No Work Tomorrow - Going Home

Heroes Remember

No Work Tomorrow - Going Home

Transcript

Interviewer: Can you tell me about the day when you find out, you're going home? You've gotten through this and you're going home. Well, we had been working on a regular shift then one day, it was around the middle of between the second, second, first and second week in August I guess, 45'. The honcho or the boss at the foundry said, "Tomorrow no work." And that was fine we went home and the next morning the camp commandant sent the word down to the American officer that was in charge of our POW's in the camp, he was a POW too, that there was no work today, and that went on for about four days. "No work today, no work today." And then, this one day I was coming back from the washroom, they had, they had established a fairly good washroom then, and as I was coming back to my hut, I could see a group of people standing around in a group, at the corner of the building and I'm getting there I discover there was two American airmen... Interviewer: That was a great sign... And that gave me a wonderful feeling. Interviewer: You knew it was getting closer. Yep. They had been out in their fighter planes, reconnaissance planes whatever it was, and looking for camps. And so they, they came into the camp and they said, "We'll be back with heavier stuff for you in a couple of days." And so in the meantime the American officer was given a guard to take him down to see MacArthur in Yokohama or Tokyo wherever he was at that point. And about two days after that we were on a train to go to Yokohama. And ah... Interviewer: Can you tell me how you were feeling then? Pretty elated I'll tell ya, it was just a, it was so hard to believe that the, that this day had come. Just after so much devastation and so little food and cold places to sleep and it was almost hard to, hard to, hard to believe you know. It was, you could almost think that you were in a nightmare and... Interviewer: And that you had survived it. That you had survived it, yeah it was, but I'll tell you those American friends were, they were hard to describe.

Description

Mr. MacLean describes being liberated from Niigata.

Ralph MacLean

Mr. MacLean was born in the Magdalen Islands on June 27, 1922. He now resides in Calgary, Alberta, with his wife and family. Mr. MacLean signed up for service looking for excitement and thinking he would get to travel to Europe and was assigned to the Headquarters Company of the Royal Rifles. Instead of being sent to Europe Mr. MacLean found himself in Hong Kong in mid-November 1941. He was captured by Japanese forces on Christmas Day after being forced to retreat to the side of a cliff and left with no means of defence. During his captivity, Mr. Maclean was held at Shamshuipo and North Point POW Camps, before being shipped to Niigata as slave labour for a steel foundry. Liberated by Americans, Mr. MacLean returned to Canada soon after, and returned to civilian life.

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