Men Like Skeletons

Heroes Remember

Men Like Skeletons

Transcript

Well we’d get that in the morning, same at dinner time, same at supper time. Sometimes you’d get a little bun, you’d have to pick the flies out of it. Some of the men there, they wasn’t men, they was skeletons. Some of them fell sick with beri-beri and diptheria. I worked a while when they started to fall sick there, I worked a while and they put me to help the fellows in the hospital and I used to give them, feed them with rice or whatever they brought us to give them. You see them die, yes. I slept between two of them in the hospital, one died on both sides of me and beside a lot more. Well, they couldn’t drink, or if they’d drink, they’d swell up.

Description

Mr. Hunt discusses poor nutrition and the declining health and eventual death of some inmates.

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.

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