Lee Hung Hoi

Lee Hung Hoi was a bus driver who became a British Army Aid Group Agent, helping continue a line of communication between the resistance and the POW camps that had been set up by Lee Lam.1 A Japanese document2 summarising one of the trials of October 19, 1943 gives a clear picture of his work:

The accused LEE HUNG HOI drove a bus for the Kowloon Omnibus Company. When asked by the above-mentioned LEE LAM to assist in conveying documents to the P.O.W.s in the camp, he agreed, although he knew these activities were connected with espionage on behalf of the enemy. From the end of April 43 to June 43 he secretly introduced documents on numerous occasions to the P.O.W.s in the Camps; and he also received secret documents from the P.O.W.s and handed them to LEE LAM.

The ‘Camps’ were presumably Shamshuipo and ‘Kowloon Fort’ (probably Argyle Street, the officers Camp), as these are mentioned in the section on Lee Lam.

He was recruited by Lee Lam after he (Lee) ceased to be a driver:

In April 43, after the company for which he worked made him a watchman, after mature consideration, he approached and made use of the accused LEE HUG HOI and others who now drove the bus his company rented to the P.O.W. Camps, and thus continued his operations.

The Captured Document tells us he lived in Fa Yuen Street, Kowloon, and was 30 years old.

The route into the Camps was suspected or penetrated in late May or early June 1943:

We {the resistance in Arglye Street} did not know what had happened, but early in June we received an urgent ‘cease operation’ signal. There was nothing more, no explanation, just that blunt warning.3

We know from the account of another member of the resistance in Argyle Street (who dates this event a little later in mid-June) that this message was sent by Lee Hung Hoi.4

Lee Hung Hoi was probably arrested soon after; he was tried and sentenced to death on October 19, 194, and executed alongside 32 others on October 29. Sadly that’s all I know about this brave man.

1https://jonmarkgreville2.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/lee-lam/

2Part of the Ride Papers and kindly sent to me by Elizabeth Ride.

3Ralph Goodwin, Passport to Eternity, 1956, 51.

4John Harris and Oliver Lindsay, The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945, 2005, 195.