WELL TO SUSTAIN HONG KONG AGAINST THIS ASSAULT BY THE ENEMY. FIGHT ON, HOLD FAST FOR KING, COUNTRY AND EMPIRE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL IN THIS FINEST HOUR.
Christmas Day in the British army in more serene times was given over to light-hearted reversal of the traditional norms. Sergeants took early morning tea to the ranks, still in bed, and officers waited on them at table. It was an interlude of uninhibited fraternization, football matches, and jolly intemperance. In Hong Kong more than half the island had been overrun, and the defenders were still grudgingly giving way—nearly sleepless Middlesexers, Scots, Canadians, Australians, Rajputs, and Punjabis—reduced to a few light machine guns, rifles, and hand grenades. All were on nearly depleted short rations of food and water. A Red Cross flag on the War Memorial Hospital, where a group of Winnipeg Grenadiers were offered tots of whiskey and a routine “Merry Christmas!” by Lieutenant Colonel George Black, MD, a sixtyish veteran of the earlier war, furnished no respite from shelling. Soon the wounded were being bayoneted in their beds.
The last radio message from abroad before communications failed had been from the Prime Minister to Sir Mark Young. Empty of reality and heedless of the human cost, it directed that “the enemy should be compelled to expend the utmost life and equipment.... Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you help the Allied cause all over the world, and by a prolonged resistance you and your men can win the lasting honour which we are sure will be your due.”
What early Christmas dinner Sir Mark was served in shelled Government House is unrecorded. His military commander, Major General Charles Maltby, with his aide, Lieutenant MacGregor, sat on upturned ammunition boxes and shared a tin of asparagus and a half-bottle of lukewarm Liebfraumilch. Others on the staff opened tins of bully-beef and biscuits, and beer, pickled onions, and cognac—anything that was left. At 3:15 P.M.—early morning in Washington—General Maltby, informed that the situation everywhere was “damned sticky,” issued orders to break off fighting. Early that evening he and Sir Mark surrendered the remnants of their forces—and the island—to Lieutenant General Sakai. About four thousand defenders had died and nine thousand were wounded. Thousands more, soldier and civilian, would die in grim prisoner of war camps.
“The report of the fall of Hong Kong came,” Admiral Ugaki noted. “It seemed that they had a hard fight with the English troops who defended well. Indeed the English troops should be praised.” Like other senior Japanese officers, he condemned retreat and saluted standing to the end.
The Japanese trooping into Hong Kong the day after the British surrendered on Christmas Day, 1941. University of Hong Kong History Archives
“Jolo was successfully occupied this morning,” he also recorded. Southwest of Mindanao, Jolo was a small undefended Philippine island east of Borneo, where the British were fighting off a second Japanese landing attempt on Sarawak. (Mili, to the far northeast, had been occupied easily on the fifteenth.) At Kuching, the capital of the semi-independent protectorate with a ruling “White Rajah,” third in the family line, who had left Sarawak for Sydney, Australia, “enemy ships attacked one destroyer, Sagiri, besides four [troop] transports. Torpedoes struck the [destroyer], and she sank.... Half of the crew were saved.” Soon after, a minesweeper and transport went down in the bay off Kuching. The Southern Expeditionary Force had asked for air support from carriers, but there was “no spare strength.” Kuching was overwhelmed, more expensively than anticipated, beginning the movement south into Dutch-held Borneo.
What Ugaki did not note was that on December 25 the Japanese celebrated not the Western Christmas but the fifteenth anniversary of the succession of Emperor Hirohito to the Imperial Throne,
Christmas Day in the British army in more serene times was given over to light-hearted reversal of the traditional norms. Sergeants took early morning tea to the ranks, still in bed, and officers waited on them at table. It was an interlude of uninhibited fraternization, football matches, and jolly intemperance. In Hong Kong more than half the island had been overrun, and the defenders were still grudgingly giving way—nearly sleepless Middlesexers, Scots, Canadians, Australians, Rajputs, and Punjabis—reduced to a few light machine guns, rifles, and hand grenades. All were on nearly depleted short rations of food and water. A Red Cross flag on the War Memorial Hospital, where a group of Winnipeg Grenadiers were offered tots of whiskey and a routine “Merry Christmas!” by Lieutenant Colonel George Black, MD, a sixtyish veteran of the earlier war, furnished no respite from shelling. Soon the wounded were being bayoneted in their beds.
The last radio message from abroad before communications failed had been from the Prime Minister to Sir Mark Young. Empty of reality and heedless of the human cost, it directed that “the enemy should be compelled to expend the utmost life and equipment.... Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance you help the Allied cause all over the world, and by a prolonged resistance you and your men can win the lasting honour which we are sure will be your due.”
What early Christmas dinner Sir Mark was served in shelled Government House is unrecorded. His military commander, Major General Charles Maltby, with his aide, Lieutenant MacGregor, sat on upturned ammunition boxes and shared a tin of asparagus and a half-bottle of lukewarm Liebfraumilch. Others on the staff opened tins of bully-beef and biscuits, and beer, pickled onions, and cognac—anything that was left. At 3:15 P.M.—early morning in Washington—General Maltby, informed that the situation everywhere was “damned sticky,” issued orders to break off fighting. Early that evening he and Sir Mark surrendered the remnants of their forces—and the island—to Lieutenant General Sakai. About four thousand defenders had died and nine thousand were wounded. Thousands more, soldier and civilian, would die in grim prisoner of war camps.
“The report of the fall of Hong Kong came,” Admiral Ugaki noted. “It seemed that they had a hard fight with the English troops who defended well. Indeed the English troops should be praised.” Like other senior Japanese officers, he condemned retreat and saluted standing to the end.
The Japanese trooping into Hong Kong the day after the British surrendered on Christmas Day, 1941. University of Hong Kong History Archives
“Jolo was successfully occupied this morning,” he also recorded. Southwest of Mindanao, Jolo was a small undefended Philippine island east of Borneo, where the British were fighting off a second Japanese landing attempt on Sarawak. (Mili, to the far northeast, had been occupied easily on the fifteenth.) At Kuching, the capital of the semi-independent protectorate with a ruling “White Rajah,” third in the family line, who had left Sarawak for Sydney, Australia, “enemy ships attacked one destroyer, Sagiri, besides four [troop] transports. Torpedoes struck the [destroyer], and she sank.... Half of the crew were saved.” Soon after, a minesweeper and transport went down in the bay off Kuching. The Southern Expeditionary Force had asked for air support from carriers, but there was “no spare strength.” Kuching was overwhelmed, more expensively than anticipated, beginning the movement south into Dutch-held Borneo.
What Ugaki did not note was that on December 25 the Japanese celebrated not the Western Christmas but the fifteenth anniversary of the succession of Emperor Hirohito to the Imperial Throne,
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