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Conclusion In theWake ofWhite Supremacy THE ATOMIC BOMBING of Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended the Pacific War and with it Tokyo’s dream of a complete racial re­ versal. On the other hand, the changes that had been wrought in the theater of war had been so deep­seated and profound that it was no longer possible to return to the status quo ante.1 Hong Kong witnessed the decline of racial segregation and the arrogance that accompanied it, along with the rise of a cadre of indigenous capitalists. Many had be­ come wealthy by collaborating with the Japanese, which set them apart from the prewar Chinese compradors allied to British business inter­ ests. Their rise also served to further discredit the notion of white su­ premacy. As a leading Hong Kong academic, Henry Lethbridge, put it—controversially though not inaccurately—the “occupation worked ultimately to the benefit of the leaders of the Chinese community. . . . The British Mandarinate collapsed in 1941; it has never been replaced.”2 When Eugene D. Williams of the United States arrived in Japan just after the war, he was staggered. “No one who has seen it,” he wrote, “can visualize the damage done to the industrial portions of Japan by our Air Force. Officers who have just arrived here from Europe say that it looks a lot worse than it does there.” He was impressed with the peo­ ple, who “seem to work all the time like ants.” They “appear to accept their subjugation and defeat with equanimity and to be very friendly to us.” But he added, ominously, “I do not believe that they actually are. . . . My personal opinion is that they have a vast capacity for hypocrisy and underneath it all they hate our guts.”3 But intense bomb­ ing of Japan culminating in Hiroshima was, in part, an expression of such intense animosity. 279 280 CONCLUSION Williams may have been mistaking simple adjustment to a new re­ ality for something more sinister—which, of course, was typical of deal­ ings by Euro­Americans and Europeans with the Japanese over the decades. The Hong Kong solicitor, Ralph Malcolm Macdonald King, must have had a particularly nasty experience, for he concluded years after the war, “I wouldn’t trust a Japanese now as long as I saw him. . . . Sooner or later they’re going to come back. They’re going to be [the] scourge that they were before. I would never trust them . . . they are an untrustworthy race.”4 Some dissented. Norman Cliff, a son of missionaries in northern China who was interned in Japan, upon being freed remarked about his former captors, “Just as they had been enthusiastic conquerors, so they were now enthusiastic losers. . . . What an amazing race the Japanese were!”5 John Streicker of Stanley partially agreed. He recalled that as the war wound down, his captors “became ingratiating. One would expect it of them and one must expect it in the future,” for “outwardly he is your most hospitable host, inwardly he is your dangerous competitor.”6 Sterling Seagrave thought he had uncovered a central reason for Japan’s alleged dissimulation. “If a robber steals $100 billion,” he asked, “and successfully hides the money before he is captured and jailed, and then is released after seven years for good behaviour, did he fail or suc­ ceed?”7 In other words, Japan was driven by the desire to mask its un­ just enrichment. Seagrave’s assessment was echoed by another analyst, who estimated that in Hong Kong alone, “goods worth $10,000 million were taken off during [Japan’s] 44 month stay.”8 Much of this property had belonged to the British, which suggested the dimensions of Lon­ don’s loss—and the point that Japan’s desire for racial reversal was not thwarted even in defeat. The undoing of the British Empire, whose heart was in Asia, was largely attributable to Japan. Russell Clark, an Australian reporter, arrived in Hong Kong in Au­ gust 1945 just after the Japanese surrender and was able to witness the surreal effects of Tokyo’s invasion. Many of the cars and much of the city’s physical plant had been shipped in previous years directly to Japan, giving the city a strangely empty feeling. The narrow serpentine streets of Hong Kong were littered with the detritus of war. The once proud Hong Kong University, which sat majestically on a hill, was a shrunken hull of its old self, with the library...

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