Next week there will be lavish celebrations in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, this will also be marked in Hong Kong but in both places the real history of this period will be suppressed for both obvious and less obvious reasons.
Hong Kong has had a consistent problem coming to terms both with the Japanese occupation and the (rather brief) battles that preceded it. Hong Kong’s former colonial authorities went so far as to take a never openly disclosed decision to deliberately suppress discussion of the most shaming disgrace that occurred during Japan’s three-year occupation of Hong Kong.
Discussion had to be suppressed otherwise the shameless collaboration of almost all the colony’s elite would need to be examined. It is no exaggeration to say that most Chinese families who were stalwarts of the colonial regime were either active or passive collaborators with the Japanese. Most were active collaborators, while a very few decided to sit the war out in neutral Macau.
