ABSTRACT
General Rensuke Isogai was appointed Japanese Governor of Hong Kong on 20 February, and the territory was ruled under Japanese martial law, with Sir Mark Young himself and some 7,000 British soldiers and civilians kept in prisoner of war camps. Under Japanese administration, the police force was reorganised, and a wide range of new controls – including over banks, factories, trading and currency – imposed. As the Second World War progressed in the Pacific, controls were imposed including the rationing of essential foodstuffs such as rice, flour and cooking oil. The Japanese invasion of 1941 was only one part of a much larger pattern of Japanese aggression and occupation. The civilian population of Hong Kong was subject to an intensity of surveillance unknown before the occupation. Post-war, it became clear that the occupation had also been a time of widespread rape and plunder – according to Welsh, tens of thousands of Hong Kong civilians were executed between 1941 and 1945.
