Stanley Military Cemetery

Stanley Military Cemetery is located near St. Stephen Bay in Stanley, Hong Kong. It is the only military cemetery (not including Hong Kong (Happy Valley) Cemetery) at the early colonial era, used for the burials of the members of the garrison force and their family in between 1841 and 1866. There are no further burials until the two world wars.

The cemetery is roughly triangular in shape and stands on ground rising sharply from the road side. It is approached by a flight of steps leading up to the Cross of Sacrifice with steep grassy slopes on either side.

The Cemetery and Hong Kong Defence

In December 1941, Japan launched their invasion on Hong Kong, which resulted in the British surrender on Christmas Day of that year. Stanley Village is one of the last battlefields of the defence, where the D company of the Royal Rifles of Canada and a group of Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. were stationed there. There are testimonies and evidence that some fighting occurred at the location.

At the British surrender, all the western civilians in Hong Kong were confined at Stanley Internment Camp, which is originally a prison (which is now Stanley Prison of Hong Kong); while the military personnel were sent to either North Point Camp or Shum Shui Po POW camp. Due to the brutality of the Japanese in the camp, many people died during the occupation and this is the only burial ground they had. Those "raw graves" are still preserved in their original shape.

Burials in the twentieth century

There are 598 WWII burials (including non-British Allied soldiers and 2 from Hong Kong Police Force) in the cemetery. 175 of them are unidentified. 96 of them are civilians, including 4 children, Eric Moreton, a Methodist missionary who was killed at St. Stephen on the December 26, 1941.

War dead from the period December 19-26, 1941 of the defence were buried at Spot 5-6 of the cemetery. Among them were Canadians that were sent to Hong Kong three weeks prior the invasion.

Another notiable group of personnel that were buried or commemorated there are those served in British Army Aid Group, which helped POWs in Hong Kong or other Japanese occupied zones to escape to China and arrange military needs for resistance in those zones. Among them was Captain M.A. Ansari, who was original in the 7th Rajput Regiment but served in British Army Aid Group after the surrender. He was also a posthumous recipient of the George Cross.

There are some burials after the war, arranged at Spot 8.

On the other hand, there are 3 commemorations of casualties (one from Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corp. and two from Chinese Labour Corp.) of the First World War, buried elsewhere in the territory and whose graves are now lost.

The larger group of World War II military burial is at Sai Wan War Cemetery in Chai Wan.

Gallery

ee also

*Sai Wan War Cemetery
*Hong Kong (Happy Valley) Cemetery
*List of famous cemeteries
*Stanley Internment Camp

External links

* [http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=49428&mode=1 Information on Stanley Military Cemetery at CWGC official site]