George Aylwin Hogg was a young man unknown in his hometown but revered in China. He arrived in China in 1938, months after the brutal Battle of Shanghai as well as the appalling massacre in Nanjing, then capital of nationalist government. It was the darkest time in China’s modern history - Hogg witnessed the war up close: the devastation, the resistance, the courage of the Chinese people.
He chose to stay, and stood with the Chinese until the very end, ultimately losing his life in remote areas of northwest China, 24 days ahead of Japan’s unconditional surrender. He was only 30 years old.
His story was remembered in China, but largely forgotten in his home country of England. So is China’s role in World War II - its resistance, sacrifice, and suffering. Over 35 million Chinese people were killed or wounded - a third of all WWII casualties.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people‘s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, as well as the World Anti-Facism War, CGTN Europe presents documentary “Witness to War: George Aylwin Hogg in China.”
History should not be forgotten.
#GeorgeHogg110 #WitnesstoWar #WWII80 #ForgottenFront
He chose to stay, and stood with the Chinese until the very end, ultimately losing his life in remote areas of northwest China, 24 days ahead of Japan’s unconditional surrender. He was only 30 years old.
His story was remembered in China, but largely forgotten in his home country of England. So is China’s role in World War II - its resistance, sacrifice, and suffering. Over 35 million Chinese people were killed or wounded - a third of all WWII casualties.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese people‘s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, as well as the World Anti-Facism War, CGTN Europe presents documentary “Witness to War: George Aylwin Hogg in China.”
History should not be forgotten.
#GeorgeHogg110 #WitnesstoWar #WWII80 #ForgottenFront
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you very much.
00:30I don't think his intention was to stay in China. I think it was to carry on around the world. And I think his humanitarian nature made him stay in hell.
00:49When you think back to George's life, he was really a wise friend and noble friend of China.
00:57He was in China during wartime. He never saw China except in wartime.
01:02I think what he saw was,
01:04It was in his mind's eye. It was seeing the spirit of the people that made him believe that there would be a new China.
01:14There would be a new China.
01:16There would be a new China.
01:20Seems like a monster ac Thermal Hayes.
01:24ETHER
01:26I don't know.
01:56Conditions in Shanghai are appalling.
02:10The Japanese army has burned down the surrounding villages and bayoneted the farmers, so the
02:16city is full of hungry and homeless folk who watch each other become thinner and colder
02:21until they die.
02:23The Japanese flag flies everywhere.
02:26Shanghai was China's main industrial metropolis and now it's in tattered ruins.
02:32The streets are strewn with dead Chinese soldiers lying as they fell.
02:39When George Hogg arrived in Shanghai in 1938, there had been a terrible battle fought between
02:46the Japanese military and the Chinese military over the northern districts of Shanghai.
02:53It was the most vicious battle of World War II, at least in this part of the world.
03:00Japanese military conducted a systematic bombing campaign targeting a largely civilian population.
03:10It's undeniable that China has played a very important and somewhat neglected role in the
03:16history of World War II.
03:18China held down millions of Japanese troops who were unable to then occupy other parts of
03:28Asia and contribute to the building of the Japanese empire.
03:32George Hogg would have seen at least the aftermath of that destructive war.
03:36He would have seen a city partly occupied by the Japanese.
03:40He would have seen countless thousands of Chinese refugees that were streaming into the foreign
03:45settlements.
03:46He may have seen some of the Jewish refugees who were coming from Europe where they were accepted
03:51here, welcomed into the city, given refuge and safety.
03:55I hadn't been to Shanghai and I really wanted to see where George had landed in his
04:25journey through China.
04:26So I talked to Zoe Reid about a year ago and we decided that it would be nice to celebrate
04:30the 110th anniversary of his birth with a trip and retracing his footsteps from Shanghai
04:35all the way up to Shandan, trying to get a feel of what George went through, what he witnessed.
04:40The SACO is about promoting understanding and friendship between the peoples of Britain
04:45and the peoples of China.
04:46We all experienced bad things in the war.
04:49I think many British people don't even think the war was anything to do with China.
04:54What we're trying to do in SACO is to build empathy.
04:57We want to get people to understand some of the historical figures and what they contributed.
