1 Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 177.
2 Kevin Lui, “How Untrained Canadian Troops Fought and Died in the Defense of Hong Kong,” Time Magazine, 17 January 2017,
https://time.com/4635638/battle-of-hong-kong-canada-winnipeg-grenadiers-royal-rifles/.
3 Legion Magazine Staff, “Face To Face: Should The Canadian Government Have Sent Troops To Hong Kong?” Legion Magazine, 1 January 2015,
https://legionmagazine.com/en/2015/01/face-to-face-should-the-canadiangovernment-have-sent-troops-to-hong-kong/.
4 Tony Banham, “A Historiography of C Force,” Canadian Military
History 24, no. 2 (2015): 254.
5 Kwong Chi Man and Tsoi Yiu Lun,
Eastern Fortress: A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840–1970 (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 10. Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally:
China’s World War II, 1937–1945 (Boston: Mariner Books, 2014), 29.
6
Kwong and Tsoi, Eastern Fortress, 15.
7 Ibid., 55, 223.
8 Ibid.,
27, 29, 31.
9 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CAB 11/57,
Report of Local Committee Hong Kong, November 1889, 1.
10 TNA, CAB
11/57, Report of Local Committee, 1889, 2.
11 TNA, CAB 11/57,
Amended Scheme of Defence, 28 August 1890.
12 TNA, CAB 11/57,
Defence Scheme, 10 July 1895, 2–3.
13 Kwong and Tsoi, Eastern
Fortress, 49–50.
14 Ibid., 52.
15 Library and Archives Canada
(hereafter LAC), Department of National Defence fonds, RG 24, volume
18571, file “951.003 (D6), The Singapore Base”, memorandum on the
Singapore Base 1930, page 1.
16 TNA, ADM 1/8890, Enclosure No. 3 to
Letter from Commodore Hong Kong, 19 February 1906, 2.
17 TNA, ADM
1/8890, Lambton Report, 25 November 1908, 1, 19, 20–21.
18 David
Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London:
Penguin Books, 2012), 123.
19 H.P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance:
Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis,
Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 27; Jeremy A. Yellen, The
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2019), 13.
20 Ibid.,
29–30.
21 Michael G. Fry, Illusions of Security: North Atlantic
Diplomacy 1918–22 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 34–35,
92–98.
22 Ibid., 152.
23 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the
Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 20.
24 Kwong and Tsoi, Eastern Fortress, 74.
25 Christopher Bell, “The
‘Singapore Strategy’ and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the
Admiralty and the Dispatch of Force Z,” The English Historical Review
116, no. 467 (2001): 610.
26 Malcolm H. Murfett et al., Between Two
Oceans: A Military History of Singapore from First Settlement to Final
British Withdrawal (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2004), 186.
27 Ibid., 194–195.
28 S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan: The
Loss of Singapore (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957), 3, 6.
Murfett et al., Between Two Oceans, 195.
29 Ibid., 196, 199.
30
TNA, ADM 1/8711/148, Question of removal of Naval and Military Premises
in Hong Kong, 12 February 1925, 2.
31 B.J.C. McKercher, “The Politics of Naval Arms Limitation in
Britain in the 1920s,” in The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval
Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor, eds. Erik
Goldstein and John Maurer (London: Routledge, 1994), 42.
32 Ibid.,
44–45.
33 Ibid., 51–52.
34 Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, 20.
35
TNA, ADM 116/3/165, The Washington Conference and its Effect upon
Empire Naval Policy and Co-Operation, 7 April 1922, 3. 91
36 Kent Fedorowich, “‘Cocked Hats and Swords and Small Little
Garrisons’: Britain, Canada and the Fall of Hong Kong, 1941,”
Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (2003): 117.
37 LAC, DND
fonds, RG 24, volume 18571, file “951.003 (D22), “Hong Kong
Coast Defences”, Committee of Imperial Defence Hong Kong Coast
Defences, memorandum by the Joint Oversea and Home Defence
SubCommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence 14 January
1936, page 1.
