Skymaster through the shoulder of a 15-foot wave as the right wing and
No. 4 engine snapped off, then slammed into the middle of the next
wave. The solid impact of the water caved in the cockpit windows. The
tail broke off, up-ended in unison with the fuselage and headed for the
sea bottom. Less than two minutes elapsed between the attack and the
ditching.
Thirty seconds after hitting the water, the fuselage sank out of sight.
Two of the Red fighters executed a U-turn around the wreckage before
heading back to their base at Sanya, on the southern end of Hainan
Island. Few of the victims had time to put on life jackets. When the
cabin went down, only those washed clear of it had a chance to survive.
The eight survivors clambered or were dragged aboard the twenty-man
inflated rubber raft. Captain Blown spread a weather awning over the
raft and warned all passengers to keep out of sight under it in case of
another attack.
Steve Wong, the Chinese radio operator, had died in the wreck. Captain
Blown remembered seeing him talk into the mike all during the dive
toward the sea and sending a final message, “Losing altitude, engine on
fire.” The message was heard at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong and rescue
operations started immediately.
Two hours later, rescue planes began to circle over the raft—Hornets, a
Sunderland, Valetta, York and a French B-24, but none could land on the
water. A pair of U.S. Air Force SA-16 Grumman Albatrosses were dispatched
from Sangley Point in the Philippines. One of the big amphibians landed
in sheltered water on the lee side of Tinhosa Island and taxied out to
the raft in a perilously rough sea.
The rescuers were guided to the spot by smoke flares dropped by the
French B-24. Dozens of Chinese junks wallowed and rocked on the waves at
some distance from the raft, making no attempt to interfere as American
fighter planes flew cover over the raft. The survivors had been on the
raft for seven hours before being rescued.
Besides the three fatalities among the crew—Stewardess Rose Chen, Steve
Wong and Flight Engineer G. W. Cattanach—there were seven passenger
deaths, including a tea merchant, a Hong Kong University student, an
American exporter and his two sons, and the owner of a Hong Kong curio
shop. Captain Blown, who continued as a Cathay Pacific Airways pilot for
many years, received a Queen’s Commendation for his cool-headed efforts
to save the Skymaster and the lives of those aboard.
Humphrey Trevelyan, British Chargé d’Affaires at Peking, delivered his
government’s strongly worded protest, and the Red Chinese ultimately paid
$1,027,600 indemnity for the loss of the plane. No explanation of the
shooting was given, except for undocumented guesses that the Communists
may have been trying to kill or kidnap some person on the plane or to
scare off all ships approaching her territorial limits.
The shooting prompted John Foster Dulles, American Secretary of State, to
issue a hot denunciation of the “further barbarity” of the Chinese Reds.
The U.S. Navy Department dispatched two aircraft carriers, the _Hornet_
and the _Philippine Sea_, to join in the rescue. Their planes raced to
the rescue scene, ready to start shooting if there were any Red Chinese
interference. It was one of the angriest moments between the U.S. and Red
China since the Korean war. It passed without further raising of American
tempers, but reinforced the already intense American antipathy for Mao’s
Communist state.
Less than one year later, the destruction of a second airliner in
the South China Sea thrust Hong Kong into the Communist-Nationalist
crossfire. A Lockheed Constellation of Air-India International took
off from Kai Tak Airport, bound for the first Afro-Asian Conference
at Bandoeng carrying eight Red Chinese delegates. The conference was
intended to assure the uncommitted nations that Communist China had put
aside its warlike ways to become an exemplar of peaceful coexistence.
There was an appalling roar as the Constellation approached Sarawak; a
bomb burst in the baggage compartment, setting the aircraft afire. Pilot
Captain D. K. Jatar, showing incredible skill and nerve, managed to guide
the shattered plane to a jolting belly-landing at 150 miles an hour.
But the impact with the sea tore the Constellation apart and it sank in
moments, leaving a circle of flames on the surface. Before the radio went
dead, the ship had issued an international distress call.
