HKU Bulletin May 2012 (Vol. 13 No. 2)

Research In Defence of Hong Kong’s WWII Pillboxes: The Truth about the Gin Drinker’s Line A team from HKU have done a study on British and Japanese WWII military installations in Hong Kong for the purpose of preserving this important historic heritage – not a team of archaeologists, but a team of architects, planners, surveyors and enthusiasts. We’d like the government to form a proper conservation policy to protect the Shing Mun site and to promote interest in it. The main aims of the study were two-fold: One to spark interest and two to conserve. Project organisers Professor Lawrence Lai and Dr Daniel Ho both of the Department of Real Estate and Construction, and Dr Lee Ho-yin of the Department of Architecture worked alongside an interdisciplinary team of experts, as well as enthusiasts from the community. They set out to study British and Japanese World War II military installations in Hong Kong and over several years conducted land surveys on key military structures. Scattered all over Hong Kong, but often largely unnoticed, these structures included gun batteries, block houses, pillboxes, firing trenches and tunnels along the defence lines at war and at major battlefields. The team identified and mapped a total of 93 pillboxes along the so-called Gin Drinker’s Line, a defensive system known as the ‘Maginot of the East’, which ran across the New Territories from Gin Drinker’s Bay (Kwai Chung) to Port Shelter to defend against enemy invasion from the north into the Kowloon Peninsula and over to Hong Kong Island. They also measured and mapped the incredible and extensive network of tunnels of the Shing Mun Redoubt above Shing Mun Reservoir – a bastion of the Gin Drinker’s Line where an important and controversial battle which saw Japanese soldiers overrun the Redoubt in just three hours. After the fall of the Redoubt, the British defence of Kowloon unraveled and they quickly evacuated the Kowloon Peninsula. As a result, the Japanese were able to conquer the rest of the Mainland with little trouble. Over the years there has been some arguments about how and why this battle was lost so quickly – the team’s research threw up some informed hypotheses. ‘Evacuation inevitable’ “The British knew that if Japan invaded, the evacuation of Hong Kong was inevitable,” says Professor Lai, “but strategy was to deny Victoria Harbour to the enemy. It was thought that Shing Mun would hold for a week. To be fair it was undermanned – the Japanese had a regiment of battle-hardened soldiers who’d seen action at the infamous Battle of Nanjing, the Allies had about 40 Royal Scots.” “Having studied the layout, what we now think happened is that the Japanese attack force realised that the Redoubt was unprepared (the observation post [OP] was facing the wrong direction), and took the initiative to attack in darkness, easily taking the Redoubt. They held 20 guys captive in the OP.” Tai Hom Village Pillbox Professor Lawrence Lai, Department of Real Estate and Construction Dr Lee Ho-yin 27 May 2012 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin