Language selection


Search veterans.gc.ca

He Was So Badly Wounded, the Japanese Just Bayoneted Him.

Heroes Remember

He Was So Badly Wounded, the Japanese Just Bayoneted Him.

Transcript
We were on the Wong Nai Chung Gap. We had to cross Wong Nai Chung Gap when they told us, they had the machine gun trained on the Gap there, and a couple of guys got hit crossing the Gap. And it come over a loudspeaker that we were supposed go to a peak there to surrender. That was on the 25th. They lined us up against the rocks, and lined the machine guns, and we thought, well, they were just gonna, that was it. And then all of a sudden a commander comes. We had to march, we started marching for, till we got to the ferries, and the ferry goes across and they put us back in our old barracks. There was several of them that were bayoneted on the road. If they couldn’t keep up with the rest of them they were either shot or bayoneted. Interviewer: The brother that was killed in Hong Kong, did you hear about that later? Yeah. He was also bayoneted. He was wounded in the shoulder and in the leg. The Japanese, this is from one of my guys from my town, he come back, he was in that pillbox that my brother was in. And he said that he was so badly wounded that the Japanese just bayoneted him cause he couldn’t go with them.
Description

Mr. Agerbak describes surrendering and Japanese extermination of the wounded who couldn’t make the forced march to Sham Shui Po. He describes his badly wounded brother dying in this way.

Knud Agerbak

Knud Agerbak was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1918. His family of seven emigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Manitoba where his father worked as a farm labourer. Mr. Agerbak started working on a farm at the age of 13. He then loaded freight for the railroad, and finally worked in a pulp mill. His sense of patriotism led him to enlist the day that war was declared in 1939. He tried to enlist in the PPCLI, but not having reached the age of 21 didn’t have naturalized Canadian status and was turned down. The Winnipeg Grenadiers did , however, accept him. He performed garrison duty in both Bermuda and Jamaica before his deployment to Hong Kong. Hong Kong quickly surrendered, and Mr. Agerbak spent time on labour gangs at KaiTak airport in Hong Kong, and the Yokohama shipyards and northern iron mines in Japan.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
1:57
Person Interviewed:
Knud Agerbak
War, Conflict or Mission:
Second World War
Location/Theatre:
Yugoslavia
Branch:
Army
Units/Ship:
Winnipeg Grenadiers
Rank:
Corporal
Occupation:
Section Leader

Copyright / Permission to Reproduce

Related Videos

Date modified: