My
grandfather was a
prisoner of
war of
the Japanese during
WWII. As I was eventually to find out he had been
stationed in
Hong Kong not long before the outbreak of the war. He was a
bandsman in the
Scotch Guards (He used to talk about how he had been a
French Horn player in the
Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra).
However this story starts long before I was ever able to find out this much
detail. In truth it starts back then when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong during
December1941, in what was by all accounts a brutal invasion, before the
British surrendered on Christmas Day. But this was all long before I became
some small part of it, and I can only tell what I know and what I can piece
together from the fragments that I have been able to gather.
I can not remember a time in my life when I was not aware of the fact that
my grandfather had been a Prisoner of War , nor can I can remember a time
when I knew anything more that this single stark fact. All through my
childhood it was like a black hole, something that, no matter how hard you
stared into it, never reflected back any light. All there was was a sense of
bitterness and rancour that would occasionally spill out if anybody mentioned the
Japanese and an impression of my Grandfather (actually my step-grandfather) as a
man who could never quite settle down, who was always throwing himself into some
new thing, some hobby or other, only to drop it a few months later before moving on to something else.
As a teenager I became involved in the peace movement and I remember the arguments
it caused, how my grandfather would rage shouting that he was glad the Americans
dropped the atomic bomb 0n Hiroshima. It was not as if I was unaware of the
situation, and though curious to find out what might have been behind it I quickly
learned to keep things to myself and it remained a black hole (This was nothing new
in my father's family, who seem bereft of the expression of emotion and hid much
away. Of my biological grandfather I knew only three facts -- that he had run in a trial
for the Olympics, that he had worked in the factory that made Cat's Eyes, and had
died of lung cancer when my father was twelve. I was in my late twenties before I was
even able to find out his first name).
As I grew into an adult very little changed, everything remained as closed off as it
had always done and though I learned to feel sadness for my grandfather it was to
remain a private thing. Then a few years later I learned that my grandfather had returned
to Japan. He had gone to look for the grave of a friend - I am still unclear what
precisely had gone on but from what I know it seems his friend had taken the punishment for
something he, my grandfather, and another friend had done. I am not sure what, only that it
was something necessary for their survival, probably stealing food. As a result of this my
grandfather survived the war but his friend didn't. When I first saw my grandfather after I had
learned this I found myself in the presence of a changed man as if something had been
released in him. For the first time in my life I heard him speak about his experiences in
the camps.
When he started to speak about this the words that came from his mouth were not tales of
pain and suffering, instead he told one simple story that spokes volumes of the
possibilities of forgiveness and of the potential to be human in the face of
degradation. He told of how he had been taken to Japan to work as a slave labourer in
a peanut oil factory in Honda Docks. One day the Allies had started to bomb
the city, dropping incendiary devices that soon set fire to the wooden houses. The
prisoners were taken out of the factory and given beaters, then sent out to fight fires as
the incendiary bombs fell on roofs. He describes coming across a Japanese woman
and her children, frightened, lost in the streets as the bombs fell around them. He talked
of putting his arm around and running with her to the air raid shelter before returning to
fight the fires.
As I listened to the story I had to choke down the tears amazed that of all he could have
chosen to tell me he has told me a story of such simple humanness, of an act of kindness to
what only a few years before had only ever been the enemy. Since that time I have a
sense of my grandfather who has at last found a little peace because he has at last been able
find some forgiveness. He has subsequently made other trips to Japan. He has never been
able to find the grave.
I wanted to say a little of why I chosen to write this and why now? Today I have
the feeling that I too have to make some kind of journey to release something from my past,
to take a trip to my own Japan. The connection is somewhat accidental; something I read
here put me in mind of my grandfather's story for the lessons I have learned
from it seem clearly relevant -- that holding onto things from the past is likely only to
perpetuate pain but that it is never to late to find a way back to release it.