THE WAR IN THE FAR EAST
Patriotism was profitable for Canadians. Even though British arms and munitions contracts came slowly in 1939, by spring of 1940 war production in Canada was expanding rapidly, and by the following year the economy was on a full war footing. By the end of the war, Canada had produced millions of shells, thousands of airplanes, hundreds of warships, and hundreds of thousands of trucks—more than Germany, Italy, and Japan combined—for the Allied nations at war.1 The minister of munitions and supply, C.D. Howe, ran business hard, but he coordinated his home front industrial empire with remarkable efficiency.2 The government intervened in almost every sector of the economy. Nearly thirty Crown corporations were established to manufacture everything from war-related polymers to weapons of war, and to streamline the extraction and production of raw materials. When the price of everyday goods rose because of inflation, King’s government intervened and froze salaries and prices, a measure that proved to be as successful as it was bold. As in the Great War, Canadian farmers continued to produce enormous surpluses of wheat and food supplies to feed Britain. Much of the Canadian economy was being geared towards the war and towards creating a new consumer culture to provide a commercial outlet for rising wealth. By 1941, jobs were available for nearly everyone, and women entered the workforce in significant numbers.3 Canada had become a warfare state.
In early 1940, King was advised by his military staff that Canada was vulnerable to attack. The country’s military might was far away: most of the modern destroyers were overseas, as were two divisions of infantry, with a third and fourth almost ready for overseas service. King yearned to assist Britain, but his duty was also to protect Canada. He turned southward to his friend, President Franklin Roosevelt. Even though King believed that Roosevelt had shirked his duty to democracy by declaring neutrality in September 1939, he was encouraged that the United States had continued to assist the Allies. The Americans had provided war supplies, had agreed to the destroyers-for-bases deal, and had even given direct naval support. King also hoped that Roosevelt would remember the promise made in his speech at Kingston in 1938 to protect the Dominion should it be attacked.4 Defending Canada was King’s first priority, but not far behind was the question of how to pay for the war. His ministers—in particular James Ilsley in finance and C.D. Howe in munitions and supply—were nervous about the growing trade imbalance with the United States, as Canada paid for raw materials from the Americans but sold its finished goods to the British.
Canada was a major producer of food, munitions, and weapons of war. This image illustrates Bren guns made for the British and Canadian land forces.
In August 1940, King drove south to Ogdensburg, New York, to meet Roosevelt while he was campaigning for an unprecedented third term as president. King and Roosevelt made an unlikely pair—the gregarious president relished a life of wealth and enormous power, while the prime minister was stuffy, guilt-ridden, and cautious—though they liked each other’s company. King listened and empathized with Roosevelt’s challenges, but he found time to explain Canada’s concerns. Britain was on the ropes, and King was anxious to lay the groundwork for the defence of North America should the unthinkable happen. On August 18, the prime minister and the president agreed to establish the Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD). This allowed Americans and Canadians to share ideas and suggest mutually supporting defence plans, ostensibly on equal terms. Over time, the PJBD bound the two nations together and provided security measures for the vulnerable Dominion.
King returned to the United States in the spring of 1941 to plead for cooperation that would help Canada meet its increasing financial challenges. While the Canadian economy was booming, Britain was all but broke and unable to pay for the Dominion’s goods. If Britain faltered financially, it would not only stumble badly in prosecuting the war but would also drag down the Canadian economy. In a meeting at Roosevelt’s Hyde Park estate, King used his considerable political skills and solid relationship with Roosevelt to propose a barter system. After some delicate discussions, Roosevelt agreed on April 20, 1941, that the Americans would purchase the same quantity of goods in Canada as Canada was purchasing in the United States, thereby balancing the books and, incidentally, considerably boosting sales for Canadian-made products and equipment. With this agreement in place, King returned to Ottawa a conquering hero: he had solved a difficult financial problem and made it possible for Canada to continue supporting Britain in the dark days of 1941. The strengthened financial and defence links to the United States came at a cost—no one was sure if the links would become shackles, leaving Canada tied to the United States and dragged out of the British orbit—but the desperation of the war had demanded a radical new relationship to the American powerhouse to the south.5
HITLER MADE NO SECRET OF HIS DESIRE to annex large parts of the Soviet Union. He had ranted for the better part of two decades about the abhorrent, subhuman Slavic people, and his Thousand Year Reich needed land in which to expand and resources to exploit. Having failed to knock Britain out of the war, and with the powerful Royal Navy remaining intact, Hitler looked eastward. While some of the German general staff warned against the strength of the Soviet armed forces, the yawning depth of the Russian terrain, and the danger of fighting a two-front war, the victory over France had left Hitler convinced that he was a military genius—“the greatest commander of all time,” as his own propaganda claimed.6 His senior military officers—cowed into submission and having sworn an oath of fealty to Hitler personally—offered little counterweight to his wild visions. Germany had looted enormous stores of war materiel from occupied France, including thousands of armaments, locomotives, raw materials, art, and treasure, but Hitler’s war machine needed more food, iron, and steel. A victory in the east would allow Teutonic warlords to enslave Slavic serfs who would work farms and factories for the greater good of Germany. Moreover, by driving the Soviet Union out of the war, Germany would also free Japan to turn its full military might against the United States.7 Although still officially neutral, President Roosevelt was, in Hitler’s mind, a puppet in the vast Jewish conspiracy, and the Führer viewed war with the United States as inevitable. And so he needed another war, against the Soviet Union, to provide the materiel to win the future war with his enemy across the Atlantic—what Hitler dubbed on January 9, 1941, the “war against continents.”8
Stalin had his own plans to take the Communist revolution to other nations, but the paranoid and ruthless dictator had done his best to ruin his military forces throughout the late 1930s, executing up to 25,000 senior officers—and 650,000 other citizens—in blood-dimmed purges later known as the Great Terror.9 While neither the British nor the Americans believed the Soviet army could withstand a German invasion, Hitler’s generals had dangerously underestimated their enemy’s strength. They had pegged Stalin’s terrestrial forces at two million, when the figure was in fact closer to five million.10 There would be other nasty surprises for the invaders.
The Soviet Union had been no mere silent partner of Germany. Stalin used the August 1939 non-aggression pact between the two nations to consolidate his grip over Eastern Europe while waiting in hope of seeing the Western capitalist states— Britain, France, Germany—destroy one another. Soviet troops occupied half of Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.11 Finland, which had achieved independence from Russia in 1917, was given an ultimatum whose terms required handing over about 10 percent of the nation’s territory. When the Finns refused, the Russians invaded on November 30, 1939, beginning what was dubbed the Winter War. The Finnish forces were vastly outnumbered but made an effective fighting retreat. They used the terrain they knew to their advantage, and launched periodic attacks against bumbling Soviet armies that were incompetently led and ill-equipped. Thousands of Soviet soldiers froze to death in the winter wasteland, their casualties eventually rising to some 126,000 killed and another 300,000 wounded, sick, or frost-bitten.12 Stalin, undeterred by the losses, renewed the offensive in early 1940, broke through the Finnish lines, and imposed a peace treaty on them in March. The Soviets continued to build up their military capabilities, but they remained deeply unready for a war against the battle-hardened German forces.
Hitler’s hand was further strengthened when the Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, declared war on June 10 against France and Britain. The Italian Fascists resembled the Nazis, at least outwardly. They favoured similarly elaborate uniforms and goose-stepping displays of power, but they fielded a far inferior fighting force. Hampered by bungling generals and poorly trained soldiers, the Italians soon proved utterly incapable of conducting a modern military campaign.