Eleven passengers and five crewmen, including Captain Jatar, died in
the crash and explosion. Three surviving crew members drifted in a life
raft for nine hours until they were picked up by the British frigate
_Dampier_. All the Chinese delegates were among those killed, and Peking
charged sabotage. The accusation proved to be well-based; the bomb had
been planted by a Nationalist saboteur, employed as a cleaner by the
British maintenance company at Kai Tak Airport. Hong Kong police offered
a $17,500 reward for his arrest, but he escaped to Taiwan on another
airplane.
The Hong Kong government issued a warrant for the bomber’s arrest, but
the Nationalist authorities replied that they had no legal basis for his
extradition to the colony. There the matter rested, with the abiding
hatred between Peking and Taipeh continuing as before.
Each of the sea and air incidents threatened the security of the
colony to some degree, but none rocked its internal structure with the
earthquake power of the Double Ten riots of October, 1956. No other
crisis since World War II has presented such a frontal challenge to
its ability to preserve law and order. Three days of savage guerrilla
warfare raged through thickly congested streets, and when the fight was
over, the British administration had had the fright of its life.
Statistics convey none of the heat of these bloody battles, but they
measure a few of their dimensions: 59 people killed, 500 injured, nearly
$1,000,000 in property damage, 6,000 arrests, 1,241 prison sentences
and four executions for murder. Nearly 3,000 police and several army
battalions were engaged in subduing the rioters. From east to west,
the riots extended across eleven miles of Upper Kowloon and the New
Territories, and were marked by fifty-four skirmishes between mobs and
the uniformed forces.
If the genesis of the riots were to be narrowed down to a single
proximate cause, it would have to be something as trivial as an argument
over a few paper flags pasted on a concrete wall. Physically, that was
where they started, but their true origin goes back at least three
centuries.
The riots took their name from the common designation of a patriotic
holiday on October 10, the tenth day of the tenth month, marking the
anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911. In
Hong Kong, it is preceded by the October 1 celebration of the birthday
of Red China. Each holiday gave Nationalist or Communist sympathizers
an opportunity to explode strings of firecrackers, hold rallies and fly
their national flags. On both days, police were out in full force to
prevent riots between the opposing Chinese groups, and they managed to
keep the lid down fairly well until 1956.
The October 1 holiday in 1956 passed without undue commotion and October
10 began with no indication of Communist violence. Nationalist flags were
displayed by refugees all over the colony, particularly in the heavily
populated resettlement estates of Upper Kowloon. The refugees were
predominantly pro-Nationalist, having been driven from their homeland by
the Reds. After years of exile and grinding poverty, many of them were
steeped in bitterness and yearning for revenge against the Communists.
The Triad gangs, whose members played a key part in the Double Ten riots,
had been established in China three centuries ago as a patriotic society
dedicated to the overthrow of the foreign Manchus who dethroned the
native Ming Dynasty. Their professed ideals slowly rotted away and they
devolved into a band of thugs, living on protection rackets, shake-downs
of street peddlers and petty criminals, enforced by fear and strong-arm
brutality. Since World War I, crime has become their primary business and
their patriotism survives only as a front.
On October 10, 1956, pro-Nationalist residents of the Shek Kip Mei
Resettlement Estate began to take down the paper flags they had pasted on
the concrete walls of the housing blocks. Housing officials had objected
that the pasted flags were difficult to remove after the Double Ten
holiday was over, and the tenants, who could still fly flags from poles
or ropes, accepted the cleanup job unprotestingly.
At Li Cheng Uk, a resettlement estate about a quarter of a mile to
the northwest of Shek Kip Mei, housing officials themselves removed
Nationalist flags and symbols stuck on the walls. It was early in the
morning of the Double Tenth, when an unfriendly crowd of about 400
gathered quickly and demanded that the flags be restored. Police were
called, but the crowd swelled to more than 2,000 by early afternoon
and its demands became more extravagant. Impatient for action, some of
the crowd attacked two resettlement officials, beating them severely.
Police units, hurrying to help the injured men, were met with a barrage
of flying bottles. They replied with tear gas and the mob, turning its
anger on the police, showered them with rocks. A resettlement office was
set afire but police reinforcements succeeded in dispersing the mob. By
midafternoon, with two persons arrested and four injured, peace appeared
to have been restored.
