70 years ago, Hong Kong was liberated from the Japanese occupation. This period, usually referred to as the "Three Years and Eight Months", was the darkest time in Hong Kong history. To provide students with an opportunity to retrospect to this sorrowful period, the History and Hong Kong Studies teaching team of CIE organized a seminar on the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong on 5 November 2015. Dr. Kwong Chi-man, Assistant Professor of History Department of Hong Kong Baptist University, was invited to deliver a talk on this period from 1942 to 1946.
More than 180 students from several secondary schools and from CIE attended this seminar. In the past, people preferred only to focus on the Japanese brutality and the difficulties that the local Chinese were facing when they studied this period. But if we want to get the whole picture of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, according to Dr. Kwong, we should broaden our sight to look at the situation of South China and Southeast Asia as well as to study the decision-making from Tokyo, London and Washington. Only through examining the intricate relationships among the political, diplomatic, military, economic and societal factors, will we be able to understand this period in full. Dr. Kwong’s talk was full of wit and humour and he grasped the attention of every single student inside the lecture theatre.
Given the overwhelming response from secondary schools for this talk, the History and Hong Kong Studies teaching team will continue to organize more talks on history of Hong Kong in the future.
Dr. Kwong’s talk was full of wit and humour and he grasped the attention of every single student inside the lecture theatre.
More than 180 students from several secondary schools participated in Dr. Kwong's talk
