Special issue to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of ...

Decoding the Enigma of the Fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt Using Line of Sight Analysis
How did the Japanese troops attack the Redoubt after
cutting the barbed wire?
Another major difference between the Cabinet findings
and the Japanese source was that the former had been
led to believe that the assault was carried out by the
Japanese climbing up Shing Mun Valley right up to
the positions on Smuggler’s Ridge above Point 341
before descending to sweep the Redoubt. Most likely,
this view was influenced by the skirmishes between the
Rajputs and the Japanese to the west of the Redoubt
and the sequence of the fall of the OP and the pillboxes.
Apparently, the Cabinet Office paid attention to only
one attack leader other than Colonel Doi, and that
would be Lt. Wakabayashi.
The new Japanese source (Cheung Sha 1971) revealed
that one of the immediate subordinates of Colonel Doi
was Battalion Commander Major Nishiyama Haruka,
who controlled two companies, the 9th and 10th under
Lt. Kasugai and Lt. Wakabayashi, respectively. The
wire cutting party and the captors of PBs 401b and
402 were part of the 9th Company, whereas the captors
of the OP were with the 10th Company. Note that
Wakabayashi did not personally lead the party that
captured the OP. Indeed, the Japanese inscription
referring to the capture of the Redoubt by Wakabayashi
was not found inside the OP, but near the entrance of a
tunnel (Shafttsbury Avenue) physically unconnected to
the OP. Outside this entrance was a path junction that
branched out (a) upwards to the OP and (b) eastwards
horizontally towards the Strand Palace Hotel entrance.
We have reasons to believe that the following events
are what actually happened. The Japanese actually
ascended the Redoubt proper from near their assembly
point near the Redoubt end of the Jubilee Dam,
seeking to attack PBs 401b and 402. Subsequent
reinforcements of the 10th Company also came up
along the same route and then branched out southwards
to invest the OP and Strand Palace Hotel through the
Charing Cross or T3 (see Figure 2) tunnel entrance.
After shooting at the Japanese for some time, the 19
Royal Scots who were not trapped inside the OP and
PB 401b, losing phone contact with their commander
in the OP or their comrades inside the pillbox, decided
to move to a position on higher ground to conduct a
better defence lest the Redoubt would be fully encircled
by the enemy. Thus, they left five wounded behind
and moved southwards through the underground tunnel
system with which they were familiar, came out into
the open, and ascended to higher ground on Smuggler’s
Ridge above the OP and the rest of the Redoubt. As
they moved very quickly through the tunnels, they did
not engage any enemy assault team, then largely above
ground, before making contact with the Rajputs. It
was very likely that when they reached the vicinity
of the OP, it had already fallen and the Japanese there
had turned north into the tunnel system in search of the
remaining defenders and to capture the last pillbox.
The Japanese attackers numbered only about 40. Had
they committed additional men to assault the higher
ground above the OP at the western end of Smugglers’
Ridge, they would have been in position to intercept
the withdrawing Royal Scots. Judging from the fine
fighting record of the Royal Scots during the Battle of
Hong Kong, we do not believe that they retreated from
the enemy due to cowardice.
Facts about the layout of the Redoubt: How many OP
exits were there?
In the Cabinet Report (Latham 1958), Banham (2003),
and Lindsay (2005) were convinced that the defenders
of the OP were “trapped” after the runner went out
with the key to the gate. However, to reiterate, even a
casual site visit would have revealed that the OP had
more than one exit. There are 3 hatches and an exit
that proceeds down Strand Palace Hotel via a tunnel.
We could reconcile this apparent discrepancy with a
careful reading of the Japanese source, which revealed
how the party led by Mochizuki captured those inside
the OP – they accidently discovered an opening that led
up it. Probably while other Japanese soldiers attempted
to break into the OP from above, Mochizuki’s party
sought to break in from below, likely from trench T3,
as our detailed site survey discovered and reported
in the next section, into Charing Cross or the kitchen
(Strand Palace Hotel) tunnel. This factual question
about the physical layout of the OP brought us to a key
factual error 10 stated in the Cabinet Report.
Facts about the layout of the Redoubt: Was the OP
connected to the Pillboxes by tunnels?
The Royal Scots’ battle diary produced a sketch map
showing that the OP was cut off from the main system
of tunnels to the pillboxes. Maltby, the ranking British
military commander in Hong Kong during the battle,
admitted in a questionnaire to the Cabinet Office that he
had never visited the Redoubt himself. In the absence
of any independent field investigation, a large scale
layout of the Redoubt, or oral evidence, the Cabinet
inquiry found that key parts in the entire Redoubt were
interconnected by tunnels. It was not certain how it
arrived at this discovery, although whether the Redoubt
consisted of one or more system of tunnels mattered
little to us.
Modes of Fighting
How was the battle actually fought? The presence of
the tunnels inside the Redoubt easily conjured up images
of dramatic hot chases and fighting in subterranean
corridors. (See, for instance, Banham’s (2003:
38), Lindsay’s (2005: 75, quoting Doi), Thrower’s
(1985: 90) accounts.) The following postwar (1946)
description of the action at the Redoubt in the memoir
of Lt. General Kitajima suggests that the actual fighting
was much quieter, though no less exciting.
On the evening of 9th December, the vanguard
led by Wakabayashi arrived at the hill overseeing
Shing Mun Reservoir and saw the enemy’s
defences as inadequate.
The master plan was to attack after an initial
10
This is curious, as the sketch map (“Map 3”) adopted by the Cabinet Office also shows a gap between the two tunnel systems. The map is
conceptually and largely correct, but inaccurate as to scale and proportion.
SBE
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