Right after the dinner hour, a newly formed mob at Li Cheng Uk renewed
the rock-throwing attacks on police. Nationalist flags were unfurled and
a shouting mass of rioters charged into police lines. Four riot units of
240 men were called out and the strengthened force threw a cordon around
six blocks while a sporadic exchange of rocks and tear gas continued. The
area enclosed by the cordon became relatively quiet, but new disorders
broke out along its southern edge. Police vehicles were attacked, and
members of Triads were sighted in the center of the commotion.
Rioting became general and violent by 10:30 P.M. and police set up
roadblocks on main routes into the area. The mobs altered their tactics,
splitting into small fighting squads that pounded a segment of the police
lines with a swift, sharp attack, then scattered and ran before police
could bring up reserves. Within a few minutes, the attack squads would
re-form on another block and hit police lines again. As the evening
advanced, the riot zone kept expanding into other parts of Kowloon.
Police units were alerted on Hong Kong Island to forestall possible riots
there.
Police were only one of the mob targets. A fire engine returning from
a minor blaze near the Kowloon resettlement estates was bombarded with
bricks, bottles and chunks of concrete. The engine driver, struck on
the head by a flying object, lost control of the truck and it plunged
erratically into a crowd, killing three and injuring five. Ambulances
were stoned as they arrived to pick up the casualties. An Auxiliary
Fire Service vehicle was dumped over and set on fire. Hordes of rioters
swarmed into the area, more police were summoned and a four-hour battle
ensued.
The looting phase of the riots began with an attack on a bakery in the
heart of the disturbed area. After smashing the bakery windows and
setting it afire, rioters turned their rock-and-stone batteries on
firemen called to put out the flames. Two floors of the building were
destroyed before the firemen could extinguish the blaze. Meanwhile,
rioters went berserk on the streets, looting and burning shops until
the massed strength of police laboriously regained control of the
neighborhood.
Another battle was fought in the crowded streets of Mongkok. Rocks were
dropped on the police from balconies while Triad gangs embarked on
the looting of shops. Marauding gangs roamed the Kowloon streets down
to Austin Road, the northern edge of the tourist and luxury shopping
section, before police hammered them into submission.
General restoration of order in Kowloon was still far off. October 11 was
only a half-hour old when police learned that a mob infiltrated by Triad
gangsters was preparing to set fire to a pro-Communist private school.
Police sent to investigate were pelted with rocks and forced to withdraw
with five men injured. A riot unit used tear gas to pen the rioters
inside the resettlement buildings while other police went to the school.
They found looters and arsonists busily at work and arrested eleven men.
About 3:45 A.M., hoodlums became active near Kai Tak Airport, a mile and
a half east of Tai Hang Tung, wrecking a traffic pagoda.
Sunrise on October 11 brought a lull, but at 10 A.M., there was renewed
rioting at Li Cheng Uk. Triad thugs peddled Nationalist flags by
threatening to beat up anyone who refused to buy. Looting and mob
barricades again confronted police who had been hard-hit by injuries.
One mob launched a full-scale attack on the Sham Shui Po police station,
but were repelled by gunfire and scattered into the side streets when an
armored car pursued them. Mobs of ever-increasing size were fast-moving
and elusive, and tear gas did little more than drive them to another
location where they attacked again. They lighted bonfires in the streets
and then heaved rocks at the firemen called to extinguish them.
The Kowloon rioters displayed no signs of a unified battle plan, nor any
concerted push toward a strategic objective. But their actions revealed a
consistent pattern of criminality after the looting and extortion began,
confirming the police belief that Triads were in control. Police decided
to shoot to kill, but realized that even this last-ditch measure would be
useless unless they deployed their units to surround the rioters and take
them prisoner. Shortly after noon of October 11—and very late by many
people’s judgment—three battalions of the Hong Kong army garrison were
thrown into the fight.
With army battalions in action, the mob spirit began to die down
throughout Kowloon by evening. A curfew was imposed, cross-harbor ferry
service suspended, and the main impetus of the Kowloon riots came to an
end.
