Why did Japan attack Hong Kong?

Answer 1

== == Historians may never cease arguing over why Canadian forces were sent to reinforce Hong Kong. In retrospect, with perfect hindsight, it certainly seems a strange decision. It was one that Churchill himself initially opposed, and it now seems clear that however many men had been sent to defend Hong Kong, the Japanese would still have attacked with sufficient forces to take the Colony. In the first half of 1941, Hong Kong's garrison was commanded by General Grasset. It consisted of three infantry battalions, the 2nd Battalion the Royal Scots, the 5/7th Rajputs and the 2/14th Punjabis, plus one machine gun battalion, the 1st Battalion the Middlesex Regiment. These were supported by a large number of Royal Artillery Batteries, the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC), and all the supporting units that an isolated garrison needed. Also, of course, the Royal Navy was there in some force. Altogether, the garrison consisted of some 10,000 men at this time. In mid-July, Grasset was replaced by General Christopher Maltby. When Grasset left the Colony, he - himself a Canadian - suggested that the Colony be reinforced by two Canadian Battalions. Somehow he persuaded Churchill's advisors to ask for these battalions, and he had also made his case to the Canadian Government. There are many theories as to how and why his representations were successful. C Force finally arrived in Hong Kong just three weeks before the Japanese attacked. This brought the number of defenders to 12,000 (which, when police - who had been sworn in as militia - and front-line nurses are included, increased to a peak of around 14,000). This was, of course, too small a number to have a hope of stopping the Japanese. However, the war against Japan was primarily a war of attrition, and every soldier and piece of equipment lost by Japan in attacking Hong Kong was a step towards victory. It is often forgotten - as everyone knows it was the atomic bomb that ended the war - that without this attrition and the island-hopping war across the Pacific, the bomb could never have been carried to Japanese soil.