Tragedy When Beam Collapses

It was, it was one large compound and it had one, two, it had four large buildings plus a kitchen and the Japanese staff lived in the entrance, beside the gate, the entrance of the camp. They had their own building. We moved into this camp. We were in a different camp till this one was finished. We were in another camp about a couple of months. They moved us into this camp just before the snow came, and we would settle in this camp and I would say there was about 80 to 90 people in the building we were in. And one night we had a heavy snow fall and the roof collapsed on the building. We were all underneath the debris of the collapsed building with slate, heavy slate shingles on it, like you know, the slate roofing that they have. It was on top of us. I was sleeping with a buddy of mine because we had, we wanted, needed to keep warm and it had been snowing and raining and we were wet and cold and miserable, so we went to bed and we had our great coats to cover ourselves up and we slept on the blankets that we were, we had, and we kept warm that way so we crouched together as close as we could get to keep warm and dry our clothes for next morning or we knew our clothes would be still soaking wet when we got up in the morning had we had kept them on. A big beam, open ceiling beam, a big beam came right across our bunks. Our bunks, there was one on each side, and it was about this high off the ground, and then there was another one and there was a third one. And we were sleeping, now we were sleeping on a grass mat on these bunks. The ones on the second and third tier, they would have to climb up the ladder and sleep on the grass mat. Well that beam came down and hit my buddy right across the neck like this, and when I woke up and I felt that blood running on my body I looked up, I’m ok, so I moved my neck over from that beam and I crawled underneath from that beam and I looked at my buddy and his tongue was hanging out and the blood was just pouring out of his . . . he was dead and that was my experience in that camp.

Mr. Friesen describes the physical layout of Niigata camp, and describes the deadly results of his hut collapsing after a heavy snowstorm.

Isaac ‘Ike’ Friesen

Isaac ‘Ike’ Friesen was born on a farm in the Russian Ukraine on October 19, 1920. His father died while Ike was an infant, leaving his mother to run the farm. At the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution, Mrs. Friesen sold the family farm and emigrated to Winkler, Manitoba, later moving to and buying a house in nearby Pomcooley. Mr. Friesen attended the four room school across the street, completing grade eight before becoming a farm laborer to help support his mother. He eventually tried working on a sugarbeet farm in Carmen, Manitoba, but quickly decided joining the armed forces was a better option. He tried to join the Royal Canadian Navy, but was deferred to the Army. He took basic training as a member of the Eighteenth Manitoba Reconnaissance Regiment at Shilo. He was designated as “D” - unfit for overseas service, until being recruited by the badly depleted Winnipeg Grenadiers where his status suddenly became “A1.” Once the conflict in Hong Kong ended with the Allied surrender, Mr. Friesen worked as a laborer at Kai Tek airport. He was eventually shipped to the camp in Niigata, Japan, where he labored as a stevedore. After being liberated and returning to Canada, Mr. Friesen, as the result of a chance meeting while hitchhiking, was offered and accepted employment with what is now Shell Oil.