Jack Edwards (Hong Kong)
Encyclopedia
Jack Edwards, OBE was a former British
World War II
army sergeant and a POW
, most well known for his dedicated efforts of tracking down Japanese
war criminals and the relentless determination displayed in defending the rights of Hong Kong
war veterans.
when Singapore fell
to the Japanese in February 1942. He was interned for some time by the Japanese in the notorious Changi
jail before transported to the then Japanese colony of Taiwan
. Edwards was put into the Kinkaseki POW camp, a mountainous region near Jiufen, where he and 526 other inmates were forced to work the copper
mine daily in tropical heat. His team was required to bring out 24 bogeys of copper every single day, if not, they were then beaten. Only 64 survived when the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945. He and others were so emaciated that their eyes were sunken and their bodies mere skeletons of their former selves. He was rescued by US Marines who later made him an honorary Marine.
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, he became a senior housing manager for Hongkong Land
. 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.
Through his dogged, tireless efforts as the chairman of the Royal British Legion (Hong Kong and China branch), in 1991 Edwards succeeded in winning monthly pension awards from the British government to ethnic Chinese veterans and their widows.
A greater triumph came in 1997 when Edwards fought and won the granting of British citizenship to wives and widows of those veterans.
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
.
dance troupe whom he met in the 1970s. 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. He is survived by his wife and her daughter by her first marriage.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
army sergeant and a POW
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
, most well known for his dedicated efforts of tracking down Japanese
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
war criminals and the relentless determination displayed in defending the rights of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
war veterans.
British Army career
Edwards was an army sergeant in the Royal Corps of SignalsRoyal Corps of Signals
The Royal Corps of Signals is one of the combat support arms of the British Army...
when Singapore fell
Battle of Singapore
The Battle of Singapore was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of the Second World War when the Empire of Japan invaded the Allied stronghold of Singapore. Singapore was the major British military base in Southeast Asia and nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East"...
to the Japanese in February 1942. He was interned for some time by the Japanese in the notorious Changi
Changi
Changi is an area at the eastern end of Singapore. It is now the site of Singapore Changi Airport/Changi Air Base, Changi Naval Base and is also home to Changi Prison, site of the former Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during World War II which held Allied prisoners captured in Singapore and Malaysia...
jail before transported to the then Japanese colony of Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. Edwards was put into the Kinkaseki POW camp, a mountainous region near Jiufen, where he and 526 other inmates were forced to work the copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
mine daily in tropical heat. His team was required to bring out 24 bogeys of copper every single day, if not, they were then beaten. Only 64 survived when the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945. He and others were so emaciated that their eyes were sunken and their bodies mere skeletons of their former selves. He was rescued by US Marines who later made him an honorary Marine.
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. While visiting Kinkaseki he found Document No. 2701 — the only surviving copy of the Japanese order to massacre all prisoners of war if the Allies landed on the Japanese home islands — and an important piece of evidence at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.On his return to South Wales
South Wales
South Wales is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated region in the south-west of the United Kingdom, it is home to around 2.1 million people and includes the capital city of...
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
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
in 1963. Edwards took up a post as a housing officer in the housing department
Housing Department
Housing Department is a department of Hong Kong Government, managing public housing estates that were built by Hong Kong Housing Authority in Hong Kong. It reports to the Housing, Planning and Lands Bureau, which is headed by the Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands.-See also:* Hong Kong...
of the Hong Kong administration. Later, he became a senior housing manager for Hongkong Land
Hongkong Land
Hongkong Land is one of Asia’s leading property investment, management and development groups with premium commercial and residential property interests across the region. It owns and manages some five million square feet of commercial space in Hong Kong’s Central Business District serving...
. 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.
Life as a campaigner
In 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, Edwards started to help the Hong Kong people with the 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 the Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He was in favour to the Hong Kong people by showing a Union Jack flag which was hoisted in Hong Kong during 1945, and proclaimed the contributions from the British Army and local veterans in the program.Through his dogged, tireless efforts as the chairman of the Royal British Legion (Hong Kong and China branch), in 1991 Edwards succeeded in winning monthly pension awards from the British government to ethnic Chinese veterans and their widows.
A greater triumph came in 1997 when Edwards fought and won the granting of British citizenship to wives and widows of those veterans.
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
Japanese military yen
Japanese Military Yen , commonly abbreviated as JMY, was the :currency issued to the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy as a salary. The Imperial Japanese government first started issuing the military yen during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904...
.
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 ArmyPeople's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on August 1, 1927 — celebrated annually as "PLA Day" — as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...
dance troupe whom he met in the 1970s. They lived in a flat in Sha Tin
Sha Tin
Sha Tin, also spelled Shatin, is an area around the Shing Mun River in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Administratively, it is part of the Sha Tin District.-Geography:...
in the New Territories
New Territories
New Territories is one of the three main regions of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. It makes up 86.2% of Hong Kong's territory. Historically, it is the region described in The Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory...
. Both he and Polly loved dancing by practising to the tunes of Taiwanese
Music of Taiwan
Taiwan is densely-populated and culturally diverse, including a majority of Bensheng ren , a powerful faction waishengren who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in the middle of the 20th century and the minority of aboriginal peoples.With the arrival of the KMT led Republic of China government in 1949,...
songs in their small living-room.
Edwards spoke fluent Cantonese. He is survived by his wife and her daughter by her first marriage.
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 MontrealMontrealMontreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
with two-thirds of the way to go. - After being requested by Diana, Princess of WalesDiana, Princess of WalesDiana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
to find the grave of Major-General Merton Beckwith-SmithMerton Beckwith-SmithMajor-General Merton Beckwith-Smith DSO MC MA was a British Army officer during the First and Second World Wars .- Early career :...
, the father of Princess Diana's lady-in-waiting who had died as a POW in Japan, Edwards managed to locate it. - In 1981 the National Film Board of Canada released A War Story: Based on the Diaries of Dr. Ben Wheeler, 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 semaphoreFlag semaphoreSemaphore Flags is the system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position...
in the camp as he had learned it in the Boys' BrigadeBoys' BrigadeFor the 80s New Wave band from Canada, see Boys Brigade .The Boys' Brigade is an interdenominational Christian youth organisation, conceived by William Alexander Smith to combine drill and fun activities with Christian values...
. 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. Interestingly, there was only one crew member on the aircraft who could read semaphore and he had learned it in the Boy Scouts of AmericaBoy Scouts of AmericaThe Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
.
Quotes
Further reading
- POW rights campaigner Jack Edwards dies, Taipei Times
- Jack Edwards, Telegraph
- Gov't mourns WWII veteran Jack Edwards Announcement from the Hong Kong Government