Long Night’s Journey into Day

Charles G. Roland

Description

Sickness, starvation, brutality, and forced labour plagued the existence of tens of thousands of Allied POWs in World War II. More than a quarter of these POWs died in captivity.

Long Night’s Journey into Day centres on the lives of Canadian, British, Indian, and Hong Kong POWs captured at Hong Kong in December 1941 and incarcerated in camps in Hong Kong and the Japanese Home Islands. Experiences of American POWs in the Philippines, and British and Australians POWs in Singapore, are interwoven throughout the book.

Starvation and diseases such as diphtheria, beriberi, dysentery, and tuberculosis afflicted all these unfortunate men, affecting their lives not only in the camps during the war but after they returned home. Yet despite the dispiriting circumstances of their captivity, these men found ways to improve their existence, keeping up their morale with such events as musical concerts and entertainments created entirely within the various camps.

Based largely on hundreds of interviews with former POWs, as well as material culled from archives around the world, Professor Roland details the extremes the prisoners endured — from having to eat fattened maggots in order to live to choosing starvation by trading away their skimpy rations for cigarettes.

No previous book has shown the essential relationship between almost universal ill health and POW life and death, or provides such a complete and unbiased account of POW life in the Far East in the 1940s.

Sujets

• Medicine
• History
• Médecine

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554587766
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Long Night s Journey into Day Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945
Long Night s Journey into Day Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945
Charles G. Roland
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
This book has been published with the help of a grant from Associated Medical Services Inc., through the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine Program. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Roland, Charles G., 1933- Long night s journey into day: prisoners of war in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88920-362-8
1. World War, 1939-1945-Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. 2. World War, 1939-1945-Medical care-Japan. 3. Prisoners of war-Health and hygiene-Japan. 4. Prisoners of war-China-Hong Kong. 5. Prisoners of war-Japan. I. Title.
D805.H85R64 2001 940.54 7252 C2001-930465-X
2001 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
Cover design by Leslie Macredie. Front cover photograph of HMCS Prince Robert returning to Canada with ex-prisoners of war, October 1945. Back cover photographs, top to bottom: Salesian Mission near Shau Kei Wan, Hong Kong; aerial view of Camp 5B, Niigata; interior of barracks at Sham Shui Po POW Camp, 1944; Lye Mun Passage separating mainland and Hong Kong Island.

