The Battle..

For Hong Kong.

8th December 1941. This morning you've heard the news of the bombing of pearl harbour just eight hours ago and you've heard plenty of rumours about the fighting on the Chinese mainland. The might of imperial japan is raging forward with unstoppable force.

The fighting was bloody and relentless. The commonwealth forces were doomed from the start being heavily outnumbered with little hope of reinforcements.

The Japanese are pouring across the river onto the island.

The garrison is scared.

Your neighbours are scared.

Your children are scared.

Theres no way off the island.

But what you fear most is a fate worse than death.

The stories of the savagery of imperial japan are well known

You've read in the papers about the POW camps and of the Naking massacre

On christmas day 1941 the commonwealth forces surrendered.

The remaining troops spent the next 3 years in the infamous Japanese POW camps

the remaining civilians were helpless to oppressive japanese occupation.

Hope thats set the scene a bit
not nice stuff but interesting nonetheless
i'm thinking about going in the war direction for my character designs and graphic novel/childrens book

 so lets start with a bit of the ol' imagery

I must point out that some of the following images are canny disturbing and not nice to look at

i also must point out that i know not every Japanese soldier did stuff like this (just like not all german soldiers were nazis and that not every british/yank soldier was a saint.)

anyway...

in case you cant work out whats happening here, that would be chinese civilians getting buried alive.

That would be a soldier getting executed with a sword

I dont think this needs a caption

For those of you interested theres a lot of information about the Nanking massacre here (theres also a photo gallery, with a lot of material i deemed too horrific for this post)

And lookee what i stumbles upon

Private Albert Moralee from the 1st middlesex regiment, captured on the 25/12/1941

and from  10 derby terrace, south shields, county durham

Brings it closer to home dont it?

Anyway i'l be adding more on the battle of hong kong at a later date
I dont think i want to go in the whole war crimes direction
i was talking to malcolm about this the other week, about looking at the day to day sturggle of the common soldier
about how on both sides of no mans land they have a lot in common ya know?

Over n out