No Canadians Would Leave the Camp
Heroes Remember
No Canadians Would Leave the Camp
On the one hand we were afraid to leave the camp
and since we were being supplied from the air
we didn't need to leave the camp.
Now we had a lot of wounded men, a lot of dangerously
ill men who were now receiving food and medical supplies.
We didn't know what would happen if we tried to move them.
Now we were so far north, there is no road system there at all,
we would have to go to the nearest railway station,
we'd have to take over a train
and take the train to Tokyo where you would hope
to run into American military with their medical supplies
and hospital ships.
But what would happen if you ran into
a hostile Japanese military force?
They might kill the whole bunch of you whereas
if you sat quietly in your camp you might be a lot safer.
Well we decided that no Canadian would leave the camp
without our permission and that our decision was to sit tight,
don't provoke them, we're in the mountains,
we're a long way from anybody,
maybe this is the safest place to stay.
Let the Americans come to us.
Going to them may be very, very dangerous and fatal.
And how would we do it anyway?
We didn't have any trucks, we didn't have any stretchers,
we couldn't figure out
how to move the really sick people.
But with the supplies from the air including
penicillin which our doctor had never heard of before
we were making amazing progress in restoring the health
of those who were just on the verge of dying.
The effect of penicillin at that point in our...
when there was no built up resistance to
this wonderful drug was absolutely amazing.
Men that were dying of infections
were getting out of bed in eight hours.
The impact on these infections
of this new drug was absolutely astonishing.
That saved I don't know how many lives.
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