Surviving the worst
The South China Morning Post's editor, Henry Ching, was asleep at his home in Village Road, Happy Valley, at 5am on Monday, December 8, when the telephone by his bedside rang. He rolled over and picked up the receiver to hear the excited voice of Bill O'Neill of Reuters. 'Sorry to wake you, old chap, but I thought you'd like to know. The bloody balloon's gone up. The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbour and the Philippines. Britain and America have declared war. Hell of a show. They'll be here for breakfast.'
They were. At 8am Japanese bombers, 12 in number, roared in over the Kowloon peninsula and bombed Kai Tak, demolishing the five RAF planes and eight civilian planes on the tarmac. At the same time, Japanese troops crossed the border of the New Territories near Lowu to begin their invasion which was to end in Hong Kong's surrender 18 days later.
The Post continued to publish each day, keeping its news on the inside main page and lighter, inconsequential reports on Page 1, including Ching's cheery 'Bird's-Eye View' column.
As the Japanese forces smashed through the British defences at Shing Mun redoubt that day and threatened Kowloon, members of the staff living on the mainland, including managing director Ben Wylie, moved to Hong Kong and slept on camp beds in the Post building. Five members of the reporting staff, Charles Allen, John Prettejohn, Tinker Lee, Ken Seyer and Reg Goldman, were posted to various parts of Hong Kong island with the Hong Kong Volunteers and would shortly be involved in the fighting. Other members of the staff serving with the Essential Services moved back to the office as soon as their posts were overrun by the advancing Japanese, who crossed the harbour on December 18 and landed at North Point, Taikoo and Sai Wan on Hong Kong island. During the shelling that had preceded the attack, the Post building took a direct hit, but it didn't penetrate very deeply, and the damage was slight.
Hong Kong newspapers reported the war mainly from official communiques since most of their younger journalists had been called up for active service. One newspaper, the China Mail, however, had a reporter, Henry Chang, covering the fighting in Kowloon. But he was withdrawn when the Japanese reached Laichikok. From then on most newspapers reported the war from the roof of Gloucester Building, which was then one of the highest in Central. There on the 5th floor was an office set up by the Hong Kong Government, headed by D.M. MacDougall, a senior civil servant later to be Colonial Secretary, who prepared communiques on the fighting. It was there that H.J. Yapp, then working for the China Mail, and S.A. Ramjahn of the Post reported on the progress of the war.
But while the Gloucester 'dug-out' was the source of all the daily communiques on the fighting which reporters used to relay to their offices by phone, Yapp recalls that from the Gloucester roof it was possible to report live action. Through binoculars pressmen saw the white banner of the Japanese 'peace mission' go up in Kowloon on December 12 after the fall of Kowloon. They excitedly reported this development to their news editors. This was to be the first attempt by the Japanese to persuade the Governor, Sir Mark Young, to surrender. They sent a boat from Kowloon to Hong Kong with a letter to Young threatening that unless their demands were met the city would be subjected to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment. The Governor, however, declined, but the press got one of their first live stories since the bombing of Kai Tak five days earlier.