It had taken the British nearly a century to build Hong Kong into a world-class city.

But British control of the colony was shattered in a matter of weeks by the Japanese during World War II.

By the end of 1941, Japan had already occupied parts of China. On December 8, just hours after Tokyo ordered attacks on the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula and the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, Japanese troops swept across the border from China, into Hong Kong's New Territories.

Japanese forces quickly destroyed the colony's weak defenses. By Christmas Day, they had taken Hong Kong.

The British surrender brought nearly four years of painful occupation. Thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilians were held in local camps, or shipped to Japan. Some prisoners were beaten, tortured or executed for escape attempts or espionage. Ordinary Chinese, allowed to remain free, were beaten or jailed for not showing proper respect to Japanese troops.

Hong Kong languished under its new rulers, who had other war-related concerns. In an effort to conserve food and fuel in the territory, Japanese troops forced thousands of Hong Kong Chinese across the border, into mainland China.

The surrender of Japan in 1945 brought with it a new question: who, now, should rule Hong Kong?

Several years earlier, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt argued that the British should give up Hong Kong to the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek.

But the British moved quickly to regain control of Hong Kong. As soon as he heard word of the Japanese surrender, Franklin Gimson, Hong Kong's colonial secretary, left his prison camp and declared himself the territory's acting governor.

Gimson set up a provisional government, which welcomed a British naval fleet into Hong Kong harbor several days later. British Rear Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt then formally accepted the Japanese surrender.

Hong Kong's post-war recovery was surprisingly swift. The population soon returned to its pre-war levels, business boomed -- and eight months after the Japanese surrender, the territory's civilian administration was restored.

Colonial taboos also broke down in the post-war years. Chinese were no longer restricted from certain beaches, or from owning property on Victoria Peak.

But optimism about Hong Kong's future was short-lived. In 1949, Chinese Communist forces emerged victorious over their Nationalist rivals in China's civil war -- placing a hostile power on the other side of Hong Kong's Chinese frontier.