The British were quick to respond to Italy’s declaration of war. They punched back in mid-June 1940, using their garrison in Egypt to attack the unprepared Italian forces in Libya, and destroying much of the enemy’s air force on the ground. The Italian generals, who made an art of operational passivity, folded in the face of aggressive action and, in December, provided the British, who were outnumbered about four to one by the Italians, with additional morale-raising victories. Mussolini turned to his new German ally and begged for aid, munitions, and soldiers. A disgusted Hitler ordered the decorated panzer general, Erwin Rommel, to the Africa theatre in February 1941 and, with a handful of German divisions, energized the Axis forces. Lauded as the Desert Fox, Rommel would become a hero as his Afrika Korps inflicted a series of defeats on the British. The Luftwaffe remained a feared striking arm, but after the victories of the first half of 1941, Hitler pulled back many of Rommel’s warplanes to support the invasion of Russia.13 This gave the British time to recover, and the next year would see shifting campaigns fought over Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, with few decisive victories for either side.
HITLER’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST SOVIET RUSSIA was intended to be the largest military offensive in human history. The Germans massed more than 3 million soldiers, 3,500 tanks, and 2,700 planes for their campaign. If the Soviet Union could be conquered rapidly, Hitler believed, “Britain’s last hope would be shattered.”14 This was a strange rationale for a dangerous initiative, not least because it overlooked the fact that Stalin was Germany’s, and not Britain’s, ally. If Hitler had kept faith with Stalin, the British would almost certainly have been defeated in the Middle East and throughout their far-flung empire. Nonetheless, it was undoubtedly true that if Stalin was beaten, then Hitler would be master of all of Europe.
Moving millions of men to the Eastern Front took time, and the British, intercepting reports of this action, became aware of what was happening. They warned their enemy, Stalin, that his ally was turning on him. For a man who had spent much of his political career butchering tens of thousands to protect himself from imagined threats, Stalin remained remarkably passive when he received this news. The Russian dictator was paralyzed by the thought of resisting the seemingly unstoppable German forces, and instead of preparing for the contest, told himself that the desperate British, imperialists to the core, were simply drawing him into a war he was not ready to fight.
The German campaign in the east began with the invasion of Yugoslavia in April, and soon thereafter, Greece and the Mediterranean island of Crete fell. These successful operations allowed Hitler to unleash Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union on June 22. Hitler had told his senior generals that this war against Communism would be “very different from the conflict in the west.” “This,” he said, “is a war of annihilation.”15
The rapid and deep advance of the Wehrmacht soon enveloped and destroyed much of the Soviet army, which Stalin had incompetently ordered into forward positions instead of a defence-in-depth that might have absorbed the crushing onslaught. It appeared that the Communists were doomed as the three-pronged German assault pierced deep into Russia: one army group moving towards Leningrad, another towards Moscow, and a southern one towards Kiev to occupy the Ukraine. Cut off from their logistical lines and seemingly abandoned by their commanders, some two million Russians were killed or surrendered in the first months of the campaign.
While the opening moves of Barbarossa seemed to represent an even grander evolution of the Blitzkrieg tactics unleashed in Poland and against the Franco-Anglo forces, the Russian steppes were not France. Soon the hot pursuit to victory was reduced to a cold crawl. The roads, many of them virtually medieval in terms of quality, were reduced to mush by the thousands of vehicles that passed over them. Hitler’s panzer divisions churned on, but much of the army was not mechanized and instead relied on horses, numbered at around 600,000 at the start of the offensive.16 With every step they took towards the east, the German logistical lines—the system for conveying fuel, food, men, and munitions to the front—became a little longer. Each victory made it harder to sustain the driving momentum, and while the Germans were nearly unstoppable in combat, they did not properly heed the limitations imposed by strained logistics.17 Most astonishingly, the Soviet soldiers, though callously treated, poorly led, and almost always horrendously ill-equipped, proved far more resilient than the Germans could have anticipated, and millions more were conscripted into service to replace the summer’s losses. The gritty Soviet rank and file risked summary execution by political officers to the rear, and often faced hopeless situations at the front, but they found ways to steel themselves for the coming horror.
The German army achieved rapid and monumental victories in the late summer and fall of 1941, but it also failed to take advantage of the goodwill it might have accrued by rescuing peasants from Stalin’s iron grip.18 Much of the Ukraine had suffered through terrible starvation years under Stalin’s wicked rule and might have been expected to greet the Germans as liberators. But in a heinous foreshadowing of the industrialized murder to follow, behind the advancing German armies crept the murderers: special extermination squads that executed all Jews in their path— men, women, children, and the elderly—as well as other enemies and supposed undesirables, such as committed Communists, gypsies, and partisan fighters. Those who were captured were shot or asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in mobile vans, and then dumped in mass graves. In Belorussia, by war’s end, 5,454 settlements had been destroyed and more than a quarter of the population killed. Some 2.2 million people were murdered, including 99 percent of the Jews.19 Even as the Einsatzgruppen units—mobile killing squads composed primarily of German SS troops and police—murdered civilians by the tens of thousands (one of the four units executed more than 270,000 victims by spring of 1942), the pace was not fast enough for Hitler and his minions. In late 1941, Hitler set in motion a system later formalized at the notorious January 1942 Wannsee Conference: the Final Solution, a killing scheme by which millions were transported by rail to concentration camps where gas chambers killed thousands daily. This horrific policy, which would eventually claim some six million victims, would later be labelled the Holocaust.20
It was not only the Jewish people that Hitler sought to wipe from Europe. Nazi leaders calculated that thirty million inhabitants of the northern half of Russia—considered by Hitler as “superfluous eaters”—would likely die through starvation.21 Hitler had given ample evidence of his disregard for humanity when he ordered the murder of the mentally challenged, including children, in Germany, in the interests of protecting the racial purity and health of the Aryan regime. Now the Nazis’ brutality and callous disregard for lives was raised to another level with their treatment of Russian prisoners of war.22 By December 1941, the capture of more than 3.3 million prisoners had been recorded by the Wehrmacht, but only 1.1 million were still alive. More than 2.2 million soldiers had been starved to death, left to freeze, or executed outright. It was German policy to deliberately inflict suffering on prisoners, and even to encourage cannibalism among them. Another million Soviet prisoners would perish under German control by the end of the war.23 This depraved behaviour by the invaders strengthened the resolve of Soviet soldiers to keep fighting, no matter what hardships they endured, and of partisans caught behind German lines to battle to the end.
Though the Germans made enormous gains in the summer and autumn of 1941, the rain, driving wind, and snow of October and November transformed the campaign. With the prize of Moscow in sight—and a chance to deliver a death blow to Stalin—the Germans were soundly beaten by a renewed Soviet offensive in early December.24 Unable to capture Moscow, and with nowhere to shelter from plummeting winter temperatures, disaster loomed for the German soldiers. In their headlong pursuit of a knockout blow, few in the army had prepared for a winter in Russia. Now, at the end of 1941, with the Ostheer (the German Army in the East) thrown back at the end of its 1,000 kilometre advance, the frontsoldaten endured agonies through a freezing winter, wrapped in layers of blankets stolen from civilians and uniforms taken from the dead, crawling with lice, suffering bleeding gums, and clenching blackened, frost-bitten extremities. Tens of thousands died of extreme cold and were left frozen by the side of the road as ghastly sign posts. In 1941, 357,000 German troops were reported killed or missing in action; of those, more than 300,000 perished on the Eastern Front.25 There would be no German victory in 1941. Instead the Eastern Front became an endlessly bleeding wound.
HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD, Japan had been bullying its neighbours since the early 1930s as it expanded its influence and sought to forge an empire. Though the Japanese emperor remained the sacred head of state, a powerful military class of expansionist-minded officers positioned the nation for war, murdering political opponents and senior officials in the country, fomenting chaos outside its borders, and pursuing zealously a policy of empire building and economic self-sufficiency through a Japan-controlled trading bloc in Southeast Asia. China became a primary target of Japanese expansionism, and a series of Japanese incursions orchestrated by military officers since the fall of 1931 led finally, in 1937, to full-scale war. Japanese troops, equally adept at combined-arms warfare and close-quarter fighting, surged forward in wide-ranging offensives.26 Victorious on the battlefield, they were utterly brutal in the aftermath. Japanese forces put Nanjing to the sword in December 1937: more than 200,000 civilians were raped, tortured, or murdered. The Japanese military followed this horror by using biological and chemical weapons on civilians.27 For East Asia, this was when the Second World War began. Washington carefully monitored Japan’s aggression from the outset and slowly enacted embargos on fuel to punish the regime and preserve its own economic interests.
