I was a Sucker Once; I Wouldn’t be it Twice

Heroes Remember

I was a Sucker Once; I Wouldn’t be it Twice

Transcript

Well, I’m proud in a way, yeah, but I didn’t want to go to Hong Kong. They sent me there. But as far as, I suppose if it was today, I wouldn’t join the army. I would stay here and work, get a job. I wouldn’t enlist for sure because I would say, I was a sucker once, I wouldn’t be it twice. They could have give Hong Kong to the Japanese without a fight because they didn’t, they couldn’t hold it. And Churchill had told them, don’t send troops there. We cleaned it out, we took everything there was to fight with. We took it to England to protect ourselves against the Germans. So that was one of the reasons why, I don’t know why they sent us there. But it was no fun. They were trying to get compensation but they sold us out. They signed with the Japanese that they wouldn’t have to pay us, that they, we were well paid and all this stuff. If I had have stayed in Canada I might have made twenty dollars a day instead of a dollar and ten cents... ...'cause there's a lot of guys didn’t go to war. I worked on the railroad with guys that was, that never went on in the army. And they were called up and they were, they were only given maybe five or six years to live and they worked till they were sixty-five, and they all had the best jobs. And when I come back, I had to start at the lower end of the ladder. I worked for ten, fifteen years before I got a steady job on the railroad. Jumped from one train to another, and those fellows here, they picked their trains, they had the seniority and everything. Us fellows? No, no, we were treated terrible bad. Course, there's nothing you can do about that because it was done.

Description

Mr. Murphy reflects on the futility of the deployment of Canadians to Hong Kong, and what it cost him in later years.

Leo Murphy

Leo Murphy was born September 3, 1919 in New Richmond, Quebec, where he grew up and completed his elementary education by 1931. He was one of nine children. Before enlistment he was a day labourer working in a sawmill, construction, excavation, farming, and a lumber camp. Mr. Murphy enlisted with the Royal Rifles on Nov 25, 1940, and took his basic training in Newfoundland and Val Cartier, Quebec. He was overseas for four years, spending all but the first three months as a POW in Hong Kong and Japan. The emotional impact of the Hong Kong deployment started early for Mr. Murphy, when on the same day his brother was killed beside him and he took the life of a Japanese soldier. During his captivity, he suffered from beri-beri, dysentry, pellagra, had his foot crushed in a mining accident, and developed liver problems. At the time of his liberation, he was a mining coal in Omini, Japan, as a slave labourer. Mr. Murphy arrived back in Canada in October, 1945 and was discharged February 5, 1946. From 1947 to 1960, he was employed as a brakeman with the Canadian National Railroad. Mr. Murphy was married on Sept 1, 1947, to Yvette Savoie. He died March 26, 2001.

Meta Data