Sham Shui Po park Canadian war memorial plaque context 2

Sham Shui Po Barracks was a

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

facility built in the 1920s in the

Sham Shui Po Sham Shui Po () is an area of Kowloon, Hong Kong, situated in the northwestern part of the Kowloon Peninsula, north of Tai Kok Tsui, east of Cheung Sha Wan and south of Shek Kip Mei (). It is located in and is the namesake of the Sham Shui ...

area of

Kowloon Kowloon () is one of the areas of Hong Kong, three areas of Hong Kong, along with Hong Kong Island and the New Territories. It is an urban area comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. It has a population of 2,019,533 and a populat ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

. The base was bounded by Fuk Wa Street to the east, by Yen Chow Street and to the west by

Tonkin Street Tonkin Street () is a street between Sham Shui Po and Cheung Sha Wan of New Kowloon in Hong Kong. It runs northeast to southwest and crosses many major roads in the Cheung Sha Wan area. After extensive Land reclamation in Hong Kong, reclamatio ...

and Camp Street. The buildings on one side were known as Hankow Barracks, and the other Nanking Barracks. There was a large parade ground. Smaller buildings were later added, and the large Jubilee Buildings were constructed as married quarters.

World War II

During World War II, the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

used the facility as a prisoner of war (POW) camp for

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

, Indian and

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

soldiers. This was the main POW Camp in Hong Kong, operating from before the British surrendered the Colony, until Japan surrendered at the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. By the later date, it was the only POW facility operating in Hong Kong, bar the hospital at the Central British School (now King George V School). Many POWs died here, especially in the diphtheria epidemic of 1942, and all shipments of POWs to Japan left from Sham Shui Po's Bamboo Pier.

After the war

In 1959, the military handed a strip of land within the base to the Hong Kong government so that Lai Chi Kok Road could be extended. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the camp was used to house Vietnamese refugees. The camp was re-developed for housing in the early 1990s. None of the former military structures exist and only plaques commemorating the POW camp remain, together with maple trees commemorating the Canadians held here. These can be found at Sham Shui Po Park, also part of the former base.

References

External links

Site of former Sham Shui Po Camp and POW Camp
at gwulo.com
Site of Jubilee Buildings, Sham Shui Po
at gwulo.com {{Coord, 22.332, 114.158, dim:2000_region:HK, display=title Barracks in Hong Kong Sham Shui Po Japanese prisoner of war and internment camps Japanese occupation of Hong Kong Military of Hong Kong under British rule Military installations established in 1927

World War II

After the war

See also

References

Further reading

External links