Japan was only loosely aligned with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy through the September 1940 Tripartite Pact, but the Asian nation was part of the Axis. As Europe toppled to Hitler and his minions, the Western colonial powers—France, Britain, and the Dutch—were vulnerable in their lands in the Far East. A defeated France was the first to find that its weakness left it prey to stronger nations when Japan occupied Indochina in July 1941. After General Hideki Tojo became prime minister in October, few Japanese voices were arguing for peace. The Americans offered them trade incentives to withdraw from Indochina and were rebuffed. The two nations were on a collision course to war.
The Japanese high command knew that their small island kingdom could not match the United States in terms of economy and productivity, or win a prolonged conflict against the 130-million-strong nation, which was essentially impervious to attack. Accordingly, it planned to strike a blow that would end the war decisively, much as Germany had done with its rival, France. In developing this plan, the Japanese wildly misread US strength. They believed the American people were soft, decadent, and unwarlike. Japan would attack, win rapidly, and then dictate a victor’s peace.
Months earlier, however, senior British and US commanders had studied the likelihood of a Japanese offensive against their colonies and protectorates in the Far East. President Roosevelt had been told that the American garrison in the Philippines would likely fall quickly. His senior generals and admirals were confident, however, that the United States would win a protracted war against Japan. The British were less certain of their own success. They had been driven from Europe and defeated in a series of battles in North Africa. Loath to lose more of the Empire, the pugnacious Churchill lamented that he had few military and naval assets to spare to strengthen his hand in Asia. The British fortress at Singapore, with its powerful naval guns, was expected to withstand any attack, but isolated colonies such as Hong Kong—a strategically important island on the south coast of mainland China—had to be either abandoned or bolstered with reinforcements.28
Hong Kong was an especially hopeless cause. Military appreciations from the late 1930s painted a bleak picture of the decrepit defences there, and Churchill himself had said, in January 1941, “If Japan goes to war there is not the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it.” But he changed his mind only a few months later.29 His military advisors—men who were disinclined to accept failure—recommended that extra troops be sent to Hong Kong as a show of force to deter the Japanese and support their ally in the region, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek. Strengthening the garrison at Hong Kong would also offer moral support to Stalin, who worried about the Japanese attacking from the east. Moreover, Hong Kong, an overcrowded, dirty port city that had long been a central supply route for China’s nationalist army’s fight against the Japanese, was a critical strategic outpost of the British Empire, from which Japanese actions could be monitored and contained.30 In a show of resolve and sabre-rattling, the Admiralty sent to the Far East two of its most prized capital ships, the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse. The Americans reinforced the effect by transferring B-17 bombers and infantry formations to the Philippines, and Canada joined in by offering modest, incremental support for Washington’s hard stance, and particularly by backing the oil embargo and freezing of Japanese finance. Perhaps, mused Churchill, the Canadians might be asked to give further support to the Empire in its bold bluff.31
This November 18, 1941, cartoon from the Winnipeg Free Press starkly illustrates the hubris and confidence that many Canadians had in sending a garrison to Hong Kong.
The British request that Canada reinforce Hong Kong came to King’s cabinet on September 23. King was dead set against sending any Canadians to an area where the Dominion had little historic interest. However, the minister of national defence, J.L. Ralston, had long advocated an increased role for the Canadian army. The navy was fighting the convoy battles of the Atlantic, and Canadian flyers were involved in the air war against Germany, but the ground forces—which had swelled to three divisions and a tank brigade—seemed to be playing Dad’s Army in England, where they did little more than march about the countryside and into the nation’s pubs. The chief of the general staff, Major-General Harry Crerar, also prodded his minister to send the available troops to Hong Kong, while downplaying the risks, and soon the influential ministers of defence for the navy and air, Macdonald and Power, supported the operation.32 Many of the English-Canadian newspapers, urged on by the opposition Conservative Party, also demanded that troops be sent. An outmanoeuvred King, who was always wary of being painted as timid and unmilitaristic (especially in relation to Churchill), agreed reluctantly to send two battalions to Hong Kong.
For decades after the war, historians and filmmakers would suggest that the British conspired to hoodwink the Canadians into sending troops to the garrison, but that is simply incorrect. While it is beyond doubt that the British underestimated the Japanese military’s strength and the conviction of its leaders, no imperial conspiracy endeavoured to draw Canada further into the war or send its troops to slaughter. As it happened, the British had more troops in the garrison than the Canadians sent, and had ordered some of their most prized warships to the region as a show of force.33
TWO CANADIAN BATTALIONS were needed for this tropical posting. Quebec’s Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers had recently returned from quiet garrison duty in Newfoundland and Jamaica. The Rifles were known informally as the “million dollar” regiment, because the regiment included within its ranks the sons of several wealthy Anglo-Quebeckers, including the minister of air, Chubby Power. But neither the Rifles nor the Grenadiers were fully equipped with modern weapons, and many of the soldiers had not finished their training. In fact, some of the infantrymen had barely fired their rifles, most claimed little experience with anti-tank weapons, and a few did not even know how to arm their grenades. The battalion’s 3-inch mortars were a good infantry-support weapon, able to hurl bombs at the enemy, but the battalion was short of rounds for both training and the forthcoming battle. Bettertrained soldiers might have been sent, but Crerar did not want to break up the 4th Division that was then being raised in Canada.34
Despite these limitations, most of the Canadian infantrymen were aching to serve. Rifleman Vince Calder, who had enlisted only a few months earlier after being turned down ten times, wrote that 150 men who had been left off the initial list bribed comrades with gifts and cash to switch places and ensure that they could go overseas.35 With unbounded optimism, military assessors suggested that the two battalions’ unfinished training might be completed at a later date.
A candid photograph of the Winnipeg Grenadiers departing for Hong Kong aboard HMCS Prince Rupert.
C Force, consisting of 1,973 soldiers and two Canadian army Nursing Sisters, left from Vancouver on October 27, arriving at Hong Kong on November 16. The Canadians landed ahead of their trucks and Universal Carriers, which had been loaded on slower transports. The vehicles never arrived, having been diverted to the Philippines after the Japanese attacked the colony. The commanding officer, Brigadier J.L. Lawson, a Great War veteran and admired Permanent Force soldier, tried to prepare his men for battle. One of the Royal Rifles sergeants, George MacDonell, was of the opinion that even with the lack of training, many of his comrades came from hunting, fishing, lumberjack, and farming backgrounds, and were “tough as nails.”36 The northern warriors were pleasantly surprised by the warm climate and the readily available servants to do washing and serve food for mere pennies, but all of the Canucks winced at the heat, the mosquitoes, the abject poverty, and the noxious smells of a city swollen with nearly 1.5 million people. The Canadians were also soon to discover that the military garrison’s defensive positions were poorly maintained, with outdated guns, no radar equipment, and a slew of other deficiencies. After surveying the isolated outpost, William Allister, an artist who had studied at McGill, remarked, “My God, another Dunkirk!” to which one dour comrade responded, “No, fella, at Dunkirk they had somewhere to go.”37
THE BRITISH COLONY consisted of the island of Hong Kong and the New Territories on the Chinese mainland, with the core of the population in the port city of Kowloon. The island and mainland were separated by the Lye Mun Passage, which was a little less than a kilometre wide at its narrowest point. The British plan of defence was to meet the enemy on the mainland, fight a delaying action of about two weeks, and then fall back slowly to the island, where the troops would hold out until reinforcements arrived.
