5.16 Unconditional Surrender

Japanese representative Major-General Umekichi Okada handing over his sword during the surrender ceremony.

"On behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Imperial Headquarters, we do hereby unconditionally surrender ourselves and all forces under our control to Rear-Admiral Cecil Halliday Jephson Harcourt, C.B., C.B.E., and undertake to carry out all such instructions as may be given by him or under his authority and to issue all necessary orders for the purpose of giving effect to all his instructions."

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.15 The Liberation

The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and another on Nagasaki three days later, and Japanese Emperor unconditionally surrendered on 15 August.

On 1 September a British Military Administration was established in Hong Kong under Rear-Admiral Harcourt, Commander of the British Pacific Fleet.

The ceremony of surrender was held at Government House on 16 September.

On behalf of Britain and China, Rear-Admiral Harcourt accepted the Instrument of Surrender from Major-General Umekichi Okada and Vice-Admiral Ruitaro Fujita who represented the Japanese armed forces.

On 30 April 1946 Sir Mark Young resumed the governorship of Hong Kong. On the following day the Military Administration ceased to exist, giving way to the re-established civil government.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.14 Guerrilla Activities

Under Communist Chinese leadership, the Hong Kong-Kowloon Brigade of the East River Column staged fierce underground resistance against the Japanese.

One of five brigades of the East River Column, the Hong Kong Brigade, had some 500 members at its height.

It was made up of six companies covering Tai Po, Sai Kung, Yuen Long, Lantau, Urban Districts and the Marine Sector.

Wu Kau Tang in Sha Tau Kok and Chek Keng in Sai Kung were the guerrilla stamping-grounds.

The brigade's tasks were to rescue intellectuals and foreign prisoners of war trapped in Hong Kong, eliminate local bandits, sabotage the Japanese army's infrastructure, and assassinate Japanese officers and Chinese collaborators.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.13 Anti-Japanese Organisations

During the Occupation, patriots of the "Hong Kong-Kowloon Brigade of the East River Column" used guerilla tactics to attack Japanese soldiers and gendarmes, as well as Chinese collaborators working for the Japanese.

Another anti-Japanese organisation working underground in Hong Kong was the British Army Aid Group.

It made a significant contribution by getting food and other necessities into the camps, and passing news to and from them.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.12 Prisoners of War

A sister attends to a patient suffering from severe malnutrition following Hong Kong's liberation.

British prisoners of war captured in the New Territories.

After the fall of Hong Kong, some 9,000 captured soldiers were interned in prisoner of war (POW) camps in North Point, Sham Shui Po, Argyle Street and Ma Tau Chung, while 2,700 nationals of Japan's enemy countries were detained in camps at Stanley.

The POWs did all work in their camps; some were sent to Japan to do hard labour for the Japanese army. Congested conditions at the camps and shortage of food meant that internees were afflicted with diseases and hunger for a long period of time, and many died of dysentery and cholera.

At the end of the war, a third of the POWs who survived were suffering from infectious diseases, and most were pitifully underweight.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.11 The East Asia Academy

On 1 April 1943 the Japanese government founded the East Asia Academy as the highest institute of learning in occupied Hong Kong.

At first the Academy was well attended because it charged no fees and employment prospects for graduates were good.

However, enrolment dropped after some time as the population declined sharply and vacancies in government service became few and far between.

All in all, education during the Japanese occupation was poorly run.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.10 Japanese style Education

Local and Japanese women at the Peak tramway.

During the Japanese occupation, education in Hong Kong atrophied as there were no school places for many school-age children.

The number of students shrank sharply from 118,000 in 1941 to 4,000 in 1945.

The policy was to instill Japanese culture by presenting Japan in a favourable light. In middle and primary schools there was compulsory teaching of the Japanese language for four hours a week, and Japanese culture and etiquette were taught as major subjects in government schools.

These measures were designed to exercise more effective control over Hong Kong citizens, and to realise Japan's long-term goal of creating the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere".

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.9 Public Transport

Public transport was crippled after the fighting in December 1941 as most conveyances had been destroyed or damaged, or commandeered by the Japanese.

Buses, trams, cable cars and ferries returned to service in 1942, and trains in 1943.

But since there was a desperate shortage of fuel during the Occupation, people resorted to bicycles, tricycles and rickshaws as the main means of transport.

They even turned to horse-drawn carts, which carried passengers between Tsim Sha Tsui, Hung Hom and Kowloon Tong.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.8 The Cartels

Hong Kong's economy was plunged into depression. Many shops closed and did not resume business until a degree of social order was restored.

