Tony Keswick was shot in the arm by a Japanese official during a 1941 election meeting for the Shanghai Municipal Council held on the Shanghai Racecourse. He escaped major injury but thereafter travelled around the city in a 1925 seven-seater armoured car that had been custom-made for Al Capone. The same year John Keswick, facing internment by the occupying forces, left following Hong Kong's surrender to the invading Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. He managed to escape to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he served on the staff of Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Both brothers worked clandestinely as senior operatives for British Intelligence throughout the war.