Dan Snow's History Hit - My Life as a Child Prisoner of War

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

The Imperial Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began on December 25, 1941, after the then Governor, Sir Mark Young, surrendered the British Crown colony to the Empire of Japan. The occupation lasted until Japan surrendered at the end of World War Two.Joining Dan on the podcast today is Barbara Sowerby, who was born in Hong Kong in 1936 to an English father and Portuguese mother. Aged just five years old, Barbara’s happy childhood would change when her family were amongst the fleeing civilians caught and imprisoned by the Imperial Japanese Army. Barbara shares the remarkable story of her time as a child prisoner of war.This episode is dedicated to Barbara’s late husband Keith Sowerby. Keith detailed the remarkable story of Barbara’s early life and had hoped, before his passing, to publish a book of this extraordinary account.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The other day Team History Hit were filming in a little village in Wiltshire in southern England. We're on the hunt for archaeology, material culture, things left behind by Easy Company, that unit of the 101st Airborne that were made famous by the book and the TV series, now probably the most famous allied unit from the Second World War. We found some really very special things. We found a dog tag belonging to a member of Easy Company. We got in touch with his descendants. It's all been a great documentary over on History Hit TV.

But while we were there, we also just stumbled across a veteran of a different sort. We met Barbara Sowerby. She was a child living in Hong Kong at the outbreak of the Second World War. Once Japan invaded Hong Kong, she and her family were taken into custody. She spent from 1941 to 1945 as a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army. I was lucky enough to meet Barbara and her husband Keith and their son, and they welcomed me into their house. A few weeks later, we recorded this podcast with Barbara, talking about her experiences as a young girl in a prison of war camp. But the sad news was that her husband, Keith,

who'd done much to set it up and encourage her to do this interview, passed away just after we recorded this episode. I obviously checked with Barbara and Keith's son, Stephen. He wants us to share this episode. He's been kind enough to say that it's what his dad would have wanted. He was always very proud of his wife's tenacity and resilience. And so this episode is dedicated to Keith Sowerby, who for decades and decades was a wonderful husband to Barbara and a great dad to Stephen. If you wish to go and watch a documentary about the Band of Brothers, please go to History at TV. You can follow the link in the notes for this podcast. Just click on that and then type Band of Brothers in and it will take you there

straight away. You can have a look at that and the other archaeology that we found. In the meantime, folks, here's the remarkable story of Barbara Sowerby told by the woman herself. Enjoy. Barbara, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Tell me about your life in Hong Kong before the war. It was idyllic. We had servants. Dad was the overseer of the docks, Wampu Docks.

Dad came from Somerset. Mother was Portuguese. And we had a nice house, someone to do the cooking and everything. I had a nanny. So it was a nice life. And how old were you when you first heard stories that war might be coming or you first got an inkling something bad was on the way? Because mother took us out of our beds and put us in the garage at the bottom of the house,

which was called a go down. She put a mattress down because I was just over five and Nanny was with me as well and we stayed there while the bombing was going. We didn't go upstairs at all. We stayed on this concrete floor on a mattress for blankets and things. And how old were you, about five or six years old? Just five. I'd just started school and we were taken out of school because the Japanese had raided. I didn't realise what was going on at that age. But I thought it was strange that I had to come out of my comfortable bed and lie on this floor. But we did as we were told.

And it was three days we were there. Mother made the Christmas puddings and I can remember them hanging in the old muslin style and the steam because it was day before Christmas Eve that we left. I remember the tannoy saying the last ship was going. Mother had five minutes to pack for the three boys. My older sister, her husband was in the army, didn't know where he was. She had a child about the same age as me and we struggled outside and it was then I saw fires and holes and then I got frightened and my brother helped me with my case. We all had a suitcase and our names were painted on there. We all ran, other families from the dockyard. We ended up in Lido Club by the sea, Repulse Bay, where happier times we went to play. Before that, we were running and stopping in

