Attention!
Cette vidéo est disponible en anglais seulement.
Description
Mr. Bérard describes being shipped to Japan, defiance of the Geneva Convention by the Japanese, and an entertaining arrival in Nagasaki.
Transcription
This wasn’t too large a ship, but it was filthy. It started, I was sleeping on the bottom part of the beds that had layers like this. The only place that was left when I got there was underneath there and I was right on top of the engine. Anyway, I was in the better condition to take that position anyway so. They brought us out of there, maybe twice a day to use the lavatory. And sometimes people that had dysentery still. God, it was filthy and they brought us on top there, maybe once a day, and you could see that the ship was transporting Japanese soldiers. And right off the bat, I knew that was against the Geneva Convention, but the Americans didn’t hit this one. They hit that first one. They lost a lot of men there. When we arrived at Nagasaki, one of our young soldiers by the name of Alistair, William Alistair was entertainment. He was a collegiate from Montreal then. He was an actor, singer, entertainer. Bob Warren joined with him. They had a singsong underneath a lamp in Nagasaki while the Japanese were getting the train ready to transport us from Nagasaki to Kawasaki. When we got on the train, finally, after the entertainment, which was so lovely, God. And of course we couldn’t, we didn’t know any part of Japan, because the blinds were drawn and we couldn’t look out until we arrived at Kawasaki, in the camp, where we stayed for two and a half years.