For people unfamiliar with Hong Kong's World War II history, it's hard to imagine that a war has ever happened here: The shoreline that the Japanese stormed on Dec 18, 1941, is today a hundred meters farther north because of land-reclamation efforts.

Tony Banham and his two sons visit the Wong Nai Chung Gap Trail, where hundreds of soldiers lost their lives during the Battle of Hong Kong 67 years ago. Photos by Edmond Tang

However, if you listen to Tony Banham, who has spent the last 20 years researching the war and has published two books on the subject, there's one place on the island where that history is still on display, sometimes in its haunting vividness.

It is the Wong Nai Chung Gap Trail, a mountain footpath that only became an official trail in 2006, when the area's historic value was brought to the attention of the government.

People tend to think of a river upon first hearing "gap". In reality, it turns out to be no more than a narrow stream of water. The valley itself has disappeared, long since filled in and flattened to house a cricket pitch or two. But the hillsides to the east and west still remain, and that's where people fell. That's where long-forgotten stories took place.

Banham and his two young sons, Mark, 11, and Harry, 6, recently set out to visit the site on a blisteringly hot autumn afternoon. The trail is clearly marked, with 10 stations illustrating, both geographically and chronologically, what happened in the vicinity, within one single day, on Dec 19, 1941.

The Japanese strategy was simple: Split Hong Kong island into two. Wong Nai Chong Gap, which runs east-west across the middle of the island, thus witnessed some of the fiercest and bloodiest battles ever fought in defense of Hong Kong.

The journey started at the entrance of the trail outside Park View, a high-end development cluster. Walking on the narrow, stone-slabbed road that more than half a century ago was used by soldiers to move ammunitions to pillboxes, a weapon storage is visible, as well as an anti-aircraft site, before arriving at Station 3 - called the lower pillbox.

What was once the frontline of the battleground is today overtaken by wild grass and unruly trees. The concrete structure has been reduced to a pile of stone and rubble, and one can walk directly onto the rooftop of the position. Half sinking into the ground, but still clearly visible, is a loophole - this is where machine guns stuck out and unleashed hell.

Connected with the lower pillbox by a flight of stone steps uphill is Station 5: the upper pillbox. This one is in much better condition and still retains all its basic features, including a periscope position and a ventilation shaft (The latter was used for air circulation inside the firing chamber below).

But it too has been at the mercy of nature: Bared, vine-like tree roots cling tightly to the rugged stones covering the ventilation shaft, through which the Japanese dropped grenades and killed everyone inside.

Battle damages in the form of gun holes measuring 1.5 cm in diameter are still found all over the pillbox's exterior walls of one-meter-thick solid concrete. Banham explains that the holes were made by guns from World War I.

These days, standing at the site of the upper pillbox, the view of the lower pillbox is completely blocked by dense foliage and an entanglement of trees. But on that fateful day when the Japanese charged the treeless mountain slope, these two pillboxes gave effective covering fire to each other.

"There were several times when the Japanese troops managed to swarm this position, but they were driven off by counterattacks from the lower pillbox," said Banham, who over the past two decades has visited the trail no fewer than 100 times.

"In the old days, people felled trees for firewood and the mountain was almost barren. From where we stand, you could look all the way down to the sea," he said.

But what else did those soldiers see on that day, apart from the sea?

Banham is explaining the history of a pillbox.

"They saw their own houses," Banham said. Soldiers that manned many of the pillboxes in the vicinity belonged to the No 3 Company of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defense Corps - comprising solely "Eurasians" - local people with mixed origins, usually those with both British fathers and Chinese mothers.

"Unlike the British Garrison soldiers who were stationed around the world in various colonies of the Empire, these people were locals - many lived here in this area," he said. "In fact, nobody else was quite as determined to hold back the Japanese as they were, because they were literally defending their own home."

Today, the homeland they fought for has undergone drastic changes. Walking along the designated mountain trail, stunning vistas of the skyscraper-skirted Victoria Harbor drift in and out of view, as do the aggressive developments in Central District.

One section of the trail was lined by a 1,000-meter-long catchwater constructed in the Victorian era. The catchwater, today filled with rotten leaves, fresh-water fish and terrestrial crabs, saw Japanese soldiers with light machine guns crawling up its dented path in an attempt to reach the two pillboxes on that day.

As the Japanese cut the barbed wire above the catchwater, the defenders realized what was happening. Private Jitts was the first to jump into the concrete ditch to fight the attackers. He would die on the spot as the Japanese opened fire.

The battle for Wong Nai Chung Gap was the hardest day of fighting since the start of the war. The defenders lost about 450 men in less than 24 hours.

"More Japanese soldiers were killed here than anywhere else in Hong Kong," Banham said as he arrived at a tiny stream running into a small valley shaded by trees.

"When they (the Japanese) arrived here, they stopped to rest and to load their guns. The commander of the upper pillbox saw the Japanese from his position. He took over the gun and started shooting," Banham said, estimating that about 150 Japanese soldiers were killed on the spot.

"The water was saturated with blood," he said. These days, the only remnants of the battle are the bullet cartridges embedded in the riverbank.

And these vestiges - little mementoes of the battle such as cartridges and shrapnel - are exactly what the eagle-eyed Banham and his well-trained children have been looking for during their numerous trips.

"They are much more difficult to find these days than 20 years ago," he said. "But sometimes the rain scouts out some for me."

Indeed, history is buried inches below the ground on this part of the island. And heavy rains a few days before this trip may have helped uncover a copper button from an allied soldier's fatigues, as well as a charger used by a Japanese soldier to load his gun.

But by midnight on that fateful day of battle nearly 67 years ago, the Gap was, in all practical terms, in Japanese hands.

For the next six days, vehement fighting continued elsewhere on the island, but as the signpost on the trail's 10th and final station bleakly acknowledges: "With the order to surrender, the guns fell quiet as Christmas Day 1941 passed".

In fact, even before the war, there was a clear sense by the British Government that once the Japanese attacked, Hong Kong would be virtually indefensible. But as Banham rightly noted, the Battle of Hong Kong was essentially a war of attrition, and one that helped exhaust Japanese resources.

"Without this attrition and the island-hopping war across the Pacific, the (atomic) bombs could never have been delivered to Japan," he said, referring to the Americans' bombing of Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later, which effectively ended World War II.

No one knew this better than Britain great Winston Churchill, whose message on Dec 21, 1941, ended: "Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance, you help the allied cause all over the world."

(HK Edition 11/11/2008 page4)