Pak Sha Wan battery: a case study of a Hong Kong military heritage site

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the military heritage in Hong Kong. It specifically covers a case-study military site – Pak Sha Wan Battery on the east of Hong Kong Island, an abandoned defensive mechanism and one of significant battlefields in the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941. This research dissertation is to examine military heritage as a Cultural Heritage with both tangible and intangible elements. By the Pak Sha Wan Battery as a case study, this is also to recognise the importance of the military heritage site in the history of Hong Kong, and the war relics deserve to be preserved for our future generations. To a certain extent, military heritage is neglected by people in Hong Kong. Part of the reason is perhaps because of a lack of a local military tradition. There has never been compulsory military service in Hong Kong. Additionally, Hong Kong does not involve in direct war conflict after the World War II. Military and war are concepts far away from Hongkongers. Few people could tell the location of military compounds and battlefields in Hong Kong. Military heritage may not even be considered as an important heritage because those military relics are just pieces of abandoned ruins to them! Owing to being neglected for long time, most of the Hong Kong war relics are overgrown and witnesses of the war become invisible to the people, though some military heritage sites are not actually hard to access, e.g. Pinewood Battery on Victoria Peak and the disused military structure on Devil’s Peak, and the former Lyemun military installations at the present-day Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence (HKMCD). As an assistant curator in a military theme museum in Hong Kong, the author find few publications on the Hong Kong military, and it is believed that many military relics in Hong Kong are still to be uncovered and documented. Pak Sha Wan Battery, inside the closed area of the HKMCD, is hardly accessible, and therefore it was least mentioned in publications. Most likely it is just mentioned the location name in publications but few further details information about the Battery can be found. It is hoped that this dissertation with the Pak Sha Wan Battery as a case study could help to document the gap of record in the military history of Hong Kong.