Why Mukden ?
[updated: January 18, 2023]
… it is about an old discussion we had had on the Topica chat list. The answers were so negative that, finally, I rubbed it out of the website ― but it is still available on the server. … And I still believe that Marylou’s hypothesis was correct and that Father deJaegher’s message to us (in his book) was to inform us that we were scheduled to go to Mukden:
to be wiped out in Unit 731.
Imagine what could have happened?
Remember that in 1950 (when the book was published) ― all about Unit 731 was ultra-confidential and that the censors would have rubbed out the paragraph from that chapter of his book if it had been written more explicitly !!!!
From: Tapol
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 10:23 AM
Subject: Weihsien & Unit-731
Hello,
My little sister, Mary-Lou, born in camp (7 July, 1944) graduated from Brussels University (U.L.B.) as a journalist. Before she died, we (her family) knew that she was preparing to write a book about what she called then: “our family saga in the Far East”. Being born in Weihsien made her to be very interested on the subject and I know that she had had long conversations about that with her mother.
She once told me that Father DeJaegher knew!
Knew what?
She told me to read Father deJaegher’s chapter about Weihsien and that it had something to do with Unit-731.
Here is the excerpt (last pages …)
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/rdjaegher/text/ChapterXVIII.htm
“He and two other camp guards were very young idealistic men who had been inflamed by the propaganda of their own militarists and induced to throw themselves into this "great and honourable war." They were wounded in the fighting on the Malay Peninsula, and their disillusionment was complete after their experiences there. They had grown more and more bitterly opposed to the war until they were really fanatical pacifists when I encountered them in camp, as violently anti-war as they had been for it before they left home. It was not too hard to win these young men over to our side and, while they remained Japanese soldiers, under military jurisdiction, doing their duty as guards, they had no heart for their work and helped us enormously. They began to give us all kinds of information, and of course I encouraged them, as did the Gervasi. It was thus I learned that the war was not going well and that plans were under way to move the various interment camps scattered all over the Pacific area. The prisoners in the Philippine camps were to be sent either to Hong Kong or Japan; the Hong Kong camps were to be moved to Shanghai, the Shanghai camps to Peiping, the Peiping camps to Mukden. Of course the military prisoners in these places, as well as the civil internees, would be moved, and the leapfrogging arrangement was to gain time and hold onto as many of these captives of war as possible, as long as possible, for bargaining purposes.
Since we would be included in the Peiping grouping, we would inevitably go to Mukden. I knew it would be extremely bad for us if this move went through, particularly for the women, because Mukden is a rugged place at all times and devastatingly cold and bleak in winter. I realized we would have to do something, and so did the committee in whom I confided my news. We made emergency contact with the guerrillas and inquired how long it would take them to bomb the railway from Tsinan to Tsingtao, the road through which we would have to be evacuated. The word came back quickly, and it was cheering. They would need only one day's notice. Knowing we could always count on that, and that we need never have to move, we relaxed.
It was not just messages like ------- etc. “
If I understand well, --- all camps in Asia were to be moved “one step” Northwards !! ??
Why?
Nowadays, we know much more about Unit-731 situated near Harbin in Manchuria. Not a single prisoner survived from that camp, a sinister place where medical experimentations were made on human bodies. Mostly Chinese, Russians and POWs from Mukden.
Father DeJaegher was very fluent in Chinese and very well accepted by the Chinese population. He was also very well informed as to what was going on in many parts of China during the war, (as well as before and after the war). Could he have had any knowledge of the atrocities going on in Harbin? Unit-731? Could he have known that POWs from Mukden were disappearing to be dissected in the Japs’ laboratories of Unit-731?
It seems to me that he must have known that everything possible had to be done to prevent us – civilian captives in Weihsien – from going up North. To Mukden which is very close to Harbin --- and from there to Unit 731. Not only for the climate (as he writes) but also for our lives … )
We were all in relatively good health and excellent material for the Japs’ experimentations on humans. Furthermore there were many children in our group.
A question to our historians:
Our Japanese captors could exterminate us at any time & place they wished.
Historians have found written orders for that. 
Do you think that my hypothesis about Unit-731 is plausible?
Best regards,
Leopold
From: Fred & Coral Dreggs
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 2:37 AM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Dear Leopold,
To cut a long story short, there are 491,000 pages on the internet dealing with the subject "Unit - 731".
