During the Pacific War of 1941-1945, Hong Kong was one of the first places attacked by Japanese forces. The Battle of Hong Kong, which lasted 17 ½ days between 8 and 25 December 1941, witnessed heavy fighting and widespread destruction. The territory’s multi-ethnic garrison fought fiercely against the larger and better-equipped Japanese forces. However, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese forces on 25 December 1941.

Prof Wallace Lai from PolyU and Prof Chi Man Kwong from Baptist University investigate how much is known about the ruins of war and the numerous stories that are hidden in the forests and buried beneath the ground in Hong Kong’s countryside, such as pillboxes, trenches and tunnels. They have used innovative geospatial and geophysical technologies to unfold the long-lost heritage of the Battle of Hong Kong to further archaeological and historical studies of the battlefields 80 years ago. Both academia developed a geo-spatial and technology-based approach to facilitate historical interpretation of the war. It helps expand and deepen the understanding of the British and Japanese military works on the hills. They first studied historical texts, old maps, aerial photos, plans of attack and defence, and satellite images to narrow down the scope of the search. They then developed geo-referenced digital terrain models by adopting 3D point clouds extracted from the Hong Kong Government’s helicopter LiDAR or their own drone LiDAR. The output allowed them to visit and identify those features of war and scan them with a 3D laser to generate a real 3D augmented reality of the battlefield in 1941, so these stories can be geo-connected and told.

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