Ein vergessener Kampf lehrte einem Mann alles über die Menschheit

*Richard Frost and Mary Hui for Bloomberg News*

The battle for Hong Kong is one of the least told stories of World War II. It began early on Dec. 8, 1941, when the Japanese fielded some 35,000 troops against a 13,500-strong garrison that included British, Indian and local soldiers, as well as 2,000 recently arrived Canadian troops. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill had privately confided there wouldn’t be “the slightest chance” of victory, yet the local forces held out for the next 18 days.

Much of the combat took place in the hills around Hong Kong Island (where battlefields are overgrown but largely intact today). By late December, the defenders had their backs to the sea with nowhere to go; on Dec. 25, Governor Mark Young raised the white flag. The garrison had suffered 3,445 casualties, while Japanese losses numbered 2,218. Another 4,000 civilians were killed or wounded.

The soldiers who survived the fighting would be held in camps for the next 44 months. Starvation, beatings and torture were commonplace. On a single day in October 1943, 33 British, Chinese and Indian captives were beheaded for resisting Japanese rule.

By the time the war ended, Hong Kong’s population had dropped to some 500,000 from a refugee-swollen 1.6 million in 1941. Many had fled to mainland China, but Banham estimates about 330,000 people died during the Japanese occupation. The city’s economy and infrastructure were left in ruins.

Tony Banham’s study of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941 captures thousands of stories tied together by a shared tragedy. [Read the full story here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-15/japan-s-wwii-invasion-of-hong-kong-left-stories-that-one-man-wants-to-tell)