Thursday, May 13, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Remembering Life in Internment Camps
The afternoon of December 25th, 1941 marks the day a whole new chapter in my life happens. On December 19th, I was hurt by a Japanese soldier. I was shot in the leg and went to St. Stephen's College. I thought I was going to get well then fight again. Unfortunately, on December 25th, 1941, Japanese troops successfully breaks thru our defensive line and reaches the hospital and starts to rape the nurses and kills a lot of the wounded.
I was "luckily" not killed before we surrender. Once we surrendered, the Japanese troops lined us up to march us to ships to deport us for internment camps. Remember how I said I was "luckily" not killed, well that's because I would've preferred to be killed instead of living in internment camps. Internment camps were torture, they felt like Hell on Earth. The Japanese hated people who give up because they show no respect for people who would surrender since it brings shame to you and your family. When what was left of the allied troops were in internment camps, a lot of them died because of the harsh conditions we had to face. We were barely fed and were treated like slaves to the Japanese.
So what memories of internment camps do you guys have?
I was "luckily" not killed before we surrender. Once we surrendered, the Japanese troops lined us up to march us to ships to deport us for internment camps. Remember how I said I was "luckily" not killed, well that's because I would've preferred to be killed instead of living in internment camps. Internment camps were torture, they felt like Hell on Earth. The Japanese hated people who give up because they show no respect for people who would surrender since it brings shame to you and your family. When what was left of the allied troops were in internment camps, a lot of them died because of the harsh conditions we had to face. We were barely fed and were treated like slaves to the Japanese.
So what memories of internment camps do you guys have?
Remembering Friends That I Lost
December 8th, 1941 is one day I will never forget. I woke up in the morning at 5:00 a.m. and was just enjoying my day, hanging out with my buddies, and all of a sudden I hear this whistling noise from the sky, I look up and i see aircrafts dropping bombs down at a nearby airport.
A couple seconds I hear massive explosions and I see a huge cloud of smoke and a lot of fire. I quickly realized that those were Japanese planes and they just blew up our air force.I was very mad at the moment but there was no time for that because shortly after, at around 8:00 a.m., a Japanese invasion started.
They sent in a lot more troops than we had around 1:3 ratio for them. We were heavily outnumbered and they were a lot more experienced than us. They had just raided a lot of China and me and my a lot of my buddies haven't even fired a rifle in our lives. I was extremely scared but war is war, I had to do my country proud. So I kept my hopes up that we would win this battle and for some reason, the generals kept telling us to retreat, retreat and retreat. I realized our defensive line was weakening and not working so they told us to retreat. We kept retreating till eventually we were trapped on Hong Kong island. The British commanders told us everything was going to be fine, Hong Kong is an impenetrable fortress and that the Japanese would take forever to get to us. They also told us that they had bad night vision because of their eye shape and hated fighting in the rain, or so they say. By the time the Japanese reached the island, our defense was broken in 8 hours. I saw by the end of that a lot of my friends in my battalion were dead or missing. We had no other choice but to surrender. All those casualties for a lost cause.
So what kinds of difficult situations were you put in?
A couple seconds I hear massive explosions and I see a huge cloud of smoke and a lot of fire. I quickly realized that those were Japanese planes and they just blew up our air force.I was very mad at the moment but there was no time for that because shortly after, at around 8:00 a.m., a Japanese invasion started.
They sent in a lot more troops than we had around 1:3 ratio for them. We were heavily outnumbered and they were a lot more experienced than us. They had just raided a lot of China and me and my a lot of my buddies haven't even fired a rifle in our lives. I was extremely scared but war is war, I had to do my country proud. So I kept my hopes up that we would win this battle and for some reason, the generals kept telling us to retreat, retreat and retreat. I realized our defensive line was weakening and not working so they told us to retreat. We kept retreating till eventually we were trapped on Hong Kong island. The British commanders told us everything was going to be fine, Hong Kong is an impenetrable fortress and that the Japanese would take forever to get to us. They also told us that they had bad night vision because of their eye shape and hated fighting in the rain, or so they say. By the time the Japanese reached the island, our defense was broken in 8 hours. I saw by the end of that a lot of my friends in my battalion were dead or missing. We had no other choice but to surrender. All those casualties for a lost cause.
So what kinds of difficult situations were you put in?
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