On January 16, 1945, dozens of U.S. Navy aircraft took off for China’s southern coast, including the occupied British colony of Hong Kong. It was part of Operation Gratitude, an exercise to target airfields, ports, and convoys throughout the South China Sea. U.S. pilots bombed targets in Hong Kong and, controversially, in neutral Macau as they strove to cut off Japan’s supply chains. They encountered fierce resistance: Japan said it shot down ten planes, four pilots were captured.

The Jan. 16 raids are the centerpiece of Steven Bailey’s Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War (Osprey, 2024), which tells the story of the U.S. Navy’s raids on Hong Kong, starting with the Japanese invasion in 1941 to the final recovery of the airmen that were lost.

Steven K. Bailey is an established author and tenured faculty member of Central Michigan University (CMU) with expertise in nonfiction writing, the history and culture of Hong Kong, the Second World War, and U.S. military aviation.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Target Hong Kong. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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