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Japanese built a huge memorial on top of Mount Cameron overlooking the Victoria Harbour after the Battle of Hong Kong. It is only half built when Japanese surrendered in 1945.

In this photo, the British engineers were probably discussing ways to demolish the structure. It was demolished not long after the war.

The base foundation is still there today, instead it became a base for some low rise residential buildings.

The following article from Gwulo:

The Japanese knew the memorial as the 'Pagoda of the Loyal Spirits', and for them it possibly served two quite different purposes. As you'd expect of a memorial it honoured those who'd died in the Battle for Hong Kong. But perhaps it also looked forward to the future battle they expected when the British returned. In a statement during the post-war War Trial, Major Hirao Yoshio described how from 1943 the Japanese government in Hong Kong knew it was unlikely they'd hold Hong Kong for a long time. (1943 was when the Japanese began losing islands in the Pacific to American forces). He went on to describe the memorial as a tomb where all the Japanese would gather to die when Hong Kong fell.

For those in Hong Kong after the Japanese surrender, the memorial was an uncomfortable reminder of their recent suffering. But while most agreed that the memorial needed to be removed ASAP, it turned out to be much more difficult than expected. At the surrender, the tower was less than half it's planned height. Still it was estimated to weigh several hundred tons, and was an almost solid block of reinforced concrete, rather than four walls around a hollow central space. The British engineers responsible for reviewing the structure and its plans described it as 'needlessly complex'. That complexity meant it was to take just over 18 months from the surrender to the final demolition of the tower.

By this time, contractors had already removed a lot of the concrete from the structure to make it lighter, and had chopped away all but two of the supporting legs. After this main explosion, further smaller explosions were used to break up the tower into smaller pieces, allowing them to be moved away.

Two more suprising facts about the memorial: First, a Japanese sword, supposedly 500 years old, was placed in a box and buried in the foundations. Second, it may well still be there!

With demolition of the tower, the most visible evidence of the war memorial was gone, and people's attention moved on. That left the massive platform behind. It's still here today, basically unchanged.

Shows the modified cutter compared to the original mould. The inserted photo shows the actual size of the model.

The modification took me 3 hours to complete.

The ship itself is almost finished. I started to turn my attention to the seaplanes construction.

DG = Dangerous Goods