different hotels with windows shattered and lying on the floors. And then when it was safe, we'd got up and run again. And then that's when we landed up at Lido. Did you think you might get a boat to safety? Well, we were hoping, but we'd missed the last boat from the docks. But there was bombing all the time. So I don't know if that last boat got away, but we missed it. So we were held up in this Lido club, beautiful place. And the mothers went and raided the cupboards and tried to feed us the next morning. We were sleeping on the marble floor on bath towels, I remember. Mother kept me close in the cubicles. It was cubicles. And while we were trying to eat something, the Japanese broke in and with their rifle butts,

they just shouted, of course we couldn't understand what they were saying, pushed everyone else with the butts of their rifles outside. And then we had to queue up in the hot sun all day from different groups of people, whichever nationality they were. And they took everybody's names down. And we stood there all day without a drink or anything in this hot sun. And I was hanging onto my mother's skirt and my brothers were nearby as well. And by the end of the day, by as well and by the end of the day it seemed to take ages they got lorries and we were put in the back of lorries and driven for a long time it was dark by the time we reached Stanley and we ended up in St Stephen's quarters and I was saying to mum can't we stop for bread and jam I just want

a piece of bread and jam mum I'll be all piece of bread and jam. Mum, I'll be all right then. We haven't had any dinner. I can remember saying this. But when you've had such a good life and suddenly it's turned upside down, these horrible memories stay. At any rate, we got into St Stephen's Quarters, which was a college,

and they used it for a hospital, the English. And I remember I couldn't walk on the floor. It was sticky. All the adults put us to bed. In the morning, it was very strange getting up, sleeping with strangers in this big room. And even the governor of Hong Kong was in the camp with us. Until we got sorted out, they tried to keep families together. We were put in the Indian quarter, where the Indian soldiers were. Because being a colony, there was lots of different soldiers there, Canadians, all sorts, Australians. Anyway, we had a room, 12 by 8, something like that,

where the Indian soldiers used to sleep. We had running water. We had a kitchen, but nothing to cook with, and bunk beds. We ended up, got sorted out, my three brothers, mother and me, in one room. My sister and her husband managed to escape. He was bayoneted in the bottom, And luckily, we had a doctor in the camp and a hospital of sorts. But he didn't have any medicine. There was a black market going on, of course.

And unbeknown to me, my mother had saw what happened to women who the men couldn't get the rings off. They just cut their fingers. My mother had sewn it in the lapels of my coat being small she thought they won't touch the little children we settled in and sometimes if someone tried to escape the Japanese would have everybody out whether you were ill you couldn't walk you had to get out and we all had to stand sometimes for hours while they counted us. And every morning a bell would go in the cookhouse just up the road.

And my elder brother, 14, George, would go and get breakfast in army cans. And it was about two dessert spoons of runny rice, it's supposed to be a porridge, per person. That was your breakfast. And then the bell would go for tiffin, lunchtime, and my brother would go and collect it. This is the main meal of the day. You had a tiny sprat and a spoonful of boiled rice. And then that was it.

And I used to say, haven't we got anything else mum no can I have one of your cakes mum said I'm sorry I can't bake here I was about six and a half then and knew by then that this wasn't a nice place to be in and And on the way to camp, though Mother tried to shield us, we saw lorries and lorries of bodies that were being collected. You listened to Dan Snow's history. I'm talking to Barbara Sowerby about being a prisoner of the Japanese

in the Second World War. More coming up. Millions dead. A higher proportion of civilian casualties than in the Second World War. More coming up. Millions dead, a higher proportion of civilian casualties than in the Second World War. America, Britain, Russia and China all involved in a conflict that technically remains active to this day. So why is the Korean War of 1950-53 called the Forgotten War? This July, we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out what this unique conflict was all about. Join me, James Rogers, throughout July on the Warfare

podcast from History Hit, as we remember the war the world forgot. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. My father was in the Hong Kong Volunteer Force, and my two brothers, 17, William and Edward, just coming up to 19, and Frederick, who was 20. They all joined the volunteer. And last time I saw my father, I just saw a lot of khaki uniforms and we were waving.

