News-Info-Alerts

Re: Nurse-POWs - Bravery Out of Horror

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: April 08, 2002

"BRAVERY OUT OF HORROR BY PATRICK PHELVIN

Two Exeter nurses who suffered the horrors of life in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong during the Second World War have been honoured.

Margaret Hearson, 89, and Pearl Frances Calvert were presented with specially-struck medals for valour by Exeter Lord Mayor Granville Baldwin at a surprise ceremony.

The Far East Veterans Association is now calling on the Government to officially recognise the hardships suffered by prisoners-of-war held by the Japanese.

Miss Hearson, from Pennsylvania, still has the nightmare memories of conditions behind the barbed wire. "There were atrocities at the camp. One man was beheaded because the guards found a radio on him," she said.

Mrs Calvert, who lives in St David's Hill, lost her parents and sister during the struggle to survive occupation.

Miss Hearson was a 26-year-old geography teacher and auxiliary nurse living in Hong Kong at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1941.

She spent three years and eight months living on rice and gruel in a POW camp on the island.

Mrs Calvert was a 14-year-old schoolgirl and also an auxiliary nurse at the time of the invasion.

Although she avoided detention in the camps, Mrs Calvert was forced to work as a nurse while living in terrible conditions.

Miss Hearson had left Exeter for Hong Kong seeking adventure in 1940. She was taken to the Stanley Peninsula camp with 2,500 other prisoners of war.
She said: "I was lucky I was young and fit.

"If you were weak you would succumb to dysentery or disease. For me the food was the biggest problem.

"People would start fainting every day because there was never enough."
The camp was not liberated until 1944.

Mrs Calvert was treating civilians who had been wounded by the Japanese at the colony's Queen Mary's Hospital.

The hospital had no medical supplies during the occupation and most food was "commandeered" by Japanese troops.

"Conditions were very bad for everyone," she said. "Civilians were being beaten and killed by the Japanese."

National president of the FEVA, Fred Will, arranged the presentation of the medals to the women at Exeter's White Ensign Club on Saturday.
He said: "The British Government should be doing more. They have given the former prisoners of war £10,000 compensation, but they should be doing more.
"One of the reasons we gave these medals was to publicise what they went through, and hopefully the Government will change its mind and give medals as well." "