Botanical Gardens 1940

Mon, 09/22/2014 - 20:14

OldTimer's Parents at HK's Botanical Garden in either 1940 or 1941. Note the background scenary resembles closely this one:

http://gwulo.com/node/2627

Date picture taken
1940s

Comments

OldTimer, thank you for sharing the photo. It is a nice scene of a smiling couple walking up the path towards the statue of Governor Arthur Kennedy, the founder of the public gardens. Note the policeman beside the old fountain and the original Government House which today is dwarfed by the skyscrapers in Central.

1940 Botanical Gardens

Oldtimer, thanks for sharing your family photo. I remember you wrote that they got married just before the Japanese invasion. Hard to imagine what was just around the corner, when they're looking so happy in this photo.

Did they stay in Hong Kong throughout the occupation, or were they one of the many families forced back to mainland China?

Thanks Moddsey and Mr. B for the response.

My parents were married on Dec 5, 1941 in Hong Kong, three days before the Japanese invasion.   It was a chaotic time and not able to obtain a marriage certificate was likely their least worry.  My previous postings mentioned that grandfather got hit by a bullet and he drank his own urine hoping to survive the injury; and he did.  Mother told me later she would have been a goner if she had not ducked below the hails of Japanese machine gun fire.  It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, so true Mr. Dickens.

The occupation forced them to return to Guangzhou our home town, then further inland during the evacuation when I was born.  We returned to HK after the war.  Their marriage lasted a life time of 62 years.  They kept this photo by their bedside in the last years of their life.  

Re: "Note the background scenary resembles closely this one:" - the difference was at least 3 years and 8 months - the length of the Japanese occupation.  Government house sprouted a tower during that time.