Printed in Canada
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means-graphic, electronic, or mechanical- without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the medical officers, nurses, and medical orderlies who endured captivity in the Far East and who laboured under the most appalling difficulties to care for their patients,
and
to Connie Rankin Roland, who participated actively in the research and who helped and inspired in many other ways.
We live not as we would but as we can. -Menander
Contents
Illustrations and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Hong Kong Chronology
1. Hong Kong before 8 December 1941
2. The Eighteen-Day War: 8-25 December 1941
3. The Prisoner-of-War Camps and Hospitals
4. Prisoner-of-War Life in Hong Kong
5. Trying to Cope with Too Little Food
6. In Sickness, Rarely in Health: Life and Death in the Camps and Hospitals
7. The Overseas Drafts
8. POW Camps in the Japanese Home Islands
9. Less than Perfect Soldiers
10. The Journey Ends-But It Never Does
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations and Tables
Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Lt.-Gen. Tanaka Ryosaburo signing surrender papers at Hong Kong, September 1945
Figure 1.2 Bowen Road Military Hospital, Hong Kong Island, 1930s
Figure 1.3 Loading of Canadian military equipment aboard HMT Awatea, in Vancouver, en route to Hong Kong, 27 October 1941
Figure 2.1 Map showing outline of Hong Kong and New Territories
Figure 2.2 Map showing Hong Kong Island and Kowloon with sites of military hospitals
Figure 2.3 LaSalle College, Kowloon, used as temporary hospital briefly in December 1941
Figure 2.4 Lye Mun Passage separating mainland (background) and Hong Kong Island
Figure 2.5 Salesian Mission near Shau Kei Wan, Hong Kong, September 1945; scene of Japanese atrocities, 19-20 December 1941
Figure 2.6 Dr. S. Martin Banfill, 1946 or 1947
Figure 2.7 Drawing of Salesian Mission and area, based on a sketch made by Norman Leath
Figure 2.8 St. Stephen s College, Hong Kong, September 1945
Figure 3.1 Ward in British Military Hospital, Bowen Road, Hong Kong Island, 1930s
Figure 3.2 Plan of North Point POW Camp in 1942, based on exhibit from war crimes trial
Figure 3.3 Plan of North Point POW Camp, 1942
Figure 3.4 Aerial view of Sham Shui Po Camp, Jubilee Buildings in the background
Figure 3.5 The Jubilee Buildings, Sham Shui Po, taken in 1941 just before war began
Figure 3.6 Plan of the layout of Sham Shui Po POW Camp, Hong Kong
Figure 3.7 Interior of barracks at Sham Shui Po POW Camp, 1944
Figure 3.8 Capt. Saito Shunkishi, IJA, formerly senior medical officer at POW headquarters, Hong Kong, ca. 1946
Figure 3.9 Cartoon-style drawing of Maj. Cecil Boon, RASC
Figure 3.10 The former Argyle Street POW Camp, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Figure 3.11 Maj. (Acting) Leopold W. Ashton-Rose, IMS (1896-1957)
Figure 4.1 Sham Shui Po, theatre scene
Figure 4.2 Colour drawing of Sonny Castro, HKVDC, wearing his famous Carmen Miranda costume and makeup
Figure 4.3 Col. Tokunaga Isao (far left) being interrogated by Lt.-Col. S.E.H. White, Royal Scots
Figure 6.1 Former IJA interpreter, the Reverend Watanabe Kiyoshi, Uncle Jon
Figure 6.2 Lt.-Col J.N.B. Crawford, RCAMC (1906-1997), testifying during war crimes trials in Tokyo, 1946
Figure 6.3 Photograph of Dr. Tokuda Hisakichi, commandant and senior Japanese medical officer at Shinagawa Hospital, Tokyo, 1943-1945
Figure 6.4 Surgeon, dentist, and anesthesiologist with a mock patient, using POW-made operating table, Sham Shui Po POW Camp, 1945
Figure 7.1 Flowchart of movements of Canadian servicemen captured by the IJA at Hong Kong, December 1941
Figure 8.1 Plan of Oeyama POW Camp, Japan
Figure 8.2 Graph of weight changes of POWs held in Oeyama Camp
Figure 8.3 Graph of deaths at Niigata POW Camp
Figure 8.4 Aerial view of Camp 5B, Niigata
Figure 8.5 Plan of Omori POW Camp, Tokyo Bay, Japan
Figure 9.1 Sign at Stewart, BC, July 1929
Figure 10.1 HMCS Prince Robert entering harbour at Esquimalt, BC, carrying Canadian ex-prisoners of war home to Canada, October 1945
Tables
Table 5.1 Report on Rations, December 1943
Table 5.2 Weight Loss among POWs at Oeyama Camp, Japan
Table 6.1 Monthly Returns, 1942
Table 6.2 Sources of Funds to Purchase Supplies for POWs (in Swiss francs)
Table 7.1 Work Performed by POWs, by Industry, May 1944-August 1945
Preface
W orld War Two prisoners of war (POWs) had an unenviable existence. No matter where one is captured or by whom, at the time of capture there is always the frightening possibility that one will be killed on the spot. Then, once men have surrendered and survived, they have to cope with the psychological crisis of believing that they have failed in their military duty. For western POWs, this worry could be temporarily depressing; for POWs from Japan s military services, the failure had cultural connotations that often led them to commit suicide.
Moreover, as soon as men cease to be military effectives they also cease to be of day-to-day interest to their parent military establishment. This can have long-term connotations to permanent-service soldiers, who, after the war and their captivity ends, usually and not unnaturally find that they are permanently retarded in terms of promotion. Often, they return home to dislocated families and have to struggle to cope with a world significantly changed from the one they knew before captivity.
Nevertheless, twentieth-century POWs in general have had an infinitely better prospect than was the case in previous centuries. Until the eighteenth century, prisoners routinely could expect to be mutilated, killed, or enslaved by their captors.
Beginning in the 1700s, ad hoc arrangements began to be made in the field, between opposing generals, that permitted the repatriation of the prisoners they might take in ensuing battles. In the 1800s, more generalized arrangements began to be made. The United States codified a humane set of rules for managing the existence of POWs during the Civil War, a groundbreaking formulation known as the Lieber Code after Francis Lieber, its author. These rules were promulgated by the Union in May 1863 as General Orders No. 100, Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field. 1 But the appalling fate of so many Union and Confederate POWs makes it clear that a Code, by itself, can do little to prevent suffering and death.
The next significant advance came through the efforts of Henri Dunant, a Swiss. He was on the battlefield after the battle of Solferino in 1859, and had been so horrified by the desperate plight of the wounded and sick, both prisoners and non-prisoners, that he began what became the Red Cross movement. The first step in that direction, in 1862, was the publication of Dunant s A Memory of Solferino . 2 One crucially important consequence of the movement was that a series of multnational conferences were convened to devise regulations assuring proper treatment of wounded and imprisoned soldiers. Over several decades, conferences were held in Geneva, Switzerland, and in The Hague, The Netherlands; the resulting multnational agreements were identified both by the name of the host city and by the year the particular compact was signed. The first so-called Geneva Convention was signed by 12 nations in 1864; the 1929 version was the one that provided restraint and guidance to the actions of most of the nations involved in World War Two. Those countries that did not sign or ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention had, in some