They Figured we Hadn’t Registered for the Draft

Heroes Remember

They Figured we Hadn’t Registered for the Draft

Transcript

In 1943, at eleven or twelve o’clock at night, the MPs come home, they circled the house, and they almost smashed the house down to get in the house, and my dad got up, went and opened the door. They were coming for me and my brother. So now imagine, us in the army, prisoners of war, and sending those fellows to get us. They figured we hadn’t registered for the draft or something, and here... So dad said, “Well, if you want them, you have to go to Hong Kong.” But then the trouble was, the mix up was worse than that. They discharged us A-1 like if we had never went to war, to go back to civilian duty. And I had trouble with my stomach and I had beri-beri and I had scurvy and all this stuff. And they treated me in the hospital and I’d go to the hospital, treat me. And finally in 1947, I used to pass out, black out, and I went to the hospital and I was four months there before they found out what’s wrong with me. My liver, through beri-beri, through malnutrition, my liver and the whole thing had knit together, you know. They called it in French (inaudible). And I had to be operated on. So they operated on me, and the DVA claimed that that was happened after I was out of the war. It was something that I got after the war, that that was no, you know. But the Doctor Caron that operated on me, he marked it in his, in the book (inaudible). It was something caused by malnutrition and all this stuff. But the DVA would never admit it because they had to pension me for that and they would not pension me for it. And eventually, about three years after, they decided they were gonna, I had to go to the hospital. I applied and they said, well you go and see this doctor. He was a German doctor in (inaudible). And the funny part of it, I had volunteered to go fight the Germans, and he was the guy that got me the pension. He got me seven dollars a month, for me and my wife and two kids. And then it was a fight and, and I had, and it was something well, I stayed at fifteen percent and then twenty percent, and then, you know, it was hellish altogether.

Description

Mr. Murphy describes two scenarios which demonstrate Canada’s early failure to recognize its Hong Kong Veterans and the trauma that they endured.

Leo Murphy

Leo Murphy was born September 3, 1919 in New Richmond, Quebec, where he grew up and completed his elementary education by 1931. He was one of nine children. Before enlistment he was a day labourer working in a sawmill, construction, excavation, farming, and a lumber camp. Mr. Murphy enlisted with the Royal Rifles on Nov 25, 1940, and took his basic training in Newfoundland and Val Cartier, Quebec. He was overseas for four years, spending all but the first three months as a POW in Hong Kong and Japan. The emotional impact of the Hong Kong deployment started early for Mr. Murphy, when on the same day his brother was killed beside him and he took the life of a Japanese soldier. During his captivity, he suffered from beri-beri, dysentry, pellagra, had his foot crushed in a mining accident, and developed liver problems. At the time of his liberation, he was a mining coal in Omini, Japan, as a slave labourer. Mr. Murphy arrived back in Canada in October, 1945 and was discharged February 5, 1946. From 1947 to 1960, he was employed as a brakeman with the Canadian National Railroad. Mr. Murphy was married on Sept 1, 1947, to Yvette Savoie. He died March 26, 2001.

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