05:03In these memorial events, I was there as representative of his family amongst all the government officials
05:12and various people involved with the CIC and Gung Ho.
05:16And I was totally amazed and began to realize really what kind of status he had.
05:24But not at home in England.
05:27His story wasn't really known.
05:29So when George Hogg arrived in Shanghai in 1938, not only would he have
05:36witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Shanghai, but he also would have witnessed the aftermath
05:43of the Battle of Shanghai.
05:45But he also would have heard reports about the Nanjing Massacre that occurred in December
05:581937, when the Japanese army overran the city of Nanjing, which was the capital city of the Nationalist government.
06:05The Nationalist army had vacated the city, left it vulnerable to the predations of the Japanese army.
06:11What ensued was a massacre of huge proportions.
06:32He didn't come here, but he met an American journalist, Art Steele, from the Chicago Tribune, and became
06:49very good friends.
06:50And I think from Art, who was here during the massacre, he learned a lot of what had been
06:56going on and mentioned it in his own book.
06:59The Japanese are told nothing of the horrors perpetrated in China.
07:20Nor can they be expected to guess at them, with no jumping off place in their own past experience.
07:25They also survived when the massacre happened.
07:30She was a 12.
07:31She was also the survivor.
07:32So I was looking here.
07:34Yeah.
07:35Yeah.
07:36Yeah.
07:37Yeah.
07:38Yeah.
07:39Yeah.
07:40Yeah.
07:41Yeah.
07:42Yeah.
07:43Yeah.
07:44Yeah.
07:45Yeah.
07:46Yeah.
07:47Yeah.
07:48Yeah.
07:49Yeah.
07:50Yeah.
07:51Yeah.
07:52Yeah.
07:53Yeah.
07:54It is the most ghastly, unforgivable story, and so well commemorated here.
08:09If everybody could see this sort of evidence, maybe people would learn not to behave in such
08:16cruel ways.
08:17I hate to get out of here in a way and leave my friends to take things like what happened
08:32in Nanjing last year, but I do want to go see what's happening up in the former Red Army.
08:38And if I don't go soon, there may be no way of getting up there.
08:45Yeah.
08:46Yeah.
08:47Yeah.
08:48Yeah.
08:49Yeah.
08:50Yeah.
08:51Yeah.
09:00He got a job as a journalist in Hankal, which had become the wartime capital, and for roughly
09:06a year, he was there as a journalist, he was allowed to travel around quite freely and investigate.
09:19Today and yesterday have been very heavy.
09:22Terrific air raids on the cities of Wuchang and Hanyang across the river, and about three
09:27miles at either end of Hankou.
09:29Afterwards, we all go out in different directions to get the news and take pictures.
09:34It is both grueling and gruesome.
09:37Yesterday and today, I got the big news of foreign property hit.
09:41One of them was on the compound of the Wuchang College, where I'd had the job offered me
09:46and might have been teaching.
09:49I think it probably started off as an adventurer, but I'm sure he got caught up in the excitement
09:53of being a war correspondent.
09:55You know, that soon became, as a humanitarian feeling, obviously came through.
10:00When he published in China, his perspective and other journalists are not the same.
10:05His main character is the people of the people of the United States.
10:10How to deal with the war in the war in the war and deal with their lives.
10:16How to deal with the war in the war and deal with their lives.
10:18So he gave us a very precious view of the war in the war.
10:22How to deal with the war?
10:25TIFFY
10:27So the Japanese took Hankal and many of the journalists were expelled from China by the
10:52Japanese, but he decided he needed to go back to China. So he made a secretive journey in his
11:00British passport. He was able to travel a little more freely through Japan into Korea, Manchuria,
11:08and round to Beijing, where he then was smuggled out by English-speaking students at the university
11:16there, through secret passages and so on into the countryside, where he met up finally
11:22with Nia Rongzhen and his guerrilla forces.
11:46He was able to live and live and live and live. It was the experience of Nia Rongzhen
11:50that made me change my thoughts. I think I should go back to the other side,
11:55to understand the real people that can impact China's situation.
