The Tokyo Shimbun

Saturday 19 August 1995

'From the Global Village' London

A chance meeting with a gentleman

This man was a British man born in China. We got to know him by sitting beside him, by chance on the underground train.

His parents were missionaries. He was seventeen when the pacific war began. He was a boarder at a British missionary school inside China. That school was taken as it was and turned into an internment camp. The second camp was a change, life went on under the surveillance of the Japanese army.

Studies continued and he passed the special entrance examination to Oxford University. But life was monotonous. Two men, one American and one British, could bear it no longer and escaped. Six weeks after it's publication date he obtained a copy of an English language paper, and they learned that the American army had reached Okinawa. The Japanese soldiers told them " If the war is lost, all the internees will be killed and we will cut our stomachs (kill ourselves)." Therefore, he half wanted a quick end to the war, but feared it. On August 17th 1945, a B29 flew overhead and seven parachutists dropped out of the plane. British and American flags which had been hidden were flown to greet them. One of the men was a graduate of the same missionary school. At last we were free. At the camp a Japanese soldier, Mr Goto Taro and one of the consular police, Mr Kosaka, were gentlemen, he said. What has become of them he wondered as he recalled his story.