This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of plane which came up and almost blinded us from our guns. Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War II podcast.

In January 1945 Admiral Halsey with the Third Fleet conducted a raid into the South China Sea.

This was designated Operation Gratitude.

The raid was to support the landings on Luzon in the Philippines, with the aim of

destroying the Japanese Navy, supply columns and any air assets in the area. As part of this operation,

Hong Kong would be attacked. I'm joined by Stephen Bailey. Stephen is the author of

Target Hong Kong which looks at the raid from numerous angles

including an eyewitness account from a British prison officer held in a Japanese

internment camp on the island.

Thanks for joining me.

Let's start with at Hong Kong itself.

It fell, I think on Christmas Day in 1941,

you tell the story of the colony through the memoirs of Ray Jones.

So let's start with Jones. Who is Ray Jones and how does he end up in captivity?

Yeah Ray Jones, Raymond Errik Jones was a prison warden. He came out to Hong Kong pre-war, took a job after he got out of the Royal Navy. He was a sub-mariner.

When he mustered out, I guess he acquired a taste for exotic locales and he took a position in Hong Kong as a prison

warden in Stanley Prison. He basically was living a pre-war expatriate life with all the privileges that you'd expect would come with that kind of life and he kept a diary for his wife who he met back in England and they married and they came out to Hong

Kong and were living instantly right basically next to the prison while he was

working at the prison the likelihood of war was increasing over time.

As it became increasingly likely that there would be some kind of conflict between Britain,

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