Hong Kong City Hall Memorial Garden, Hong Kong
With the opening of Hong Kong’s new City Hall in 1962, a Memorial Garden was also inaugurated on its grounds. The date was the 30th of August, the anniversary of the city’s ‘liberation’ from Japanese occupation in 1945. The garden had been lobbied for by veterans of the multi-ethnic Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC), the colony’s home-defence milita, which had played an important part in the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941. The centre piece of the Memorial Garden consists of a Shrine of Remembrance, commemorating all those who served in the defence of the colony, both in regular formations from Britain and the Commonwealth and in locally-recruited civil defence, clandestine and other volunteer units. The entrance to the garden features memorial gates, dedicated specifically to the HKVDC.
The British authorities celebrated Liberation Day at the Memorial Garden until Hong Kong’s ‘handover’ to China in 1997, when it was taken over by the new Hong Kong SAR government. The ceremony was eventually replaced by a Sino-Japanese War Victory Day to align it with remembrance practices in the People's Republic.
Source: Daniel Schumacher