1942, escape accounts are much rarer. This is due in large part tothe fact that only a comparatively small number of brave souls attempted to escape to freedom rather than suffer brutality,starvation and very possibly death as POWs. However, as Never Surrender vividly describes, there were a significant number who took this desperate course. Escapersfaced challenges far more daunting than those in German hands. They were Westerners in an alien, hostile environment; the terrain and climate were extreme; disease was rife; their physical condition was weak; there was every chance of starvation andbetrayal and, if captured, they faced, at best, the harshest punishment and, at worst, execution. The author draws on escapeattempts from Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Borneo and China by officers and men of the British, Commonwealth andUS armed forces. As this superbly researched and uplifting book reveals, few escapers found freedom but all are inspiring examples of outstandingand, indeed, desperate courage. The stories told within these pages demonstrate the best and worst of human spirit.
Download or read book Reduced to a Symbolical Scale written by Tony Banham and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In July 1940, the wives and children of British families in Hong Kong, military and civilian, were compulsorily evacuated, following a plan created by the Hong Kong government in 1939. That plan focused exclusively on the process of evacuation itself, but issues concerning how the women and children should settle in the new country, communication with abandoned husbands, and reuniting families after the war were not considered. In practice, few would ever be addressed. When evacuation came, 3,500 people would simply be dumped in Australia. The experience of the evacuees can be seen as a three-act drama: delivery to Australia creates tension, five years of war and uncertainty intensify it, and resolution comes as war ends. However, that drama, unlike the evacuation plan, did not develop in a vacuum but was embedded in a complex historical, political, and social environment. Based on archival research of official documents, letters and memoirs, and interviews and discussions with more than one hundred evacuees and their families, this book studies the evacuation within that entire context. ‘Reduced to a Symbolical Scale is an original and interesting addition to the evacuation literature. Tony Banham has done a masterly job of integrating archival documents with other forms of communication. The stories of individual evacuees and their families are very skilfully woven into the narrative.’ —John Welshman, Lancaster University; author of Churchill’s Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain
Download or read book Target Hong Kong written by Steven K. Bailey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Commander John Lamade started the war in 1941 a nervous pilot of an antiquated biplane. Just over three years later he was in the cockpit of a cutting-edge Hellcat about to lead a strike force of 80 aircraft through the turbulent skies above the South China Sea. His target: Hong Kong. As a storm of antiaircraft fire darkened the sky, watching from below was POW Ray Jones. For three long years he and his fellow prisoners had endured near starvation conditions in a Japanese internment camp. Did these American aircraft, he wondered, herald freedom? Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II had never been told. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this massive operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots and the POW Ray Jones. Drawing upon oral histories, diary transcripts, and U.S. Navy documents, this book expertly narrates the intertwined experiences of these servicemen to bring the history to life.
Download or read book The Quest of Noel Croucher written by Vaudine England and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noel Groucher nad a secret penchant for philanthropy. From simple beginnings in England, he arrived in Hong Kong at the turn of the century to live through eight decades of change on the China Coast. Myster surrounded Noel Croucher. Seen as tight-fisted by some yet loved by others, he endowed Hong Kong with its richest academic charity in The Croucher Foundation. He became Commodore of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and chairman of the Stock Exchange. To many he was a throwback to the glory days of empire. Yet he battled prejudice to get ahead in the colony. That era has now passed. This timely, fresh look at the lives lived on the Coast - through Noel Croucher's life story - brings out the realities of those times.
Download or read book Children of the Massacre written by Linda Banks and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early morning on 1 August 1895, a group of armed insurgents attacked a remote mission station in China. An Irish couple, Robert and Louisa Stewart, and two of their young children were murdered. Three other children were wounded but escaped, while three older boys were away at school in England. From their early years, the six surviving Stewart children, most of whom were born in China, believed they had "unfinished business" there. One after another, each returned to their adopted country, where they founded and served schools, churches, student hostels, and hospitals. Their visionary contributions took place against the backdrop of the Nationalist Revolution, anti-Western demonstrations, and the Japanese invasion and occupation of China. More than seventy-five years ago, Bishop R. O. Hall of Hong Kong stated: "the story of the Stewart family needs to be told!" This thoroughly researched volume finally documents the lives and legacy of one of the most impressive families in missionary history.
Download or read book Eastern Fortress written by Kwong Chi Man and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrated as a trading port, Hong Kong was also Britain’s “eastern fortress”. Likened by many to Gibraltar and Malta, the colony was a vital but vulnerable link in imperial strategy, exposed to a succession of enemies in a turbulent age and a troubled region. This book examines Hong Kong’s developing role in the Victorian imperial defence system, the emerging challenges from Russia, France, the United States, Germany, Japan and other powers, and preparations in the years leading up to the Second World War. A detailed chapter offers new interpretations of the Battle of Hong Kong of 1941, when the colony succumbed to the Japanese invasion. The remaining chapters discuss Hong Kong’s changing strategic role during the Cold War and the winding down of the military presence. The book not only focuses on policies and events, but also explores the social life of the garrison in Hong Kong, the struggles between military and civil authorities, and relations between the armed forces and civilians in Hong Kong. Drawing on original research in archives around the world, including English, Japanese, and Chinese sources, this is the first full-length study of the defence of Hong Kong from the beginning of the colonial period to the end of British military interests East of Suez in 1970. Illustrated with images and detailed maps, Eastern Fortress will be of interest to both students of history and general readers. Kwong Chi Man is an assistant professor in the History Department of Hong Kong Baptist University. Tsoi Yiu Lun teaches history and liberal studies at Mu Kuang English School, Hong Kong. “Armed with a range of declassified archives—many of them unpublished—Kwong and Tsoi expertly weave together military, political, social, and economic history to show how Hong Kong played a strategic role in East Asia and the British Empire from the early 1840s to the 1970s. Eastern Fortress is a must-read for anyone interested in Hong Kong and its history.” —John Carroll, author of A Concise History of Hong Kong and Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong “This careful and well-written study does a difficult balancing act very well indeed. It connects the military history of Hong Kong to both the general Hong Kong experience and the wider military history of the region and beyond. Weaving its way with confidence from archive to library, from grand strategy to battlefield, this volume provides what we have long needed. Hong Kong’s experience was unique, but at the same time it was integrally connected to the wider circles of empire, region, and Asia. Nothing brings that trajectory out more strongly than the military dimension, and by ranging from the Opium War to the Cold War, with a critical eye, this volume does that story justice. It is the capstone that brings together a generation of good scholarship on the military history of Hong Kong.” —Brian Farrell, author of The Basis and Making of British Grand Strategy 1940–1943: Was There a Plan? and co-author of Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore from First Settlement to Final British Withdrawal
