Hong Kong’s East River Column Remembered

Posted: June 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

After WW2 the British suppressed any talk of what went on in Hong Kong during the war. Hong Kong swiftly got back into the swing of things as a British crown colony after the liberation and put the war behind it. The newspapers, such as the South China Morning Post, played their part. The reinstalled colonial government told the newspapers to leave alone stories of collaboration by Hong Kong residents with the Japanese during the occupation for the sake of the recovery effort and the resumption of trade without scapegoats and reprisals. By and large, the papers and their editors complied with the request, despite having evidence that some of the major business families and groups (British and Chinese) had openly fraternised and traded with the enemy in both Hong Kong and Macau. A good book is still to be written on the subject of collaboration by major British and Chinese companies in Hong Kong during the War – I hope someone does it soon.

This also meant that stories of resistance often got suppressed in the name of getting business going again. This means that Chan Sui-jeung’s new book – East River Column: Hong Kong Guerrillas in the Second World War and After – is both important and, for many people, a previously little known story. Chan Sui-jeung was a District Officer in Sai Kung, New Territories Administration, where he met many of the veterans of the East River Column, the Chinese guerrilla forces who harassed the Japanese and played a crucial part in the escapes from Hong Kong’s prisoner of war camps and in rescuing Allied airmen.

When the Hong Kong resistance story has been told it’s largely been one of the British forces and their defeat on Christmas Day 1941 but the East River Column stayed right on fighting after the collapse of the British.

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