Īccording to Ward, "when the real fighting came it was the British soldiery that broke and ran. US Consul Robert Ward, the highest ranking US official posted to Hong Kong in the period preceding the outbreak of hostilities, offered a first-hand explanation for the rapid collapse of defences in Hong Kong by saying that the local British community had insufficiently prepared itself or the Chinese populace for war besides highlighting the prejudiced attitudes held by those governing the Crown Colony of Hong Kong: "several of them (the British rulers) said frankly that they would rather turn the island over to the Japanese rather than to turn it over to the Chinese, by which they meant rather than employ Chinese to defend the colony they would surrender it to the Japanese". The British military in Hong Kong grossly underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese forces and downplayed assessments that the Japanese posed a serious threat as 'unpatriotic' and 'insubordinate'.
Victoria 2 japan strategy manual#
Īccording to the history manual of the United States Military Academy: "Japanese control of Canton, Hainan Island, French Indo-China, and Formosa virtually sealed the fate of Hong Kong well before the firing of the first shot". The Gin Drinker's Line was expected to hold out for at least three weeks, following which all defenders would withdraw to Hong Kong Island which would be defended and use of the harbour denied until reinforcements could arrive from Singapore or the Philippines. The plan for the defence of Hong Kong was that a delaying action would be fought in the New Territories and Kowloon peninsula to allow the destruction of vital infrastructure and stores there. In September 1941, they reversed their decision and argued that additional reinforcements would provide a military deterrent against the Japanese and reassure Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek that Britain was serious about defending the colony. Winston Churchill and the general staff named Hong Kong as an outpost, and decided against sending more troops.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command argued that limited reinforcements could allow the garrison to delay a Japanese attack, gaining time elsewhere. By 1940, the British determined to reduce the Hong Kong Garrison to only a symbolic size. British defence studies concluded that Hong Kong would be extremely hard to defend in the event of a Japanese attack, but in the mid-1930s work began on improvements to defences including along the Gin Drinkers' Line. On 21 October 1938 the Japanese occupied Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong was surrounded. 2.1.2 Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artilleryīritain first thought of Japan as a threat with the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921, a threat that increased throughout the 1930s with the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War.Within a week the defenders abandoned the mainland and less than two weeks later, with their position on the island untenable, the colony surrendered. The Hong Kong garrison consisted of British, Indian and Canadian units, also the Auxiliary Defence Units and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC). On the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor, forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the British Crown colony of Hong Kong, without declaring war against the British Empire. The Battle of Hong Kong (8–25 December 1941), also known as the Defence of Hong Kong and the Fall of Hong Kong, was one of the first battles of the Pacific War in World War II.
0 kommentar(er)