I have never heard of it and am now astonished to read that a unit such as that really did exist and has dreadful matters attached to it reminiscent of Dr. Mengles(?) in German concentration camps etc. I have not yet read what has appeared on the net but am bringing this to the attention of readers.
Regards..
Fred aka Alfie
From: Tapol
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Dear Everybody,
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/unit%C3%A9+731/video/x4emmn_les-fantomes-de-l-unite-731-part1_politics
This URL brings you to a recent & interesting TV documentary about the subject. Its in French but there are many other videos in English, as Fred mentions in his message. First time I heard of 731 ---- must have been in the mid-eighties. It's a real nightmare!
Best regards,
Leopold
From: Ron Bridge
To: weihsien@topica.com
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 10:38 AM
Subject: RE: Weihsien & Unit-731
Unit 731 is one thing but to link it with Weihsien is ridiculous. I have seen much on Unit 731 and at no time did Weihsien feature as a possible source of humans for laboratory experimental use.
I have just read through all the reports written both during the war and by the Duck and other release teams and there is no mention whatsoever of a move to Mukden.
Readers of this bulletin board should realise that the whole of all internment camps lived on rumour it is a very natural human activity and when there is no authoritative news of events they are invented and then embellished at each telling, with optimists giving one slant followed by pessimists turning it round.
Ron
From: Albert de Zutter
To: weihsien@topica.com
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2009 6:23 AM
Subject: RE: Weihsien & Unit-731
I don't think it's correct to dismiss Leopold's hypothesis about Weihsien and Unit 731 as "ridiculous."
The two soldiers cited in the passage of Father De Jaegher's book did say there was a plan to move all the camps toward the north, and since we were the "Peking group," north for us would have meant Mukden.
Whether or not that was to have been our fate, I think it was very fortunate that the war ended when it did and that the Duck Mission reached us three days after the cessation of hostilities. Had the war continued over another winter, many of us would not have survived anyway, whether from the cold and malnutrition in Weihsien or under the tender mercies of the Japanese "Doctors Mengele" in Mukden. Or, for that metter in just another camp in that frozen part of the world.
Albert de Zutter
From: Tapol
To: weihsien@topica.com
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2009 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Dear Ron,
Nonsense?
I don’t think so.
The author was a very intelligent man. His book was written after the war and he had ample time to correct and modify his prose before the book was published. He could have not written this short paragraph about Mukden and his chapter about Weihsien would have been just as spicy as it is now.
The fact is that he wrote that paragraph and that he explicitly mentions “Mukden” three times.
What message did he want to send us?
After the war and as a Catholic priest he was close to the entourage of Mr. & Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek and certainly had knowledge of a lot of very confidential information. The negotiations for the possession of all the scientific data concerning 731 took place then. All that was “Top Secret” and of course he couldn’t write that in his book. He would have been immediately censored.
Furthermore, when the war ended, the Japanese destroyed Unit-731 and with it --- all the compromising documents were burnt in Manchuria as well as in Japan. The whole episode was classified “Top Secret” in Japan and in the US.
No wonder you can’t read any official report about this.
---
So, if Father DeJaegher writes that we could have been sent to Mukden, I believe him. Once in a POW camp in Mukden, whether you are a civilian or a military --- you become a potential candidate for Unit-731. That’s just pure logic!
I hope that one day; a historian will find some written evidence about all this.
Not all has been said about WWII and some things, we will never know.
Best regards,
Leopold
From: David Birch
To: weihsien@topica.com
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 3:55 AM
Subject: RE: Weihsien & Unit-731
As far as I am concerned, I'll go with Ron Bridge. He is one of the very most well-informed people on the whole subject of Japanese internment camps in the Far East that I know about. And, of course, he was one of our fellow prisoners, as a boy, in Weihsien!
In fact through his work as a high executive with the ABCIFER organization, I among thousands of others who were prisoners of the Japanese, in the Far East, received thousands of dollars of special Ex Gratia grants from the British Government.
Yes it is true, of course, that we were very fortunate that the war ended when it did and that we were rescued promptly by Major Staiger and his men. But I don't think we were in any danger of being used as human guinea pigs by ghoulish Japanese versions of depraved Nazi medical men! I think that is sheer speculation with no real basis in provable fact.
David
From:
To:
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:19 AM
Subject: ONI report on Weihsien
I've uncovered a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence based on
> an interview with a missionary internee who was part of the 1943
> exchange. I'll pass it on to Leopold for the website.
