American Merchant Sailors at Sham Shui Po and Stanley: The Fall of Hong Kong and the Fate of the Steamship Admiral Y.S. Williams

The experience of American civilians during the invasion and occupation of Hong Kong has received little attention from scholars and historians, who have tended to focus on the experience of British civilians at Hong Kong, particularly those who spent the war in the Stanley civilian internment camp. The Americans comprised a relatively small portion of the larger European population in Hong Kong, so the focus on the British community is unsurprising. However, the colony’s wartime history nonetheless remains incomplete because the American civilian story has never been studied in a comprehensive fashion. This article addresses this gap in the existing canon of research by focusing on one small subgroup of American civilians: the merchant mariners of the freighter SS Admiral Y.S. Williams, who were captured along with their ship at Hong Kong in December 1941 and sent to the Stanley camp and Sham Shui Po POW camp.