Little Forks Branch reports - for United Empire Loyalists

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Some of the awards are to be presented during the VJ-Day 50 th anniversary celebrations in Ottawa on
august 11. The decoration represents the first and only special recognition that veterans of this ill-fated,
landmark battle have ever received.
“It’s too bad we couldn’t have got it before,” said Bury resident Oswald Clark, one of the dozens of
surviving Hong Kong vets living in the Townships. After his capture, Clark spent the rest of the war
working as a slave in Japanese shipyards.
“I appreciate it, but it’s not going to make us give up.”
“It took a heck of a long time. We have been asking for this for 38 years,” said Roger Cyr, national
president of the Hong Kong Veterans Association. “The answer we always got was that Canada doesn’t
have the authority to give out an award that’s British.”
The Japanese invasion of the British colony began on Dec. 7, 1941, (Dec. 8 in Hong Kong), quickly
running over a poorly-equipped Allied resistance composed mainly of British, Canadian and Indian
troops.
When Allied surrendered Hong Kong two and a half weeks later on Christmas Day, 290 Canadian soldiers
lay dead and 493 had been wounded. Some 264 survivors would die in prisoner-of-war camps following
the years that followed, subject to systematic brutality at the hands of their captors.
About 200 of the 1,975 Canadians were shipped to Hong Kong from Vancouver in October, 1941 were
recruited from militia units in the Eastern Townships, including the 7 th -11 th Hussars Regiment, which
amalgamated with Québec City’s Royal Rifles in 1940, joining recruits from the Gaspé and northern New
Brunswick.
The Veterans Association filed a claim before the United Nations eight years ago for compensation from
the Japanese government for their mistreatment of the Hong Kong prisoners.
In prison camps in Hong Kong and later in Japan, the Allied prisoners were subject to forced labour,
torture and murder. They were fed only starvation rations and were constantly humiliated by their captors,
who had been taught that to surrender was sub-human.
Many of the survivors still suffer long-term physical effects of their imprisonment due to chronic
malnourishment, overwork and the beatings.
The association’s demand of $20,000 per veteran is being promoted by the War Amputations of Canada.
“Thus far our claim has been unsuccessful,” Cyr laments, “- largely because Canada refuses to support us
in the international community.”
The Canadian government maintains that it signed away all rights to such claims when it approved a peace
protocol with Japan after the war.
For most Canadians World War II ended with the fall of Adolph Hitler’s Berlin in early May, 1945. The
prisoners from Hong Kong had to wait another three months until Japan surrendered.
“We’re about the last to celebrate the 50 th anniversary,” said Sawyerville resident Royal Rifle vet Lionel
Hurd. “We were in the first battle of the war in which Canadians were involved, and we didn’t get out
until after it was all over.”