>
> In it, the missionary tries to make the case that a raid could be made
> (long before the end of the war was in sight) to free the internees.
> This had just been done in the Philippines.
>
> I have never come across any primary source documents to suggest that
> this was seriously considered (the Chinese had their own wild scheme to
> free Weihsien) but I suspect that intelligence like this was available
> to the Duck Mission.
>
> I also came across a list of equipment carried by members of the various
> humanitarian missions.
From: Gay Talbot Stratford
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Dear Friends,
The fecent flurry of e-mails concermimg Weihsien and Mukden is interesting.
There is no doubt that Father de Jaegher was an intelligent man and a fine priest. He and his 'news team' risked' their lives to bring news and hope to the adults in camp. He was an unsung hero, and I have no difficulty in believing what he said.
Facts are facts of course, but all the facts are not yet in-- and may never be.
One of our sons is married to a Japanese girl who knew nothing about the war, except for the dropping of the atomic bombs. But in recent years an exhibit of camp 731 has been touring Japan. The place did exist ,and it was horrendous. Thousands of Chinese were not as lucky as we were.
Gay Talbot Stratford-
From: "Tapol"
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: ONI report on Weihsien
Dear Greg,
I'd gladly add that document to what we already have --- mostly thanks to
Norman Cliff's scrap-books.
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/NormanCliff/history/DOCUMENTS/1944-Oct18-TiptonHummel/ConditionsInWeihsien.htm
On the website, I added a short cut on the main frame:
"Documents&Archives" ----
Best regards,
Leopold
From: rod miller
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 5:23 AM
Subject: Situation reports Chinese camps
Hello
I'm not sure how interested you are but in the file below there are some references to Weihsien.
Due to the file title you probably haven't seen them before.
There are daily sitrep reports for August 1945.
If you want to look at these files in date order you start at the back and work your way to the front.
Pages 224 to 197 have mentions and there maybe others as I didn't go right through it.
Page 25-28 is a list of Australians at Weihsien.
For the link below to work you will have to be logged into the Australian National Archives as a guest
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/recordsearch/index.aspx
Then click the link below.
http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/imagine.asp?B=237699&I=1&SE=1
Title
Australian Prisoners of War and Internees.
Series number
A4144 Control symbol
810/1945 Contents date range
1944 - 1945
Access status
OpenLocation
Canberra
Barcode
237699
Regards
Rod
From: Ron Bridge
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 2:31 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Rod,
Many thanks I had seen some of the messages as they were in the UK National Archives. But as always there were some nuggets.
RGds
Ron
From: Ron Bridge
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 9:38 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Rod,
Just as a matter of info I am now understanding why there were so many discrepancies in numbers the NAA documents referred to give a host of Australians many of whom I knew or were friends of my grandparents or parents and the Camp document list as British (UK) and many of the children in the China Inland Mission School Chefoo who were in Weihsien and who had bee born in China of Australian parents have UK Birth Certificates.
It could be belt and braces as with Australia emerging on it's own in the Commonwealth post the 1931 conference British enjoyed extra-territoriality and were not subject to Chinese law where there was some doubt re Commonwealth Countries.
Thanks again thinking of me
Rgds
Ron
From: rod miller
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 11:59 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Ron
The reason I stumbled across this file is because I was researching the Australian POWs at Hainan.
Between January and September 1942 the Australian internees in China were probably valuable to the Japanese.
Australia had a diplomat in China Sir Frederick Eggleston. He arrived in Chungking in October 1941 and remained until 1944.
Its a complicated story to do with the British exchange but the Japanese desperately needed 800 Japanese we had interned in Australia. I mention them in my book. I'm pretty sure that our Prime Minister, John Curtin, put his foot down and said if it wasn't reciprocal
they weren't getting them.
At 07:38 AM 1/25/2009, you wrote:
Rod,
Just as a matter of info I am now understanding why there were so many discrepancies in numbers the NAA documents referred to give a host of Australians many of whom I knew or were friends of my grandparents or parents and the Camp document list as British (UK) and many of the children in the China Inland Mission School Chefoo who were in Weihsien and who had bee born in China of Australian parents have UK Birth Certificates.
This would be the trick, as for the exchange the British Government would be counting the heads as British where as the Australian Government would be counting them as Australian. I believe it was all about numbers and who was going to be returned on the exchange, people the British Government wanted, or people the Australian Government wanted. As you've pointed out to me before, in the British files people from the dominions were all named as British. The thing is Australia held the whip hand for although we weren't negotiating the exchange we had the internees the Japanese desperately needed.
