MyStory

  My Hero, George Hogg. He was a great man, as I know. I am going to tell you why I respect and salute to him. It was through a movie that I knew about this hero, The Children of Huangshi.

  George was an English adventurer.  He was a graduate of Oxford University in economics. He is well-known for helping to save 60 Chinese schoolboy war orphans with New Zealander Rewi Alley in 1944.

   George Hogg grew up in the small town of Harpenden in England. He attended St. George's School, where he captained the First XV Rugby team and was Head Boy in his last year.

After schooling, in 1937 he sailed on the Queen Mary to New York, hitchhiked across the United States, and joined his aunt, well-known English pacifist Muriel Lester, on a trip to Japan, as part of a round-the-world trip before taking a job in banking. From Japan in January 1938 the 23-year old Hogg embarked on what was supposed to be a two-day visit to Shanghai, China, but he never returned home: he died seven years later in China.

Upon arriving in China in 1938, he found himself caught in the middle of the upcoming war between the Chinese and Japanese. Witnessing the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army, he decided to help the Chinese civilians, choosing to stay in China without his parents' knowledge.

     Hogg also reported as a stringer for Associated Press who accompanied Mao's Eighth Army in Yenan, was thrown out of China by the Japanese, then stole back in via Korea. For a time he helped a New Zealand nurse smuggle food and medicine to the communists.

     During his stay in China from 1937-1944, he met various people and witnessed many incidents that greatly changed his perceptions of life. Primarily, he worked with the New Zealand-born communist Rewi Alley and helped him run a school for wayward boys, first in Shaanxi Province and then, after marching the boys over 600 miles (970 km), at the Shandan Bailie School, which Alley founded in Gansu Province.

     He also befriended Communist general Nie Rongzhen during his stay in Shanxi, and participated, with the 8th Route Army, in guerrilla raids against the Japanese. He adopted four boys whose dying mother asked him to look after them. Three of the children are still alive and remember him well.

      He traveled the silk road from Shanxi all the way to Gansu.

      In Gansu, Alley rented some old temples, turned them into classrooms and workshops, and appointed George Hogg as headmaster. From the beginning the school was helped by New Zealand friends, who later formed the New Zealand China Friendship Society. In July 1945 tragedy struck when George died of tetanus after stubbing his toe while playing basketball with the boys. He was buried just outside the South Gate of the town and Rewi became headmaster himself.

His pupils had tried to keep him alive. When his death was unavoidable, they all sang him school nursery rhymes until he finally passed away. He died at age 30.

From Goh Rhay Gynn,

                              Maris Stella High School (pri)