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Reprinted here by permission is an article written by Mary Ann Goheen, based on an interview with Bob "Flash" Clayton, RRC. This article appeared in Fall 2004 Edition of The Reveille, a publication of District F ONTARIO COMMAND The Royal Canadian Legion.
Thanks to Mary Ann for documenting Bob Clayton's memories, and to Bob for sharing the story of his life with us.
"You had to learn Japanese to survive”
Hong Kong Vet Bob ‘Flash’ Clayton
This is a story of a frequently overlooked group of Canadians who were sent by our country to support the scant contingent of British and Hong Kong nationals to defend the British Colony of Hong Kong.
Many would meet their fate in the battles that preceded the fall of Hong Kong or in the POW camps to follow. This article comes with a warning that what you read is graphic and disturbing.
Bob Clayton, a Life member of #488 Brechin-Mara branch is the heart of this article. Comrade Bob agreed to talk to me about his experience as a serviceman and Hong Kong Prisoner of War. John & I met Bob and his wife Jesse at their cottage on the shores of Lake Simcoe just after Thanksgiving.
Sitting around the kitchen table, Bob brought out several photos and some very important original documents from that period in his life.
“I quit school at 14 as a lot of my generation did—I was the eldest of 8...I used to deliver groceries on my bike for $5 a week before the war. I joined the militia—the Queen’s York Rangers in Toronto…”
Bob liked the training and recalled going to summer camp in Niagara for two weeks. War preparations began in mid-August 1939. Told to report in uniform to the Armories , Bob and his fellow militiamen were transported to the Welland Canal and put on guard duty. When they returned to Toronto Bob requested a transfer to the Royal Canadian Regiment. Bob volunteered to go to camp for overseas. “I looked older than I was...anyway my mother wrote and told them I was under age so they sent me back and I was transferred to the RCR depot in London”.
Promoted to corporal, young Bob was training recruits. In the fall 1940 Clayton requested a transfer to the Royal Rifles and was sent to Quebec City to join the regiment and another promotion to Sgt. He was stationed at Val Cartier and did some duty in Newfoundland.
Meanwhile overseas, Japan was looking to expand their Empire, had marched through China and were advancing toward Hong Kong—it was now 1941.
Britain had a small contingent of soldiers guarding the colony. The British government under Churchill, knew that the likelihood of holding onto Hong Kong against the Japanese was a pipe dream. But in true British fashion, they wanted to maintain the ‘appearance of a force’ but were not prepared to commit any more of their own troops to the region. Britain’s main focus at the time was the German threat. Canada was called upon to send troops for support and our government quickly obliged.
Approximately 2000 men from the Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles found themselves on a train for a destination unknown to them.
“In Oct. ‘41, I was sent to Kong Kong—I had my 20th birthday going over—–we didn’t arrive in Hong Kong until mid-Nov.”
British intelligence had estimated the Japanese threat to be about 5000 soldiers when in fact it was more like 50,000.
Bob and his chums were more interested in the sights of Hong Kong, the girls ...beer was cheap at 10 cents and rickshaw rides were a real novelty. Hong Kong also had a lot of tattoo parlours, and Bob christened his adventure with a permanent reminder on his arm—the Regimental Coat of Arms and the word “Mother”. It was not to be the only ‘souvenir’ he’d be bringing home when the fighting was over.
Everyone knows that Dec. 7th 1941 at 7:50 am Japan bombed Pearl Harbour but what people don’t remember or realize that it was only hours later that Japan attacked the Philippines, Malaysia and Hong Kong. It was Dec. 8th… “I looked up and saw a V of airplanes...about that time I heard this British voice say “they must be up from Singapore”...I saw these black pieces falling from the planes….now I’d never been bombed before but I’m not stupid” Bob hit the first ditch he saw head first—the ditch was over six feet deep.
Hong Kong is partly on the mainland and consists of an island as well. Initially the troops were defending mainland Hong Kong but with the advancement of the Japanese the Canadians were ordered to go back to the island of Hong Kong. After that the Hong Kong Chinese were at the mercy of the Japanese—–a quality that eluded many a Japanese soldier.
“You could hear the screams coming from Kowloon...it was one massive scream all night long...made your hair stand on end” recalled Bob.
The British were in charge of the Canadians and the expectation was that the island would be attacked by sea and in daylight. The attack came at night and the green recruits from Canada had only been in the Far East less than a month—now they were being bombed, fighting man-man and dying. The first Canadian casualty was Winnipeg Grenadier John Grey—he missed the ferry ride from the mainland to the island and was captured and killed.