It could be belt and braces as with Australia emerging on it's own in the Commonwealth post the 1931 conference British enjoyed extra-territoriality and were not sbject to Chinese law where there was some doubt re Commonwealth Countries.
Have a look at http://www.passports.gov.au/Web/PassportHistory.aspx The words 'Australian Passport' replaced 'British Passport' on the cover of an Australian passport in 1949. No wonder the Japanese were confused.
Thanks again thinking of me
You survivors of Weihsien are living history. Like all internees you can tell us what happened, which is terribly important, but you can't tell us why it happened. It is the "Why" factor that interests me.
I enjoy the lively debate in here. I can tell you that the Rabaul nurses who were interned in Japan, although completely different to you in the respect that there was only 19 of them, had many different guards, police, army and navy.
I think historian Margaret MacMillan http://www.margaretmacmillan.com/index.html summed it up nicely during a recent visit to Australia.
History is a process, and there is not one truth about the past, just as there is not one truth about the present. It will depend in part where you're looking at it from. What we have to try and do, in both history and in confronting the present, is recognise that our view is a limited one and it may not be the only one. And try and be aware of other angles and other aspects. We have to sort out what people think they believe and what we think we believe about the past from what actually happened. We have views on the past which are simply not borne out by the evidence. And I think that's what good history does, it respects the evidence and it tries to deal with evidence that doesn't fit in to a particular picture.
Maybe a lesson in that for all of us...
If I find anything else I'll let you know.
Regards
Rod
From: Pamela Masters
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Just a thought -- As Unit 731 was unknown to any of us internees till after the war was over, I can't see how we could have been spreading rumors about it in the camp.
Pamela Masters-Flynn
Since we would be included in the Peiping grouping, we would inevitably go to Mukden. I knew it would be extremely bad for us if this move went through, particularly for the women, because Mukden is a rugged place at all times and devastatingly cold and bleak in winter. I realized we would have to do something, and so did the committee in whom I confided my news. We made emergency contact with the guerrillas and inquired how long it would take them to bomb the railway from Tsinan to Tsingtao, the road through which we would have to be evacuated. The word came back quickly, and it was cheering. They would need only one day's notice. Knowing we could always count on that, and that we need never have to move, we relaxed.
It was not just messages like ------- etc. “
Why?
Nowadays, we know much more about Unit-731 situated near Harbin in Manchuria. Not a single prisoner survived from that camp, a sinister place where medical experimentations were made on human bodies. Mostly Chinese, Russians and POWs from Mukden.
Father DeJaegher was very fluent in Chinese and very well accepted by the Chinese population. He was also very well informed as to what was going on in many parts of China during the war, (as well as before and after the war). Could he have had any knowledge of the atrocities going on in Harbin? Unit-731? Could he have known that POWs from Mukden were disappearing to be dissected in the Japs’ laboratories of Unit-731?
It seems to me that he must have known that everything possible had to be done to prevent us – civilian captives in Weihsien – from going up North. To Mukden which is very close to Harbin --- and from there to Unit 731. Not only for the climate (as he writes) but also for our lives … )
We were all in relatively good health and excellent material for the Japs’ experimentations on humans. Furthermore there were many children in our group.
A question to our historians:
Our Japanese captors could exterminate us at any time & place they wished.
Historians have found written orders for that.
Do you think that my hypothesis about Unit-731 is plausible?
Best regards,
Leopold
To cut a long story short, there are 491,000 pages on the internet dealing with the subject "Unit - 731".
I have never heard of it and am now astonished to read that a unit such as that really did exist and has dreadful matters attached to it reminiscent of Dr. Mengles(?) in German concentration camps etc. I have not yet read what has appeared on the net but am bringing this to the attention of readers.
Regards..
Fred aka Alfie
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/unit%C3%A9+731/video/x4emmn_les-fantomes-de-l-unite-731-part1_politics
This URL brings you to a recent & interesting TV documentary about the subject. Its in French but there are many other videos in English, as Fred mentions in his message. First time I heard of 731 ---- must have been in the mid-eighties. It's a real nightmare!
Best regards,
Leopold
I have just read through all the reports written both during the war and by the Duck and other release teams and there is no mention whatsoever of a move to Mukden.
Readers of this bulletin board should realise that the whole of all internment camps lived on rumour it is a very natural human activity and when there is no authoritative news of events they are invented and then embellished at each telling, with optimists giving one slant followed by pessimists turning it round.
