Jack Edwards, who dedicated much of his long life to getting better deals for former prisoners of war and their dependants, was ever the optimist.
Hours before the doughty campaigner died on Sunday - while fellow war veterans were gathering at the Garden of Remembrance in Central to commemorate the city's liberation from the Japanese during the second world war - he was talking about leaving hospital and travelling to Wales.
He went there every year to visit his sister, stopping off in London to do British Legion work. Ill-health kept him away last year and he was determined to go this year.
Jack Edwards was born in South Wales in Cardiff's suburb of Canton at the tail-end of the first world war and joined the Territorial Army shortly before the outbreak of the second world war.
He was taken prisoner in Singapore in February 1942 and shipped to Taiwan, where he spent three years in the iron mines. It was during those years of hard labour that he decided he would seek justice for those who could no longer fight for themselves. He later wrote a book about his experiences in the mines, unapologetically titled Banzai You Bastards!
Edwards first came to Hong Kong in 1946 as part of the war crimes investigation team.