Honouring Hong Kong’s “little devils”

Women – including girls as young as six or seven – were key to the resistance during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

Emma's grandparents when they were young

The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong lasted for three years and eight months, from December 1941 to August 1945. That time is remembered for its cruelty, hunger and fear. In just 17 days, nearly a century of British control was up-ended and what followed was not just military occupation, but a deep wounding of spirit. For decades, much of that pain remained hidden beneath the glitter of post-war recovery. People rebuilt. They moved on. But the scars didn’t go away – they never do.

When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin

I didn’t grow up knowing all the details. What I knew of that time came mostly through my grandfather’s stories, offered in snippets during Mid-Autumn Festivals, when my family would visit Hong Kong. I remember the glow of paper lanterns, the sweetness of mooncakes sticking to my fingers, the clack clack clack of firecrackers bouncing off tiled rooftops of village houses in the New Territories.

Amidst the celebration, my grandfather would sit down and share bits of the past. He told me about the occupation, about soldiers and survival, and about how the Hakka people – our people – joined the resistance to fight back. His voice always changed when he spoke about that time. There was pride, yes, but also something softer. Something haunted. Even as a child, I felt it. I couldn’t yet understand the stories, but I understood the feeling behind them.

My grandmother didn’t speak about the war. Not once. She had only been a baby when it began, far too young to remember it first-hand. But over time, I came to understand something important: you don’t need memories to carry the weight of history. Trauma can be passed down in silences, in gestures, in the way people move through the world. My grandmother never told war stories. She just sat beside me, peeling fruit or cracking nuts, slipping the pieces into my hand without a word. With her, I was never hungry.

Emma with her grandparents when she was a chid.

When I started writing When Sleeping Women Wake, I found myself returning to those childhood moments. But this time, I wasn’t just listening for what had already been said. I was paying attention to what hadn’t. Writing this novel became an act of listening – to the silences, to the gaps, to the things that live between memory and forgetting.

I dug into the history and quickly learned about the East River Column, a guerrilla group formed in 1943, made up of local villagers and fighters – many of them Hakka – who resisted the Japanese from the hills and forests of the New Territories. What struck me most was how essential women were to that resistance.

These weren’t just men with rifles. These were teenage girls smuggling explosives in baskets, nurses hiding medicine in their sleeves, little girls – or siu gwai, “little devils” – slipping past enemy checkpoints with coded messages. Some of them were only six or seven years old.

While researching, I came across a video interview with one of these women, now elderly. The video, Hong Kong’s Unsung Guerrilla Fighters of the Second World War by Dayu Zhang, was published by the South China Morning Post just a few years ago and offered a rare and powerful glimpse into her story.

The woman recalled how it was her sister who inspired her to join the resistance, having already become a member herself. One day, a Japanese soldier attempted to rape her sister, but she fought him off. Angered, the soldier falsely accused her of stealing military yen. During the interrogation, her sister was beaten for an hour, yet she didn’t shed a single tear. That moment of utter bravery and defiance proved just how strong these women were.

After her sister recovered, their mother, witnessing her daughters’ strength, said, “How can I stand by and do nothing? Let me also join the fight!” And so, all three – sisters and mother – joined the resistance together.

Toward the end of the interview, she said something that stayed with me: “I hope our stories can be remembered by future generations.”

That hope, that fire, became the heartbeat of the character Hao in my novel.

Other real people made their way into the story too – like Lieutenant Donald Kerr, a US pilot shot down over Hong Kong in 1944, who was rescued and smuggled to safety by guerrilla fighters. Or Hisakazu Tanaka, the Japanese general who ruled Hong Kong during the occupation and was convicted of war crimes. But the fiction always stayed rooted in truth. I was determined not to just imagine history – I wanted to honour it.

I visited the real places, too, or traced them through maps and testimonies. The Peninsula Hotel, taken over by the Japanese as military headquarters. Stanley Camp, where Allied civilians were interned.

Nam Koo Terrace, also featured in the book, is still one of the most haunted places in Hong Kong. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, something lingers there. The women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military – the so-called “comfort women” – were silenced in life and mostly erased in death. Few names. Fewer stories. Even fewer forms of justice. Writing about them felt like an act of witness. I wanted to say: You were here. You mattered. And that’s what fiction can do. It can remember what history forgets, or in some cases, removes.

Recently, though, plans have been approved to redevelop the site into a 28-storey residential building. While some elements of the original structure may be preserved, the redevelopment raises questions about how we honour and remember such histories.

In writing this book, I also found my way back to my own heritage. I’ve lived in England, Hong Kong and now Australia. I’ve always felt like I belong to many places, and yet never fully to one. There’s a Chinese phrase that translates as “fated to meet, but not destined to stay together”. That’s how I’ve always felt about Hong Kong. A place I’ve loved deeply, but known only briefly. Writing this novel helped me hold onto it.

My research also took me deep into archives and oral histories. Books like The Fall of Hong Kong by Philip Snow and Three Years Eight Months: The Forgotten Struggle of Hong Kong’s WWII by Jenny Chan and Derek Pua were constant companions. But the person who guided the heart of the story was my grandmother. Even in her silence, she showed me what resilience looks like. What survival feels like.

There’s a moment in the novel when a character grapples with the question: Were all Japanese truly monsters? She reflects, If that were true, what kind of world would this be? That moment was a deliberate addition. Despite all the horrific things I’ve learned about the occupation, I’ve also uncovered stories where humanity triumphed – where race, class and gender dissolved in the face of compassion and solidarity. What I’ve tried to capture in this novel is that even when a majority may seem complicit in wrongdoing, there are always individuals who choose kindness, who resist hatred. And that matters.

Now, as When Sleeping Women Wake prepares to enter the world, I find myself thinking often of the women who inspired it – not just the fighters, but the ones who bore their stories in silence. My grandmother. The unnamed girls who ran messages through enemy lines. The comfort women whose names we may never know.

I penned this book to connect the past to the present and to give these women a voice. In a world where conflict rarely ceases, we can make an impact through books, discussions, and collective voices. It may seem like a small act, but even a single rice seed, sown into the soil, eventually yields more than a hundred grains.

Emma Pei Yin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Hong Kong Chinese writer and editor. Her work has been featured in publications such as Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, HerCanberra, Aniko Press, The Hong Kong Review and Books+Publishing. In 2023, BookPeople and Penguin Random House Australia nominated her as Bookseller of the Year. She lives and works on Ngunnawal Country (Canberra) with her partner and their
extremely barky dachshund, Lady.
When Sleeping Women Wake
is her first novel.

When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin

ABOUT THE NOVEL

Set in 1940s Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, the novel follows the lives of three extraordinary women whose destinies intersect amidst the turmoil of war. It’s a story of courage, sacrifice, and unbreakable bonds that unite women. Growing up, the author often visited Hong Kong for the Mid-Autumn Festival. During those visits, Yé ye (her grandad) told her stories of the Japanese occupation, while her grandmother would remain silent. As a child, she struggled to fully comprehend the depths of the hardships endured, and set out to learn more.