Tony Banham is founder of the Hong Kong War Diary project, which studies and documents the 1941 defence of Hong Kong, the defenders, their families, and the fates of all until liberation. His published books:
“Not The Slightest Chance”
“The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru”
“We Shall Suffer There”
“Reduced to a Symbolical Scale”
Are considered to be examples of some of the best research on the Hong Kong experience during the Second World War. Mr. Banham is also very active in the "human side" of historical research relating to the era and often speaks at various symposia on the subject and carries on an active dialogue with survivors of the conflict and their families. He also maintains a close association with various diplomatic services, government agencies, and other official parties associated with providing care and services to those involved in the conflict. He serves, at the request on the Government of the Hong Kong SAR, on a special government panel which reviews and grants the payment of pensions to veterans who served Hong Kong during the period.
Hong Kong War Diary began as a simple attempt to locate and centralise documentation relating to Hong Kong's wartime garrison, but soon evolved into the core of a community of interest around this group of people. What started off as purely a centre of information exchange, grew into a historical network that helps today's descendants of the defenders place their ancestors' experiences in context, offers a service to other researchers, and reunites families split by war. His website has more than 10,000 regular readers and he is generally acknowledged as the authority on Hong Kong's POWs. The central ethos of the project has been to catalyze the open exchange of all information from disparate sources for the benefit of the maximum number of people. Banham's core interest is in the impact of war on society at both the micro and macro level. This interest runs the gamut from studying the civilian casualties in the London blitz to writing about the concept of the island of Tinian being, as the location where the final assembly of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" took place, the geographical segue between the 'old war' to the 'new war' which has dominated civilization since Hiroshima. Hong Kong, while perhaps not the central theatre of the conflict, offered an opportunity to study a small population in the context of the critical path to victory that dominated the core of the Pacific War. Banham received his PhD in history from the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. The book Reduced to a Symbolical Scale is closely based on his thesis.
Published work
Banham's books – spin offs from Hong Kong War Diary – avoid the traditional historian's analyses. Instead, they set out to construct the most accurate possible chronology of the events concerned, populated almost entirely with the words of the people who experienced them. In "Not The Slightest Chance", a reference book laid out as a war diary, Banham documents the attempted defence of Hong Kong against Japanese invasion. "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" takes up the story of those defenders taken prisoner afterwards, who were then put on this vessel to be taken to POW Camps in Japan. "We Shall Suffer There" documents the remainder of the POW and Internee experience. His latest work, "Reduced to a Symbolical Scale", documents the civilian evacuation of the then Colony in 1940 and the men they left behind. A future volume will cover the secret war for Hong Kong. Banham has also contributed to a large number of other books and publications, including the history of the HKVDC: 'Serving Hong Kong', and is a contributor to Hong Kong's new Dictionary of National Biography. Mr Banham's works are produced to the highest standards of historical and academic accuracy and have been widely read by both academic historians and members of the general public. However the narrow audience for the books limit the scope of sales and each work has been a "labor of love" as opposed to a financial bonanza for the author. His first novel, "The Big For", was designed to interest younger people in British history and was originally written as light relief while finalising his PhD thesis. Banham has also appeared on or assisted with documentaries for TVB Pearl, ATV, RTHK Radio, Phoenix TV, the BBC, the History Channel, Breakthrough Films and others. Most recently he featured on Channel 4 in My Grandfather's War with Sir Mark Rylance.