On the mainland, the primary defensive position was the Gin Drinkers Line, a loose series of pillboxes situated in a rugged, hilly region north of the port. It seemed ideally suited for defenders, who could hold high hilltops while sweeping the advancing forces with deadly fire; but a resolute enemy might also be able to use the broken terrain to drive quickly through the defenders, who were isolated in garrisons and unable to support one another. The British commander, Major-General Christopher Maltby, had a garrison of six battalions (two Indian battalions—the 5/7 Rajputs and 2/14th Punjabis—as well as the 1st Middlesex and 2nd Royal Scots, along with the two Canadian battalions), coastal artillery regiments, and the Hong Kong Defence Corps (about 2,000 strong), for a total of about 14,000 troops. In the forward defence, Maltby placed much of his strength in the front-line perimeter or much further to the rear in the port. He had, for instance, only a single company in brigade reserve—far too weak a force to throw back any sort of sustained assault should the enemy break through the Gin Drinkers Line.38 Maltby situated his two Canadian battalions on the island, anticipating an attack from the sea, which was a possibility, but since all of the island’s modern guns and defences were sited outward to protect against such an operation, he would have been better served to place at least one of these battalions on the mainland. One is not relying entirely on hindsight in suggesting that any competent commander would have strengthened the single company he had acting as a mobile reserve with at least one of those Canadian battalions. The Canadians were not happy with their role in guarding against a seaward attack, and at least one British officer was impressed by the ardour of the aggressive Canadians, overhearing one to demand, “When do we get to grips with the Goddamned little yellow bastards?”39
AGAINST THE HONG KONG GARRISON was the 38th Division, a battle-hardened Japanese formation of about 7,000 infantrymen, but augmented with thousands of additional troops from the 23rd Army, including artillery, signals, and engineer units.40 The British had long clung to a racist belief that the Japanese were poor warriors, possessing eyesight so bad that they could not fight at night, and barely simian intelligence. Maltby shared this flawed racism, lecturing fervently to the Canadians that they had little to worry about if Japan should be so reckless as to declare war.41 In one graphic depiction of the type of lecture the Canadians received, Major Maurice Parker of the Royal Rifles of Canada recorded the message in a postwar memoir, noting that the Japanese “are badly trained, badly equipped, and physiologically unfit to fight. They are buck-toothed, slant-eyed, near-sighted, scrawny little people. Their slanted eyes make them poor night fighters, and prone to sea-sickness. Most of them have to wear thick corrective glasses. Because their diet consists mostly of rice and fish they are weak from malnutrition, and their stamina is poor.”42 In reality, many of the Japanese troops had gained years of combat experience against the Chinese, had learned the art of advancing rapidly under fire, were willing to fight with little logistical support, and were well trained to conduct difficult night manoeuvres.
The Japanese unleashed their spectacular surprise attack against the US navy at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The goal of the operation was to sink the United States Pacific Fleet and so give the Japanese military forces a free hand in attacking British, Dutch, and American colonies and outposts in the Pacific. Two waves of fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes launched from six aircraft carriers projected power deep into US territory, with the first bombs dropping a little before 8 A.M. on the unprepared Americans. Intelligence failures, a dereliction of duty, and poor tactical preparation had left the US battleships, cruisers, and destroyers lined up as easy targets.43 Direct hits from the bombers sank four of the giant battleships and six additional destroyers and cruisers. A significant part of the American fleet went down in flames, with 2,402 killed and 1,282 wounded, although many of the warships were later raised from their temporary graves. The attack left the Americans reeling, but soon the grief was channelled into anger.
The first waves of Japanese bombers struck Hong Kong at 8 A.M. on December 8 (coordinated with Pearl Harbor but a day later because of the time-zone difference), killing civilians, military personnel, and destroying five obsolete aircraft that the British had unfortunately left on the runway. The aircraft were not of much use, but they could have offered crucial intelligence on the advancing Japanese infantry that soon crashed against the Gin Drinkers Line. General Maltby was left largely blind in the face of the enemy offensive. Rifleman Alfred Babin remembered, “I saw the planes flying overhead … saw and heard them drop their bombs and knew the war was on. That was just about it. The war just seemed to begin. From that date on I can’t remember where I ate, where I slept or put any of the events in a chronological order.”44
The aggressive Japanese forces closed to the Gin Drinkers Line on December 9, and probed the Allied positions. Despite the advantages afforded the British, Scottish, and Indian troops in fighting on the defensive, that night the Japanese bypassed strongpoints and infiltrated through the gaps in the line, capturing a key position, the Shing Mun Redoubt. Maltby had planned for the enemy to fruitlessly attack his fortresses in frontal attacks against concrete bunkers. Inconveniently for him, the experienced Japanese had done no such thing, and, because of Maltby’s failure in deployment, when the Japanese breached the lines, few mobile reinforcements were in place to counterattack.
The Japanese were cautious in their advance, and were turned back by the 5/7 Rajput Regiment at points along the line, but the Allied forces were dislodged rapidly from their positions and sent into a headlong retreat back to the port on December 11. The defenders crossed to the island just off the mainland early on the 13th. By all accounts, the evacuation was premature, and it gave up important terrain to the Japanese.45 The campaign started with defeat and retreat, and would only get worse.
The defenders, already shaken, were further distressed by the news that the two British capital ships, Prince of Wales and Repulse, had been sunk off Malaya (modern-day Malaysia) by Japanese dive- and torpedo-bombers on December 10, and that the American fleet at Pearl Harbor was in ruins. Reinforcements and rescue were now likely impossible.46 At Kowloon, on the mainland, Japanese fifth columnists in civilian clothing blew up buildings and sowed confusion; looters ransacked businesses and warehouses; and lawless gangs harassed, robbed, and murdered terrified refugees. As the Japanese troops entered the city, further hysteria erupted among the citizens, especially as the soldiers began to loot and kill. With power out and refrigeration off, the bodies of the rotting dead soon corrupted the air. Excreta and garbage were mixed into the awful swill as more than a million and a half civilians contended with the rampaging army. The Allied garrison troops watched the doomed city go up in flames from their island. Twenty-year-old Sergeant Bob Clayton of the Royal Rifles wrote, “It was one massive scream all night long … it made your hair stand on end.”47
MAJOR-GENERAL MALTBY followed up his inept stand on the mainland with an equally questionable defence of the island. He divided his six battalions into four sectors, with an eastern and western brigade command structure. Yet again, bizarrely, he planned for almost no central reserve. While it was expected that the Japanese amphibious invasion would crash against the narrowest point of crossing in the northeast sector, defended by the Indian 5/7 Rajput Regiment, Maltby had no rapid counterattack force there to repel the invaders when they were at their most vulnerable. He split the Canadian brigade, putting one battalion on each side of the island, in the south, where because of their lack of vehicles they would have grave difficulty in striking hard and fast. Brigadier J.K. Lawson commanded the west side of the island, while the forces in the east were commanded by Brigadier Cedric Wallis, who would play a key role in ordering the Royal Rifles of Canada into numerous battles. Maltby’s inexcusable errors complicated command and control functions of senior officers and of units working smoothly together in unison.
This propaganda leaflet was dropped on the British and Canadian troops on Hong Kong Island. The text reads: “We want you to know one thing. The very day when Japan makes its furious attacks on Hongkong and Malay, it is also the day that Germany makes its long planned landing in British Isles. The end of Britain has come!”
“We were assured that the demolitions on the mainland had been so extensive that it would take many weeks before the Japanese could bring up their artillery,” wrote Major Maurice Parker, the D Company commander of the Royal Rifles of Canada. “The next day the first heavy shells began exploding on Hong Kong Island.”48 The island’s defenders found little rest as the Japanese steadily bombarded their positions. Rumours of Japanese atrocities on the mainland further unhinged some men. Sergeant Leo Berard of the Winnipeg Grenadiers described one private who was thoughtfully cleaning his weapon when he “put the muzzle of the rifle underneath his chin and reached down and pressed the trigger. Split his head in half.” His suicide left the survivors shaken. As they buried the unfortunate soldier, Berard reflected, “The stress and anxiety caused by our position and the fear of capture by the Japanese were more than some men could tolerate.”49
For days, Japanese artillery shelled pillboxes in the Rajput sector in the northeast of the island, which seemed to telegraph the location of the enemy’s intended invasion point. A commander shrewder than Maltby might have rushed forward additional reserves to meet the attack. This came on the night of December 18, when the Japanese 38th Division crossed the Lye Mun Passage in boats, sampans, and rafts under an oily sky discoloured by the burning city. Indian sentries fired upon the advancing Japanese, who were partially masked by rain and darkness, but the defenders’ situation was perilous: they were only about 700 strong and spread over 4 kilometres. One Japanese officer later wrote, “It was a spectacular and grim crossing,” but the tenacious Japanese troops, taking fire in the open water, moved forward in sheer numbers, with six battalions of some 4,000 light infantry converging on the tiny garrison.50 The Rajputs fought hard but were overwhelmed, although not before signalling to Maltby’s headquarters that the invasion was on.
