Home > Events > Academic
Date: 2015/05/11
Time: 14:30~16:30
Venue: Conference room 2B (RCHSS)
Speaker:Mr. Tim LUARD (Tim LUARD)
Organizer: IMH
Attachment:Introduction (PDF)
It was one of the most remarkable adventures of the Second World War. On Christmas Day 1941, within hours of Hong Kong’s surrender to the Japanese, Admiral Chan Chak (陳策 Chen Ce) and a group of 68 mainly British companions staged a dramatic breakout through enemy lines. In one of the most remarkable adventures of the Second World War, they swam through a hail of gunfire, went by torpedo boat through the night to the mainland and marched for four days across Japanese-occupied Guangdong province to the nearest Nationalist Army stronghold. Local guerrillas carried Admiral Chan in a bamboo sedan chair, as Chan had lost his wooden leg while he swam for his life. Tim Luard, author in 2012 of the book Escape from Hong Kong (HKU Press), has given a number of lectures on the subject in Britain, Hong Kong and China, but the 1941 escape has received very little attention in Taiwan, even though the one-legged Chinese Admiral was a very senior figure in the KMT – as well as being a very colorful character – and though his aide de camp Henry Hsu 徐亨 went on to become a prominent figure in political, business and sporting circles in Taiwan. The Jan. 2015 release of the paperback edition, the forthcoming publication (announced for Sept. 2015) of the Chinese translation of Tim Luard’s book by Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense (under the title 1941 – 香港大突圍), and the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII have led CEFC Taipei and Institute of Modern History to host a lecture to discuss the historiography of the event at Academia Sinica.In his lecture, Tim Luard will be using rare photographs from the time, describing the background to the Fall of Hong Kong and show how the various members of the escape party came to be among the lucky few who got away. Chan Chak, who was Southern President of the Kuomintang and China’s senior representative in the colony, received a British military knighthood for his heroic role in the colony’s defense and for leading the escape of key personnel when further resistance proved impossible. Seldom if ever had the two peoples joined forces against a common enemy – and certainly not with a Chinese at the helm.The epic escape came at a crucial juncture in international relations, within a few weeks of Pearl Harbor, as China was finally taking its seat alongside the British, Russians and Americans as one of the four main Allies in what had now become a global war. In his description of the event, Tim Luard will try to assess the geopolitical forces and pressures at play during this crucial year of WW2, 1941, including regarding the strategic and political background, and how such an unlikely and fascinating array of Chinese and British characters came together in the final hours before surrender and launched their dramatic escape. More on the book can be found at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Luard-author-of- Escape-from-Hong-Kong/150150171722167
Biography
Tim Luard read Chinese at Edinburgh University and spent the next seven years working as a journalist in Hong Kong. He was later posted in Beijing as Correspondent for BBC World Service Radio, travelling widely in China and covering the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He spent a further 17 years with the BBC as a presenter and editor of current affairs programs such as “East Asia Today” and “The World Today”. He is the author of Escape from Hong Kong. Admiral Chan Chak’s Christmas Day Dash, 1941, Hong Kong University Press (Paperback, 2015).