At the Emperor's Pleasure  
Surviving Wartime Captivity in the Far East
Author(s): Richard Graham
Published by Pen and Sword
ISBN: 9781036109233
Pages: 0

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At the Emperors Pleasure follows the young couple Christopher and Topsy Man through the savage battle for Hong Kong and the years of enforced separation, she interned in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, he as a prisoner of war and forced labourer in Kobe, Japan.

The book is not about Christopher and Topsy Man alone but also of friends and colleagues close to them forced to endure the cruel torture and execution by the Kempeitai.

Amongst those close to them some of Topsy’s friends and colleagues were raped and murdered, one was imprisoned within shouting distance of her husband being tortured then executed by the Kempeitai, while another died when their camp was mistakenly bombed by the Allies. Topsy was herself the reluctant witness to ritual executions.

Christopher lost brother officers and many of the Cockney soldiers under his command in the battle for Hong Kong. Others drowned in the East China Sea, victims of a barbaric but little-known mass war crime, the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Still others survived the sinking only to succumb to the harsh regime of the POW camp in Japan. Perhaps most tragic of all, four of Christopher’s men came through the battle, the Lisbon Maru sinking and cruel imprisonment only to die when the aircraft carrying them to freedom crashed into the sea during a typhoon.

Like many of their generation who suffered at the hands of the Japanese during the second world war, Christopher and Topsy Man rarely spoke of their experience, and when they did, they were guarded in what they chose to share of it, even with those closest to them in their post-war lives.

With privileged access to personal letters, diaries and records from the wartime years, from memories exchanged with Christopher’s and Topsy’s contemporaries and from knowledge shared by other historians, the author has written a compelling and moving account of the young couple’s lives being torn apart by world events in late 1941.
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At the Emperors Pleasure follows the young couple Christopher and Topsy Man through the savage battle for Hong Kong and the years of enforced separation, she interned in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, he as a prisoner of war and forced labourer in Kobe, Japan.

The book is not about Christopher and Topsy Man alone but also of friends and colleagues close to them forced to endure the cruel torture and execution by the Kempeitai.

Amongst those close to them some of Topsy’s friends and colleagues were raped and murdered, one was imprisoned within shouting distance of her husband being tortured then executed by the Kempeitai, while another died when their camp was mistakenly bombed by the Allies. Topsy was herself the reluctant witness to ritual executions.

Christopher lost brother officers and many of the Cockney soldiers under his command in the battle for Hong Kong. Others drowned in the East China Sea, victims of a barbaric but little-known mass war crime, the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Still others survived the sinking only to succumb to the harsh regime of the POW camp in Japan. Perhaps most tragic of all, four of Christopher’s men came through the battle, the Lisbon Maru sinking and cruel imprisonment only to die when the aircraft carrying them to freedom crashed into the sea during a typhoon.

Like many of their generation who suffered at the hands of the Japanese during the second world war, Christopher and Topsy Man rarely spoke of their experience, and when they did, they were guarded in what they chose to share of it, even with those closest to them in their post-war lives.

With privileged access to personal letters, diaries and records from the wartime years, from memories exchanged with Christopher’s and Topsy’s contemporaries and from knowledge shared by other historians, the author has written a compelling and moving account of the young couple’s lives being torn apart by world events in late 1941.
Table of contents
  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Prologue
  • PART I: 1939–1940
    • Chapter 1 May 1940: Hong Kong
    • Chapter 2 July 1939: Port Said, Egypt
    • Chapter 3 Autumn 1939: Qingbang Island, China
    • Chapter 4 Autumn 1939, Hong Kong
    • Chapter 5 June 1940: Hong Kong
    • PART II: 1941
    • Chapter 6 Waiting for War
    • Chapter 7 8 December: At War
    • Chapter 8 11–18 December: Enemy at the Gates
    • Chapter 9 18–25 December: The Battle for Hong Kong Island
    • Chapter 10 25 December: Surrender
    • PART III: 1942
    • Chapter 11 Captivity
    • Chapter 12 January: Stanley Camp
    • Chapter 13 January: Shamshuipo Camp
    • Chapter 14 February: Escape
  • Chapter 15 April: Stanley Camp
    • Chapter 16 September: Argyle Street Camp, Kowloon
    • Chapter 17 25 September: Embarkation
    • Chapter 18 1 October: Under Attack
    • Chapter 19 2 October: Sinking
    • Chapter 20 2 October: In the Sea
    • Chapter 21 2 October: Stanley Camp
    • Chapter 22 2 October: Qingbang Island
    • Chapter 23 3–5 October: Where Next?
    • Chapter 24 Japan
  • Chapter 25 October: Stanley Camp
    • Chapter 26 Christmas: Kobe House
    • PART IV: 1943
    • Chapter 27 Spring
    • Chapter 28 Summer
    • Chapter 29 Autumn
    • Chapter 30 December
    • PART V: 1944
    • Chapter 31 Spring
    • Chapter 32 Autumn
    • PART VI: 1945
  • Chapter 33 January
  • Chapter 34 Spring
  • Chapter 35 Freedom: August–September
  • Chapter 36 Going Home
  • Chapter 37 Reunions
  • Epilogue
  • Author’s Acknowledgements
  • Bibliography
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