START 00:00:00 Scenes in the central district of Hong Kong showing its Chinese inhabitants going about their daily business, with close-ups of a duck and her three ducklings, brightly-coloured wreaths on sale at a flower shop, children and street traders selling their wares, mainly sprats and crabs.

00:05:22 Views from the heights overlooking Hong Kong's Central District towards Kowloon and the New Territories showing units of the British Pacific Fleet at anchor in Victoria Harbour; just about recognisable (from right to left) are two aircraft carriers, HMS Venerable and HMS Colossus, a Dido Class cruiser, HMS Euryalus, a Minotaur Class cruiser, HMS Swiftsure and, barely visible along Kowloon Docks, the fleet carrier HMS Indomitable. Views of a derelict and gutted colonial building, formerly the Governor of Hong Kong's Mountain Lodge, a Chinese gateway and a pagoda in a park on the hillside overlooking the city and on another hilltop a large squat rectangular building put up by the Japanese (?).

00:06:28 Busy street scenes in Hong Kong's Central District: colourful street signs in Chinese characters, a young mother with her child on her back asleep, somebody inside a covered sedan chair being carried along by two porters, a boy carrying a baby in his arms, street traders selling fresh vegetables, men frying food in pans over cookers, people carrying their goods etc suspended from poles, with a few British military personnel visible from time to time.

END 00:10:32

Scenes filmed on 16mm Kodachrome showing Hong Kong after the Japanese surrender on 12 September 1945.

Notes

Acquisition: Harold Thomson retrieved this Kodachrome footage from the Royal Navy and passed it on to the IWM after meeting Neil Pilfold of the Department of Information Retrieval in 1980.

Remarks: good quality, expertly-photographed footage with some superb shots.