The Siege of Repulse Bay Hotel

[Hobilar]

With fighting continuing in the hills, the elite of Hong Kong society retreated to the most likeliest place of safety, the luxury Repulse Bay Hotel. The hotel quickly filled, not only with the two hundred wealthy guests (mostly white women and children) but also with large numbers of Chinese and Philippine families, together with around 200 dirty, exhausted soldiers pulled out of the line for a brief rest.

On the morning of the 20th December, a ragged Chinese coolie knocked on the door of the Hotel and asked to buy Cigarettes and beer-He had been stopped by a Japanese Patrol who had sent him to the Hotel to make the purchase. Turned away by an astonished waiter, within ten minutes four Japanese Officers appeared , smartly attired in full dress with white gloves, followed soon after by twenty five soldiers who quickly occupied a nearby petrol station and began sniping at the hotel guests who were taking breakfast on the terraces, causing the said guests to flee briskly inside. Throughout the rest of the day the defenders kept by a stiff resistance to the Japanese who had, by the end of the day, as many as five or six hundred soldiers on the beach and nearby slopes. Meanwhile the Chinese and Philippine Hotel staff had fled and the hotel guests had taken shelter in a storm drain which offered some protection from the incoming mortar and machine gun fire. A sortie by a platoon of the Middlesex Regiment under 2Lt Peter Grounds managed to drive the Japanese out of the Petrol Station and rescue six sailors who were being held captive there, but it also revealed the strength of the enemy. Lt Grounds was killed leading this sortie,

By the next morning news of the hotel siege had reached Major General Maltby, the Garrison Commander, who immediately despatched Major Robert Templar with two platoons of the Royal Regiment of Canada. Speeding through the Japanese lines in racing trucks and an armoured car, Templar's small force reached the hotel without loss. His arrival there was electrifying. Insisting that each of the weary defenders should wash and shave, he then set about reorganizing the defences around the hotel lobby which was to be the main bastion, before leading two truckloads of Rifles to raid a Japanese encampment to the north.

That night a Japanese patrol managed to get into the left wing of the hotel and set up a machine gun at the end of a long red carpeted corridor. Templar and him men rolled grenades down the corridor as if they had been in a bowling alley, blowing the gun to pieces and causing the remaining Japanese to flee through the windows.

Some of the guests wanted to join the soldiers on the barricades. Templar's first reaction was to refuse this request, but he later relented. Among one of the bravest acts was by three elderly guests, all in their sixties, who sprinted to a bullet-ridden car and drove it half a mile under constant sniper fire to the Lido Beach Club to collect more ammunition from a hidden cache there. Millionaire Henry Marsman and two bell boys dressed in red caps and gold buttoned jackets climbed out of a window to dig in the garden to fill sandbags. The women too set up a kitchen canteen from where they would supply the embattled soldiers with tea and scones.

By the third day of the siege the once plush hotel was a shambles. Mortar shells had blown great holes in the roof, and the walls of the luxury rooms were pock-marked with bullet holes; broken glass, shredded wood and ceiling plaster littered the floor; and magnificent mahogany dining tables lay broken and splintered. Although the Telephone was still in operation, the Japanese had cut off the water and electricity supply. With food and water running short, Templar telephoned General Maltby's Headquarters. Informed of the situation the General ordered the evacuation of the soldiers at the hotel. Despite concern as to the fate of the wounded and civilians if left to the mercy of the Japanese, Templar decided to obey orders and the troops departed in the middle of the night. Their two mile trek to the British lines was plagued by Japanese snipers along the way but thankfully nobody was killed.

At 7.am. the next morning, Japanese soldiers entered the lobby. Informed that the soldiers had departed the guests were rounded up and placed under guard. Six Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed tried to get into the cocktail bar where the wounded men had been placed. They were turned back by frail grey haired Elizabeth Mosey who stood resolutely in their path and denied them entry. Shortly after a Japanese General arrived. Once he was satisfied that the British and Canadian soldiers had indeed departed, and that all that remained were wounded and civilians, with rare honour he promised complete protection to his prisoners, and keeping to his word the prisoners went off to their captivity without any further loss of life.