Canadian Prisoners of War

Well, there, an interesting thing was there were a lot of Canadians taken prisoner in Hong Kong and after the war they were liberated, of course, and some had spent a long time in prison camp. And there was a boat took them from Japan to Brisbane, Australia, and we met them and they were, that was sad, my Heavens, I couldn't look at them, when they came down the gang plank there was nothing to them, skinny!

Well we just knew something was going on. Emperor Hirohito sent a message, or I should say MacArthur sent the message that he wanted them to surrender and he gave them 48 hours. And it came back that Emperor Hirohito wished to negotiate a settlement. Well, MacArthur would have none of that, no negotiations at all. And he said, "If you don't, don't surrender within 48 hours we'll drop another one." And they did. Nagasaki got it.

We were too far away, we, we didn't see anything, much of that at all, other than the cheering when we heard it on radio.