Comrade Bob was wounded four times. His platoon officer sent him to get some flare pistols in the early hours of the night. While walking down the dark road a ‘sheet of flame’ came up and hit Bob knocking him down, He couldn’t get up. Somehow he managed to crawl back up the road to his platoon, called out for the platoon officer. The Officer asked him if he had the flare pistols, he replied to the negative, to which the officer told him he’d have to go back for them. Bob informed him he was wounded. A couple of comrades dragged him to a bunker and left him. Bob pondered his situation, figured he’d get the bayonet if the enemy found him so considered beating them to it pulled the pin from a hand grenade. But after some further consideration decided he could be of some use and perhaps take out a few of the enemy before a bad situation got worse!. Luckily for Bob, someone returned for him ...a Lt. Scott put Bob on his back and took him into a field hospital—meanwhile Bob was still clutching the grenade to his chest. At the hospital, Bob created quite a furor when the doctor discovered Bob was still holding the live grenade. “Someone took it off me and I heard it go off somewhere outside.”
Lt. Scott would later be found tied together with four others and bayoneted.
With shrapnel wounds to both legs, a bullet in one, a concussion and cut from flying glass when the ambulance was hit on route to the hospital at St. Stephens, Bob was quite a sight. It was Dec. 18th and Bob was not on the battlefield anymore.
The fighting continued and being out numbered, out gunned by the Japanese, it was only days before the British surrendered. On Christmas Day 1941, the Japanese arrived on the doorstep of St. Stephen’s College (the hospital had been set up here for the wounded) and with abandonment entered the building killing the surrendering medical officers and bayoneting 63 helpless Canadian & British soldiers in their beds. Bob Clayton was one of the wounded who for some unknown reason was spared as was his friend Al Babin...but witnessed the slaughter of their comrades. “Nurses were raped, killed and mutilated ...some of us who were spared were put in a separate room...a couple of the guys were taken out...we could hear the screams...Several hours later when we were herded out of the room, we passed the bodies of the men who had been taken from us.” Bob’s friend Al Babin was to write that .. “ears were cut off, tongues cut out and eyes gouged from their sockets hanging on their cheeks. They were a terrible mess." There were pools of blood everywhere. The stench of blood, excrement, urine and vomit just filled the air. It was a horrible scene.”
No one knew what was in store for them. Japan had not signed the Geneva Convention—their policy was not to keep prisoners of war or provide medical treatment let alone allow the Red Cross parcels or inspections of their POW camps.
Taken to Sham-shi-po prison camp Bob worked at Kai Tak airport from early morning to night. “They worked you to death...you had to build your own camps...if you didn’t work they put you on half rations…” Food was horrible by many accounts. From the diary of Charles Trick ,Winnipeg Grenadier the account written Dec. 23/41… “Got rice and seaweed twice today and clean camp. Very weak. We bail some grass and leaves and eat them. A few more boys arrive in PM. Can't get any news. We believe we are the only ones left. Feel pretty blue. Took my boots off tonite and washed my feet. First time since Dec 6.”
Rice was the main staple fed to the prisoners and not much of that—occasionally a vegetable of some description was dragged across it for minimal flavour. I asked Bob if he ate rice today and to my surprise he said he did in a variety of ways—fried, steamed etc.
The only thing he couldn’t eat in the camp was “green horror”—the seaweed served on top of rice or made into a soup.
In the camps of Hong Kong the main killer was ‘everything’ from
dysentery, malaria, beriberi wet & dry, starvation. In the camps in
Japan it was “pneumonia”. In the winter of ‘43, after about a year at
Sham-shi-po, Comrade Bob and about 500 others were shipped to Japan in
the hold of an old freighter…. “food was lowered to us in a bucket,
...it was a terrible trip...when we came out of the hold the Japs were
holding their noses and my thought were ‘You bastards, we’ll have our
day’.” Bob along with the others were sent to work in the shipyards of
Yokohama. The Nippon Ko Kon is still in operation today, it is a multi
national corporation but during the war the prisoners worked there
building Japan’s war fleet.
The prisoners were kept at camp 3D. The climate of Japan is similar to Canada. “the men were sick all the time and in winter there was no heat. If you got wet there was no way to dry your clothes so you wore them wet: Pneumonia was a big killer, beatings and other abuses a daily occurrence, and there was never enough to eat—you were always hungry.”