The government turned the majority of trades into cartels and places them under Japanese control. Anyone wishing to start a trade would have to register with the cartel, the registration form tantamount to a business licence.

Acting as tax collectors and disseminators of messages, the cartels helped the government to keep the people under control.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.7 Banking and Currency

Following the liquidation of all "enemy banks" such as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Chartered Bank and the Mercantile Bank of India, only Chinese banks were allowed to provide limited services.

The Yokohama Specie Bank and the Bank of Taiwan were given the prerogative of issuing and exchanging military yen, the legal currency.

As time went on, Hong Kong was flooded with so much military yen that it became virtually worthless.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.6 Food Supply

Under food rationing during the Occupation, those holding a ration card were entitled to 6.4 taels (242 grams) of rice a day.

In 1944, when stocks of rice were exhausted, the government did away with rationing, leaving consumers to fend for themselves in the free market.

Sugar, salt, cooking oil, vegetables, meat and fuel were in extremely short supply and prices rocketed.

The poor were reduced to subsisting on peanut bran, cassava flour and roots of trees.

So desperate were the starving that food-snatching was a common occurrence.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.5 Social and Economic Conditions

The three years and eight months under Japanese occupation was a time of untold misery for the people of Hong Kong.

Rice, sugar, salt and cooking oil were rationed and other foodstuffs such as vegetables and meat were extremely scarce and exorbitantly priced.

Fuel was equally scarce so that electricity, gas and public transport services were gravely affected.

To tighten its control of Hong Kong's mercantile activities, the Japanese government organised the majority of trades into cartels. British and other enemy banks were liquidated, and the Hong Kong's dollar was replaced by the Japanese military yen as the legal currency.

Profligate issuing of the military yen debased the currency, caused runaway inflation and paralysed Hong Kong's economy.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.4 Population and Repatriation

Before the war the estimated population of Hong Kong was 1,600,000, including refugees newly arrived from China.

The Japanese were quick to realise that it would be a problem to provide a population of that size with food, housing and other necessities. In order to relieve the pressure, the government set up, as early as January 1942, a "Repatriation Committee" within the Civil Administration Department to organise trains and ferries to forcibly repatriate large numbers of people to China.

By December 1942 the population had been reduced to 1,000,000.

Despite this, the shortage of daily food became more acute. Gendarmes would catch people in the street and have them forcibly transported out of Hong Kong.

By this and other measures Hong Kong's population was reduced to 600,000 at the time of Japan's surrender in 1945.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.3 Fall of Hong Kong

Japanese personal patriotic flag with inscriptions.

On the night of 18 December, Japanese troops landed at North Point, Quarry Bay and Shau Kei Wan.

They swiftly captured Mount Parker and Mount Butler, and pressed on to Jardine's Lookout and Wong Nai Chung Gap.

In the next few days Mount Nicholson and Mount Cameron both fell into Japanese hands.

The defenders attempted several times to launch counter-attacks, but all failed.

Major-General Maltby advised the Governor that he was unable to turn the tide, and on the afternoon of Christmas Day 1941, Sir Mark Young surrendered to the Japanese, ending the futile struggle.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.2 Battle for Hong Kong

British Force Commander negotiating terms of surrender with the Japanese at the Peninsula Hotel.

The growth of militarism in Japan from the late 19th century created the hostile atmosphere in which the ambition to conquer China was conceived.

The first move was the annexation of Manchuria in 1931, followed by full-scale war in 19377. Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing fell one after another, and the Japanese conquerors committed appalling atrocities in Nanjing, massacring 300,000 civilians.

In 1938 Guangzhou fell into Japanese hands, and Hong Kong came under direct threat. Hong Kong's defences at the time comprised only four battalions and some auxiliary artillerymen, plus the locally-raised Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps.

To reinforce these meager forces, two Canadian battalions of 2,000 men arrived at Hong Kong in late 1941.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

5.1 Japanese Attack Hong Kong

Japanese planes bombed Kai Tak Aerodrome on the morning of 8 December 1941 soon after the attack on Pearl Harbour. The suddenness of the attack caught the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong unprepared and its air defences were destroyed.

Having gained control of the air, the Japanese sent their troops across the Shenzhen River, and they marched unimpeded through the New Territories.

At the Shing Mun Redoubt was lost, and the defences along Gin Drinkers Line collapsed. The relentless Japanese advance gave the British commanding officer Major-General Maltby no alternative but to order a retreat to Hong Kong Island.

In the next several days the Governor, Sir Mark Young, twice rejected Japanese demands for Hong Kong's surrender.

Credit : History Museum of HK.