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Battle for Hong Kong, December 1941
On the same day as the Pearl Harbor attack, forces of the Japanese Empire attacked the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong without warning. Philip Cracknell provides a research-driven narrative about the Battle for Hong Kong in 1941, which commenced on December 8 and lasted for three weeks until the surrender on Christmas Day 1941. Hong Kong had become a strategic liability, an isolated outpost. It would be sacrificed, but not without a fight. The main priorities for the British in Asia were Malaya and Singapore. The Crown colony was gallantly defended, but it was a battle against overwhelming odds. Crucially, as a resident of Hong Kong for 30 years, the author knows every inch of the ground. He challenges some assumptions, for example the whereabouts of "A" Coy, Winnipeg Grenadiers on December 19, when the company was destroyed during a fighting retreat. What exactly happened, and where were the actions fought? One can still see so much evidence, in the form of pillboxes, gun batteries, and weapons pits. Bullets and other relics can still be picked up lying on the ground. The defending troops mainly consisted of British, Canadian, Indian, and Hong Kong Chinese. Dozens were massacred, including more than 50 St John’s Ambulance personnel—a grim pointer to the hell of the Pacific war that followed. Over the following nearly four years of occupation, an estimated 10,000 Hong Kong civilians were executed. The battle for Hong Kong is a story that deserves to be better known.
320 pages, Paperback
Published October 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 13, 2020
An examination of the Japanese army's overrun of the Crown colony of Hong Kong in December 1941.
Often eclipsed by the subsequent disaster that overcame Malaya, Hong Kong was garrisoned as a diversionary enclave, with parallels to Singapore in its seemingly senseless reinforcement just prior to the Japanese invasion.
Taking into account only the Commonwealth perspective, the collapse of resistance on the mainland, the subsequent withdrawal to Hong Kong Island and the short seige and invasion which followed, with the sadly inevitable cycle of massacre, here centred continually around brutality toward the wounded.
The narrative shoots along at a rapid rate, which left me barely able to catch my breath or, most importantly, my bearings which, combined with poor maps, left me often at a loss as to what wad happening or what effect this had on the overall battle.
On the whole, an important book about an overlooked prelude to the Pacific War, let down by breakneck pace, an overreliance on archaic British military terminology and confusing maps.
Often eclipsed by the subsequent disaster that overcame Malaya, Hong Kong was garrisoned as a diversionary enclave, with parallels to Singapore in its seemingly senseless reinforcement just prior to the Japanese invasion.
Taking into account only the Commonwealth perspective, the collapse of resistance on the mainland, the subsequent withdrawal to Hong Kong Island and the short seige and invasion which followed, with the sadly inevitable cycle of massacre, here centred continually around brutality toward the wounded.
The narrative shoots along at a rapid rate, which left me barely able to catch my breath or, most importantly, my bearings which, combined with poor maps, left me often at a loss as to what wad happening or what effect this had on the overall battle.
On the whole, an important book about an overlooked prelude to the Pacific War, let down by breakneck pace, an overreliance on archaic British military terminology and confusing maps.
February 17, 2020
On the 7th December 1941, two hours after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan declared war not only on the United States but also on the British Empire. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking (1842) that brought the First Opium War to a close, Hong Kong had been ceded by China to the United Kingdom in perpetuity. Though Hong Kong was the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire’s Far East colonial possessions, Winston Churchill had already realised early in 1941 that the colony would be indefensible if Japan ever chose to invade. This accounts for the paucity of British military assets sent to Hong Kong prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Certainly, Hong Kong was viewed as a strategic liability and there had been a policy of siphoning off officer and men from the colony as it was thought they would prove more useful in other theatres of war. However, some reinforcements were sent to Hong Kong in September 1941 to reassure Chiang Kai-shek of China that the United Kingdom was serious about defending the colony, but this was done for geopolitical reasons only and the reinforcements that were sent were of very dubious quality.
So, when Japan attacked Hong Kong about four hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defence consisted of a few antiquated aircraft, some First World War era naval vessels and motor torpedo boats, some assorted infantry battalions of varying quality – British, Indian Army and Canadian – and a motley group of auxiliary and volunteer units often comprised of men of advancing years with the odd few having military experience from the First World War. Philip Cracknell’s book is a detailed account of how these units defended Hong Kong against an invading force of about 30,000 Japanese.