Escape was not considered an option—–4 Canadians escaped from the camp in Hong Kong trying to get to Canton. When they were caught they were beheaded, no doubt after being tortured. “After the four escaped, we were put in groups of ten and told if one escaped from the group the remaining nine would be executed—we believed them”
I examined the letter sent from Bob to his mother while in captivity.. “ It was 11 months before my mother learned I was alive—the mailman knocked on the door to personally give it to her.” I couldn’t help but wonder how many times Bob’s mother would have taken that letter out of her apron pocket or from the special place she kept it to read it over and over.
Also in the mementos his mother had saved, was a letter of apology sent to Mrs. Clayton from the Red Cross. It stated in the letter “the Red Cross made every possible effort to assist our unfortunate prisoners in the Far East but the unco-operative attitude of the Japanese permitted only a minimum of Red Cross supplies to reach the prison camps.” “A lot more would have lived if we had received the parcels...sometimes they contained medicine, food, clothes.
All the time in camps I received 3 Red Cross parcels...my mother sent a parcel every month but I only received one….in one parcel mother had sent toothpaste...my buddy George Sopher and I put it on our rice until it was all gone.”
4% of POW in German camps died compared to 27% POW in Japanese camps.
While working in the shipyard, Bob fell ill, problems with his breathing. Dr. Reid one of the Canadian POW told ‘Flash’ he was going to bed…. “He had a room separate from the rest—a kind of isolation—that’s where I stayed until I was given the OK to return to work.”
The prisoners got little news and often any letters they received from home were almost a year old.
“About March 1945, the Americans bombed the city at night—over 50,000 people died in those raids...the camp was at the edge of the city and luckily we didn’t get hit.”
The Japanese decided to move some of the POW’s to northern Japan to work in the coal mines—Bob was one of them. He was now relocated to Camp Sendai.
Like the Germans, the Japanese had a final solution of their own for POW’s but the end of the war in the Far East came faster than Japan could ever predict.
With the Atomic bomb hitting Hiroshima and Nagasaki ,came an abrupt end to the suffering of the POW’s .
“The Americans dropped food into the camp….I weighed around 100 lbs when I came out of the camp...the Americans treated us great…” . Liberated by the Americans, 50 POW’s were taken to Tokyo and put aboard the USS Wisconsin. Appalled by the condition of the men, the Commander assigned a sailor to buddy-up with each POW with orders to get the POW “anything he wants...we could eat 24 hours a day….the Commander announced that they had some guys on board that hadn’t had much to eat for several years and that we would be going to the front of line at mealtime.” ‘Flash’ Clayton was paired with Bob Grillo and the men have kept in touch ever since.
“They transported us to Guam where we were hospitalized and examined….we hadn’t heard much about Iwo Jima, the place of the famous photo of marines raising the US flag….over 6000 died in that battle, but I recall looking out from the ship and saying Thank You Very Much”.
Hospital stays were mandatory for men who were barely alive, 3 weeks in Guam, 21 days on a Liberty ship from Guam to California and 3 days in Vancouver, before boarding a train for Toronto.
The train trip across Canada was spent playing bridge with 3 ladies, one who was very pregnant.. “I thought she was going to have that baby on the train...before we got to Toronto the pregnant one tried to convince me to let her escort me off the train to my awaiting mother—she thought it would be a great joke—my mother would have had a stroke at the sight! Looking back, I kind have wished I had done it for the hell of it!”
“ It was Christmas Day and since I had been gone my mother had put my Christmas presents away each year….I opened them all that day...68 relatives met me at the train station,...my Dad had cooked a goose because that was my favourite...what a homecoming.”
More hospital time would follow but the the fighting was not over. “The government didn’t want to recognize our conditions and give us any compensation….we organized the Hong Kong Veterans Association with members across Canada...Cliff Chadderton of War Amps has done a fantastic job on our behalf and I give credit to the Royal Canadian Legion for lobbying the government on our behalf.
In typical bureaucratic fashion, the government finally acknowledged the HK vets a 50% POW pension in 1976 but only in the last 5 years have they granted the vets a 100% pension. The members have greatly reduced since 1945—200 died from the affects of their incarceration before the age of 50; 87 returned legally blind. Buried in Hong Kong from camp death are 264 Canadians, 137 died in camps in Japan and then there are the battle dead and those from the St. Stephen’s massacre to add to the count.
“ What hurts the most is the number who died from conditions of our internment and even those who came home and died in spite of getting help here.” says Clayton.
Bob celebrated his 20th birthday en route to Hong Kong and his 24th on the way home.
