Yes, I know. While speaking to Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt actually said, “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy …”

Referring to the Japanese surprise attack upon Pearl Harbor that drew the United States into World War II.

However, it was Dec. 8, 1941 that was the infamous date on this side of the Pacific. When Imperial Japan sprang into military action on this (east side) of the International Dateline. You gain a day, when you cross the Pacific, remember?

Anyway, Hong Kong is the first place I have stayed more than a week or two … where World War II actually rolled over and through it. Paris doesn’t count because it wasn’t really fought over — not as the Germans came in, and not when they went out. Florence, same deal. To name two foreign cities I’ve spent more than a few weeks in.

The overextended British Empire, already reeling from Nazi Germany’s hammer blows, could do little to protect its Asian assets. Well, almost nothing, really. It knew attacks were almost certain to come, and it sent a brigade here and there, but those were mostly symbolic gestures. Though there were some real soldiers who were about to suffer quite real, and not symbolic, fates.

Some of them were here in Hong Kong.

I knew about Manila and the Philippines and Wake Island, and the doomed American defenders there. I knew about Malaysia, and Singapore, which the British thought to be capable of holding out for months if not years, and about the naval disasters (Prince of Wales, Repulse) the British suffered in the south Pacific. I knew about Jakarta and the Dutch getting routed in Indonesia. I knew about the Japanese taking over from the French in Indochina.

I just never had thought about Hong Kong. But it already was a city/territory of 840,000 in 1940. A serious city, that is, that had been part of the British Empire for nearly a century.

Here is the wikipedia account of the Battle of Hong Kong. It’s wikipedia, so it’s less than Gospel, but it serves for the broad outlines of what went on.

Japan had been fighting in China for eight years already, and had taken Canton (now known as Guangzhou) just up the Pearl River from here. So they could mass on the border of Hong Kong … where the modern Chinese city of Shenzhen now stands.

And the Japanese attacked here eight hours after their bombers had left the U.S. Pacific Fleet a smoking ruin at Pearl.

The resistance apparently was heroic but, as were nearly all things Allied in 1941, doomed.

The Japanese broke through the main defensive line north of Kowloon, and the two brigades of British Empire troops (including Canadians and Indians) withdrew from the mainland, across the strait, to Hong Kong Island.

On the night of Dec. 18, Japanese forces crossed over to the island at North Point — which is where the office I work in is located. They split in two the thinly spread garrison, with half of it retreating west toward the Central District (where I am now), and the other withdrawing south, hoping to defend the ridge line that runs nearly the length of the island. That brigade was forced farther south, into the Stanley Peninsula — where I was a week ago.

The Empire forces lost control of the island’s one reservoir, which was a major problem because Hong Kong has water issues during the winter, when it rains very little. I know, hard to imagine considering anual rainfall here is about 70 inches; but it nearly all comes between May and October. The defenders were going thirsty.

On Christmas Day, the British governor surrendered. The usual atrocities ensued, the Japanese being keen on atrocities at that point in their history. In Stanley, I saw some of the graves of the British soldiers summarily executed there. And I saw other graves of British civilians who died during the war, mostly from neglect, I imagine. Starvation and simple diseases.

Anyway, “December 7” still has a cachet, in the U.S.

Over here, it’s December 8 that brings to mind the nightfall of a very dark era in the history of the city.

I can’t say the history is keen. Not in that “Verdun” sort of way, not in the Omaha Beach style — where the gravestones march into the distance. Hong Kong tends to live in the moment. But if you think about it, and you read the history, and you see the names of places you pass every day …

Well, we in America haven’t been invaded since 1812. So we can hardly relate.

Over here … it makes me think.

Dec. 8, 1941. A date which will live in infamy — for those who remember, in Hong Kong.