Canada’s Unknown War

Although Canada’s main effort during the Second World War was directed against Germany, the country also contributed to the war with Japan

In the minds of most people, the commemorations in May of this year marking the 60^th anniversary of VE-Day--the conclusion of the war in Europe--also represented the end of the Second World War. But the war did not officially finish until more than three months later, with the surrender of Japan and VJ-Day.

The Canadian war effort against the Japanese Empire was minimal; Canada’s limited resources, although large for the country’s size, were concentrated on winning the war against Germany.

Nonetheless, about 10,000 Canadians fought against Japan, a large number compared with the capabilities of today’s Canadian Forces. Yet, apart from certain events, the war against Japan remains largely unknown in Canada.

Despite the overwhelming focus on Germany, paradoxically the Canadian Army’s first battle of the Second World War was against Japan, and was one of its most disastrous.

Two infantry battalions, the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada, plus a brigade headquarters, totaling some 2,000 soldiers known as Force C, were committed to the defence of Hong Kong just before the Japanese attack on the tiny colony on December 8, 1941.

In the fighting that followed, the under-trained Canadian units, along with their British and Indian counterparts, were virtually wiped out. After a stout defence, the garrison fell on Christmas Day.

The first Canadian Victoria Cross of the Second World War went to Company Sergeant-Major John Osborn of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. On December 19, during the Japanese attack, Osborn selflessly threw himself on an enemy grenade to save his comrades--shouting “Duck, lads!”--and was killed instantly.

Ironically, although Osborn’s action resulted in the first Canadian VC of the war, it was the last one to be announced because the surviving witnesses were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese until the end of the war.

Almost 300 Canadians were killed and 500 wounded, with hundreds of others captured. Imprisoned in Hong Kong or Japan for the rest of the war, they were subjected to inhumane conditions, and more than 250 were killed or died in captivity.

The commitment of Canadian troops to Hong Kong, and their treatment at the hands of the Japanese, was a shameful act that remains controversial to this day.

Ten weeks after the fall of Hong Kong, amid growing hysteria, the Canadian government ordered the removal of all Japanese Canadians living within 160 kilometres of the Pacific coast, ostensibly as a national security measure, yet neither the military or the RCMP viewed them as a threat. Nearly 21,000 Japanese Canadians--80 percent of them Canadian nationals--were shipped to detention camps in the interior of BC or to prairie farms.

The government seized and sold off their homes and businesses. In 1945, Japanese Canadians were given a choice: deportation to war-torn Japan or dispersal east of the Rockies. Most went to central Canada or the Prairies.

Fearful of a Japanese invasion, Canadians and Americans rammed through the 2,450-kilometre long Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek, BC, to Fairbanks, Alaska, in eight months in 1942-43, crossing thick forests and five mountain ranges.

Japanese attacks were made on North America. In June 1942, an enemy submarine lobbed a few shells at a lighthouse on Vancouver Island, causing minimal damage, while another sank two ships at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Two years later, the Japanese launched some 9,000 incendiary balloons, hoping to cause massive forest fires in western Canada and the US. Only 80 reached Canada and caused no harm.

Despite these minor incidents, the invasion threat was very real, and the Japanese even seized part of North America. In May 1943, American forces wiped out 2,350 Japanese soldiers who had occupied the island of Attu at the western end of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands a year earlier. The bitter fighting to retake foggy, barren Attu cost the Americans 4,000 casualties.

Canada offered to help in the campaign, and in August, 4,800 men of 13 Brigade Group, including a machine-gun company from the Saint John Fusiliers, participated with US troops in the invasion of another Aleutian Island, Kiska. Brigadier Harry Foster, from Halifax, was recalled from England to command the brigade.

In preparation for the assault, American and Canadian fighter aircraft flew several sorties over Kiska during the two weeks before the invasion. Although no Japanese were seen, the enemy’s well-known talent for camouflage was highly regarded.

So was his fanaticism: 30 percent casualties were expected in the invasion force.

On August 15, the 1st Canada-US Special Service Force (later nicknamed the “Devil’s Brigade” by the Germans during fighting in Italy) led the way in its first operation. Unknown to the Allies, the Japanese had withdrawn three weeks earlier under cover of fog.

Despite a sense of relief, Foster’s men felt cheated of the only chance most of them would have for action. Foster’s comments in his diary echoed their sentiments: “I feel bloody silly coming all this way for nothing.”

Foster need not have worried; he returned to England, led 7th Infantry Brigade ashore in Normandy and went on to command 4th Armoured Division and 1st Infantry Division before the war ended.

The Canadians remained on Kiska for more than three months, building roads and piers. Their only casualties were four killed by enemy booby traps or accidental explosions.

The Canadian Army expected to participate fully in the war against Japan once Germany had been defeated. To gain experience and an idea of conditions there, nearly 100 officers were sent to the Pacific and Southeast Asia theatres as observers, attached to the American, British, Australian and New Zealand armies.