38 Ibid., page 3.
39 LAC, DND fonds, RG 24,
volume 18571, file “951.003 (D22), “Hong Kong Coast Defences”,
note by the Secretary, 10 February 1936.
40 TNA, CAB 11/196,
Hong Kong Defence Scheme, 1936, Chapter 1, 11.
41 Ibid.,
Chapter 4, 58–59.
42 Ibid., Chapter 1, 8. 93
43 Ibid.,
Chapter 1, 15.
44 LAC, DND fonds, RG 24, volume 18571, file
“951.003 (D23), The Policy for the Defence of Hong Kong”, The
Policy for the Defence of Hong Kong, 15 July 1938, page 1.
45 Ibid., page 2.
46 Ibid., page 1–2.
47 Ibid., page 3–6.
48 Ibid., page 8.
49 TNA, ADM 116/4356, Telegram from C.
in C. China to Admiralty, 18 July 1939. 95
50 Rob Weir, “A
Note on British Blockhouses in Hong Kong,” Surveying and Built
Environment 22, no. 1 (2012): 8– 11.
51 Chi Man Kwong,
“Reconstructing the Early History of the Gin Drinker’s Line from
Archival Sources,” Surveying and Built Environment 22, no. 1
(2012): 24.
52 Ibid., 24.
53 TNA, WO 106/111, Report on
the Defences of Hong Kong, Part 1, 1934, 16. Kwong
“Reconstructing the Early History of the Gin Drinker’s Line,”
25.
54 Ibid., 26, 29. 55
56 TNA, CAB 11/196, Hong Kong
Defence Scheme, 1936, Chapter 4, 59.
57 Kwong,
“Reconstructing the Early History of the Gin Drinker’s Line,”
32–33. 58 Ibid., 33.
59 Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 80. 98
60 TNA, CO 129/571/11, Telegram from A.P. Blunt to Governor Hong
Kong, 16 December 1938, 1.
61 TNA, CO 129/571/11, Telegram
from G.O.C. Hong Kong to War Office, 1 December 1938.
62
TNA, CO 129/571/11, Letter from G.A. Northcote to H.R. Cowell,
14 November 1938.
63 TNA, CO 129/571/11, Memorandum of
Interview, 27 October 1938, 1.
64 TNA, CO 129/571/11, Visit
of Major Matsitani, of the Japanese Army, to Hong Kong, 27
October 1938, 1. Ibid., Telegram from C. in C. China, 26
November 1938.
65 TNA, CAB 96/1, War Cabinet Far East
Committee, Restriction of Exports of War Materials to China from
Hong Kong, 22 October 1940, 1.
66 Mitter, Forgotten Ally,
222.
67 Franco David Macri, “Abandoning the Outpost:
Rejection of the Hong Kong Purchase Scheme of 1938–39,” Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 50, 304.
68
TNA, ADM 1/9820, Letter from H.E. Pollock to Commodore F.
Elliott, 13 November 1933.
69 TNA, ADM 1/9820, Letter from
Admiral Frederic Dreyer to Secretary of the Admiralty, 18
November 1933.
70 Macri, “Abandoning the Outpost,” 304.
71 TNA, ADM 1/9820, Letter from G.A. Northcote to Malcolm
MacDonald, 8 June 1938, 1.
72 TNA, ADM 1/9820, Letter from
G.A. Northcote to Malcolm MacDonald, 11 June 1938, 1.
73
TNA, ADM 1/9820, Letter from G.A. Northcote to Malcolm
MacDonald, 4 August 1938, 1.
74 TNA, ADM 1/9820, Note of a
Meeting held in the Colonial Office on the 26 August 1938, 2–3.
75 Ibid., 6.
76 Ibid., 8.
77 TNA, ADM 1/9820, Telegram
from A. Clark Kerr to Foreign Office, 14 March 1939. TNA, ADM
1/9820, Telegram from Foreign Office to Colonial Office, 17
March 1939.
