The Valour and the Horror

Synopsis Continued

On December 13, 1941, the Japanese began a five-day bombardment of the island of Hong Kong, softening it up for the coming amphibious assault.

A Japanese Officer with sword

The British commanders had always expected an attack from the sea, and so had placed most of their fortifications at the bottom of the island. They still expected a Japanese attack from the sea, even though the enemy was now in control of the mainland on the other side. All the Japanese had to do was cross the harbour. Canada's Royal Rifles were placed at the narrowest crossing point, Lye Moon Passage. The British commander said the Japanese would never come across the water at night. Canadians were assured that the Japanese were racially prone to sea sickness. Because of their eye shape, their night vision was supposed to be poor. Both sides reduced the enemy to a racial caricature.

At 10:00 pm on December 18, the Japanese crossed to the island,the Canadians found themselves under fire in the pitch black. John Payne phoned British headquarters to report that the Japanese had come ashore.

By the time British headquarters accepted that the attack was real, the Japanese had landed 7,500 soldiers on the island of Hong Kong. They streamed over in boats of every description. Sea sickness was not a problem. Many of the Japanese soldiers rather enjoyed their short boat ride over to the island, some even remember singing along the way.

The Japanese forces swept across the channel from the mainland and rolled the defenders back up the mountains in the centre of the island. A key battle took place at the central mountain pass called The Wong Ne Chong Gap. Today, it's still the only way through the centre of the island.

The Japanese soldiers were ordered to make a series of suicide attacks against the Canadian positions. They suffered 800 casualties to win the battle at Wong Ne Chong Gap. When the Japanese discovered how few defenders had caused this decimation, the field commander was forced to apologize to his superiors. The Grenadiers, and others rounded up as prisoners, were now in danger. Some Japanese soldiers wanted revenge.

In the afternoon of Christmas day, with much of Hong Kong in flames, the British realized that further resistance was futile. At 3:00 p.m. the British commanders officially surrendered to the forces of Imperial Japan. The Union Jack was lowered. On the day after Christmas, in Hong Kong, the Japanese commanders paraded in triumph through the streets of the city. The defenders of Hong Kong from Britain, India and Canada were now prisoners of war. Some appeared almost jovial, happy at least to have survived. Many expected to be treated civilly according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. They were sadly mistaken. Over the next three and a half years of captivity, many of the living would come to envy the dead.

Canadian POW's just after being liberated with the fall of Japan. Many were too weak to walk and it was many months until they were healthy, again.

After the British colony fell to the Japanese in December of 1941, the Canadian prisoners of war were incarcerated at the Shamshuipo prison camp near the centre of Hong Kong. More recently this prison camp has been used to hold illegal Vietnamese immigrants to Hong Kong: boat people.

The prisoners were warehoused in a steaming, crowded barracks. After one year in the prison camps of Hong Kong, Canadian prisoners of war, like Bob Clayton, were put onto ships and sent to Japan.

For almost three years, Canadians worked as slave laborers in a giant shipyard near Tokyo. Here, many of the vessels for Japan's war fleet were built and launched -- and still are today -- by the same corporation that operated during the war, NKK Nipon Ko Kon, a flourishing Japanese multinational. Bob Clayton worked here for over a year. Now he can find almost no trace that Canadians were ever present. But the veterans have no trouble remembering the conditions they lived in. The men were filthy, starving, but always determined to survive.

In the summer of 1945, most of the Canadians were sent down to work in Japanese coal mines. In those last days of the war, the Emperor's military leaders were planning one last crime. If Japanese was invaded, all prisoners of war would be executed. The end, however, came far more quickly than the Emperor's men had anticipated.

In October 1945, four years after they left Canada, the Hong Kong veterans were finally home again.

Nipon Ko Kan and its founder, Morosiro Shiaichi, made millions of dollars profiting from the Japanese war effort, partly from using Canadian prisoners as slave laborers. In similar circumstances, German corporations have paid billions of dollars in compensation to wartime workers. Japanese companies are being pressed by Canada's veterans for compensation, but refuse even to discuss the issue.

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