| A
brief historical background
In the early 1800's
Hong Kong, a name meaning Fragrant Harbour, was a tiny fishing village
with an excellent seaport. England made Hong Kong its gateway to the
treasures of Asia. It quickly became a thriving center of trade and
commerce and England's source of tea, luxurious silks, porcelain, and
fine bone china. It also became a bone of contention between the Chinese
and the English.
The English discovered that paying for china from China with cheap opium
from India was much more profitable than paying for it with silver,
which was the form of payment the Chinese Government wanted. But, the
English traders did business directly with the Chinese merchants and
paid for the goods with what the merchants wanted ... opium. The
merchants sold the opium to the people and became rich. The Chinese
people became opium addicts.
So many Chinese became addicted that the economy of China suffered from
lack of hard currency and an over abundance of opium addicts. The
Chinese Government banned the drug, destroyed huge quantities of it, and
sunk a British ship carrying a large cargo of opium into Hong Kong. The
British considered this unfair business practices, and war like. In 1842
England and China fought the first of two wars called, appropriately,
"The Opium Wars, One and Two."
England was victorious in 1842 and China ceded Hong Kong Island to the
English that year with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. More
battles were fought over the years, with the second major conflict,
Opium War number Two, being fought in 1860. The Brits were again
victorious. This time China ceded Kowloon and other lands called
"The New Territories" to Britain. In 1898 England, tired of
bickering, negotiated a lease with China, and Hong Kong became theirs to
run for 99 years. This agreement put an end to the squabbling and Hong
Kong continued to grow into a center of world trade that profited both
the Chinese and the British into the next century. It also became a
territory coveted by the Japanese who set out to capture the Colony in
December of 1941, having conquered a lot of China in the previous
several years.
On December 8th, 1941, (December 7th, in Canada), Japan launched an
all out assault against The New Territories, Kowloon, and the island
of Hong Kong. They used 60,000 battle-hardened troops who had been
fighting a murderous war against China since 1932. In that clash the
14,000 untried troops they attacked put up a fierce resistance, but
in the end, after 18 bloody days, Japanese troops captured Hong Kong,
and its defending troops on Christmas Day. Among them were "D"
Company of the Royal Rifles of Canada, and my Dad. |
This
is, in part, the story of "D" Company of the Royal Rifles of
Canada. It is about one hundred and sixty men who fought a battle more
than half a century ago that hardly anyone remembers any more, and don't
much care about either.
It is a story about Canadians put in harm's way by men of ambition, by
politicians for political and economic reasons, and by military leaders
who knew that if a battle were to ensue it could not be won, but wanted
in on the action anyway. I have chosen to focus my story on the Royal
Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers. To attempt to tell the
whole story of all the allied troops who fought the battle of Hong Kong
would do none of them justice, and historical justice they deserve. Hong
Kong is an almost forgotten chapter in Canadian Military history.
and the men and women who fought, were wounded, died, or survived to
spend years in captivity. It is a brutal story that words cannot
precisely describe. |
