They Kicked me, and Booted me With Rifle Butts

Heroes Remember

They Kicked me, and Booted me With Rifle Butts

Transcript

A lot of the women just spit at us and threw rocks and stuff like that but the workers on the dock, they weren’t all that bad. So as long as you done your work, they were all right. I carried rice to trucks, loaded on trucks and carried charcoal. They burned a lot of charcoal over there - carried charcoal and shovelled coal and different things, moved freight around. One time, I took a pair of gloves that didn’t belong to me. They were army gloves and I gave one pair to my Scotch friend and there happened to be a Jap there with him and I said, “Oh my gosh",he’ll tell the guards that I had the gloves.” And my Scotch friend said, “Oh, no, he’s my <em>comadachie</em>,” that’s friend and so ten minutes later two guards come up and kicked and booted me with rifle butts and yelled at me and kicked me around and beat me up something awful and after that I got sick in the prison camp. I was sick for about a month. Two of these British fellows stole some oranges and gave them to me. There was doctors in the camp but they couldn’t, there was nothing they could do. And I brought up tape worms. I was going at both ends. I was pretty sick and a few days later I started to get better and one fellow said to me, “I didn’t think you were going to make it.” But I did and I guess they took pity on me and they put me in the cookhouse and gave me one of those quart bottles half full of rice, green rice, and a stick and I pounded it to polish it. Polished rice was illegal for the Japanese to eat because it didn’t have the vitamins in it and this sergeant of the guard, the Japanese sergeant of the guard wanted polished rice and that’s what I did. They sat me in the corner and gave me that stick to polish his rice. And then I got my strength back in the cookhouse and became second cook which was no big deal but I managed to get my strength back and here I am today.

Description

Mr. Yeadon briefly describes his early work on the docks, being severely beaten for stealing a pair of work gloves and being redeployed to the kitchen staff after a serious illness.

Francis Edison Yeadon

Francis Edison Yeadon was born in Spryfield, Nova Scotia, on September 24, 1924. He was the youngest in a family of eight. After leaving school at the age of 16, he joined the Merchant Navy in Halifax. Mr. Yeadon completed one successful North Atlantic convoy, before being captured at sea while transporting a shipload of arms to India. He remained aboard the German “raider” for several months, finally being turned over to the Japanese at Yokohama. Included is a good account of the American bombing(s) which led to Japan’s capitulation. Mr. Yeadon remained in the merchant marine after the war, due, as he says, to the lack of educational opportunities offered to Veterans of the Armed Forces.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 3:51
Person Interviewed:: Francis Edison Yeadon
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Japan
Battle/Campaign:: North Atlantic
Branch:: Merchant Navy
Occupation:: Seaman

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Date modified:: 2019-04-03