George Hogg

George Aylwin Hogg (26 January 1915 – 22 July 1945) was a British adventurer. He read economics at University of Oxford. Early life George Aylwin Hogg was the son of Robert Hogg a merchant tailor from Belfast, Co. Antrim & his wife Kathleen née Lester. Hogg grew up in the small town of Harpenden in the United Kingdom. He attended St George's School, Harpenden, where he was head boy. Afterwards, he went to Wadham College in Oxford, read economics, obtaining a degree of Bachelor of Arts. He then became a freelance journalist for the Manchester Guardian. In 1937 he sailed on the Queen Mary to New York City, hitchhiked across the United States, and joined his aunt Muriel Lester (a well-known English pacifist and friend of Mahatma Gandhi). They continued their trip to Japan. Life in China In January 1938, during the undeclared war between China and Japan, he left Japan to visit Shanghai, China for two days. He helped Kathleen Hall, a nurse from New Zealand, smuggle food and medicine to the communists. During this, he witnessed first hand the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army towards the Chinese and chose to stay in China. In Shaanxi Province, Hogg befriended communist General Nie Rongzhen and participated with the Eighth Route Army in guerrilla raids against the Japanese. While on the front lines, he wrote the book "I See a New China".