The Sum of All Fears

Leonardo d’Almada e Castro, Jr., a young barrister in 1930s Hong Kong, is often credited with being a defender of the underclass, including earlier in his career, the Macanese and Chinese residents of the colony’s ghetto, Wan Chi. As a second-generation Macanese, whose father migrated from Macau in 1842 to work for Captain Charles Elliot, the British Superintendent of Trade, the younger d’Almada was well acquainted with the workings of legal and commercial institutions in Hong Kong.

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As a life-long advocate of ethnic rights, d’Almada succeeded another Macanese activist, Jose Pedro Braga, on the Legislative Council in 1937, and subsequently became a critic of London’s response in June 1940 to fears of a Japanese invasion that resulted in a mandatory evacuation of British government and military dependents to Australia. As the details of the new plan emerged, the impact on Hong Kong’s middle and working classes, its most vulnerable residents, became increasingly clear. After witnessing several weeks of confusion caused by the deportation order, d’Almada and other legislators dramatically stood before the Hong Kong Legislative Council on July 25, 1940 to question the haphazard enforcement of the evacuation, and in particular, to ask the Governor and the Colonial Secretary why the compulsory order included only “… British women and children of pure European descent”. [1]

To understand the impact of this event, and to appreciate the anxiety that fed public fears, we must place the evacuation order in historical context. Like all residents of Hong Kong, d’Almada had read news reports describing the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the bombing Shanghai in 1937, and the sacking of Nanking in 1938. He then watched in alarm as Japanese troops massed along the border with Guangdong, a few hundred kilometers from the British colony. One month after France fell to Nazi Germany on June 25, 1940, the British War Cabinet, in response to numerous requests from the Commanding General of Hong Kong’s military forces, ordered the colonial government to evacuate about 3,500 British women, children, and some elderly men to Manila, and then to Australia. The deportation of forty-one percent of the British population by the local police on a few days’ notice, and without financial support or information about their return, created an uproar that reverberated across class and racial lines in a colony that was already showing signs of disintegration.[2]

The targeted groups were to be, as one scholar describes them, “All British women and children under eighteen ‘of European race’ who were unnecessary for the defence or essential services to the maintenance of the colony…”.[3]  Most were the dependents of enlisted military personnel or low level government workers who were to be protected by the colonial government due to their status as British “sojourners”, identified by London and Hong Kong officials as “non-domiciled” or short term residents. Those who were not of British descent, including Chinese, Eurasians and Macanese, even families with males working in higher levels of the military or government, were mostly excluded from the order. There were some exceptions, including some Chinese women who were married to military personnel. But most were returned to Hong Kong from Australia before the war. [4] The government’s explanation for this selective emphasis was that those groups not evacuated were originally “domiciled” in other Southeast Asian countries, and should be repatriated by those nations when necessary. On its face, the rationale ignored the fact that many Macanese and Chinese had been in Hong Kong for three or four generations and considered the colony their home.

The shock expressed by British families to the abruptness of the evacuation order was immediate, but given deteriorating relations inside Hong Kong, not entirely unexpected by other ethnic groups. According to recent scholarship, several female British evacuees and their husbands began writing letters complaining to officials in London, Hong Kong, and Australia.[5] Many inquired about government motives and the lack of settlement arrangements once they arrived. Others questioned why the families of high-ranking members of government were able to avoid the deportations, or seemed to be able to settle comfortably outside Hong Kong. The unequal granting of exemptions to these so-called “official families” was roundly criticized in letters to local newspapers.[6] Several evacuees challenged the compulsory order in court, and gained the support of prominent business executives, including the heads of the Chamber of Commerce and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Their legal threats temporarily suspended the order, but was followed by new regulations that forbid the return of any evacuee then in Manila or Australia under penalty of arrest.[7] The decision by the government to rescind the order in late 1940 created even more resentment and confusion. The abrupt cancellation, as Tony Banham and others write, seemed to imply that the government now saw no imminent threat of invasion, despite news reports to the contrary.

