ssuni86

My Gwulo user name--ssuni86--is an homage to the SS Universe, the ship that first carried me to Hong Kong in 1986 as a university student in the Semester at Sea program.  In the 1960s this program partnered with C.Y. Tung, who planned to use the Queen Elizabeth as a floating university campus.  Regrettably, the Queen Elizabeth burned in Victoria Harbor before it could be refitted for the Semester at Sea program, then known as World Campus Afloat.  C.Y. Tung offered the SS Universe as a replacement ship.  Semester at Sea is still going strong today with Colorado State University as its academic partner.

Since the colonial days of 1986 I have visited Hong Kong numerous times and in various capacities--travel writer, transit lounger, teacher, tourist, and academic researcher.  As a writer and researcher, I am fascinated by the wartime experience of American army pilots, naval aviators, and merchant sailors at Hong Kong during World War II.  I have published several articles on this subject in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong and have written two books as well:

Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942-1945 (University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2019).

Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Naval Pilots at War (Osprey/Bloomsbury, 2024).

I am currently working on a third book, tentatively titled Captured at Hong Kong: The Wartime Fate of the Steamship Admiral Y.S. Williams and Its All-American Crew.

--Steven K. Bailey