I have been looking for a good book on the battle for Hong Kong for some time and I was hoping that this book by Philip Cracknell might well be it. However, even though the author is a long time Hong Kong resident and has obviously spent years trying to understand the battle by walking the ground where all the major actions took place, and is to be commended for piecing together what actually happened, it is also true that the book suffers somewhat because of all this. The author is not a professional military historian and unfortunately it shows. In describing almost every small action in the battle, and even though maps are provided throughout the narrative to show where those actions were taking place, it is too easy to get lost in that detail and lose the actual strategic and tactical realities of what was happening on the ground – much as the British in their defence of Hong Kong did at the time. Much better from a story-telling point of view to drop in the personal exploits of those involved from time to time and tell the main story from a wider view, I think. It is not necessary to know that the author has discovered used bullet casings in a certain depression in the ground which proves beyond a doubt that a firefight must have occurred there.
This, then, is the issue with the book: it is part military history, part archaeology. And, though a forensic understanding of how a battle developed is useful to historians, and a record made of what has been unearthed is necessary to support or counter eye-witness testimonies of the time, a book telling the story of the whole battle itself is not exactly the place to include all this detail. Furthermore, curiously, the maps often lacked detail and were difficult to place sometimes in the overall geography of Hong Kong Island, and the omission of an Order of Battle for both the Japanese and British forces is a mistake. I could also have used more of a understanding of the Japanese thinking in regard to the battle of Hong Kong, how the Japanese saw the battle developing, how many casualties they incurred on the ground etc. – though I appreciate those records are much harder to track down.
All that being said, even though the book did not quite live up to my expectations, the author needs to be seriously commended for all the work he has done in trying to make proper sense of the chaos of this battle, if only from the British point of view – and to put right many fallacies along the way. I just wished he had taken a step back from all the archaeology and told the story from a slightly wider perspective.
3.5 stars
So, when Japan attacked Hong Kong about four hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defence consisted of a few antiquated aircraft, some First World War era naval vessels and motor torpedo boats, some assorted infantry battalions of varying quality – British, Indian Army and Canadian – and a motley group of auxiliary and volunteer units often comprised of men of advancing years with the odd few having military experience from the First World War. Philip Cracknell’s book is a detailed account of how these units defended Hong Kong against an invading force of about 30,000 Japanese.
I have been looking for a good book on the battle for Hong Kong for some time and I was hoping that this book by Philip Cracknell might well be it. However, even though the author is a long time Hong Kong resident and has obviously spent years trying to understand the battle by walking the ground where all the major actions took place, and is to be commended for piecing together what actually happened, it is also true that the book suffers somewhat because of all this. The author is not a professional military historian and unfortunately it shows. In describing almost every small action in the battle, and even though maps are provided throughout the narrative to show where those actions were taking place, it is too easy to get lost in that detail and lose the actual strategic and tactical realities of what was happening on the ground – much as the British in their defence of Hong Kong did at the time. Much better from a story-telling point of view to drop in the personal exploits of those involved from time to time and tell the main story from a wider view, I think. It is not necessary to know that the author has discovered used bullet casings in a certain depression in the ground which proves beyond a doubt that a firefight must have occurred there.
This, then, is the issue with the book: it is part military history, part archaeology. And, though a forensic understanding of how a battle developed is useful to historians, and a record made of what has been unearthed is necessary to support or counter eye-witness testimonies of the time, a book telling the story of the whole battle itself is not exactly the place to include all this detail. Furthermore, curiously, the maps often lacked detail and were difficult to place sometimes in the overall geography of Hong Kong Island, and the omission of an Order of Battle for both the Japanese and British forces is a mistake. I could also have used more of a understanding of the Japanese thinking in regard to the battle of Hong Kong, how the Japanese saw the battle developing, how many casualties they incurred on the ground etc. – though I appreciate those records are much harder to track down.
All that being said, even though the book did not quite live up to my expectations, the author needs to be seriously commended for all the work he has done in trying to make proper sense of the chaos of this battle, if only from the British point of view – and to put right many fallacies along the way. I just wished he had taken a step back from all the archaeology and told the story from a slightly wider perspective.
3.5 stars
January 1, 2020
This book is a very detailed blow by blow account, which has its uses, but there's not a lot of analysis, I don't think, and as usual with a lot of military history books although there are a lot of maps most are not particularly brilliant. There's also no handy order of battle summary. Still definitely worth a read if you're at all interested in this particular campaign or the first part of WW2 in the Far East. You can find decent maps of HK at the time via Google. I'll print one out sometime and read it again.
March 22, 2025
Great detailed narrative of the battle, too much in detail for me in fact. I goes down to the individual local battles that occurred around and inside the island of Hong Kong. The author even goes to the point of explaining the current situation of several of these locations, bunkers and pillboxes.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews