Torturing a Couple for Giving Some Rice

Well there conditions, we was taken in as prisoners, and in the morning they’d give us a little bowl of rice, and had no sugar nor milk in that, just dry rice and sometimes you’d have to pick the flies out of it. So one day we was behind the fence there, barbwire and this Chinese woman and her husband came with each a little parcel of rice for us to give to me and the guards happen to notice them. They come, they took them and tied one like there to a post and another one like there and then took and tore down their clothing down to the waist and with the woman they practiced bayonet on her there and the man the same until they passed out. That wasn’t enough they took and threw the gas or oil over them and burned them.

Mr. Hunt describes how a gift of rice from a Chinese couple leads to their torture and death.

Arnold Joseph Hunt

Arnold Joseph Hunt was born in 1910 in the village of Pabos on the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec. He was the eldest son in a family of 16. His father was a river guide, and as a boy Mr. Hunt would carry provisions upriver to the fishing camp for his father. He also worked cutting pulp and cooking in a lumber camp, earning 50 cents a day. Mr. Hunt enlisted with a French regiment, but transferred to the Royal Rifles, one of three brothers to do so. He describes his captivity and in particular the severe beatings he endured, as well as other brutality that he witnessed. He also describes a desperate effort to save a friend. Mr. Hunt questions both the Hong Kong deployment and Canada’s commitment to its Hong Kong Veterans.