12:01here there was an air raid warning as we leapt from the windows three planes were already
12:28circling of the city and the anti-aircraft shells bursting around them rough trenches had been
12:34prepared beside the line into which those who could get off the train in time flung themselves
12:39I was glad enough to be at the bottom of a pile of others bombs exploded on the station as we
12:45made face downwards breathing deeply the scent of the damp earth to see this wonderful museum
12:57several of them all talking about wartime period and then particularly the horrific era when the
13:06Japanese swept through Shanghai and into Nanjing and it was very moving very moving indeed
13:27whilst he was in Hankal before he was expelled he was the first journalist to visit the CIC headquarters
13:49he was really impressed by the idea of this cooperative organization so finally after this
13:56year traveling with the guerrilla forces he joined up with the CIC in Fauci
14:02Let's see
14:04Let's see
14:09Let's see
14:11Let's see
14:24I want to look
14:26In the 19th century, he arrived in the 19th century.
14:28He was in the police department at the police department,
14:32Neen Rongzhen.
14:34The police department said,
14:36you should go to the West, you should go to the West.
14:42It is known as an historic scene of racial and political struggle,
14:47as a vast economic hinterland only recently being opened up
14:51as Japan drives Chinese initiative out of the coastal cities.
14:56There's a military base of vital strategic importance
15:01in which guerrillas and young students are teaching the people
15:04to live new lives of resistance.
15:09The North West is an ideal place from which to watch new China taking shape.
15:16Here is seen at its best the Chinese people's amazing adaptability.
15:20What he saw in China, the horrors and the way the ordinary Chinese people
15:30were somehow coping, and then saw this possibility, the CIC and all the other people behind the CIC,
15:38how they really tried to get all this massive number of refugees up and running and doing stuff
15:43and creating some kind of economy in the hinterland.
15:45It must have been really, really inspiring.
15:47It must have been really, really inspiring.
15:54It must have been really, really inspiring.
16:01In September 1938, Baoji's first cooperative was launched with nine blacksmiths.
16:06But by April 1940, there were about 3,000 industrial cooperatives spread throughout eight of China's provinces,
16:10making a range of 500 kinds of goods and making a range of 500 kinds of goods.
16:33This is because of this counterattack industry.
16:36The Japanese planes were going to blow up the ship.
16:38The ship was going to blow up the ship.
16:39The ship was going to blow up the ship.
16:40The ship was going to blow up the ship.
16:42The ship was going to blow up the ship.
16:53The day we left one place, 34 aeroplanes flew over our heads and bombed it terribly.
16:59And the next day we saw the same planes again and arrived in the evening to find our destination still burning,
17:06women crying and coffins everywhere.
17:09Next day, the Japanese got very close with their armies and people had to start fleeing even before they had picked out
17:16the remains of their dead and belongings from the burning rubble.
17:20This is the China that is rebuilding.
17:32Many of the people in these co-ops were penniless refugees a year ago.
17:37Now they are settling down as part of their new community and making a valuable contribution to the country's economy,
17:56as well as being once more in a position to support themselves and their families.
18:00I've got a change of jobs to being a schoolmaster for a boys' technical and cooperative training school.
18:25I am Dean. It is very interesting.
18:28Not an ordinary technical school.
18:31The idea is to get them young, get them from tough backgrounds,
18:34so that they will learn to look on the school and on CIC as their home.
18:40One of the most amazing little villages in China.
18:43Here, the people are terribly poor, though untroubled by wars and refugees.
18:48And children under the age of 15 often go right through a winter without a single pair of trousers.
18:58Those windows would have been paper, not glass.
19:01Yes.
19:02So getting this white light in, no view out.
19:07And the boys would stick their fingers through them.
19:09Yeah.
19:10Yeah.
19:12Developing that school, creating it.
19:16That was such an important part of his life here.
19:21Developing his very much own character.
19:26The two elder ones were amongst the first students of the Xuanzhipu School, which had
19:51started about a year before George took on the task of being headmaster. Then the younger
19:58two were in an orphanage for a while after the mother died. He saved their lives, basically.
20:10Here in our place, everything is very calm. No bombing even, as all the Japanese planes
20:15are temporarily engaged elsewhere. We have a school here full of oddly humorous boys.
20:21They are always dropping around to have a look at the strangely funny foreigner, drink
20:25some of his peculiarly funny coffee, bang on his typewriter, play on his gramophone, and
20:31generally have a good time.
20:35I'm very Chinese by now, one just can't help it, living right here amongst them for so long.
20:40And I think some of my peculiarities, rather naive, rather idealistic, rather laughter-loving,
20:48have much in common with the non-city fight type of young Chinese.
20:52A small Fifteen
20:56A small Fifteen
21:00A big time
21:04A small Fifteen
21:09A small Fifteen
21:12A small Fifteen
21:18We'll be walking,
21:43emulating the start of the little long march
21:47when he led the school out of Shuang Xipu,
21:51westwards into Gansu.
21:53So we'll get a taste of that
21:55as we start walking from here.
21:59Consider the fact that they did this
22:01during the winter times.
22:03You know, they're crisscrossing the frozen rivers.
22:07At times, the lorries would break through the ice.
22:10In five days, we made 57 kilometres over the mountains
22:20and two carts overturned.
22:23It was the worst time of the year over high mountains
22:26in the coldest winter for 20 years
22:28and the roads were covered in snow and ice.
22:30Absolutely amazing trek it must have been.
22:38He just determinedly carried on
22:42and brought that school out of the danger of the war zone,
22:46saving all these kids.
22:47Ladies and gentlemen, dear villagers,
23:01good evening.
23:05Welcome the relatives and the friends of George Hawk
23:08to come to this beautiful Tiaohe village
23:11in Liangdang County
23:13along the footsteps that George Hawk once walked.
23:41Seeing the reaction of the local people to George
23:45and the group we were in was just staggering.
23:56It's on the little long march.
23:59They were greeted in every village they came to
24:02and treated with respect and kindness
24:05and given housing in those winter nights.
24:11Clearly, he's remembered.
24:23Clearly, he's remembered.
24:41We have just 60 boys here now
24:51with another 20 smaller ones coming on
24:54from Lanzhou in the summer
24:55and perhaps some local kids.
24:59We are still busy fitting up our various workshops.
25:02The whole of one side of the compound
25:04is given over to work.
25:06In the centre, the biggest temple
25:08holds three remaining Buddha statues.
25:10All down the other side are classrooms.
25:13At the back, there are dorms.
25:14The place was recognisable, but now it's some other world.
25:19So this was the first building?
25:21Yes.
25:22Yes.
25:23Yes.
25:24Yes.
25:25Yes.
25:26Yes.
25:27Yes.
25:28Yes.
25:29Yes.
25:30Yes.
25:31Yes.
25:32Yes.
25:33Yes.
25:34Yes.
25:35Yes.
25:36Yes.
25:37Yes.
25:38Yes.
25:39Yes.
25:40Yes.
25:41Yes.
25:42Yes.
25:43Yes.
25:44Yes.
25:45Yes.
25:46Yes.
25:47Yes.
25:48Yes.
25:49Yes.
25:50Welcome to Bailey Vocational College.
25:53They've kept the idea alive and his legacy is strong there.
26:00It's gone way beyond George's dreams.
26:20Personally, for him, it didn't end too well, did it?
26:38But my word, his spirit lives on.
26:42His sense of purpose, which wasn't there when he thought of joining the co-operative movement.
26:49As time went by, getting into his story here,
26:53beyond what I had known and was writing the book,
26:57we began to get a much better sense of really why he stuck it out.
27:03He's always been in China.
27:09He's always been in China.
27:10He's finally been in China.
27:12He's finally been in China.
27:13His love for the Shandan School was intense.
27:39Sometime in the spring of 1945, Eilwyn had written a song.
27:45In Shandan we are born again.
27:49We will stay in Shandan till we die.
28:09I think he did make an amazing sacrifice, and in those days coming to China and just empathizing with people,
28:39the Bailey School, I think that's what has really captured people's hearts.
28:46It's been an amazing experience in following my Uncle George's footsteps.
28:54George Hogg was one of the few foreign friends of China who really penetrated into the life of the Chinese people.
29:03They never treated him as a foreigner, because they never felt that he was in any way foreign to them.
29:12God bless you.
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