Then & NowHow ‘Anonymous’ wrote the story of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in World War II: the life of Major Evan George Stewart
- Major Evan George Stewart, long-time headmaster of St Paul’s College in Hong Kong, lost his parents and two siblings after a violent attack in China when he was 3
- In World War II, as part of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force, he saw fierce fighting, and in a POW camp, he helped write a detailed account of the action
A deceptively slim, yet heavily detailed account of the role played by the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) during the Japanese invasion in December 1941, compiled by “Anonymous” and first published in 1953, has provided the principal chronological basis for numerous narrative histories of the Hong Kong conflict ever since.
“Anonymous” was actually Major Evan George Stewart, the long-serving headmaster of St Paul’s College. Stewart was born in England in 1892 to parents with a long-term China background. His father, Reverend Robert Warren Stewart and his wife, Louisa, were both Anglican missionaries, and he returned with them to China in 1893.
Tragedy struck in 1895. On leave at Hwa-sang, a hill station in Fukien (Fujian), the family were violently attacked. United by virulent racial nationalism, and a hatred of foreigners, militant groups targeted missionaries in various parts of China.
Both parents and a brother, a sister and a nursemaid were killed, but Stewart was rescued from a burning house by his two older sisters; one also survived a sword-slash across her leg. Three elder brothers, at school in England, avoided the massacre.
Subsequently raised in Ireland by grandparents and other relatives, Stewart came out to Hong Kong in 1910 to teach at St Paul’s College, where his older brother Arthur was already headmaster. These days, this pre-university sojourn would be considered an extended gap year.