The+War+Outside+of+Europe

When we say "World War 2", we really mean "world". World War 1 was largely a European affair, with other countries coming to fight there, such as Canada. World War 2 was different. Europe was the key battleground, but the war was also fought in Africa and Asia. Italy had attacked Northern Africa in the lead-up to World War 2 and Germany followed. Below you'll find the events that led to Canadian soldiers becoming POWs in Japanese camps.

**Soldiers in the Pacific**

So far we've looked at World War 2 in Europe. But Japan had been at war with its neighbours, especially China, since 1937. In 1939, Japan joined the Axis nations and continued its military operations in the Pacific. It was decided to send Canadian and other Allied soldiers to Hong Kong - a British colony at the time - to try to keep it from falling to Japan.

The Canadian troops saw little action there until late in 1941. At that time the British expected Japan to attack, so they urgently requested more troops. In October 1941, 1975 Canadian soldiers were shipped from Vancouver, arriving in Hong Kong in mid-November. They formed part of a total defence force of 14 000 troops.

On December 8, Japan attacked. It captured Hong Kong in only 17 days. By the time Hong Kong surrendered on Christmas Day, 290 Canadians had been killed and 493 injured. This was a total casualty rate of almost 40 percent. The survivors spent the rest of the war as prisoners of war (POWs).

The POWs in Japanese camps were badly treated. Many were not given enough food, were forced to do hard labour or to march long distances to new locations. POWs found to have broken camp rules were brutally punished. Certainly the conditions that the Canadians met in the Japanese POW camps were among the very worst in the war, with the exception only of the concentration camps in Europe.

**TIMELINE: Key Events In the Pacific War**

1937: War between Japan and China begins

1940: Japanese troops occupy Malaya, Vietnam, and other countries in Southeast Asia

1941: Japanese troops capture Hong Kong, taking Canadian troops prisoner

1941: Japanese air force attacks American base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; United States declares war on Japan and Germany

1943: American forces begin to push back Japanese occupiers and liberate captured territory

1945: American planes drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders after tens of thousands of civilians are killed. The very day of the surrender, the US continued to bomb Japan, killing thousands more.

John Ford, from Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland, became a POW after being captured in Java in 1942. He was first held in Singapore, and then taken to Nagasaki, where he was put to work building ships.

It was slave labour... You'd have your breakfast (a small tin of rice) in the morning. You'd take your lunch with you, a little rice can. Then, when you'd go back to the camp again at night, the same thing, a little bit of rice. Occasionally, probably once a month or once every two months, you'd get a bit of cabbage stew. Nothing, only water. Danette Dooley, "A-Bomb Survivor Wants Recognition," //St. John's Evening Telegram//, 20 August 2005

<span style="font: 150% 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.3px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Tasks <span style="font: 150% 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.3px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">1. Find 4 countries/places where Canada fought in WW2, make sure that 2 are outside of Europe. Now, find some way to calculate the rough distance from Ottawa and list all of the distances. <span style="font: 150% 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.3px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2. Name 3 difficulties of fighting a war that is so far spread out.