The Hong Kong Veterans, 1941-1945

Part II

During the Battle of Hong Kong, 290 of the 1,975 Canadians defending the island were killed in battle. After the Canadians were captured by the Japanese on Christmas Day, 1941, Canadian soldiers were taken into a brutal period of captivity, first in Hong Kong and then in Japan. Deprived of food and sanitary conditions, 267 more Canadians died as Prisoners of War.

The Canadians were later moved to a POW camp in Japan, where many worked in mines and they were limited to less than 800 calories of food a day.

The Japanese government recently offered a full apology for the treatment of Canadians in these POW camps. (Read a CBC article covering the apology, here).

Reactions among Canadians are mixed, with some accepting the apology while others say it’s too little, too late. What do you think?

Part I

In the autumn of 1941 World War Two was raging across Europe, but the battles of the Pacific region were yet to come. Although considered of little strategic importance by Winston Churchill, the island of Hong Kong was considered defensible by some Canadian military leaders. On October 20, 1941 the decision was made to send just over 2,000 Canadian soldiers to help defend Hong Kong from possible Japanese aggression. On December 8 the Japanese attacked…

Part Two of this blog will showcase an artefact from their POW experience, when food was in short supply and the days were long.

For more information on the Battle for Hong Kong, visit http://www.hkvca.ca, or for more on the experience of Canadians in the Pacific during the Second World War, visit the exhibit (which will feature some of our artifacts) in Calgary – http://themilitarymuseums.ca/whats-new

It’s a simple tool: a rolling pin made from a single piece of wood, fashioned into a two-foot long rod tapered at both ends. Sometimes these are called French rolling pins, but this one was made in Latvia over one hundred years ago and made its way to Winnipeg in 1909. A young woman named Rytze (1885-1962) followed her married sister to Canada, and the rolling pin was part of Rytze’s trousseau (items gathered together for a woman to bring into her household once she was married). And in fact Rytze did marry a man named Schmul Aron in Winnipeg on January 10, 1910. It was an outdoor wedding (strange for January) held in the yard of their Rabbi’s house. Rytze and Schmul knew each other from their childhood in Latvia, where they grew up in neighbouring villages.

A special thanks to Sophie Shinewald for the donation of the rolling pin and her family stories.