Ron
The two soldiers cited in the passage of Father De Jaegher's book did say there was a plan to move all the camps toward the north, and since we were the "Peking group," north for us would have meant Mukden.
Whether or not that was to have been our fate, I think it was very fortunate that the war ended when it did and that the Duck Mission reached us three days after the cessation of hostilities. Had the war continued over another winter, many of us would not have survived anyway, whether from the cold and malnutrition in Weihsien or under the tender mercies of the Japanese "Doctors Mengele" in Mukden. Or, for that metter in just another camp in that frozen part of the world.
Albert de Zutter
Nonsense?
I don’t think so.
The author was a very intelligent man. His book was written after the war and he had ample time to correct and modify his prose before the book was published. He could have not written this short paragraph about Mukden and his chapter about Weihsien would have been just as spicy as it is now.
The fact is that he wrote that paragraph and that he explicitly mentions “Mukden” three times.
What message did he want to send us?
After the war and as a Catholic priest he was close to the entourage of Mr. & Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek and certainly had knowledge of a lot of very confidential information. The negotiations for the possession of all the scientific data concerning 731 took place then. All that was “Top Secret” and of course he couldn’t write that in his book. He would have been immediately censored.
Furthermore, when the war ended, the Japanese destroyed Unit-731 and with it --- all the compromising documents were burnt in Manchuria as well as in Japan. The whole episode was classified “Top Secret” in Japan and in the US.
No wonder you can’t read any official report about this.
---
So, if Father DeJaegher writes that we could have been sent to Mukden, I believe him. Once in a POW camp in Mukden, whether you are a civilian or a military --- you become a potential candidate for Unit-731. That’s just pure logic!
I hope that one day; a historian will find some written evidence about all this.
Not all has been said about WWII and some things, we will never know.
Best regards,
Leopold
In fact through his work as a high executive with the ABCIFER organization, I among thousands of others who were prisoners of the Japanese, in the Far East, received thousands of dollars of special Ex Gratia grants from the British Government.
Yes it is true, of course, that we were very fortunate that the war ended when it did and that we were rescued promptly by Major Staiger and his men. But I don't think we were in any danger of being used as human guinea pigs by ghoulish Japanese versions of depraved Nazi medical men! I think that is sheer speculation with no real basis in provable fact.
David
To:
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:19 AM
Subject: ONI report on Weihsien
I've uncovered a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence based on
> an interview with a missionary internee who was part of the 1943
> exchange. I'll pass it on to Leopold for the website.
>
> In it, the missionary tries to make the case that a raid could be made
> (long before the end of the war was in sight) to free the internees.
> This had just been done in the Philippines.
>
> I have never come across any primary source documents to suggest that
> this was seriously considered (the Chinese had their own wild scheme to
> free Weihsien) but I suspect that intelligence like this was available
> to the Duck Mission.
>
> I also came across a list of equipment carried by members of the various
> humanitarian missions.
From: Gay Talbot Stratford
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Dear Friends,
The fecent flurry of e-mails concermimg Weihsien and Mukden is interesting.
There is no doubt that Father de Jaegher was an intelligent man and a fine priest. He and his 'news team' risked' their lives to bring news and hope to the adults in camp. He was an unsung hero, and I have no difficulty in believing what he said.
Facts are facts of course, but all the facts are not yet in-- and may never be.
One of our sons is married to a Japanese girl who knew nothing about the war, except for the dropping of the atomic bombs. But in recent years an exhibit of camp 731 has been touring Japan. The place did exist ,and it was horrendous. Thousands of Chinese were not as lucky as we were.
Gay Talbot Stratford-
From: "Tapol"
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: ONI report on Weihsien
Dear Greg,
I'd gladly add that document to what we already have --- mostly thanks to
Norman Cliff's scrap-books.
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/NormanCliff/history/DOCUMENTS/1944-Oct18-TiptonHummel/ConditionsInWeihsien.htm
On the website, I added a short cut on the main frame:
"Documents&Archives" ----
Best regards,
Leopold
From: rod miller
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 5:23 AM
Subject: Situation reports Chinese camps
Hello
I'm not sure how interested you are but in the file below there are some references to Weihsien.
Due to the file title you probably haven't seen them before.
There are daily sitrep reports for August 1945.
If you want to look at these files in date order you start at the back and work your way to the front.