He continues to suffer to this day from conditions acquired as a result of his internment—avitaminouses with residual effects and peripheral vascular damage and a slight limp from the bullet wounds he sustained.
“We all suffer the after affects of starvation.” I asked Bob if there was ever a time when he felt he wasn’t going to get out alive… “NEVER—I never gave up that I would live through it.” Perhaps his ‘never give up’ motto held him in good stead all these years. Maybe it was something he inherited from his father—a WWI vet, Bob’s father served with the 20th Battalion at Vimy, Paschendale, Hill 70; his youngest brother joined the 6th Division and requested to serve in the Far East because his brother Bob was a POW.
Japan refuses to acknowledge the POW’s in any manner—there has been no official apology and no compensation from either the Japanese government or the corporations that used these men for slave labour. In 1952 without permission from the HK Veterans Association,
Canada pardoned the government of Japan for any wrongdoing, in effect kneecapping our Veterans claims for retribution.
‘Flash’ Clayton has returned to Hong Kong and Japan and to the cemeteries where his friends are buried several times over the years. He has missed only three reunions since 1952. On one trip to Japan, he was asked to speak to school aged children about his incarceration by the Japanese and the teacher told him.. “tell the students what happened—all of it—they need to learn about it. I never thought I’d see that day—we were well received.”
Returning to civilian life after the war, Bob worked for the City of
Toronto worked his way up the ladder from labourer to superintendent in
the public works department. He married another vet whom he had met in
1939. Jesse was a member of the CWAC Pipe Band, the only female military
pipe band in history. Those girls marched and played the bagpipes
through France,
Belgium, Germany and Holland. And in 1946 Jesse piped her way to the
Bob’s heart and they were married. They have 2 daughters, 3
grandchildren 7 great-grandchildren.
Twenty-eight years ago, the Claytons moved to Brechin and became involved in Br. 488. Bob has served for many years as Sgt. At Arms for the branch and has been involved in that position at Zone level over the years as well.
In 1991, Bob was selected to be part of the National Film Board production of ‘The Valour and the Horror—A Savage Christmas Hong Kong 1941’—produced by Brian & Terrence McKenna, along with Winnipeg Grenadier Bob Manchester. In spite of the controversy surrounding the 3 part series, Clayton speaks positively of the first part about Hong Kong.. “They did represent our situation well.”
Bob speaks all over the province to schools and other groups about the Hong Kong conflict and subsequent treatment of POW’s and the importance of ’Remembrance’.
In November he is speaking at a Whitby high school.
In 2003, Comrade Bob was awarded the Queens Jubilee Medal. His name had been submitted by both the HKVA and War Amps as well as his own branch. His medal is framed along with the letter submitted by the Branch President Len Shier. It reads as follows:
“...participates in the Citizenship Reaffirmation Ceremony which began in our community several years ago...Bob spends many hours traveling to schools and class rooms in our surrounding community speaking to many students and educating them on the sacrifices of many fallen comrades in order for our Country to enjoy the freedom they fought for….We are truly proud of this man and love him dearly. I can’t think of anyone more deserving of the Queen’s Jubilee”.
The day of the medal presentation, there were 200 at the Legion. George MacDonell a fellow POW presented it to him. “the branch had a great bar that day and Heather Shier said to me, ...Bob can you get a medal every year?”
George MacDonell wrote the book “ One Soldier’s Story 1939-1945 From the Fall of Hong Kong to the Defeat of Japan” published by Dundurn Press 2002—Comrade Bob has sent me a copy of this book and I look forward to reading it.
Next year will be the 64th anniversary of the fall of Hong Kong. “It will be our last hurrah!” says Clayton.
A few years ago Dominion President Bill Barclay attended a reunion of
this group of Vets in Hong Kong. Bob & Jesse Clayton took their
daughters with them on that pilgrimage and as his daughter was to
remark….. “Dad, a lot of laughs and a lot of tears.”
This Nov. 11th, Bob will be in Ottawa laying the wreath on behalf of the Hong Kong Vets. Several speaking engagements have been organized for him over the 4 day trip along with newspaper interviews. The Toronto Star called him the other day for an interview.
I’m sure as Bob lays the wreath and the memories return in those moments he may repeat the words he said in ‘The Valor and the Horror’ which go like this:
“I’m very proud to have served with this brigade both in fighting and in Prison Camp—I’d like to say to them. ...where ever you are...where ever you go, You can say ‘I’m a Hong Kong Veteran’ and hold your head up high.”
Mary Ann Goheen