HONG KONG, DECEMBER 18–25, 1941
BY THE EARLY HOURS OF THE 19TH, the Japanese pushed on from their vulnerable beachhead to advance on a number of high points on the island: from east to west, these were Mount Parker, Mount Butler, and Jardine’s Lookout, all in the northeastern quadrant of the island. This high ground was only lightly held by the Allied forces because Maltby had ordered his troops to dig in along the low valleys. In a postwar interview, a senior decorated British gunner, Colonel H.B. Rose, revealed that Maltby had told his staff that they did not need to hold the high ground because the “Japs will not attack over hilltops and mountain tops.”51 Since even a first-year cadet knows that the high ground is fundamental to a robust defence—as it forces the enemy to attack upward while allowing for forward artillery observers to call down accurate fire—it is not surprising that the Japanese surged up the hills and ridges, garrisoned the tops, and soon used them to rain down mortar fire on the defenders laid out before them. Major Kenneth Baird, a fifty-two-year-old veteran of the Great War and an officer in the Winnipeg Grenadiers, wrote that his regiment soon caught “merry hell from all angles.”52
Communication was sporadic from the front, especially after the Rajputs were put to flight, but elements from both the Royal Rifles in the northeast and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, who shifted over from the west towards the sound of fighting, engaged the enemy. Despite being handcuffed by a poor tactical deployment, the Royal Rifles, as the next line of defence behind the Rajputs, fought aggressively. Major W.A. Bishop’s C Company was in the firing line and its riflemen and Vickers machine gunners forced advancing Japanese troops to ground in a hail of fire. Rifleman E.I. Bennett was just one of the Canadian defenders. According to an official citation, as the invaders pressed in on his position, Bennett “attacked this enemy post alone, on his own initiative.”53 His counterattack drove back the Japanese and he was awarded the Military Medal for his bravery. Japanese reports later admitted a crippling 65 percent loss to lead units.54
With neither Maltby nor his brigadiers basing orders on reliable information about the extent of the enemy incursion, at 2 A.M. Brigadier Lawson ordered four of the Winnipeg Grenadiers’ platoons of about thirty-five men each to climb and hold the 1,411-foot-high Jardine’s Lookout, in a race to beat the Japanese. Sergeant Tom Marsh of the Grenadiers later wrote, “This was going to war with a vengeance.”55 But the entire Japanese 2nd Battalion of the 229th Regiment, numbering around 500 infantrymen, was already dug in on the mountain. The Canadians came under fire as they wound their way forward up the steep incline, with most soon left bleeding on the slopes. It is difficult to reconstruct these battles, and all the others fought over the following week, because few records were created and most were later burned to prevent them falling into the enemy’s hands. Moreover, many Canadian officers and NCOs were killed and their experiences were lost with them.56 But the surviving eyewitnesses recounted a fierce battle at Jardine’s Lookout. Sergeant Ed Schayler of the Grenadiers remembered his first time in combat: “I heard this crackling sound, and for a little while I couldn’t understand what it was. Then it dawned on me. It was bullets going past my ear. If they come close to you, you won’t hear the ping like they make in the movies. You just hear a little crackle…. I knew what fear was. I often wondered how I would react, and I shocked myself because I became quiet. I didn’t shake, my mind worked well. I didn’t shake until I got out of that place.”57 Schayler survived and the Grenadiers demonstrated their grit and determination, as some of them fought to the top. They did not last long and were destroyed by the much larger force. Almost all of the Canadians from the four platoons were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner in the lopsided battle, and the Japanese now overlooked much of the island. This also put them in position to threaten the Tai Tam reservoirs that held about 90 percent of the island’s water supply.
Brigadier Lawson, aware that the Japanese were also likely to occupy Mount Butler, which overlooked much of the eastern part of the island, ordered an attack to take it using half of A Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, plus a D Company platoon. This is one of the few battles that is known through survivors’ accounts. Major A.B. Gresham led a 7 A.M. bayonet assault, supported by Company Sergeant-Major John Osborn. Three platoons advanced up the mountain, shooting, throwing grenades, and driving the enemy back with the business end of a bayonet. Throughout the firefight and bayonet charge, an outwardly calm Osborn organized the attack and then, when the Japanese struck back, the defence. After three hours of battle, the Canadians took the mountain but were soon overwhelmed by a series of Japanese counterattacks. The Canadians were forced to retreat back down Butler’s slope, with a number of officers and NCOs killed. Osborn—bleeding freely from a wound to his arm—again took over the fight, placing his surviving Bren gunners to provide a crossfire to keep the enemy from driving forward and cutting off the vulnerable force.
At forty-two years old, Osborn had served in the Great War, been gassed, and lived with little means and wealth near Winnipeg during the 1930s. He was a gruff disciplinarian with five children, whose booming square-bashing voice could be softened for nightly singalongs at the piano with his family. Now, on the 19th, his voice rose above the din of battle to coordinate the desperate defence. By mid-afternoon, the Canadians had been driven into the foot of Jardine’s Lookout and were trapped. The Japanese advanced again, firing and throwing grenades. Steel and shrapnel whirled over the battlefield. Canadian eyewitnesses swore that Osborn several times picked up Japanese grenades and threw them back at the enemy in a deadly game of hot potato.
Around 3:15 P.M., Major Gresham concluded that his decimated company was in an untenable position and tried to surrender. As he stood up with a white flag, Japanese machine-gun fire cut him down, nearly tearing his upper torso apart. The desperate fighting continued. Private William Bell, who was wounded in the hip but still firing at the enemy as he bled fiercely, recalled, “The Japanese made numerous attempts to attack us waving swords in the air. At one point, I remember shooting one Japanese officer in the pit of the stomach. I then lifted another one into the air with a burst from my Tommy gun just as he was about to bayonet one of my comrades, Roy Stodgell.”58 The Canadian perimeter slowly shrank as their ranks were cut down. At one point in the battle, an enemy grenade landed amid a group of Canadians that included Bell. With no time to pick it up and throw it back, Osborn gave a shout of warning and threw himself on the grenade, absorbing the fatal blast with his body to save his comrades. “It was the bravest thing we had ever seen,” wrote Bell, who owed his life to the regimental sergeant major. A little while after Osborn’s death, the Japanese accepted the surrender of the remaining band of wounded and exhausted Grenadiers. Osborn’s body was never recovered and he has no known grave, but for his leadership and self-sacrifice during the battle, he was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the first to go to the Canadians during the Second World War.59
Company Sergeant Major John Osborn of the Winnipeg Grenadiers was an inspiration to his fellow soldiers, and eventually sacrificed his life to save his comrades. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry.
OTHER JAPANESE FORCES continued to swarm southward throughout the morning of December 19. The Japanese suffered their own breakdown in communication, but in attacking they took the initiative and sowed further confusion in the Allied lines. While the Canadian Bren gunners were especially effective in laying down a punishing sweep of bullets, the Japanese infantry had been trained to drive forward around areas of resistance. As the Royal Rifles’ Sergeant Macdonell observed, “When we stopped them [the Japanese] in some position, they would immediately and skilfully begin to slip around us to turn our flanks,” thus forcing the Canadians’ retreat.60 Maltby’s headquarters, and that of his brigadiers, attempted to react to the slashing Japanese attacks, but they were often working with outdated information, and so most of the Allied companies and platoons fought piecemeal battles with little direction from rear headquarters.
