I also spoke to two ladies at Chuk Yuen Village in 1963, who had described the removal of the large and old village of Po Kong, in its entirety, along with the nearby hamlets of Ta Kwu Ling, Shek Kwu Lung and Kak Hang, to make way - as they said - for a road and the airfield extension, adding that the Japanese built new stone houses for them and gave rice compensation instead of cash; which [again] 'was much more useful to us at that time, when money was worth very little.'
Other information was available that embellished the account of this difficult time. A man of 52, born at Ta Kwu Ling in 1915, told me in 1966 that part of the village was demolished, not for the airfield extension but because they were too close to it; the Japanese military authorities thinking that it might harbour guerillas who could damage its installations and parked aircraft. Around a hundred structures, all told, were demolished at Ta Kwu Ling, among them 14-15 large village houses. The people had been told to move out in October-November 1943, and were not offered houses in Model Village, In lieu of resettlement, they were given 75 catties of rice per adult and 35 catties for children - clearly with the intention of providing some assistance in an emergency for those concerned. Nonetheless this must have been a time of great hardship, with winter coming on. It was reported that the village headman, who had held office since about 1925, had died of starvation.
This removal, together with Shek Wu Lung and Tai Horn, was said by the Nga Tsin Wai elders to have been unnecessary, caused by greedy Chinese contractors working for the Japanese authorities (and perhaps in collusion with some of their people), who had coveted the building materials and saw this opportunity to force people from their homes. According to the elders, the Chu lineage of Tai Horn were too frightened to object to the Japanese about this, for fear of being executed, and had said nothing.
During the main clearance, the Nga Tsin Wat leaders averred, they had had the courage to visit the Japanese officer in charge, and even to call upon the military governor. He had asked them to return to their native village in China, whereupon they had explained that they had none, having lived in Kowloon for six hundred years. Thereafter, a diversion was arranged for the light rail track carrying the earth wagons used in the nullah excavation and construction, whereby the main village - but not its outlying houses and structures - was saved from the planned demolition.
If even part of the above can be believed - its reliability is surely strengthened by the fact that it came directly from the mouths of affected parties - it will be seen that the Japanese authorities were not completely ruthless in their behaviour towards those Kowloon villagers affected by the airfield extension, or in their treatment of those men, women and children who laboured on the various public works projects undertaken by them during their wartime occupation of Hong Kong.
Finally, as reported by Patrick Hase, cash compensation was paid by the returned colonial administration after the war to those villageowners who had lost their land and houses for the extension of the airfield. This is correct. When I became District Officer South in 1957, 1 found that the office registers listed a number of files dealing with the subject, among them DOS 9/171/50 (1950), entitled 'Kai Tak Compensation - List of Property formerly owned by Squatters at Kowloon Tong (Kowloon Tsai) Mode! Village', and that my staff were still making payments to late applicants.
Model Village itself was cleared for development in the early 1980s, removing an almost forgotten link with the wartime events, which had brought so much hardship to those village families directly involved. |