Academic literature on the topic 'World War II – civilian experiences, Hong Kong'

During the Second World War, approximately 3,500 Australian military nurses served in combat regions throughout the world. The vast majority were enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS), but after the Japanese advance and the fall of Hong Kong (December 1941) and Singapore (February 1942), a significant number of these nurses spent three-and-a-half years as POWs in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines. To date, considerable research has been undertaken on POW experiences in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Japan, albeit primarily focused on the testimonies of men and civilian women. This body of research utilises various methodologies, from Yuki Tanaka and Kei Ushimura's efforts to reconcile Japanese war crimes with the corruption of the Bushido ethic and sexual violence in contemporary Japanese society, to Christina Twomey's work on the imprisonment and repatriation of Dutch, Dutch–Eurasian and Australian civilian women and children. In the past fifteen years, historians have become aware of the need to recognise the multiplicity of these experiences, rather than continuing to focus on individual community, camp or regional case studies. Nurses are by no means absent from the discussion, although the majority of notable works on this subject focus on Hong Kong or the Philippines and adopt a descriptive and somewhat anecdotal approach. At the same time, scant critical attention has been paid to the internment of nurses in Indonesia despite a wealth of material kept in the Australian War Memorial (AWM) and National Archives of Australia (NAA).

One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Many Portuguese families who left Macau in the mid-nineteenth century attempted to establish a new identity in the nearby and far more successful British colony of Hong Kong. They succeeded in doing this to a limited degree, the limitations being imposed on them chiefly by the constraints of British colonial policy and its social outworkings. Well before the occupation of Hong Kong in 1841, British merchants in Macau had developed contempt for the Portuguese administration of Macau which was transferred to the Portuguese community which established itself in Hong Kong between 1841 and the end of the nineteenth century. As these attitudes hardened, opportunities were denied to people whose abilities were well-recognised in their own community. Conspicuous among them were the Noronha and Braga families, some of whom did well, especially as printers and chemists. Other members of the Portuguese community in Hong Kong found themselves in a position of permanent inferiority in a British-dominated administrative and commercial system with rigid social and racial barriers. The prosperity of Hong Kong could not have developed and been maintained without the sustained reliability of a large group of people who came to be termed ‘the Portuguese clerk class’. Between 1900 and 1941, J.P. Braga, the scion of his family, built on his forebears’ attainments, becoming the leading member of the Portuguese community in Hong Kong, with a significant public career, despite the difficulties he encountered. Most of his children established themselves successfully in the 1920s and 1930s in a rapidly diversifying economy until the catastrophe of the Japanese Occupation forced them to flee to Macau as refugees. The resumption of British rule in 1945 brought about a rapid recovery in the fortunes of the colony and of the generation which succeeded J.P. Braga, who had died during the war. The long-term prospects of the Portuguese community continued to be bound up with those of British rule, which by the 1960s was being challenged. By the end of the twentieth century, the British had departed. So too had most of the Portuguese community, including the Braga family. Between the 1950s and 1970s, most emigrated to the Pacific Rim countries or Portugal and Brazil. Their presence in the Far East had proved to be transitory. Nevertheless they had a major presence in the region for well over a century. This thesis sets out to show how the Portuguese community in Hong Kong, having emigrated from Macau in search of better opportunities, struggled to find a foothold in a British-dominated community that placed it in a position of permanent inferiority. It posits that the role played by a few key families over several generations gradually began to make inroads into, but could never overcome this unstated but firmly maintained policy of racial superiority. It also compares the Portuguese community with several other non-Chinese groups, the Indians, Jews and Americans, during a period of rapid change after World War II which transformed the social and political landscape of Hong Kong.