Rigid enforcement of the curfew slowly cleared the streets of bystanders,
but failed to drive the active rioters to cover. Looting and stoning of
police persisted in Mongkok until after midnight, when riot guns and
tear gas finally halted it. Strong-arm gangs armed with rocks, hammers,
and iron bars prowled through eastern Kowloon, extorting money from
shopkeepers, looting factories and battling police. Three rioters were
killed and more than 400 arrested before the plundering was checked.
Looting and arson continued for the third day, October 12, at many
places in Kowloon. The mass riots of the first two days were replaced
by a merciless street war between bands of gangsters and the uniformed
services of the colony. Three looters were shot to death in a raid on a
provision shop in Mongkok. Firemen, ambulance crews and practically every
man in a uniform was stoned or beaten if he ventured into a riot area.
On the afternoon of the 12th, police began dragnet raids on the hideouts
of rioters and looters, taking 1,170 prisoners. The next day, raids at
Li Cheng Uk by police and military units took 1,000 prisoners, and 700
others were rounded up at Tai Hang Tung.
On the morning of October 14, the curfew was lifted in Kowloon and most
of the army units were relieved. But a night curfew continued for three
more nights in northwestern Kowloon.
The day after the Kowloon riots erupted, a related but different kind
of rioting broke out in Tsuen Wan, a New Territories factory town five
and one-half miles west of Li Cheng Uk. In this area of textile and
enamelware factories, most of the workers lived in company dormitories;
physically close, but divided into intensely hostile pro- and
anti-Communist unions.
Tsuen Wan had experienced some friction over the refusal of factory
owners to display Nationalist flags on plant buildings during the Double
Ten holiday, although pro-Nationalist workers could display the flags in
their dormitories. No open protest was made until the afternoon of the
next day, when a mob gathered outside a cotton mill and insisted that
Nationalist flags be shown. The company acceded, and even granted the
crowd leaders a small amount of money.
But the right-wing unions were in no mood for peaceful solutions that
same evening when they launched a series of raids on Communist union
offices; they looted and burned the offices and beat some leftist workers
so savagely that five of them died. Sixty other leftist union members
were collared by a mob and dragged off to a Nationalist rally where they
were kicked and punched until many were unconscious. Meanwhile, another
group of right-wing unionists continued to raid Communist union offices,
assaulting any members they could find. Army troops were called to
restore order, and their heavy vehicles crashed through mob barricades to
remove the injured and clamp a strict curfew on Tsuen Wan.
One mile south of the town, mobs were still on a rampage, attacking a
canning factory and setting it on fire. Four other factories on the
outskirts of Tsuen Wan were besieged by mobs carrying Nationalist flags.
Their demands were identical; either the plant would put out Nationalist
flags and pay protection to the mob, or the place would be burned down.
Management officials hastened to comply.
Several large textile mills were also favored with mob visits and a
peremptory demand that they fire all pro-Red workers. Four miles west of
Tsuen Wan, a Nationalist union group combined forces with a Triad gang,
looted a textile factory, set fire to an automobile, stole a factory
truck and withdrew after having their demands satisfied by management.
Five houses and shops identified with Communist interests were invaded
and wrecked.
The Tsuen Wan curfew was extended to surrounding areas and remained in
force until October 16 while police and the army locked horns with
the Nationalist rioters. Left-wingers were not an immediate problem,
most of them having fled to the hills for their lives. But the rightist
demonstrators were tough; they were disciplined fighters, ably led
and guided by whistle-blast commands. Eight persons were killed, 109
seriously injured and 684 arrested before the rioters capitulated.
Long after the restoration of law and order, fear continued to keep
workers away from their jobs. Full production did not resume at factories
and mills in the Tsuen Wan area until early in November.
When the last of the Double Ten disorders ended, the hard-pressed colony
government had a chance to assess events. Most of the property damaged
by mobs belonged to Communists or their sympathizers, but Nationalist
vengeance was by no means the only reason for its destruction; the longer
the riots continued, the more inescapable became the conclusion that they
were directed by criminals bent on manipulating patriotic emotions to
enrich themselves.
The Double Ten riots did more than weaken the prestige of the
Triads, whose leaders were either arrested or deported; it helped to
illustrate the futility of waging a street war in Hong Kong over the
Nationalist-Communist issue. Partisanship toward either side still
burns strongly among the older Chinese, but it is a dwindling flame.
