A boy’s war: the story of a PoW.
BY
DAVID J. MICHELL
THE
GLOBE AND MAIL, Friday August 16, 1985.
Mr. Michell is Canadian director of the ' Overseas Missionary Fellowship.
THE MIDSUMMER sun seemed to beckon as it filtered through the corner windows of our prison camp church. "Let's try it one more time," the singing teacher said, with a hint of resignation. A group of us younger boys were droning our best when everything was drowned out by a deafening roar over our heads. Above the din we heard frantic shouts: "American plane! American plane!"
We dashed outside end were caught in a frenzied flow of inmates from their dingy shacks and crowded rooms onto the camp field. We joined a throng gazing skyward, hearts pounding wildly.
Could
it be, at last, that my three years of captivity with 1,400 other prisoners
under the Japanese in Weihsien Concentration Camp were about to end? It was
Aug. 17, 1945 - 40 years ago tomorrow; the Japanese had quit fighting three
days earlier and the war was over. From the age of 6 to 12 I had not seen my
parents, not since all 150 or so boys, girls and teachers at the boarding
school I attended, Chefoo, bad been interned by the Japanese as enemy
nationals. I didn't even know if my parents, who were missionaries, were still
in
The
plane had turned and was coming in very low, just sweeping above the lookout
towers and the high walls with their electrified and barbed wire. Hysteria was
at fever pitch; some ran to and fro in panic, others were frozen to the ground,
their upturned faces magnetized by the huge B-24. As the plane came lower we
could see men inside and then its name, The Flying Angel. We wondered if the
Japanese soldiers would shoot it down. Slowly the plane circled higher, moving
away from the camp. "Oh no, it couldn't leave us," someone wailed.
Then suddenly, to the wild cries of the prisoners, seven
The forbidding grey walls and massive wooden gates instantly lost their terror. Not even the guards with their bayonets drawn could block our headlong stampede. Some of us children, running bare foot, were first down the cinder road to the main gate. We hesitated as we neared the soldiers, but the shouts and cheers behind us and the hope of deliverance took away our fear. The guards fell away to the sides as we surged through the gates.
The stronger men reached the Americans first and faced drawn pistols - the GIs thought they might be met by Japanese soldiers. In no time, however, the liberators were hoisted onto the prisoners' shoulders, surrounded by adoring girls and wide-eyed children. "I wouldn't change places with Clark Gable for all the world," remarked one GI.
We tagged along behind, shouting and cheering as we tugged the billowing folds of the parachutes along the ground. There were tense moments as we neared the gates, but nothing happened. Inside the camp, pandemonium had broken loose. .he Japanese surrendered quietly and Major Stanley Staiger and his men started evacuation proceedings for the critically ill and elderly prisoners.
In the next few weeks many more military personnel arrived. Medical supplies, food and clothing were showered down on us by parachute from the bomb racks of B-29s. The heavens opened with blessings we will never forget. Much of the food was new to us. I had no idea what ketchup was. I found it a bit thick to drink but loved it. Chewing gum was hard to swallow but I kept getting it down until some body told me, "You don't eat it, you just keep on chewing." Our stomachs were in turmoil but who could be ill at such a time? We heard of some people in the camp hospital who, when they heard the Americans had landed, jumped out of bed and out the windows, never to return.
By
late September, 1945, the American forces organized our travel from the camp
and down the coast on a troopship, USS Geneva. We were battered by the tail end
of a typhoon but managed to reach
As
we came in to dock at
Many memories have faded, but not those of my heroes, among whom were my teachers in the prison camp. Caring for hundreds of boys and girls must have given them many scares. Once some of us went to watch after hearing that Chinese guerrilla units were attacking. We watched the Japanese garrison defend the camp. Hand-grenades were flying and wounded soldiers were being carried in on stretchers right under our noses as we hid behind the walls of the camp church.
My earliest hero in the war was Major Kosaka, the Japanese Commandant of Temple Hill, our first prison camp. Unlike the others, he treated us with respect. He had a kind face and talked to us in English. Sometimes after roll call he would let us pull out his sword and swish it around in the air. Major Kosaka must have missed his own children. One time, with only a small group of us around him and no soldiers in sight, he reached into the top pocket of his uniform and brought out a little black-covered booklet. He showed it to us - it was an English New Testament.
After 10 months in Temple Hill Camp, we were shipped in the hold of a cargo boat down the coast and then by train and truck, reaching Weihsien Concentration Camp in September, 1943. In all, 1,400 people were crowded into 61 buildings in an area 150 yards by 200 yards.
My
other three heroes were from Weihsien Camp. They were Hummel and Tipton, and
Eric Liddell. Arthur Hummel Jr. (now the
Many internees were losing hope and news that would give the truth about the war was urgent. Hummel and Tipton had made contact with Chinese soldiers outside through the help of a Chinese coolie who came into the camp each day to empty the cesspools. He was a good choice, because the Japanese guards gave him a wide berth as he slopped his way in and out of camp with cesspool buckets swinging from the pole across his shoulder.
On a night when the conditions were right, Hummel and Tipton, dressed in black, tight-fitting Chinese clothes that had been smuggled in, crept into one of the searchlight towers by the camp wall while a fellow internee distracted the Japanese guard. Manoeuvring past the electrified wire and coils of barbed wire, passing the graves outside the walls, they rendezvoused with Chinese soldiers. After some weeks of living in caves, they got hold of a radio and travelled back to the region of the prison camp.
From
their hiding place they dispatched news into the camp by writing it in code
on a tiny piece of silk and rolling it up tightly in a bit of rubber. This
was given to the cesspool coolie, who would push the pellet up his nose. At
a certain place in the camp, he would blow his nose,
discharging the little pellet undetected. A Catholic priest would pick up
the capsule, decipher the news and secretly circulate it. In this way we all
knew when
Also in Weihsien Camp was Eric Liddell, hero of the film Chariots of Fire. When our school first arrived, someone said to, me, "Do you know who that is coming up the camp road?" "No!" I said, as I saw a strong, athletic-looking man in baggy shorts down to his knees and a shirt made of curtain material. "That's Eric Liddell, the Olympic gold medallist who wouldn't run on a Sunday."
That is how I first met the athlete who had refused to run in the 100 metres in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, but who later won a gold medal and created a world record in the 400 metres. Here he was, 20 years later in his early forties, in our prison camp. He was a Congregational missionary and was taken captive like the rest of us enemy nationals.
Eric Liddell helped organize athletic meets. Despite the weakening physical condition of people as the war dragged on, the spirit of competition and camaraderie in sports was good for us. Young and old watched with pride, basking in the aura of Olympic glory, as Eric Liddell ran in the race for veterans. He also helped many internees by teaching and tutoring, and he shared the work load of the older people, the weak and the ill.
Despite the squalor, the open cesspools, the rats, flies and disease, life had a pretty normal routine. Ours was a world in microcosm where the conditions brought out the best and the worst in people. .
One
of my most vivid recollections is of talking with Eric Liddell the day he died.
That morning he was walking slowly under the trees near the camp hospital
beside the open space where he had taught us children to play basketball and
rounders. As usual he was smiling. We knew nothing of the pain he was hiding
from a brain tumor that was to take his life that evening.
Weihsien
Concentration Camp is today the
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