Tony Banham - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

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” (Hong Kong University Press, 2003) ISBN 962-209-615-8
“The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru” (Hong Kong University Press, 2006) ISBN 962-209-771-5
“We Shall Suffer There” (Hong Kong University Press, 2009) ISBN 978-962-209-960-9

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 ( or their survivors ) who served Hong Kong during the period.

Private life

Banham was born into an academic family in Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

. He is nephew of architectural historian Professor Reyner Banham

Reyner Banham

Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...

and great nephew of 1945 Member of Parliament Edwin Gooch

Edwin Gooch

Edwin George Gooch was a British Labour Party politician and trade union leader.Gooch was appointed an Alderman for Norfolk County Council...

.
He graduated in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire

University of Hertfordshire

The University of Hertfordshire is a new university based largely in Hatfield, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, from which the university takes its name. It has more than 27,500 students, over 2500 staff, with a turnover of over £181m...

and had an initial career in research & development with Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

and the European Space Agency

European Space Agency

The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...

at ESRIN. At the age of 30 he moved to Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, working there for a variety of software vendors including Informix

Informix

IBM Informix is a family of relational database management system developed by IBM. It is positioned as IBM's flagship data server for online transaction processing as well as integrated solutions...

and, today is a senior executive based in Hong Kong with Oracle

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

. He is a licensed pilot and is married with two sons and has made Hong Kong his permanent home.

Hong Kong War Diary

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 disperate 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 (where Banham has conducted on-site research) being, as the location where the final assembly of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" took place, the geographcal segue between the 'old war' (of tanks and marines storming beaches) to the 'new war' which has dominated civilisation 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 is currently a PhD candidate at the Australian Defence Force Academy

Australian Defence Force Academy

The Australian Defence Force Academy is a tri-service military Academy that provides military and tertiary academic education for junior officers of the Australian Defence Force in the Royal Australian Navy , Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force .Tertiary education is provided by the...

(ADFA), Canberra.

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

Lisbon Maru

Lisbon Maru was a Japanese freighter which was used as a troopship and prisoner-of-war transport between China and Japan.When she was sunk by USS Grouper on 1 October 1942, she was carrying, in addition to Japanese Army personnel, almost 2,000 British prisoners of war captured after the fall of...

” 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.
Future volumes will cover the secret war for Hong Kong (the escapees and invaders, and the irregular forces that many joined), and the civilian evacuation of the then Colony in 1940.
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 bonanaza for the author.

Banham has also appeared on or assisted with documentaries for TVB Pearl (Hong Kong), ATV (Hong Kong), RTHK Radio (Hong Kong), Phoenix TV (China), the BBC (UK), the History Channel (US), Breakthrough Films (Canada) and others.

External links

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