Torture ordeal spurred courage of resistance fighters

The agonized cry, "If I die, avenge me!" has echoed in Lam Chun's mind for 82 years.

It was May 1943 in Kowloon City, when Japanese soldiers dragged her 23-year-old sister, Lam Chin, into their home. The accusation was theft — a charge fabricated after she rejected a soldier's advances.

A laundry worker at the Japanese barracks, Lam Chin was subjected to a relentless beating, with rifle butts smashing against her bones.

Eight-year-old Lam Chun stood frozen. Her sister was tied to the staircase, her shirt staining redder with each blow.

Soldiers demanded stolen military currency she had never touched. When she fainted, they revived her with water. When their mother lunged forward, a soldier threw the older woman to the ground. A blade was pressed to Lam Chin's throat — yet she never yielded.

"That day left a deep impression on me," Lam Chun, now 90, recalled. "It wasn't a day for just our family's shame, but also the nation's suffering."

The torture lasted hours, finally ending at lunchtime. Having found nothing, the soldiers left — but not before stealing a pair of military binoculars that had belonged to Lam Chun's late father, a Kuomintang officer.

What her tormentors didn't know was that Lam Chin was secretly smuggling intelligence for guerrillas led by the Communist Party of China in their fight to liberate Hong Kong.

That night, as her family dressed her wounds, Lam Chin revealed her secret. A former leader in the student movement supporting the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), she had long been fighting back.

Her suffering, coupled with this revelation, became a call to arms — not just for vengeance, but for victory.

"'If we're beaten for no reason at home, we might as well fight,'" Lam Chun remembered her mother declaring.