Being there . . . . across the International Date Line in the early morning hours of Monday,
December 8 th , a tragic day in the history of the Pacific world that believed so dearly in
democracy. As the hours passed, Washington and London received reports of Japanese troops
engaging in mass killing assaults across a wide front from Honolulu to the Gulf of Thailand,
including Malaya, Singapore, the U.S.-ruled Philippines, Guam, Wake, Midway, and respected
Hong Kong New Territories. It was said that even before the President of the United States
learned the details of the Japanese “blitzkrieg” that out rivalled the Fuhrer’s, the Rising Sun was
on its way to conquering a little less than half of the earth.
Losses were unimaginable: in less than 90 minutes more than 500 Allied airplanes, fighters
and bombers, lay smoldering. In the following 4 ½ months, the Rising Sun’s armies, navies, and
air forces would dominate the Pacific from the Aleutians to Australia, including tiny Hong Kong,
the coveted British Colony in southern China, 400 square miles defining it, with a 1.4 million
population, all mostly Chinese. A measly 12,000-strong Chiang Kai-shek garrison had been
organized to protect it in the event of a war with Japan. When it arrived through the back door,
the 12,000 fought valiantly and heroically. When the Japanese ground troops entered, they
were angry, too, because of the garrison’s fierce resistance. But such intensity couldn’t last
more than two weeks, surrendering Hong Kong on Christmas Day, 1941. It was messy, the
garrison with losses of a 4,400 dead, innumerable casualties, remaining defenders utterly
exhausted, little water, and ammunition supplies depleted. Until now that sad story has never
been fully researched and told. For the first time, historian-author Steven K. Bailey capsulizes
the true story of an ambitious but flawed American raid against Japanese held and defended
Hong Kong, a subject few historians and writers cared to research and describe because it cost
so many American planes and airmen, while simultaneously inflicting needless collateral
damage on the neutral Portuguese colony of Macau and accidentally killing 14 Allied prisoners
in a nearby prisoner of war camp. For the serious World War II buff, who most certainly never
knew of this tragedy until Steven’s resoluteness in describing it in painful detail, is a must read
and shelving in his or her personal library.
CATOLOGED IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HISTORIC NAVAL RECORDS OF THE PACIFIC WAR IS
A STORY HITHERTO FULLY UNTOLD. MORE THAN 100 U.S. NAVY WARSHIPS AND 1,000 CARRIER
PLANES, IN THE FINAL SEVEN MONTHS OF WORLD WAR II, PARTICIPATED IN AN ATTACK ON
JAPANESE-HELD HONG KONG THAT REMAINS CONTROVERSIAL TO THIS DAY. WAS THE
“OPERATION GRATIDUDE” BOMBINGS, SO NEAR THE END OF THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION,
WORTH THE HIGH COST IN MILITARY AND CIVILIAN LIVES?
Reviewed and highly recommended by Don DeNevi
“TARGET HONG KONG – – Operation Gratitude, A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War”, by
Steven K. Bailey. OSPREY PUBLISHING/Bloomsbury Publishing Plc: 2024, 368 pages, hardcover,
6 ¼” x 9 ½”, $35. Visit, www.ospreypublishing.com.
Via a warm, heart-felt, masterly-authoritative narration, Steven brings this mesmerizing
story, Operation Gratitude, down to a human level by allowing readers to actually participate in
the steady Allied bombings of Hong Kong months prior to the Japanese surrender. He achieves
his brilliant “You Are There” personal approach through the experiences of seven men whose
lives intersected in those air-runs of January 1945. The seven were Commander John D.
Lamade, five of his U.S. Navy pilots, and British POW Ray Jones watching from the ground. Thus,
we not only experience death, our boys alongside the Japanese, and destruction of a great,
historic city, civilian killings where there was no count, but we also sense what genuine
American heroes were all about, men whose highest priorities were all about, integrity,
generosity, selfless service, and unswerving adherence to our military excellence.
In short, using oral histories, U.S. Navy documents, diaries, official documents from long
forgotten Naval archives, this classic catches us up with a tough campaign action no one heard
about before. Not only does it surprise us WWII buffs, but we are both thankful and
appreciative of not only Steven’s obvious meticulous research for this book, but his original
effort in 2019, “Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942 –
1945”.