78 B.J.C. McKercher, “National Security and
Imperial Defence: British Grand Strategy and Appeasement, 1930–
1939,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 19, no. 3 (2008): 423, 413. 102
79 John Ferris, “The Fulcrum of Power: Britain, Japan and
the Asia-Pacific Region, 1880–1945,” in Maritime Strategy and
National Security in Japan and Britain: From the First Alliance
to Post-9/11, ed. Alessio Patalano (Leiden, Netherlands: Global
Oriental, 2012), 36.
80 Fedorowich, “Cocked Hats and Swords
and Small Little Garrisons,” 125, 128.
81 Norman Hillmer
“Defence and Ideology: The Anglo-Canadian Military ‘Alliance’ in
the 1930s,” International Journal 33, no.3 (1978): 589
82
TNA, WO 208/1459, Telegram from A. Clark Kerr to Governor Hong
Kong, 28 August 1939.
83 Willmott, Empires in the Balance,
55–56.
84 Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: Into Battle,
1937–1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 460.
85
Ibid., 547.
86 Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor:
Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936–1941 (London: Routledge, 1995),
159. Bell, “The ‘Singapore Strategy’,” 627.
87 Ferris, “The
Fulcrum of Power,” 38.
90 Bell, “The ‘Singapore Strategy,’”
621.
91 Ibid., 631.
92 Peter Thompson, The Battle for
Singapore: The True Story of the Greatest Catastrophe of World
War II (London: Piatkus, 2006): 64–65.
93 Bell, “The
‘Singapore Strategy,’” 627.</p>
94 Imperial War Museum
(thereafter IWM), Private Papers of Major General C.M. Maltby,
Catalogue number 22835 Scrapbook, 20 July 1941.
95 TNA, WO
106/2366, Notes for Brigadier Grasett, 1 July 1938, 1–2.
96
Ibid., 10.
97 TNA, WO 106/2380, Letter from A.E. Grasett to
R.H. Dewing, 16 January 1940, 2.
98 Ibid., 5 April 1940, 2.
99 TNA, CO 323/1787/64, Hong Kong Defence Policy, 1940, 3–4.
100 TNA, CO 323/1787/64, Telegram from G.O.C. Hong Kong to
War Office, 23 June 1940. TNA, CO 323/1787/64, Telegram from
G.O.C. Hong Kong to War Office, 2 July 1940.
101 TNA, WO
106/2399, Telegram from G.O.C. Hong Kong to War Office, 5 August
1940.
102 TNA, CO 323/1787/64, War Cabinet, Chiefs of Staff
Committee, Defence of Hong Kong, 19 October 1940, 4, 6.
103
TNA, CO 323/1787/64, Telegram from G.O.C. Hong Kong to War
Office, 25 October 1940, 1–2.
104 TNA, WO 106/2383, Telegram
from War Office to G.O.C. Hong Kong, 3 November 1940.
105
TNA, CO 323/1787/64, Telegram Singapore-Brooke Popham 2, 5
December 1940.
106 Liddell Hart Centre for Military
Archives, King’s College, London (hereafter LHCMA),
Brooke-Popham 6/2/4, “Letter to H.L Ismay 6 January 1941,” 4.
107 Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, 165.
108 John
Ferris, “‘Worthy of Some Better Enemy?’: The British Estimate of
the Imperial Japanese Army, 1919–41, and the Fall of Singapore,”
Canadian Journal of History 28 (1993):240.
109 Ibid.,
245–246.
110 Gerald Horne, Race War: White Supremacy and the
Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York
University Press, 2004), 67.
111 Richard J. Aldrich,
Intelligence and the War against Japan: Britain, America and the
Politics of Secret Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 23.
112 Horne, Race War, 63.
113 TNA, CAB
11/196, Hong Kong Defence Scheme, 1936, Chapter 1, 3.
114
Kwong and Tsoi, Eastern Fortress, 154.