By late morning, a Japanese column of troops advanced southward from Jardine’s Lookout, overlooking Brigadier Lawson’s headquarters at the Wong Nei Chong Gap in the centre of the island. With the front collapsing, Lawson’s brigade headquarters was now a forward outpost. It did not last long. Two platoons of Grenadiers from D Company—no more than 80 men—sought to block some 800 Japanese infantrymen.61 But though the Canadians slowed the tide, Signaller Georges Verreault, who had earlier boasted that he would be “good for 15 Nips myself,” wrote in his diary, “We’re trapped like rats without any hope of escape.”62 Around 10 A.M., Lawson’s last communiqué to Maltby was that he and his staff were “going outside to fight it out.” The slain Lawson was found among Japanese and Canadian corpses.63
THE CANADIANS MADE THE JAPANESE PAY for their advance, but thousands of invading troops continued to cross from the mainland to hammer home the final nails in the garrison’s coffin.64 The Japanese first waves numbered around 4,000, but they were concentrated against the scattered Allied defenders, whose numerical superiority of close to 14,000 was frittered away by poor generalship. Though the written record of battle for this period is sporadic, when the Japanese commanders recorded “strong opposition,” “fierce fighting,” and “heavy casualties,” they were almost always referring to fighting against Canadians.65 A Japanese official report noted clinically, “The advance of our assault troops met with many setbacks…. The enemy fire from these positions was so heavy that not only was the advance balked, but our troops were thrown into confusion.”66
Aggressive Japanese infantry infiltrated steadily southward on December 20 until they reached Repulse Bay Hotel, which was guarded by a mixed force of British troops and A and C Companies of the Royal Rifles. The Japanese drive was stopped short of the opulent hotel by Canadian and British counterattacks and concentrated fire, but it penetrated enough to allow the invaders to sweep the main road with sniper and artillery shellfire, all but cutting the island in half and severing communication between the eastern and western defenders. The Anglo-Canadian garrison at the hotel was under continuous bombardment but held out for two days. Terrified civilians crouched in the cellars and in makeshift shelters, using fine linen to stop the flow from bleeding wounds and crawling amid the shards of once-fine china as Japanese artillery reduced the hotel to rubble. The building was partially evacuated on December 22, and most of the Canadians escaped westward that night. A number of British soldiers were not so fortunate. They were captured, bound, and tortured, with ropes tied around their arms and between clenched teeth, so that if they fell forward the twine cut deeply into their mouths. After systematic beatings, a number of the captives were lined up and shot. The Japanese commander responsible was convicted of war crimes in 1946; according to the judgment, “the whole route of this man’s battalion was littered with the corpses of murdered men.”67
By the fifth day of the battle, the island was split, the water reserves were lost, and the defenders had endured much of that time with little food, water, or sleep. The Canadians continued to hold out with uncounted acts of heroism and sacrifice. There were few places of safety for the wounded, but the Canadians exhibited enormous bravery in dragging their wounded comrades from the battlefield and in carrying them over the rough ground. They knew that anyone left behind would likely be executed. Corporal Bud Dicks fell into Japanese hands after an ambush. He and a few comrades were tied up roughly and lined up overlooking a cliff. The doomed men stared at one another as the seconds ticked by to their grim fate. A Japanese officer shot one of the sergeants in the back, and the other Canadians jumped to their deaths, choosing action over execution. “I smashed my face on a rock and lost consciousness,” remembered Dicks. “When I woke I thought I was dying but I found out that you don’t die that easily.”68
THE ROYAL RIFLES’ COMMANDER, LIEUTENANT-COLONEL W.J. HOME, took over command of C Force when Lawson was killed. Though Home, a decorated Great War veteran, reported to the British brigadier, Cedric Wallis, as the senior Canadian officer he also had a responsibility to the Canadian government. Major Maurice Parker of the Rifles wrote that relations, which were strained from the start, soon degenerated during the stress of the losing battle: “The British thought the Canadians were a rag-tag bunch of rowdy, cowardly colonists, not good for very much…. The Canadians thought of the British as arrogant, condescending prigs.”69 In a stormy meeting on the morning of December 21, an exhausted and dispirited Home told Wallis that his soldiers needed a rest, as they had lost more than half of their officers and fought several days and nights with little food or water.70 It was, he noted, not uncommon for the riflemen on the march to drop from exhaustion, collapsing into a coma-like sleep that resembled death. Wallis was aghast at the suggestion of a pause, even though the battle was clearly lost, the Canadians had been engaged more fiercely than the other units, and the British brigadier had units that had barely been committed to battle. While Home, as senior Canadian, had a right to speak to Major-General Maltby, Wallis refused to allow Home to bypass him, and the British brigadier considered having the Canadian commander shot for defeatism. He did not act on this draconian notion, but Wallis’s mind was poisoned towards the Canadians and their commitment to battle.71 For those Canadians closer to the front, there was no let-up. Home knew the battle was now unwinnable, and twice more he pressed his case over the coming days, arguing that continuing the contest was “a useless waste of lives.”72 Neither Wallis nor Maltby entertained surrender, and both were urged to keep up the struggle by Sir Mark Young, the governor of Hong Kong. A spine-straightener of a telegram by Churchill on December 21, demanding the garrison hold out to the bitter end—“fighting in the inner defences, and, if need be, from house to house”—no doubt also had an impact on the British generals.73
The close-quarters combat continued up until the final day of battle, on December 25. Dog Company of the Royal Rifles was ordered to attack against dug-in defenders at Stanley Village in broad daylight—a nearly hopeless task. When Home protested the attack, Wallis promised massive artillery and machine-gun support. With few guns in the area, this was a boldfaced lie. Home must have known this and was nearly ready to mutiny against the callous order. Yet he relented once again when Wallis insisted on the attack, and the Rifles carried out their orders. A little after 12:30 p.m., under a beating sun, about 110 of the Royal Rifles scrambled forward, even though all their officers considered the plan to be “madness.”74 They moved from rock to rock and bush to bush, but soon, according to Rifleman Raymond Elliot, the “enemy spotted us and started shelling and firing.”75 The Rifles took grave casualties but regrouped. They had come too far to retreat, and any reversal would likely see them shot down as they scrambled away from the battlefield to a false safety. The only way was forward.
The survivors readied themselves, fixed bayonets, and charged the final 40 metres. Shouting war cries and brandishing cold steel, they drove back the shocked Japanese, who were backstopped by artillery and machine guns. One of the Rifles later wrote, mincing no words, “The morale was very high, being backed up by hatred, contempt and disgust for those wanton, raping, sadistic, cold blooded murderers from Japan.”76 The Canadians carried the battle but left behind twenty-six dead comrades, while another seventy-five were wounded.77 No more than a dozen of the Rifles emerged unscathed. Later on that Christmas Day, at 3 P.M., Maltby’s forces surrendered.
“I AM VERY FORTUNATE TO BE ALIVE DARLING,” wrote signaller Ray Squires a few months after the battle.78 With the surrender of the entire garrison, the Hong Kong campaign was the only significant action in Canadian military history in which 100 percent losses were inflicted. Not a man escaped either capture or a grave. For those who had fought for their lives, and seen comrades give theirs in battle, it was a crushing defeat. “I saw some men break down and cry like children, ‘What, surrender now?’ they sobbed,” recounted Private Tom Forsyth of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. “‘After all the good men we lost?’… I never dreamed it could happen.”79 The victorious Japanese soldiers had every right to crow about defeating the Allied troops who had held them in contempt, but then they squandered the victory by engaging in acts of outrageous sadism. The Canadians, British, and Indians who had fought gallantly against the Japanese were now treated to horrendous beatings and outright murder.80 Injured men were routinely executed. Alfred Babin of the Royal Rifles remembered the massacre at St. Stephen’s Hospital: “The Japanese who bayoneted those helpless people in their beds just did it. They showed no emotion afterwards…. The slaughter had been done so efficiently that it was impossible to believe that one human being could do such savage things to another human being…. Ears were cut off, tongues cut out and eyes gouged from their sockets hanging on their cheeks…. It was a horrible scene.”81
Along with the wanton murder, the Japanese soldiers raped women and girls. Canadian Nursing Sister Lieutenant Kay Christie testified that Japanese soldiers rounded up all of the women from one hospital, including secretaries, nurses, and teachers. “As one of the soldiers stood in the doorway with a machine gun, the others took the younger girls, laid them on the floor and raped them while the mothers could do nothing but stand by helplessly and watch.”82 Another Canadian, Private Sid Vale, who was immobilized with injuries, shuddered at the “screams of a nurse getting raped in the room next to us…. I couldn’t walk or do anything at that time. I don’t know whether I would have had the guts to do anything had I been able to walk. But that’s something I’ll never forget.”83 There were other horrors and outrages, but all were common for the Japanese army that had repeatedly indulged in similarly barbaric behaviour in their pitiless war against the Chinese over the previous five years.
