Japanese Occupation Timeline

By hangwong

  • 1. Winston Churchill realizes that Hong Kong is in danger and decides to send reinforcements.

  • 3. 36 Japanese fighters attack Kai Tak airfield and units of the Japanese 23rd cross the Sham Chun Shan River.

  • 2. Canadian troops arrive on the HMCS Prince Robert.

  • 4. Evacuation of New Territories.

  • 5. Evacuation of Kowloon.

  • 6. Japanese demand surrender (surrender is ignored).

  • 7. Japanese begin a heavy bombing and artillery barrage of the island's northern coastal defenses.

  • 8. Japanese main attack Hong Kong Island.

  • 9. Grenadiers Retake Mount Butler with heavy casualties.

  • 10. HK Commanding officer Lawson was killed as Fortress Hong Kong was captured.

  • 11. Royal rifles Retreat to Stanley.

  • 12. Japanese attack Royal rifles and capture Stanley fort. (5:00am)

  • 13. Japanese attack St. Stephens’s College. (6:00am)

  • 14. Mt Cameron captured and Maltby calls for Governor Young to surrender. (3:15pm)

  • 15. Over the month, 10,000 women are raped.

  • 16. Police recruited to be Kempeitai.

  • 17. Hong Kong Dollar was outlawed and replaced by the Japanese Military Yen. The exchange rate was fixed at 2 Hong Kong dollars to one military yen.

  • 18. The HK-Kowloon Brigade (港九大隊) was established from the Guangdong People's anti-Japanese Guerilla force led by Cai Guo-liang (蔡國梁).

  • 19. Food rationing begins.

  • 20. Streets and buildings in Central were renamed in Japanese.

  • 21. The British Army Aid Group was formed by Colonel Lindsay Ride.

  • 22. Public utilities handed over to Japanese control.

  • 23. Repatriation of Chinese back to the mainland.

  • 24. Internment of most 'white' (western) Allied civilians.

  • 25. The US dropped an atomic bomb from a plane, called the “Enola Gay” on Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 instantaneously.

  • 26. Another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

  • 27. Japan finally surrenders.

  • 28. Hong Kong was handed over by the Imperial Japanese Army to the Royal Navy.

  • 29. The "30 August" was declared as the "Liberation Day" (Chinese: 重光紀念日), and had been a public holiday in Hong Kong until 1967.

  • 30. Franklin Gimson, Hong Kong's colonial secretary, declares himself interim governor.

  • 31. British Rear Admiral Sir Cecil Halliday Jepson Harcourt formally accepts the Japanese surrender; Mark Young resumes as Governor.

  • 32. General Takashi Sakai, is tried as a war criminal and executed on the afternoon of