Bob Clayton - Page 3

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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.

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