Younger people, and many Chinese intellectuals within the colony, seem
indifferent or hostile to both camps. Practically no one wants to return
to Red China, and Taiwan had shown little inclination to welcome Chinese
immigrants from Hong Kong until the border rush of May, 1962.
The turmoil occasioned by the Double Ten riots was succeeded by a period
of comparative calm between Red China and the colony. But it ended in
1958, when the Chinese Communists clamped tight restrictions on inshore
fishing by boats from Hong Kong. The Reds, perennially belligerent over
the suspected invasion of their territorial limits, demanded that any
boats fishing in their waters must have a Communist registration in
addition to their colony registry. The registration also involved a
Communist share of the fisherman’s catch, and Hong Kong boats resented
the gouge. The apparent solution was to keep their craft out of Communist
waters.
The Reds made the problem more complex by invading Hong Kong waters on
numerous patrol swoops to seize Hong Kong junks. The first of these came
in October, 1958, when Red patrol boats grabbed several junks near Po Toi
Island, on the southern edge of colony waters. In December, a Communist
gunboat fired on junks in colony waters, killing two fishermen and
injuring several others. A month later, a Chinese gunboat crossed into
colony waters and captured two fishing boats with six persons aboard. In
May, 1959, an armed Communist tug pushed nine miles into Hong Kong waters
to round up a pair of large fishing junks.
In self-defense, many Hong Kong fishermen abandoned inshore fishing, and
ventured much farther out to sea. Without intending to, the Reds helped
to stimulate the mechanization of the colony’s fishing fleet and improve
its efficiency.
The colonial administration at Hong Kong carefully avoids comment on
the Nationalist-Communist issue. It can, of course, initiate no foreign
policy of its own, but must keep precisely to the line set down by the
British government. It is expected to get along as best it can with both
Red China and Taiwan, and leave the high-level thundering to London.
While the colony’s officials are well aware that the United States and
other Western powers are using Hong Kong as an observation post on Red
China, and that both Red China and Taiwan have their corps of spies in
the colony, they take no official cognizance of such activities until
they become too conspicuous. Unfortunately, they often do. Toward the
end of 1961, the colony had 21 Nationalist spies in custody, including a
former leader of guerrilla forces in Southeast Asia.
Even more embarrassing are the cases in which one of the colony’s
officials turns out to be a foreign spy. On October 2, 1961, the colony
government arrested John Chao-ko Tsang, an Assistant Superintendent of
Police and one of its most promising career men, and deported him to Red
China on November 30. The case created a sensation, for Tsang had the
highest post of any colony official ever involved in an espionage case.
With its customary delicacy in matters affecting Red China, the
government announced only that Tsang was being deported as an alien.
Fourteen other “aliens” were rounded up for questioning in the case, and
four of them were sent across the border at Lo Wu with John Tsang. Tsang
was later rumored to be in charge of public security for the Reds at
Canton.
Tsang’s arrest was pure luck. A Chinese detective returning from Macao
on another case noticed a man dressed as a common laborer take a bundle
of $100 banknotes from one pocket and put it into another. The detective
questioned him about the large amount of money, but found his answers
pretty thin. He was accordingly hauled to a police station, questioned
further and searched. A letter found on him was eventually traced to John
Tsang. Unofficially, the letter was said to contain instructions from a
Communist espionage cell in Macao.
The former Assistant Superintendent was thirty-eight years old, and so
intelligent and popular that he looked to be headed for a top place in
the department. Born in China, he had come to Hong Kong before the Reds
ruled the mainland, joined the police in 1948 and rose rapidly from the
ranks. He had gone to Cambridge University in 1960 for advanced studies,
married while there, and returned to the colony in mid-1961. He was then
one of the highest-ranking Chinese officers in the department.
The nature of Tsang’s work gave him an expert’s knowledge of the colony’s
defenses and internal security, information of obvious value to the Reds.
His associates in the police force still doubt that he came to Hong Kong
as a spy, believing that he turned Communist after he became established
in the colony. His wife and mother remained in Hong Kong after his
deportation.