There was an appalling roar as the Constellation approached Sarawak; a bomb burst in the baggage compartment, setting the aircraft afire. Pilot Captain D. K. Jatar, showing incredible skill and nerve, managed to guide the shattered plane to a jolting belly-landing at 150 miles an hour. But the impact with the sea tore the Constellation apart and it sank in moments, leaving a circle of flames on the surface. Before the radio went dead, the ship had issued an international distress call.
Eleven passengers and five crewmen, including Captain Jatar, died in the crash and explosion. Three surviving crew members drifted in a life raft for nine hours until they were picked up by the British frigate Dampier. All the Chinese delegates were among those killed, and Peking charged sabotage. The accusation proved to be well-based; the bomb had been planted by a Nationalist saboteur, employed as a cleaner by the British maintenance company at Kai Tak Airport. Hong Kong police offered a $17,500 reward for his arrest, but he escaped to Taiwan on another airplane.
The Hong Kong government issued a warrant for the bomber’s arrest, but the Nationalist authorities replied that they had no legal basis for his extradition to the colony. There the matter rested, with the abiding hatred between Peking and Taipeh continuing as before.
Each of the sea and air incidents threatened the security of the colony to some degree, but none rocked its internal structure with the earthquake power of the Double Ten riots of October, 1956. No other crisis since World War II has presented such a frontal challenge to its ability to preserve law and order. Three days of savage guerrilla warfare raged through thickly congested streets, and when the fight was over, the British administration had had the fright of its life.
Statistics convey none of the heat of these bloody battles, but they measure a few of their dimensions: 59 people killed, 500 injured, nearly $1,000,000 in property damage, 6,000 arrests, 1,241 prison sentences and four executions for murder. Nearly 3,000 police and several army battalions were engaged in subduing the rioters. From east to west, the riots extended across eleven miles of Upper Kowloon and the New Territories, and were marked by fifty-four skirmishes between mobs and the uniformed forces.
If the genesis of the riots were to be narrowed down to a single proximate cause, it would have to be something as trivial as an argument over a few paper flags pasted on a concrete wall. Physically, that was where they started, but their true origin goes back at least three centuries.
The riots took their name from the common designation of a patriotic holiday on October 10, the tenth day of the tenth month, marking the anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911. In Hong Kong, it is preceded by the October 1 celebration of the birthday of Red China. Each holiday gave Nationalist or Communist sympathizers an opportunity to explode strings of firecrackers, hold rallies and fly their national flags. On both days, police were out in full force to prevent riots between the opposing Chinese groups, and they managed to keep the lid down fairly well until 1956.
The October 1 holiday in 1956 passed without undue commotion and October 10 began with no indication of Communist violence. Nationalist flags were displayed by refugees all over the colony, particularly in the heavily populated resettlement estates of Upper Kowloon. The refugees were predominantly pro-Nationalist, having been driven from their homeland by the Reds. After years of exile and grinding poverty, many of them were steeped in bitterness and yearning for revenge against the Communists.
The Triad gangs, whose members played a key part in the Double Ten riots, had been established in China three centuries ago as a patriotic society dedicated to the overthrow of the foreign Manchus who dethroned the native Ming Dynasty. Their professed ideals slowly rotted away and they devolved into a band of thugs, living on protection rackets, shake-downs of street peddlers and petty criminals, enforced by fear and strong-arm brutality. Since World War I, crime has become their primary business and their patriotism survives only as a front.
On October 10, 1956, pro-Nationalist residents of the Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate began to take down the paper flags they had pasted on the concrete walls of the housing blocks. Housing officials had objected that the pasted flags were difficult to remove after the Double Ten holiday was over, and the tenants, who could still fly flags from poles or ropes, accepted the cleanup job unprotestingly.