On Christmas Day 1941, after eighteen days of fighting, the British colony of Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese army. In the afternoon General Christopher Maltby advised the Governor, Sir Mark Young, that no further effective resistance was possible, the white flag went up, and Young surrendered at the Japanese headquarters in the Peninsula Hotel. In Hong Kong the day is remembered as Black Christmas. The occupation that followed lasted three years and eight months.
Eighteen days
The Japanese attacked in the early hours of 8 December 1941, local time. About 13,000 men had been assigned to the defense of the colony, among them British, Indian and local units and two Canadian battalions, against a Japanese force that Hong Kong Memory puts at more than 40,000. The defenders were driven off the mainland within days, and after the Japanese landed on Hong Kong Island on the night of 18 to 19 December the garrison was split and pushed back. Our full account, The Battle of Hong Kong, 1941, follows the whole campaign.1
Christmas Day
On the morning of 25 December the Japanese sent another demand for surrender, carried by two civilian prisoners. The Canadian official history records that it was refused, and that the Governor signaled London that stout fighting was going on and that all were in very good heart and sent Christmas greetings. The demand led to a partial truce, but when it ran out at midday the Japanese attacked at once and made rapid progress along the north shore. With the force at Stanley cut off and only a handful of mobile guns left, Maltby and the naval commander advised Young at 3.15 p.m. that no further effective military resistance could be made, and the white flag was hoisted. Hong Kong Memory records that Young surrendered to Lieutenant General Sakai Takashi at the Peninsula Hotel.2
Losses are uncertain. Hong Kong Memory says close to 2,700 defenders were killed or missing. The Canadian official history counts 290 Canadians killed or died of wounds and quotes Maltby's provisional figures of about 955 killed and 659 missing for the rest of the garrison, and gives the Japanese losses, from their own narrative, as 675 killed and 2,079 wounded. Many prisoners were murdered after capture, and those who survived spent the rest of the war in Japanese camps.3
Christmas night, 1776
Another Christmas operation belongs to this date. On the night of 25 December 1776 George Washington's main force, about 2,400 men, was ferried across the icy Delaware River in a nor'easter of wind and sleet by Colonel John Glover's Marblehead fishermen, to attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton the next morning. The crossing is told in our article on Washington crossing the Delaware, and the battle on the next day's page, 26 December, Trenton, 1776.4 › Battle of Trenton, 1776
