William Bell's Story:
The Last Days in Hong Kong
On September 26th, 1942, after 9 months in North Point I, and many
other Canadian POW's, were transferred back to Sham Shui Po Camp. One of
the interpreters at North Point was a Japanese who we named "Kamloops
Kid". He was raised in British Columbia, was well-educated, about 5'6"
tall, 170 lbs., dark complexion and clean-shaven. He spoke very good
English. This was a viscous man who eventually was convicted of
murdering POW's. In the end, he was executed for his war crimes.
I remember on one occasion at Sham Shui Po the Japanese lined up the
medical orderlies outside of the medical hut. I was about fifteen feet
away when I witnessed one of the Jap officers walk up and down the row
of orderlies and slap them in the face. Major Crawford was there on this
occasion.
There was one British soldier assigned to the Signal Corps who came to
me looking for any batteries we might have because he was attempting to
build a radio. I told him we would keep our eyes open for one and would
let him know if we found any. It wasn't long after that when I saw the
Japanese guards march him away and we never saw him again.
We did have a radio which we hid from the Japanese inside our main hut.
There was a garbage can which sat on a concrete slab, and we would move
the garbage can in order to lift the concrete slab up. We would hide the
radio underneath this slab. The radio was used to glean any information
we could get about the war efforts, but unfortunately, it was only
usable until the batteries went dead. We never could get any more power
for it and, of course, the penalty was death for possessing a radio in
any of the POW camps.
There was a Japanese guard at this camp named "Sato". Sato was one of
those guards you could manipulate somewhat and use to your advantage. He
once mentioned that he had a social outing coming up and that he did not
have any good shoes to wear. The camp guards certainly weren't well
equipped with the best clothing. He lamented how much he wished he could
get some better footwear for this event. I had a good friend in one of
the other prisoners who just happened to have a pair of shoes that were
in pretty good shape. I borrowed the shoes from my friend and then lent
them to "Sato" for that night. The next day he returned the shoes with a
big smile and stated how proud he was of the impression he had made at
his outing. He then pulled out a full pack of cigarettes and gave them
to me (cigarettes were of course like gold in the camps and could be
used to barter with).
Shortly after that I developed a severe toothache and was allowed to be
taken out of camp to see a dentist. "Sato" happened to be the guard who
escorted me to the Dentist office in a building in downtown Tokyo in
order to have the tooth repaired. The dentist repaired my tooth and made
arrangements to have several other teeth of mine worked on at a later
time. The next time I was escorted back to have my teeth worked on we
found that the building was completely destroyed. It had been bombed
along with many other areas of Tokyo by the American bombers of the
Doolittle squad.
Many of the men used their ingenuity in order to survive the camps we
were in. One of the things we used to do was take whatever metal wire we
could get our hands on and twist them into an electrical element. When
we hooked these up to the lighting system we had a nice little hotplate
in order to heat our food upon. We did get a little concerned though
when the guys were hooking so many of these home-made hotplates to the
electrical system the lights used to flicker pretty bad. We were scared
the Japanese would catch on to what we were doing.
Jack Stephens, like many of the men, developed a bad case of Diphtheria
and was taken to the "Agony Ward" (basically the point of no return for
sick prisoners). On numerous occasions I would scrape out the large pots
which were used to cook rice in, and gather all the blackened rice I
could get. Later, in the dark of night, I would sneak out of my hut,
crawl along the bottom of the huts, and make my way to the outside of
the Agony Ward. I tried my best to elude the searchlights and Japanese
guards. Jack and I had a secret whistle that we would use to signal each
other, then I would toss the rice over the ledge so those in the ward
could supplement their rations.
I remember many of the men felt that General Maltby tended to cooperate
a little too much with the Japanese. I learned that all too well one
night when I was making my way in the dark to the Agony Ward. As I was
crawling in the dark I came upon General Maltby and several others who
saw me and called out, "Who is that, get that man". I threw the rice out
of my hands as fast as I could and ran back to my hut without being
identified. I vowed that if I could ever be alone with that man some day
I would take a round out of him.