Lt-Col Victor deB Oland of Halifax, an artillery officer, was in charge of one of the first groups of 10 Canadians sent to the Americans, and saw action in the Philippines. Another 75 soldiers were attached to the Australian forces to provide technical assistance with Canadian-designed and build radar equipment.

In 1944, 336 members of No. 1 Canadian Special Wireless Group set up their equipment near Darwin in northern Australia to intercept and decrypt coded Japanese military messages. Made up of radio operators and intelligence analysts, their work played an integral part in shortening the war in the Pacific Theatre.

Lauchie MacDonald, now living in Chester, was a 20-year-old corporal in the Canadian Intelligence Corps attached to the unit. “I knew the war was over,” he recalls, “when we intercepted an uncoded message from the Japanese High Command, ordering the army to surrender.”

In the formal--and flowery--language of the Japanese military, the message read in part, “The time has passed either for looking with covetous admiration at countless foreign lands, or for advance preparations for every effort at stalwart defence. The time has come to lay down arms .... Troops serving with all armies must swallow their tears, and not allow their emotions to run to excess.”

Members of the group were sworn to secrecy and details of their activities have only recently been declassified, with the surviving members just receiving their campaign medals in 1996.

Another secret group operating in Southeast Asia was Force 136, trained in guerilla warfare and demolition. The unit’s commandos, including several Canadians--as well as Chinese-Canadians who could blend in with the local population--operated behind enemy lines throughout Southeast Asia. Their exploits were portrayed in the classic 1957 war movie, “The Bridge over the River Kwai.”

Dedicated movie buffs may recall that the four-man commando team sent to destroy the bridge was from “Force 316,” and included a young Canadian, Lt Joyce.

On the air side, three Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons served in Southeast Asia. No. 413 was a general reconnaissance squadron equipped with Consolidated Catalina flying boats, which moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) early in 1942.

On April 4, a week after their arrival, Squadron Leader Len Birchall and his crew sighted a Japanese battle fleet some 560 kilometres south of Ceylon. Japanese carrier-borne fighter planes shot him down, but not before he had warned Ceylon of the approaching Japanese. Birchall and five crewmen were captured, beaten and imprisoned, but survived the war.

Royal Air Force fighter squadrons on Ceylon, which had a number of Canadians serving in them, rose to meet the attacking Japanese the next morning and drove them off in the first check to Japanese expansion up to that time. For his feat, Birchall earned the nickname “Saviour of Ceylon.”

Nos. 435 and 436 transport squadrons flew unarmed Dakotas in support of the Anglo-Indian Fourteenth Army in northern Burma (now Myanmar). They flew air essential supply missions and delivered a vast array of stores and equipment by landing or parachute--usually on small jungle clearings--frequently under intense Japanese ground fire.

It marked the first time in history that an entire army was supplied by air.

The two Canadian squadrons carried more than 56,000 tonnes of freight and over 27,000 soldiers and casualties, despite some of the worst flying weather in the world and totally inadequate facilities. Seven aircraft were lost on operations and 25 aircrew killed, missing or captured.

They were the last RCAF units to be actively engaged in operations during the war.

Given the Royal Canadian Navy’s contribution to the Battle of the Atlantic, and the small naval forces available to Canada at the start of the war, Canadian involvement in the war in the Pacific was minimal. But as the war in the Atlantic wore down, plans were made for a significant Canadian contribution against Japan.

The cruiser HMCS Uganda joined a Royal Navy task force in the western Pacific in March 1945, and participated in operations against the islands of Okinawa and Truk, as well as Japan.

In one of the strangest episodes of the war, because of the policy of the Mackenzie King government with regard to volunteers for the Pacific Theatre, Uganda’s crew were allowed to choose to return to Canada, perhaps the only occasion in history that a unit voted itself out of combat.

A number of other Canadians participated in the war against Japan, either as members of the armed forces of other countries, notably Britain, or as Canadian servicemen attached to the British forces.

Among these were some of the 200 naval aviators and observers serving with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. One of them, Robert Hampton Gray, earned Canada’s last Victoria Cross of the war (see sidebar).

When the war ended in Europe, Canada planned to contribute a fleet of sixty ships, an air group of eight bomber and three transport squadrons and an infantry division, all under US command. The final assault against Japan was expected to involve some 80,000 Canadians.

Volunteers for 6th Division--organized along American lines--were assembled at six concentration areas across the country, including Camp Debert, near Truro, to begin training. One of the nine infantry battalions assigned to the division was the West Nova Scotia Regiment.

Although the Canadian Army was integrated, in order to conform to the segregated nature of the US forces, “it was found necessary to impose a colour bar against Negroes” so as “not to embarrass the United States authorities and/or the soldiers concerned” and blacks were not allowed to serve in the Pacific Force.

In the end, none of the units saw action once the US dropped two atomic bombs. While considered in hindsight by some as a reprehensible act, it unquestionably shortened the war and saved thousands of Allied lives, including many Canadians.

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