They’d Have Killed Us!

Heroes Remember

They’d Have Killed Us!

Transcript

And I was coming in to go into work again. I thought I was getting weak. I caught onto the door and I was standing there and looking and all of a sudden the sirens started and the sirens started and everybody was out and underground. There, it wasn’t so nice. A couple of hours underground, came out, started to work again. Now they had a big boat just outside of the foundry at sea. The Japs had an ammunition factory on that and when we come out and we started to work, worked about maybe 20 minutes or more. The sirens started again and back underground again. There, jeez, they had dropped the bomb in the boat that had the ammunition factory aboard. Oh boy, I said Jesus Mary, the Japs sure are going to kill us all but it was the Americans was dropping bombs and shooting. We went into dinner, Jesus Mary, the table was not quite so high as that and a little wider than that and we used to sit back to back and eat out of our mess tents, but the table there was just, take a pickaroon and picked it on both sides. If we had of been in there we would’ve been all shot down. The Americans, I suppose, thought there were Japs in there and they fired at both sides. Anyway, in the afternoon about two o’clock, maybe quarter past two, sirens again. Jesus Mary, went in, used to finish at five o’clock; it wasn’t five o’clock, it was seven o’clock. The Japs wanted to get at us, the civilians. It took them all they could do to keep them off of us. Oh they’d have killed us, jeez.

Description

Mr. Hunt talks about a day of deadly American bombing, and fearing for his life at the hand of angry Japanese citizens.

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.

Meta Data