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Heroes Remember
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Interviewer: When you look back, Mr Purse, on your service in the
Winnipeg Grenadiers, and in both the battle, the
desperate battle for Hong Kong and the miserable conditions and
the three and a half years afterwards that you spent in
Japanese prison camps and ultimately in slave labor camps,
when you look back on that, how would you say that, that has
affected you?
Well, in my case, I honestly can't believe that I went through
it. I, I keep saying to myself, God I don't think I could have
done that. You know, even the graders, they, they put us on
graders, the graders you see. They put 75-80 people on graders,
a rope and you pulled that grader and did the roads in Japan. I
can't believe that those things, you know that I could be part of
that. But I was, and, but I always believed that I would, I
don't know survive, but I always believed I'd get back home.
Interviewer: When you look back on that experience and you think
back on the deprivations that you endured, the cruelties that
were inflicted upon you, what's your attitude towards
the Japanese people?
Well, I said earlier that I don't have any hard feelings towards
the Japanese. It was a dictatorial regime. Uhmm, and in
my work with the blind, and I did international work, you've seen
that program. I was deeply involved with programs in Japan
on blindness, and I had to simply tell myself I had a job to do,
the Japanese were just another culture. And I remember looking
after an international student because I was very active in
Rotary too in the Exchange Student program. This Japanese
boy, I was going to be his counsellor and somebody had told
him I was a prisoner of war in Japan. And so one night he came
to my door and pushed the button and he'd heard about this. He
said to me, he said, "You know, I'm from Japan". And I
said, "Yes, I know". He said, "But I had nothing to do with it".
Here's a boy, eighteen, saying to me I had nothing to do with it
how could you blame him. And, and I keep in correspondence with
some of the people that worked for the blind, Nippon Lighthouse
for the Blind in Japan and my association even after
retirement. And I don't trust the military. I was back in Japan
about 20 years ago, 21, 22 years ago and the only time that I had
any uneasiness in Japan was when I'd see the military because
they haven't changed. They look the same and they act the same.
I don't, I just think you had to make sure that you could turn
your life around and get on with it. That was yesterday.
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Mr. Purse describes his first impression of the army's military camp in Hong Kong and goes on to explain why he originally thought the Canadian troops had been sent there.
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Mr. Purse recalls the day the Japanese troops arrived in Hong Kong.
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The diet fed to the Hong Kong Prisoners of War by the Japanese is described by Mr. Purse.
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