"On Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese captured Hong Kong, and Britain lost control of its Chinese colony for almost four years. The Japanese occupation was a turning point in the slow historical process by which the British were to be expelled from the colony and from four centuries of influence in East Asia. In this definitive account of the wartime history of Hong Kong, Philip Snow unravels the dramatic story of the occupation from the viewpoint of all the key players - the Hong Kong Chinese, the British, the Japanese and the mainland Chinese - and reinterprets the subsequent evolution of the colony in the light of this half-buried episode."--Jacket.