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The Battle of Hong Kong (8–25 December 1941), also known as the Defence of Hong Kong and the Fall of Hong Kong, was one of the first battles of the Pacific campaign of World War II. On the same morning as the attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, forces of the Empire of Japan attacked British Hong Kong. The attack was in violation of international law as Japan had not declared war against the British Empire. Japan's unprovoked act of aggression was met with stiff resistance from Hong Kong's garrison, composed of local troops as well as British, Canadian and Indian units. Within a week the defenders abandoned the mainland, and less than two weeks later, with their position on the island untenable, the colony surrendered. ==Background== Britain first thought of Japan as a threat with the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in the early 1920s, a threat that increased with the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On 21 October 1938 the Japanese occupied Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong was effectively surrounded. Various British defence studies concluded that Hong Kong would be extremely hard to defend in the event of a Japanese attack, but, in the mid-1930s, work began on new defence facilities, including the Gin Drinkers' Line. Key sites of the defence of Hong Kong included: *Wong Nai Chung Gap *Lye Moon Passage *Shing Mun Redoubt *Devil's Peak *Stanley Fort By 1940, the British determined to reduce the Hong Kong Garrison to only a symbolic size. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command argued that limited reinforcements could allow the garrison to delay a Japanese attack, gaining time elsewhere. Winston Churchill and his army chiefs designated Hong Kong as an outpost, and initially decided against sending more troops to the colony. In September 1941 they reversed their decision and argued that additional reinforcements would provide a military deterrent against the Japanese, and reassure Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek that Britain was genuinely interested in defending the colony.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Hong Kong」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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