The evacuation order, however, was seen from a different perspective among the Macanese, Eurasian, and Chinese populations of Hong Kong. Although some were initially allowed to board ships, most Chinese and Eurasian evacuees were turned away at the docks by police officials who noticed their racial features. Others, as reported by Council member Lo Man Kam in Legislative minutes were “identified” by self-appointed British women in Manila as “ineligible”, and were returned to Hong Kong.[8]  But many non-British subjects were apparently already making plans for evacuation in the event of war. Some wealthy Chinese families took the advice of their representatives and departed for Macau, Singapore and Canton to escape the turmoil. [9] Some Macanese families from Shanghai and Hong Kong had already begun the journey, and others would follow in August 1941 and later, according to witnesses and news articles noting ship passages to Macau.[10]

The reasons for their willingness to leave Hong Kong at this critical juncture was surely fear, but also may be understandable in light of their historic positions in society. As noted in my own research and by others, the reins of colonial power and authority had always been tightly held by the British, while others not born in the British Isles were considered racially inferior, subordinate, and usually kept at a distance.[11] From the perspective of the Chinese, the Macanese and Eurasians, the 1940 evacuation was more fundamental than social slights and condescension. Rather, their collective pessimism was the culmination of decades long frustrations with the Hong Kong government’s unwillingness to protect their interests, and those of other non-British subjects. In this regard, safeguards promoted under “Free Trade” policies and the ideals of “fair dealing” at the center of British values were gradually exposed as social myths hardly realized after nearly a century in the stratified environment of Hong Kong, and apparently intended only for commercial and government elites. Many others on the margins of Hong Kong society, including British in the lower ranks of government and the military, historically were left vulnerable in times of crisis.[12]

Indications of this decline in trust were evident in the early criticisms of Jose Pedro Braga, another second-generation Macanese born in Hong Kong, in his defense of the “Rights of Alien Workers” written in 1895.[13] A further erosion of confidence followed the government’s neglect of fire and building codes, as well as police protection, which exposed thousands of Macanese and Chinese to danger during the Happy Valley Racecourse fire in 1918.[14] Even in an “open” economy benefiting from Hong Kong’s free trade policies, ethnic owned businesses like the Hongkong Printing Press in 1928 had to rely on well-placed compradors and clerks, who were essentially “intermediaries”, for access to large scale capital, which was not always assured. These secondary relations were ultimately vulnerable to corruption, geo-political events, and often resulted in a loss of control by the founding families.[15] By the decade of “malaise” in Hong Kong of the 1930s described by Frank Welsh, Austin Coates, and others, the deterioration of social ties among the underclass began to take on psychological traits of isolation and marginalization, joined with the weight of cultural, religious, and familial pressures. Leonardo d’Almada himself witnessed this during the trial of Jesuina Xavier, a Macanese woman and owner of a boarding house he defended, who was accused of assaulting her British lover in 1931.[16]

The attempted evacuation of British women and children in 1940, and the public exclusion and humiliation of other ethnic groups, could therefore be interpreted as a final step in a long process of resentment among disenfranchised groups in Hong Kong based on generational experience with class and racial discrimination. This resulted in the declining confidence of many foreign communities in the colonial government, beginning as early as the 19th century. Among lower born English subjects this realization occurred as late as 1940, as a bitter surprise that colonial officials made decisions based on institutional expedience, racial bias, and class preference. In an editorial, the China Mail alluded to the loss of faith by stating: “It is doubtful, … there has ever been a time in the modern history of the colony when sympathy between public and government has been so strained.” [17]

Most ethnic residents and their families, ironically, considered themselves loyal British subjects, and had been heavily invested in the life of the colony for generations through business ownership and long years of service in leading institutions. Several Macanese even sought to demonstrate their allegiance by obtaining British citizenship.[18] Gradually, many realized that to be truly considered a “British subject” required more than legal certification. As one scholar writes: in terms of social sentiment in a society dominated by London it could only be “held by those born in the British Isles…” of “pure European descent”. Leonardo d’Almada and other Hong Kong legislators concluded by July 1940 that this final slight, laying bare the government’s racial and class priorities, would have consequences on the Macanese and others as war with Japan became imminent. When a vote to approve additional funds for the evacuation came before the Council, he offered this warning:

In this matter of discrimination, … Government, … has forfeited to a very great extent the respect and confidence of the community. That, of course, is Government’s business. But that is not all. Government has also placed an appreciable strain on the loyalty of a large section of the community, and I am not going to be an accessory after the fact … [19]

The final resolution to the controversy, making all debates and protests irrelevant, came with the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong on December 8, 1941. After such emphasis was placed on who was, and who was not, a real “British subject”, the fates of all residents ultimately were left to the whims of the invaders, and to their own identification of war prisoners and “Third Nation” non-combatants among thousands who were left behind. In the end, war became the final and most brutal arbitrator.

[1] Hong Kong Legislative Council Minutes, 25 July, 1940: 100

[2] Frank Welsh, A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong, Kodansha, New York, 1993. See Chapter 13, “A Colonial Backwater”, 378-385.

[3] Vivian Kong, ‘Hong Kong is my Home’: The 1940 Evacuation and Hong Kong Britons, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2018: 3.

[4] Tony Banham, Reduced to a Symbolic Scale: The Evacuation of British Women and Children in 1940, Hong Kong University Press, 2017: 57.

[5] Branham, ibid, p.75

[6] “Compulsory Evacuation”, Hong Kong Volunteer and Ex-POW Association of NSW, Occasional Paper #20, August 2013: 2.

[7] Kong, op. cit. p. 4.

[8] Hong Kong Legislative Council Minutes, 25 July, 1940: 115-116.

[9] Both Banham, op. cit., p.33 and the writer of “Compulsory Evacuation”, op. cit., p. 2 provide examples.

[10] The South China Morning Post, August 20, 1937, reported the arrival in Hong Kong of approximately one thousand Macanese refugees from Shanghai on the French steamer The Aramis. The Consul General for Portugal in Hong Kong is quoted that more were on the way and that the Hong Kong Macaense community would accommodate their relatives as best they could while the rest would proceed to Macau. Another writer in 1996 claimed that 1,203 Portuguese refugees had fled Hong Kong by August 1941, followed by 950 people on January 6, 1942 and another 450 the next day. R. Pinto, ‘War in Peace’, Macau Magazine, No. 96, p. 90.

[11] Roy Eric Xavier, “Hong Kong and the Introduction of “Social Distance”, Working Paper, The Portuguese-Macanese Studies Project, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of California, Berkeley, 2019.
https://www.academia.edu/37735740/Hong_Kong_and_the_Introduction_of_Social_Distance_.

[12] See Henry Lethbridge’s article, “19^th Century Working Class Hong Kong, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 15, 1975.

[13] Roy Eric Xavier, “J.P. Braga and ‘The Rights of Aliens’ in Colonial Hong Kong”, Working Paper, The Portuguese and Macanese Studies Project, Berkeley, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of California, December, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/37934228/J.P._Braga_and_The_Rights_of_Aliens_in_Colonial_Hong_Kong.

[14]  Roy Eric Xavier, “Death at the Races: The Portuguese Presence during the Happy Valley Fire of 1918”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society-HK, Vol. 53, March, 2014, pgs. 89-107

[15] Based on unpublished research conducted by the author on the Hongkong Printing Press from 1888 to 1974.

[16] Roy Eric Xavier, “Jesuina: A Profile of Marginalization”, https://macstudies.net/jesuina-a-profile-of-marginalization/.

[17] The China Mail, Editorial, July 23, 1940.

[18] Januario Antonio de Carvalho, Chief Clerk of the Treasury and a first generation Macanese, was one of the first of his community to be granted British citizenship in December 1883. By the early 20^th century it was common practice, and required for advancement in colonial institutions. See “NATURALIZATION OF JANUARIO ANTONIO DE CARVALHO ORDINANCE,” Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online,http://oelawhk.lib.hku.hk/items/show/440.

[19] Hong Kong Legislative Council minutes, 25 July 1940: 113-114