News-Info-Alerts

Re: Battle of Hong Kong Remembered

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 16, 2003

"Hong Kong vets gather to remember

VICTORIA - Close to 100 World War Two veterans meet in Victoria today, at a convention to remember a horrific battle that for years went ignored by veterans' associations.

Almost 300 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941. 1,400 survivors of the battle spent the next four years in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

Carole Hadley's father was a member of the Winnipeg Grenadiers in 1941. He and 2,000 other Canadian men from the Royal Rifles and the Signal Corps faced the impossible task of defending Hong Kong from the Japanese.

It happened on the same day as the bombing of Pearl Harbour, but it received little attention at the time.

Hadley says the four years her father spent in a POW camp took its toll on her family for decades afterwards.

"He had nightmares for years. My brother and I, when we were growing up, spent our weekends at Deer Lodge hospital, because he was undergoing surgery and treatments and things like that," she recalls. "My Mom had to try and raise these two children. Their jobs were not all that frequent, so money was an issue as well."

Hadley's father died in 2001, but she's still the president of the Hong Kong Veterans' Commemorative Association. It's organized this week's reunion, which will culminate with a remembrance ceremony at the cenotaph in front of the legislature Friday.

Hadley says Victoria is a fitting place to remember, because it was here in September of 1945 that the surviving prisoners were returned to Canada.

©2002 CBC"