Hopefully this counts as more than remotely related to Hong Kong, but I am trying to locate the owners or history of a photo album my parents found in Brisbane, Australia in the early 1970s. The photo albums were mostly taken in China during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and include photos of the Japanese air raids. The photos are predominantly from Hankou, but many of them were also taken in Hong Kong and Kowloon.
The man who took the photos appears to be English judging from some contextual clues in the album, but he seems to have ended up in Australia by the end, as the album includes photos of Australia right at the very end.
I have uploaded some of the photos from the two albums, but I have no idea where to start researching who this man might be, or even the importance of the photos.
Content warning, some of the photos in the collection show buildings burning from air raids, and bodies of people killed in the war https://imgur.com/a/S72l4F8
December 18, 1944: hundreds of American bombers including B29, B24, and B25 started a nepalm bombing campaign over the city of Hankou. The 20th airborne squadron of B29's, with 4 out of 5 planes carrying nepalm, flew at a low altitude of 5km, while Claire Chennault's strategic squadrons of B24 and B25 also carried high yield explosives. The entire campaign lasted 3 hours, unopposed. A total of 84 nepalm-carrying B29's dropped 500 tons of such explosives. The city center of Hankou, whose width spanned 2.5 kms, and whose length ran over 5 kms, was thoroughly decimated. Corpses floated across the Yangzt river.
Americans' own post-bombing estimates put the civilian body count at 20,000.
That was simply a test run for a planned strategic bombing of Tokyo. The reason for the accuracy and success of the Tokyo bombing was that KMT boss Chiang Kai Shek let the Americans perform practice runs in China. As an ally of the Americans, KMT was utterly incompetennt in stopping the Japanese - a single battle of Xiang Yu allowed the Japs to take control of the whole transporation network over the entire continental China. The Americans had nothing but total contempt over the 'soldiers' and 'army' of the KMT under its boss Chiang Kai Shek, and basically demanded Chiang let them use the city of Hankou as the test site for the bombing. To the Americans, even if they asked to f*** Chiang's wife, he would have to tamely disrobe her.
Curtis LeMay, who commanded the Hankou air campaign, would replicate his success over the skies of Tokyo. Bombing of Tokyo was carried out by the 37th, 313th and 314th heavy bomber squadrons, including a total of 300 B29s flying over low altitudes. 1700 tons of nepalms and high-yield explosives were dropped, many of which were set to go off with a 1 hr to 5 hr delay, for casualty maximization over medical workers and fire fighters.
The fire caused by the nepalms led to a special phenomenon, in which a massive 12.5 m/s wind took shape in the middle of the fires, which sucked out all surrounding oxygen. Throughout the night, the city center of the Tokyo was burned to the ground and American casualty estimates put the dead at over 100,000, 40% of which are under the age of 20.
LeMay, after the Tokyo campaign, quipped: "My god, if we'd lost the war, we would all be hung as war criminals". The spring of 1945 was suppoesd to be a fragrant and tender season in Tokyo, with flower petals from cherry blossoms fondling the cheeks of the girls of Japan. Yet
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