On this day of remembrance, some thoughts about my paternal grandfather, the last member of my family to see active service (thank God).
Like so many veterans, he did have PTSD after World War II. The eastern theatre took him around China and to Malaya and Singapore.
He never talked much about his experiences but there were a few incidents that he did share.
The first was in Malaya, where officers gambled after hours—including with the enemy. At the risk of making this sound like the plot of Casino Royale, a Japanese general did frequent one gambling den where my grandfather was. Sadly, I don’t recall the exact details and names—my father did, but by the time I asked for them again he had developed Alzheimer’s.
During one game, the general and a member of our whānau from our village got into a dispute, enraging the general, and my grandfather—ever the pacifist—intervened. The details are fuzzy here but I believe he prevailed and the general didn’t.
The second was back in the village. As a high-ranking colonel, he found himself on a Japanese hit list. He hid in trees on the property. Unfortunately, he was spotted. A group of enemy soldiers opened fire. Not a single one managed to hit him.
The third was when he was hiding in a shelter with a comrade as the Japanese air force bombed overhead. The bombs got closer and closer, and he was remarking with his comrade how close they were. Then there was no reply. He turned and saw his comrade dead, against the wall, killed by the shock waves from the blast. I don’t know how big the shelter was, but the impression I had was that it was tiny. A difference of centimetres meant the difference between life and death.
I think a lot of veterans who made it home knew they got through with more than an ounce of luck, or they had God at their side, or whatever they chose to believe.
The above he told to his children so I heard them second-hand, and the only one I remember him telling me first-hand was posted on this blog 14 years ago.
After the Japanese surrendered, a lot of them were stranded in Malaya with no means to return home.
爺爺 was placed in charge of an area in Malaya as one of the occupying Allied officers, so he created jobs for the Japanese to earn their passage back home, since their empire had collapsed. They would do things like clean the streets or collect the rubbish.
I told this story during the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake when there were some pretty cruel Chinese saying on Chinese social media that the Japanese deserved that fate because of what happened in the war.
The reality was that the one person in my family who encountered more Japanese people than any one of us, and who for years sent men to kill their soldiers, was prepared to forgive. He recognized they were all in a situation not of their making. And postwar, we all needed to get back to our families and rebuild our lives. It was his responsibility to do the right thing. Aged just 38, a veteran of a long war, he saw to “the enemy” before he saw to himself.
My maternal grandfather didn’t make it out of the Japanese occupation alive, and that’s another story.
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