We Had to Apply for Our Medals . . . an Insult to the Canadian Soldier

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Description
Mr. Barton discusses what he sees as a sacrificial deployment to Hong Kong and his disappointment with the Canadian Government for its lack of recognition of the Hong Kong Veterans.

Thomas Barton

Thomas Barton was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on June 8, 1920. His father worked as the Deputy Registrar with the Supreme Court in Victoria. After attending high school, Mr. Barton worked for the <em>Victoria Times</em>, a local newspaper before joining the Underwood Typewriter Company. He enlisted in September, 1939 as a staff clerk. Upon reaching Hong Kong, Mr. Barton was attached to Brigade Headquarters. Despite minimal training, he was compelled by heavy Canadian losses to assume a combat role. After the surrender of Hong Kong, he spent time in North Point and Sham Shui Po, POW camps in the colony, and was then sent to the Japanese labour camps, Sendai being the last. Mr. Barton feels that the Canadian Government was remiss in not recognizing the Veterans of Hong Kong much sooner than it did.

Transcript
You can’t always believe what you hear or read. I mean the Canadian Government used us as pawns. It was a situation they knew they couldn’t win, but they put Canadians out there anyway, just as a show of, you know, solidarity or whatever you want to call it. But it’s too bad that they couldn’t have experienced it. It’s taken a long time to get the real story across. You get the War Amps of Canada are the patron of the Hong Kong Veterans, not the Canadian Legion. During their presentation to the Royal Court or what not, they had the opinion of a Dr. Gingras who was a renowned medical man. And he’s on that tape if you haven’t seen it, talking about it. Maybe some people think he’s a little slurred but he’s had a stroke when he had that. But he looked at them and talked about deprivation. Of course Chadderton, the head of the War Amps, has said that these men were sacrificed. It’s worse when we are told that when we don’t get specific pay because we’re out of Canada under different circumstances. That was the understatement of the year. We had to apply for our medals to begin with, which I think is an insult to the Canadian soldier. I never applied for mine and eventually they were sent to me some time after 1984. And I have given them to my, one of my sons and he can do what he likes with them (inaudible). I’m not very proud of the Hong Kong medal with the way things evolved. Now maybe I’ve got a quirk about that. There’s two, there’s a political aspect of it, same thing as Mulroney saying he’s made a diplomatic coup getting an apology from Japan. We haven’t heard from them. We haven’t heard anything. So there’s the political side and there’s the DVA side. And I have no fault with the DVA.

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