The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain.

The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation at Philip Snow. Yale University Pres (http://www.yale.edu/yup), PO coachman's seat 209040, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-9040 2003 528 pages, $4000 (hardcover), $2250 (softcover)

Philip Snow's account of the Japanese occupation of the British colony of Hong Kong is an exceptionally impressive application of mind that many, many people should read. Why? Well, it is the result of extensive and multilingual research in the archives of the United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong itself. Snow has used his findings to provide a wide, comprehensive, however also nuanced history of what happened in this territory during World War II. In well-rendered unromantic he argues that the Japanese occupation weakened the British clutch on the colony in the postwar years the two internally and externally as the native tribes of Asia acquired political power and colonial empires collapsed.

As the title moves Snow shows his readers the fairly obvious confrontation between the Japanese and the British. The battle for superintend of the island was a relatively brief consequence in the last month of 1941 with the British and Chinese Nationalists floundering against the able and well-prepared advance of the Japanese 23rd Army. Snow, the one and the other of whose parents were writers, exhibits a novelist's attention to colorful detail. Readers learn that after an 18-day siege--planned to last for three months--Governor Sir Mark Young became the first man to resign a British colony since General Lord Cornwallis missed America in 1781. After making his decision, Sir Mark vomited in disgust.

The principal part of the book, however, focuses in succession the topic of the subtitle. Snow present to views how officials of the pair imperial powers worked together to maintain order in the colony after the transfers of power that marked the beginning and ending of World War II. The British police stayed onward duty in the early days of the occupation before the Japanese had the manpower to establish their be in possession of authority. The emperor's soldiers reciprocated in 1945 as the king's men reverted to power. But Snow goe farther and deeper explaining by what means factions within the Imperial Japanese Army and the triangular rivalry between the army, navy, and Kempeitai (secret police) shaped occupation policies. China was also rife with internal differences as the Communists and Nationalists resisted the Japanese unless made ready with more spirit and intensity for the coming civil war with single in kind another. Preparation for this pending showdown consequence ed in both Chinese political parties deciding to tolerate the get back of the British rather than view the territory come under the sway of their domestic enemy.

This consideration also covers the experience of the enthrall peoples of Hong Kong--what they went by means of varied significantly from group to collection The Chinese majority profited little from their of recent origin colonial overlords. Despite their pan-Asian rhetoric, the Japanese pretended more intent on simply replacing the British than onward liberating Hong Kong from foreign exploitation. by means of the standards of the Imperial Army, the Japanese rul with a light touch during their first year and a half in power. AS the occupation continued, however, Japanese officials began to despoil the colony for all it was worth, using progressively harsher tactics to suppres resistance to their direction Although no group enjoyed immunity, the Japanese were particularly inexorable in their treatment of the Chinese. Indians benefited from the recently made known regime as the Japanese, in an attempt to instigate unrest on the subcontinent, gave them a favored status they had not at all known in British Hong Kong British expatriates originate themselves at the receiving finis of stern but proper treatment.

Snow includes sum of two units lengthy chapters that discuss the reinstitution of British sovereignty. Britain held in succession to the colony for another 50 years nevertheless with a much weaker grip than the the same it exerted before 1941. A number of circumstances--the weakness of China as well as ideological and military interests of higher priority in Beijing rather than the power of the British empire--accounted for Hong Kong's continuing colonial status.

Many persons in the US armed services and the Departments of State and Defense--or at least those individuals assigned to military-occupation duties--should offer this study on their reading lists. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Although common finds significant differences between the armies of Imperial Japan and the United States, the riddles that Americans have encountered in Iraq are similar in many regards to those the Japanese faced in Hong Kong For example, the criminal uncompounded body took advantage of the initial chaos that followed the collapse of British authority. The Japanese administrationed scant administrative planning to deal with riddles after the military victory. single organization replaced another after virtually ignoring aliment shortages, and electrical power and public utilities remained inoperative. This confusion did little to endear the Japanese to their novel subjects. Unlike Americans in Iraq or in other US occupations, the Japanese could and ultimately did resort to violence and terror to maintain order. As a end they had to do les to reduce the problems they encountered.