Description
Mr. Maro recalls being beaten by a Japanese guard for returning to camp to quickly from work.
Harold Maro
Mr. Maro was born in Norway in 1917, and had begun going to sea with his father at age 15. During the Second World War, Mr. Maro sailed with two Norwegian Merchant Navy ships; the <em>Atesbull</em> and <em>Prominence</em>, both of which were sunk. Mr. Maro and other crew members washed up on the beaches of Indonesia five days after the <em>Prominence</em> was sunk and were placed under Japanese supervision; however, they were not taken prisoner until Norway declared war the following year. Transferred from camp to camp over the course of 3 ½ years, Mr. Maro was interned in Chang, Singapore when he was liberated in 1945. As the war came to an end, Mr. Maro eventually returned to Norway, but was soon lured to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for work , moving with his wife. They both soon became Canadian citizens. Mr. Maro continued to sail until his retirement in 1976.
Transcript
Interviewer: Were the guards, I guess they were not kind to you but were they cruel to you, did they beat you, or did they...?
Occasionally but not, not an awful lot of beating. Some people were badly beaten that's true. I was only beaten once actually. A good beating, you know, kicked.
Interviewer: What for? Where you, did you do something wrong?
I didn't think I did but apparently they did. See I was the, I was the foreman for the gang of about ten or twelve men. We were finished our job and went back to camp and the old Japanese guards found that we were too early. We had to do something, we couldn't come back in before 6 or 7 o'clock, whatever it was, a certain time. So we got a job to tear down the guard house of corrugated, corrugated iron you know, the, with the galvanised iron and the rivets. To tear it down, I mean we didn't have anything but our, our bare hands, so that was impossible. So I thought, my God we got the, we just finished doing some gardening work, you know we had hoes with us and they of course were excellent to chop off the nails with you know, the rivets with. So I told the boys, heck I said, we will have this down in no time at all. Wrong thing, if we had done this slow you know, but we finished that in ten minutes and still we're using an hour. So we were still too early. Then they got mad. And since I was the foreman, and I was the instigator, I got the beating and he was told in Japanese to put . . . I had stayed to attention and he gave it to me, my God could that guy hit. Blood was spurting everywhere, but that's, I kept my cool, I didn't do anything because if I did, everyone would be shot, you know.
Interviewer: If you object too much they'll do more to you...
Oh yeah.