Addendum: Hong Kong 8th -26th December 1941
Garrison
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Addendum: Hong Kong 8th -26th December 1941
‘The fall of Hong Kong was undeniably a blow, but the unpalatable truth was that in the larger scheme of things it was one that we had already discounted.’
‘The fall of Hong Kong was undeniably a blow, but the unpalatable truth was that in the larger scheme of things it was one that we had already discounted.’
From the Memoirs of Anthony Eden
The reasons why Hong Kong was judged indefensible could be found by simply looking at a map. The Japanese occupied the area of China immediately adjacent to Kowloon and the New Territories. The island of Formosa to the northeast of Hong Kong had been a Japanese colony for decades and they also held the island of Hainan to the south of Hong Kong. The occupation of Indochina in 1940 meant that Hong Kong was surrounded and the IJAAF was well placed to interdict any attempt to resupply the colony while the IJA could bring overwhelming force to bear from the mainland, potentially backed up by their own amphibious operations. The British colonial inhabitants of Hong Kong apparently could not read a map, or simply refused to believe that the physically and intellectually inferior Japanese would dare to attack an outpost of the British Empire. Even when the reinforcements scheduled to arrive in the autumn of 1941 were diverted to Malaya this was not seen as an ominous sign, rather the armchair experts in Hong Kong chose to interpret it as meaning that the likelihood of a Japanese attack had diminished and that a diplomatic resolution to the tensions between the USA and Japan was in the offing, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
The British garrison in Hong Kong was advised that this was a wildly optimistic assessment at best and that they should remain on guard against an attack, though with barely 7500 troops to defend the entirety of the colony the best that was hoped for was that they would be able to hold out long enough for a relief force to be dispatched from Malaya, or if the US was drawn into a more general war they might be able to dispatch some assistance . All of this was based on a series of improbable assumptions about how such a conflict with the Japanese would unfold, including that some form of Plan Orange would be enacted and the IJN would be drawn into a major naval battle near the Philippines, allowing the Royal Navy considerable latitude in conducting its own operations.
Efforts had been made to improve the defences of the colony, especially with respect to holding Hong Island itself. What was called the ‘Gin Drinkers Line’ was a defensive perimeter that took advantage of the mountainous terrain north of Kowloon to construct a series of fortified positions linked together by paths to allow troops to move swiftly between different parts of the line, as there simply weren’t enough troops or equipment to properly man the whole of the line. Despite the obvious differences prior to 1940 the Gin Drinker Line was referred to in approving terms as the Maginot Line of the Orient. Even after the utter failure of the French fortifications there was still confidence that the Gin Drinker Line would hold as unlike the Maginot Line it could not easily be flanked. The Japanese initially agreed with the British assessment of the Gin Drinker Line, see breaking it as a considerable challenge and fearing it could hold them up for months. This changed as their intelligence and reconnaissance efforts revealed just how thinly the line was held. The persistent belief among the local commanders, who in turn persuaded a number of politicians in London, that the Gin Drinker Line might be held with enough manpower committed was the reason Churchill had been persuaded to reverse his position on sending reinforcements to Hong Kong and it took the combined efforts of Montgomery and Alanbrooke to convince the Prime Minister that it was still a forlorn hope.
The final plan for the Gin Drinker Line called for the British forces to destroy bridges and any other infrastructure to impede the Japanese advance before retreating to the fortified line and digging in there. When the Japanese attack on Pearl harbour took place, the order went out to detonate the charges that had been set to destroy the bridges. This was carried out but did not do much to slow the Japanese advance and disaster struck the Gin Drinkers Line on the 9th of December when the Japanese attacked and overran the Shing Mu Redoubt, fatally compromising the western side of the line. The Japanese moved swiftly to exploit their success and by the 12th they had taken Kai Tak airport. That same day the Japanese engaged the last line of defence short of Hong Kong Island itself at Devil’s Peak. When they broke through here the Japanese regrouped for several days before crossing the narrow stretch of water that separated Kowloon from the island and they launched their assault around 2015 Hours on the 18th of December. The defenders did their best, forcing the Japanese to fight hard to clear one strongpoint after another but Hong Kong finally fell to the Japanese on the 26th of December 1941.
For the British Empire troops in Hong Kong surrender did not mark the end of their suffering. The Japanese regarded them as beneath contempt for surrendering and the POWs were subjected to the brutality for which the Imperial Japanese became infamous as the war progressed. The civilian population also suffered badly at the hands of the occupiers, with white colonials and native being subjected to hunger, forced labour and summary execution with a fine lack of discrimination. Had the rest of the Japanese campaign in the region achieved the swift and decisive success of the invasion of Hong Kong the entire strategic position of the Allies in the Pacific might have collapsed, and the Japanese might have had a slim chance of forcing them to make peace, though given the American rage after Pearl Harbor it would have been a very faint one. As it was the victory in Hong Kong provided something for Japanese propaganda to latch on to and ignore the fact that much of the rest of their strategy was in tatters.