Jack Edwards (British Army soldier)

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Jack Edwards
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
Other workHousing officer and manager in Hong Kong

Jack Edwards,

war criminals and his determination displayed in defending the rights of Hong Kong
war veterans.

Early life

Jack Edwards was born in Cardiff, Wales on 24 May 1918, in the suburb of Canton, joining the Territorial Army just before the outbreak of the Second World War.[1]

British Army career

Edwards was an army

POW camp, a mountainous region near Jiufen, where he and 525[2] other inmates were forced to work the copper mine daily in tropical heat. To get to the mine, parties had to walk up 250 steps to top of a ridge, then down 831 more to sea, and then descend a further 800 steps inside the mine to the working face on the lowest levels.[3] So ever day before, and then again after work, the men had to walk up and down 1,881 crudely cut steps (by way of comparison there are 1,665 steps to the small platform on the top of the Eiffel Tower).[4] His team was required to bring out 24 bogeys of copper
every single day, if not, they were then beaten. As men died, or were transferred to other camps because they were too weak and ill to continue working, replacement contingents were drafted in to make up the numbers.

From the initial contingent of 525 only 120 remained in Kinkaseki when the camp was abandoned between 16 and 30 May 1945.

American Marines arrived at the jungle camp.[8] He and others were so emaciated that their eyes were sunken and their bodies mere skeletons of their former selves.[9]

After World War II

Edwards spent a year recuperating in Britain, then in 1946 he returned to Asia to help in the apprehension of Japanese war criminals and to give evidence at their trials as part of the war crimes investigation team in Hong Kong.

Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.[11]

On his return to South Wales Edwards worked in local government. There, he felt an active discouragement from talking about the horrors he experienced as a POW. Unable to settle, he left for Hong Kong in 1963. Edwards took up a post as a housing officer in the housing department of the Hong Kong administration, later becoming a senior housing manager for Hongkong Land.[1] There, he was actively involved in the Hong Kong Ex-Servicemen's Association as well as the Royal British Legion, becoming later on its chairman. He was also president of the St David's Society of Hong Kong.[12]

Life as a campaigner

In 1989, after the suppression of the

Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, Edwards started to help the Hong Kong people with British Dependent Territories Citizenship (BDTC), to fight for the recognition as British Citizens with the right of abode in the United Kingdom from the British Government. He was featured in the open forum "Hong Kong - A Matter of Honour" which organized by RTHK in Hong Kong and the BBC in Britain, during which showed a Union Jack flag which was hoisted in Hong Kong during 1945, and defended the contributions from the British Army and local veterans in the program.[13]

Through his efforts as the chairman of the

British citizenship to wives and widows of those veterans.[1]

He spoke out for the many in Hong Kong who during the occupation, had been forced to sell their businesses as well as property to the Japanese in exchange for the worthless

Japanese military yen.[15]

Personal life

Edwards's first marriage ended because of the war. In 1990, he married Polly Tam So-lan, a former member of a Chinese People's Liberation Army dance troupe whom he met in 1974.[16][17] They lived in a flat in Sha Tin in the New Territories. Both he and Polly loved dancing by practising to the tunes of Taiwanese songs in their small living-room. Edwards spoke fluent Cantonese.[18] He was survived by his wife and her daughter by her first marriage.[10]

Trivia

  • It took him 45 years to write his book Banzai You Bastards!.
  • The first translator of his book, the Japanese journalist Shinji Nagino, was murdered in Montreal with two-thirds of the way to go.[15]
  • After being requested by Diana, Princess of Wales to find the grave of Major-General Merton Beckwith-Smith, the father of Princess Diana's lady-in-waiting who had died as a POW in Japan, Edwards managed to locate it.[15]
  • In 1981 the National Film Board of Canada released A War Story: Based on the Diaries of Dr. Ben Wheeler, docudrama produced, written, and directed by Anne Wheeler whose father was the Canadian doctor in the Kinkasekihe camp. Jack Edwards was a featured commentator in the film, along with several other former POWs who were interviewed in the documentary.
  • In 2000, a memorial was erected in Kinkaseki to which Edwards returned for the second time with the help of a grant of £10,000 from the British Government.
  • Edwards and his other POW survivors escaped impending death at the hands of their Japanese captors by a mere two days due to the dropping of the two American atomic bombs at
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki
    .
  • When American aircraft began to drop supplies into Edwards' POW camp near the end of the war, several POWs and civilians were killed by the supplies which were dropped too low for their parachutes to work. Edwards was the only one to know flag semaphore in the camp as he had learned it in the Boys' Brigade. As Edwards frantically signalled "Don't Drop" the American aircraft circling overhead was about to drop supplies on top of him until the crew realised Edwards' signals. There was only one crew member on the aircraft who could read semaphore and he had learned it in the Boy Scouts of America.[19]

Quotes

The Allies rebuilt Japan and Germany and Italy. Nobody rebuilt our lives. The tears and nightmares will remain 'til death. I'm willing to forgive. None of us should forget.[20]

See also

  • A War Story (1981), a docudrama about Major Ben Wheeler the doctor in Kinkaseki

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d "We shall remember him". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong. 15 August 2006. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  2. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, p. 46 see also Appendix B for a named list of inmates.
  3. ^ Edwards & Walter, 1994, pages 60–62
  4. ^ All you need to know about the Eiffel Tower (PDF), Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, 30 June 2008, p. inside cover (2 pdf), retrieved 2 October 2012.
  5. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, Appendix B for the number;Edwards & Walter 1994, p. 199 for the dates.
  6. ^ a b Edwards & Walter 1994, p. 207.
  7. ^ Kukutsu POW Camp, Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society, 2012, retrieved 27 November 2012
  8. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, pp. 250, 251.
  9. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, pp. 256, ff photographs 10 and 11
  10. ^ a b "Patten pays tribute to war veteran". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong. 20 August 2006. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  11. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, pp. 257–261.
  12. ^ "Jack's still nimble on singing front". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong. 14 February 1994. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  13. YouTube
  14. ^ "POW rights campaigner Jack Edwards dies". Taipei Times. Taipei. 15 August 2006. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  15. ^ a b c "Jack Edwards Obituary". The Times. London. 15 August 2006. Archived from the original on 23 May 2011. Retrieved 1 October 2016.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  16. ^ "A life less ordinary". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong. 4 January 2003. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  17. ^ "POW veteran dies at age 88". Penarth Times. Penarth. 24 August 2006. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  18. ^ "Obituary: Jack Edwards". The Daily Telegraph. London. 15 August 2006. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  19. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, pp. 246, 247, 254.
  20. ^ Edwards & Walter 1994, p. 264.

References

Further reading
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