Sham Shui Po park Canadian war memorial plaque context 2

Sham Shui Po Barracks was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

facility built in the 1920s in the Sham Shui Po area of

Kowloon Kowloon () is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. With a population of 2,019,533 and a population density of in 2006, it is the most populous area in Hong Kong, compared with Hong Kong Island and t ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. The base was bounded by

Fuk Wa Street Fuk Wa Street () is a street in Cheung Sha Wan and Sham Shui Po, New Kowloon, Hong Kong. Name Unlike other streets in the area, Fuk Wa Street is not named after a place in China. Its name means blessing (fuk, 福) and prosperous (wa, 華) while ...

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, reclamation ...

and

Camp Street Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...

. 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 was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

used it as a POW camp for British, Indian and

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) 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 ...

soldiers. This was the main POW Camp in Hong Kong, operating from before the British surrendered the Colony, to the Japanese surrender. 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 exists 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