Pages 224 to 197 have mentions and there maybe others as I didn't go right through it.
Page 25-28 is a list of Australians at Weihsien.
For the link below to work you will have to be logged into the Australian National Archives as a guest
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/recordsearch/index.aspx
Then click the link below.
http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/imagine.asp?B=237699&I=1&SE=1
Title
Australian Prisoners of War and Internees.
Series number
A4144 Control symbol
810/1945 Contents date range
1944 - 1945
Access status
OpenLocation
Canberra
Barcode
237699
Regards
Rod
From: Ron Bridge
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 2:31 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Rod,
Many thanks I had seen some of the messages as they were in the UK National Archives. But as always there were some nuggets.
RGds
Ron
From: Ron Bridge
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 9:38 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Rod,
Just as a matter of info I am now understanding why there were so many discrepancies in numbers the NAA documents referred to give a host of Australians many of whom I knew or were friends of my grandparents or parents and the Camp document list as British (UK) and many of the children in the China Inland Mission School Chefoo who were in Weihsien and who had bee born in China of Australian parents have UK Birth Certificates.
It could be belt and braces as with Australia emerging on it's own in the Commonwealth post the 1931 conference British enjoyed extra-territoriality and were not subject to Chinese law where there was some doubt re Commonwealth Countries.
Thanks again thinking of me
Rgds
Ron
From: rod miller
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 11:59 PM
Subject: RE: Situation reports Chinese camps
Ron
The reason I stumbled across this file is because I was researching the Australian POWs at Hainan.
Between January and September 1942 the Australian internees in China were probably valuable to the Japanese.
Australia had a diplomat in China Sir Frederick Eggleston. He arrived in Chungking in October 1941 and remained until 1944.
Its a complicated story to do with the British exchange but the Japanese desperately needed 800 Japanese we had interned in Australia. I mention them in my book. I'm pretty sure that our Prime Minister, John Curtin, put his foot down and said if it wasn't reciprocal
they weren't getting them.
At 07:38 AM 1/25/2009, you wrote:Rod,
Just as a matter of info I am now understanding why there were so many discrepancies in numbers the NAA documents referred to give a host of Australians many of whom I knew or were friends of my grandparents or parents and the Camp document list as British (UK) and many of the children in the China Inland Mission School Chefoo who were in Weihsien and who had bee born in China of Australian parents have UK Birth Certificates.
This would be the trick, as for the exchange the British Government would be counting the heads as British where as the Australian Government would be counting them as Australian. I believe it was all about numbers and who was going to be returned on the exchange, people the British Government wanted, or people the Australian Government wanted. As you've pointed out to me before, in the British files people from the dominions were all named as British. The thing is Australia held the whip hand for although we weren't negotiating the exchange we had the internees the Japanese desperately needed.
It could be belt and braces as with Australia emerging on it's own in the Commonwealth post the 1931 conference British enjoyed extra-territoriality and were not sbject to Chinese law where there was some doubt re Commonwealth Countries.
Have a look at http://www.passports.gov.au/Web/PassportHistory.aspx The words 'Australian Passport' replaced 'British Passport' on the cover of an Australian passport in 1949. No wonder the Japanese were confused.
Thanks again thinking of me
You survivors of Weihsien are living history. Like all internees you can tell us what happened, which is terribly important, but you can't tell us why it happened. It is the "Why" factor that interests me.
I enjoy the lively debate in here. I can tell you that the Rabaul nurses who were interned in Japan, although completely different to you in the respect that there was only 19 of them, had many different guards, police, army and navy.
I think historian Margaret MacMillan http://www.margaretmacmillan.com/index.html summed it up nicely during a recent visit to Australia.
History is a process, and there is not one truth about the past, just as there is not one truth about the present. It will depend in part where you're looking at it from. What we have to try and do, in both history and in confronting the present, is recognise that our view is a limited one and it may not be the only one. And try and be aware of other angles and other aspects. We have to sort out what people think they believe and what we think we believe about the past from what actually happened. We have views on the past which are simply not borne out by the evidence. And I think that's what good history does, it respects the evidence and it tries to deal with evidence that doesn't fit in to a particular picture.
Maybe a lesson in that for all of us...
If I find anything else I'll let you know.
Regards
Rod
From: Pamela Masters
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: Weihsien & Unit-731
Just a thought -- As Unit 731 was unknown to any of us internees till after the war was over, I can't see how we could have been spreading rumors about it in the camp.
Pamela Masters-Flynn