When the rampant murder subsided, the survivors were finally accounted for by their officers. The Canadians had lost 290 killed, while 493 were wounded. Maltby’s entire force suffered 955 killed. Another 659 were recorded as missing, all of whom were presumed dead.84 The Hong Kong garrison had fought well, with the fallen selling their lives dearly despite poor tactical coordination and planning from Maltby. In relation to other British battles of the time—notably the failed defence of Crete and the lamentable collapse at Singapore—the Hong Kong force endured relatively high combat casualties and held out for seventeen days.85 Despite their victory, the Japanese were also bloodied, taking 2,096 casualties, including 683 killed.86 While the Canadians had not been fully trained for battle, by Japanese accounts they fought tenaciously, with skill, and went to the wall in a lost cause.
WHILE THE DEAD WERE BURNED OR BURIED, the remaining 13,000 or so former combatants and thousands of British civilians were marched into captivity. What lay ahead was a period of grim imprisonment, “a new living hell,” according to William Bell, most of whose closest friends had been killed during the battle.87 Canadian prisoners were put in camps in Hong Kong—at North Point or Shamshuipo—and, later, a group was sent to Japan as slave labour. Though the Japanese had never signed the Geneva Convention and therefore had no formal agreement guiding them in the treatment of prisoners, Japan’s representatives had said their military would abide by the rules. And yet, as Japanese soldiers and authorities saw it, surrender was dishonourable, and on the battlefield or in the prisoner of war camps the Japanese authorities exhibited little but contempt for their prisoners. Even accounting for cultural differences, the Japanese were sadistic captors and their prisoners, over the next four years, faced starvation, malnourishment, disease, and execution.
In the first months of incarceration, the Japanese authorities refused to allow the Red Cross to inspect camps, and even withheld the names of prisoners from their families in Canada. While the Japanese did not reveal this cruel tactic to their prisoners, the silence from home left many Canadians in the camps deeply uneasy. Ray Squires confessed his private fears in his secret diary some three months after capture, writing, “I hope you know I am alive.”88 Prisoners’ letters were routinely read by the Japanese and when they revealed any mistreatment they were destroyed and the author punished with isolation and starvation. At all times, rifle butts were used freely to smash bones and shatter teeth. “We took a lot of beatings,” remembered Leo Berard.89 Humiliation was also common. The Japanese guards tied naked prisoners to stakes for hours or days, even under the burning sun or, when the weather turned cold, in the harsh winter wind. The prisoners were in fragile health to begin with and many did not survive the ordeal.
Mock executions were also held, with men dragged before firing squads or forced to kneel beneath the executioner’s blade. At the last moment, the sadistic guards would toss the quivering Canadians back in their cells. But the threat was always there. Sergeant John Oliver Payne of Winnipeg Grenadiers, a twenty-three-year-old from Fort Rouge, Manitoba, wrote a final letter to his mother on August 19, 1942, about his plan for an escape from North Point Camp.
Dear Mother, I have decided, either fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be to take a chance on getting through to Chungking. I’ve investigated as much as possible and feel sure we stand a jolly good chance of getting there. There are numerous reasons for this step the chief being that the cholera season & fly season is starting, dysentery & Beri Beri are high in camp, and anyway I’m ruddy sick of Japanese hospitality. You share, I know, my own views on fatalism, so for that reason I know you won’t condemn my judgment. So just in case I shouldn’t make it you must remember that according to our beliefs I have departed for a much nicer place (I hope) although it will grieve me to exchange the guitar for a harp even though there is a higher percentage of gold in the latter. But that’s enough of this drivel, I’ll be able to destroy this note myself I’m sure so bye bye for now, your devoted son John.90
John and three Canadians who joined his escape attempt were captured after their boat capsized. Japanese military police beat them to a pulp with bats, bound their bodies with barbed wire, and later executed them.
Throughout the British and Canadians’ period of incarceration, the daily nutritional intake per prisoner dropped to a starvation level of fewer than 1,000 calories. While there were periods during which a quantity of food would come into the camps, the supplies never lasted long. For the most part, prisoners subsisted on rice, rotten meat, weeds, and fish heads. In the summer months, the meagre meals had to be eaten with one hand constantly waving off the swarms of flies. But with men starving, nothing was wasted. Camp cooks threw unappetizing scraps of food into a communal stew, along with grass, buttercups, and rice, to create a frothy broth that the prisoners called the “green horror.” Stray dogs and cats were consumed by the desperate men who were, in the words of Sergeant Howard Donnelly, “wasting away.”91 The prisoners, wrote Leo Berard, “appeared as if some vampire had sucked all the blood from them, with the dead blue skin and eyes with a deep distant look, staring right in front about their own height, without turning the head … as if in a coma of hypnotism.”92 The systematic starvation affected men differently. Some prisoners could withstand the drastic weight loss—as much as a third to half of their pre-battle weight—while others saw their once-healthy bodies reduced to a boneprotruding nightmare, followed by disease and death. Rifleman D.L. Welsh of the Royal Rifles wrote his last diary entry on October 5, 1942: “never ate anything all day (could not swallow).”93 He died shortly thereafter, at the age of twenty-one.
The prisoners played sports for a while, to stay active and keep their spirits up, but soon the malnutrition left them too tired. Disease began to claim victims. Pellagra, malaria, and diarrhea were virulent among the emaciated prisoners. “Those men with dysentery,” recounted Vince Calder, “had to head for the toilet 40 to 50 times a day.”94 Bleeding body sores plagued the gaunt scarecrows, and prisoners found to their horror that they were able to pull out their own teeth from their grey, squishy gums. Parasitic worms infested almost everyone. Beriberi was another killer, brought on by a lack of vitamin B1. Starving bodies ballooned as fluid accumulated in tissue and skin became doughy. The disease caused a burning sensation in the feet, or extremities felt as if they were being jabbed repeatedly with needles. “I would find them rocking back and forth,” remembered one of the camp’s doctors, “and crying with pain.”95 One horror was called “Hong Kong balls,” which caused men’s testicles to be enlarged to the size of baseballs. In the Anglo-Canadian camps, men died every day from starvation and disease. Donald Geraghty of the Royal Rifles recounted that they “were burying fellas six a day.”96 Some were too bloated from the beriberi to fit in the makeshift coffins and were simply put in the ground. For a while, “The Last Post” was played to acknowledge a death, but eventually it was stopped by the prisoners: the plaintive call was too demoralizing, as its haunting refrains sounded morning, noon, and night.
This is the medical ID card for Winnipeg Grenadier Private Norman Pott, age twenty-two, who died of pellagra in a Japanese prisoner-ofwar camp on February 11, 1944.
“The will to live is very strong,” believed one Canadian prisoner.97 Rumours of rescue and food sustained many men, with Lieutenant Leonard Corrigan of the Winnipeg Grenadiers writing, “they are invaluable as topics of conversation and subjects of humour.”98 Amid the beatings and starvation, prisoners cared for one another. One of the few international reports to reach Ottawa about the Canadians in the Japanese camps in July 1943 revealed that “Medical Facilities are scandalous.… The Japanese entirely neglect medical aid.”99 The report spoke the truth. Medicine and instruments were withheld by the Japanese prison guards, and men parted with their wedding bands or pulled out their own gold-capped teeth to pay for the supplies to keep their buddies alive. “There was never enough medicine to go around,” said William Bell, who was hobbled during his incarceration by multiple wounds sustained during the battle. “The doctors literally had to choose who would live and who would die.”100 One of those doctors, J.N. Crawford, the medical officer for the Winnipeg Grenadiers, wrote agonizingly, “We felt that such a power over life and death should be the prerogative of the Deity, but at the moment He seemed to have forgotten us.”101 In a twist of sick irony, Japanese guards often beat the doctors or medical orderlies, blaming them for not doing enough to keep the abused prisoners alive.102
While any act of disobedience resulted in a savage thrashing, a former Japanese Canadian, Kanao Inouye, known as the Kamloops Kid, took special delight in tormenting prisoners. He claimed to have been subjected to racial abuse and epithets when he lived in Canada, and now he took his revenge. “He was a sadistic maniac,” wrote one prisoner, “who vented his sickness in the deliberate torture, abuse and even murder of his Canadian countrymen.”103 He kicked, smashed, and battered the Canadians relentlessly during the imprisonment, and tortured other civilians. Justice was delivered in August 1947 when the Canadian government hanged him for treason.104
IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, THE BRITISH GENERAL, MALTBY, had time to stew over why the battle had been lost. He did not blame himself. When he wrote his official dispatch, he held his soldiers responsible for the defeat, singling out the Canadians as particularly weak. With most of the official records destroyed or lost during the battle, the confusion and chaos of combat left few clear narratives. Brigadier Wallis also wrote up his account of the battle during his incarceration and was exceedingly harsh in his assessment of the Canadians, and especially the Royal Rifles of Canada—his acerbity no doubt stemming from his many disagreements with the Rifles’ Lieutenant-Colonel Home. Wallis’s stinging indictment—in the form of an official war diary entry that was leaked throughout the prison camps—led to acrimonious relations between the Canadians and British.105 A number of Canadian officers refused to let their men be scapegoated and wrote their own reports of the battle when they found out. As Lieutenant-Colonel George Trist remarked with anger, “We [the Canadians] are being blamed by the Imperial staff for the early fall of Hong Kong.”106 Wallis’s war diary was never published, but after the war the Canadian government, upon receiving an advance copy of Maltby’s official report, formally protested the contents, which were set to be released in 1948. Maltby was out of touch for much of the battle and therefore relied heavily on Wallis’s war diary; his report highlighted the lack of training of the Canadian battalions, downplayed their many brave actions during the battle, and, far worse, accused them of lacklustre fighting. Because of the Canadian government’s outcry, the 1948 report was heavily expurgated, but it still stirred considerable controversy in Canada and a significant backlash from veterans. Maltby’s full report was not released in its entirety until 1993, when it again provoked an angry response from Canadians.
“HOW LONG! HOW LONG! WILL THIS DAMN THING LAST,” wrote a starving and despondent Major Kenneth Baird after three years of incarceration, and facing an unknowable future stretch of torture and neglect.107 Somehow Baird and his Canadian comrades held on, but the prisoners were not liberated until after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945. The survivors reported that even a few more months of incarceration and starvation would have led to mass death. As it was, the effects of imprisonment were horrendous: 264 Canadian POWs died in captivity as a result of systematic abuse, malnourishment, torture, and execution. The treatment of the Canadians in Japanese hands was far worse than it was for those soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fell into the clutches of the Nazis.
Back in 1941, the defeat of the Canadians at Christmas in Hong Kong had sent the King government reeling. It reacted with little honour, with the prime minister expending a great deal of energy in shifting blame to Crerar and Ralston. King’s voluminous diary is also nearly devoid of expressions of concern for the welfare of the Canadians in captivity. Instead he worried more about the potential political fallout from having sent Canadians to the indefensible and isolated colony. The opposition Conservatives hammered away at King and eventually demanded an investigation. The Royal Commission found no evidence that the government had betrayed Canadian soldiers in the unmitigated defeat in the Far East, but few would have expected a full and frank revelation of government wartime policy during the conflict.108
A malnourished ex-POW receiving treatment from a British nurse in September 1945.
If blame was difficult to assign, Canadians nonetheless demanded retribution for the losses. Innocent Japanese Canadians became the scapegoated victims. Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attacks, some 23,000 Canadians, living for the most part on the west coast, were rounded up and evacuated to the interior. The justification for the evacuation was that members of the visible minority might have aided an enemy assault on Dominion soil, although police and military investigations had already found almost no enemy sympathizers.109 At the same time, Japanese Canadians’ civil liberties were trampled and their household and business goods sold off to despicable vultures, often their former neighbours or, in the case of fishermen, their competitors. The ill treatment of these Canadians remains a dark stain on the nation’s history, although it cannot be divorced from the anger and fear felt by wartime Canadians who worried about the threat of a Japanese invasion, or from the misplaced belief that race trumped nationality.
For over seventy years, historians have since chewed over the Hong Kong operation at some length. Much of the first generation of literature, until the 1980s, condemned the Canadian and British governments for sacrificing inexperienced troops to a hopeless operation and then being all too keen to fight to the last Canadian.110 But such accounts were delivered with a healthy dose of hindsight. At the time, the King government (if not King) and the Canadian army were anxious to see the nation’s troops sent into battle somewhere, perhaps anywhere. Further, the British had their own soldiers stationed in the isolated garrison; desperate to deter the Japanese—to the point where they sent two capital ships to that theatre—they were in dire need of help from allies. Contrary to early opinion, the calamity that resulted was not an imperial conspiracy. The King government acted with naiveté and lacked the means to independently assess intelligence coming from the Far East, but Ottawa wanted to do its part in defending the far-flung British Empire. Its soldiers fought with enormous bravery and distinction, and they paid a heavy price, but they were not sacrificed in any different way than other soldiers, sailors, or airmen who are sent into desperate situations and battles.
IN EARLY 1942, the Rising Sun flag was raised over much of East Asia. In five months, the Japanese created a new empire, incorporating the natural resources of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and Burma, as well as much of China. These swift and shocking victories were capped off by the British capitulation in their seemingly impregnable fortress at Singapore. There, the British army collapsed in the face of Japanese pressure, the garrison surrendering on February 15, and some 80,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops were captured.111 The sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse only added to the severe blows to British prestige. Churchill nearly wept at the losses, and, in the case of Singapore, at the clear failure of command and willpower. Defeat and disgrace in the Far East doomed the Empire, and with it, Churchill’s hollow hope of keeping it intact.
While the British Empire sagged under the onslaught—and with India and Australia threatened with invasion—the Americans were only temporarily dazed. The strike against the US navy at Pearl Harbor had seemed a crushing blow, but the Japanese bombers had not sunk the aircraft carriers that were safely at sea. They had missed the oil storage facilities and only lightly damaged the dockyard. Most of the sunken warships, including three battleships and three cruisers, were raised and repaired. Amid this resurgence, the Americans were united in rage against the sneak attack and responded with a formidable commitment to victory.112
Churchill’s greatest fear was that the full might of the US forces would be thrown against the nation’s new Asian enemy, causing it to ignore Nazi Germany. But Hitler saved Churchill from having to negotiate for ongoing American support by declaring war against the United States on December 11, 1941, in one of his most monumental blunders. The Führer was driven by hatred and hubris, and by his long-standing belief that a Germany that ruled Europe would eventually face off against the United States for global dominance. Hitler’s declaration of war allowed Roosevelt to order a two-front war, against both the Japanese and the Nazis, and it was the final step in transforming the conflict into a global war. When Churchill and King heard the news of Germany’s declaration, both men gasped at Hitler’s strategic ineptitude, but also recorded their jubilation, knowing that the odds had tipped in their favour. The Western Allies were also willing to support the monster, Stalin, following the axiom that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Whatever had happened on the Eastern Front or in the Far East, there would be much hard fighting and many horrendous casualties before the Thousand Year Reich was brought down.