I don't know if anything on this has been posted before, but Google appears to have all the back issues of Life Magazine online. Amazing to flick through and a quite useful resource. Here's one for instance from Oct 7 1940, bringing to life the many faces of the British forces in Hong Kong, the thin red line of empire as they called it, as they await war with the Japanese.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AEoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA28&dq=hong%20kong…