115 TNA, WO 106/2398,
Telegram from War Office to C-in-C Far East, 23 June 1941.
116 TNA, WO 106/2400, Telegram from GOC Hong Kong to War Office,
8 August 1941.
117 TNA, WO 106/2398, Telegram from War
Office to GOC Hong Kong, 25 August 1941.
118 TNA, CAB
106/88, Report on Hong Kong Chinese Regiment 8th–25th December
1941, 4–5.
119 TNA, CAB 121/718, Question, 10 June 1942,
88–89.
120 TNA, CAB 121/718, Defence of Hong Kong History,
2.
121 Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance,
177.
122 LHCMA, Brooke-Popham 6/3/3, “Letter to Street, 15
January 1941,” 4–5.
123 LHCMA, Brooke-Popham 6/1/9, “Aide
Memoire on Regular Troops Required in the Far East,” 1–2.
124 LHCMA, Brooke-Popham 6/1/12, “Letter March 1941,” 1–2.
125 LHCMA, Brooke-Popham 6/1/29, “Aggressive Action Against
Japan 30 August 1941,” 1, 2.
126 Ibid., 2.
127 TNA, AIR
23/1863, Hong Kong Report, 8 August 1941, 1–2.
128 TNA, AIR
23/1863, Air Defence of Hong Kong, 18 August 1941, 1.
129
LHCMA, Brooke-Popham 6/11/2, “Letter from J.T. Babington 15
September 1941,”, 2.
130 LHCMA, Brooke-Popham, 6/1/16,
“Cable to Chiefs of Staff 16 September 1941,” 1, 4.
131 TNA,
WO 106/2412, Telegram from GOC Far East to War Office, 24
November 1941.
132 IWM, Maltby, Scrapbook, 20 July 1941.
133 LAC, Royal Commission to Inquire into and Report upon the
Organization, Authorization and Dispatch of the Canadian
Expeditionary Force to the Crown Colony of Hong Kong fonds, RG
33/120, volume 3, file “Telegram from H.D.G. Crerar to W.K.
Campbell,” 11–12.
134 LAC, H.D.G. Crerar fonds, MG 30 E 157,
volume 21, file “958C.009 (D329) Comments by Gen. Crerar on
Official History of Cdn Army,” letter from H.D.G. Crerar to C.P.
Stacey, 23 October 1953, page 1.
135 Nathan M. Greenfield,
The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW
Experience, 1941– 45 (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2010), 12.
Brereton Greenhous, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian
Catastrophe, 1941–1945 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1997), 15.
136 Kwong and Tsoi, Eastern Fortress, 136.
137 Paul Dickson,
A Thoroughly Canadian General: A Biography of General H.D.G.
Crerar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 166–167.
138 LAC, J.L. Ralston fonds, MG 27 III BII, volume 67, file
“Ralston, J.L. Diary 1941–44 (Incomplete).”
139 Dickson, A
Thoroughly Canadian General,
140, 163. 140 TNA, CAB 79/14/8,
Chiefs of Staff Committee Meeting, 3 September 1941, 5, 6.
141 TNA, WO 106/2380, Letter from A.E. Grasett to R.H. Dewing,
16 January 1940, 2.
142 TNA, CAB 79/14/8, Chiefs of Staff
Committee Meeting, 3 September 1941, 6.
143 TNA, CAB
121/718, Chiefs of Staff Committee Defence of Hong Kong Report,
19 October 1940, 1, 2.
144 TNA, CAB 121/718, War Cabinet
Chiefs of Staff Committee, 22 January 1941, Annex I.
145
TNA, CAB 80/30/59, Hong Kong, Defence of Note by C.I.G.S.
circulating draft note for submission to Prime Minister, 8
September 1941, 1, 2.
146 TNA, CAB 121/718, Letter from
Colonel L.C. Hollis to Sterndale Bennett, 4 October 1941, 1.
147 TNA, CO 968/13/2, Note, 9 September 1941.