saw a lot of khaki uniforms and we were waving. Before they got in Hong Kong, the government had told the English people to burn everything you can, take out what you can and get out. And it was Australia. So Dad took us down to the docks and we went to get on and they pushed my mother aside. At that time, Australia had a different view for colours. Dad could take all us children,

all 10 of us, but he couldn't take his wife. So dad stayed behind. That was his death warrant because they were caught up eventually and taken as false labour to Japan and only one came back. and only one came back. My brother in Hong Kong, Edward, had surrendered. William died in the first three days bombing with a lot of other young men. I mean, they joined up without knowing how to hold a rifle, let alone fire it. All my grandparents on my mother's side were killed in the bombing. Just she had one sister that survived because she had gone to pick up the children from school or something. They shipped dad back to Hong Kong. By then he was blind where

they'd beaten him. My other brother was made to watch in Japan. They were unloading ships for the Japanese and my brother only survived Fred because he could eat what he could see managed to open tins of fruit and whatever but he had to hide the evidence he couldn't take anything to his father because you know they had to work in separate places so poor dad died of beriberi where they beat him because he wouldn't work. And they shipped him back to Hong Kong because dad, being the overseer of the dock, could speak all the dialects of Chinese. And I expect he understood a bit of Japan as well. So they shipped him back and he died in Bowen Hospital. He got someone to write a letter to mum to say, Angelina,

there's nothing here now. You're to take the children to my brother in Somerset. Arthur knows you're coming. And he apologised for all his misdoings to him. We were pushed out on the balcony not to listen. But you know what children are like. We were listening to this letter and everyone was crying. They were crying. We knew there was something wrong. And we knew that father had died in this hospital. But father had luckily was in the bed next to a Portuguese solicitor and did a will.

And it was secretly buried in the garden in the bed next to a Portuguese solicitor and did a will. And it was secretly buried in the garden in the hospital. And this man, after the war, had remembered where it was. They must have made a marker or something. And he left mum a good pension and money till we were 16. How much did you weigh at the end of the war? Just over 28 pounds. I looked like a three-year-old instead of a nine-years-old. That's what I looked like. I was very tiny. When you were liberated? Yes. How did we find out? Yeah. Well, it was very quiet and we couldn't

understand it. We woke up and we were frightened to go outside. We looked over the balcony. There was no Japanese about. Looked on the beach, couldn't see anyone guarding or anything. Then a plane came very low and parcels were being dumped out and they were shouting out, the war has ended, the war has ended. Mine ended up on August the 15 15th six months after the german war

six months after we were still locked up japanese had disappeared but we had to wait we were so wanting to get out this big big gate and it was medical officer and they had to push us back and they were spraying us with DT or whatever, pumping all this stuff on us. For three days we had to stay while they checked us all over. Then we were taken to small ships and then on to the Empress Australia, great big ship, to come over to my uncles who I'd never met. You know, I had my mother. How did it affect the rest of your life, that experience as a child? I'll tell you a story before I tell you how it's affected me. We hadn't gone to the Indian quarters and there was a boy

a few years older than us and he was bullying my niece and my niece would not hit him back. I said you hit him you hit him so I'm afraid I got hold of his head and I was so angry with him his head was like jam and it took two adults to pull me off and at that age I said to myself I must never lose my temper like that again. Never. And I don't lose my temper very often. But I stand up for my rights, mind. I won't have injustice. He was all right, but he never bullied Rosemary again. What about the rest of your life? You obviously say don't lose your temper. Is there anything else that you still do today because of your experiences as a child oh yes i don't like waste of anything i seem to collect cardboard boxes thinking they would make nice parcels and i mend clothes but i can't do it so much now as i'm older because my sightings are good and barbara do you have nightmares do you still see these things in your head? I think it was hunger more than anything else and screams that

I hear sometimes. When I first came out of camp, I used to have awful nightmares and I had to sleep with my mother until I was nearly 17 because I had such terrible nightmares. There's no counselling or anything in them days. Well, I just want to say thank you so much, Barbara. That was very, very moving indeed. Thank you for sharing it with us. And you're now, how old are you now? I should be 86 in October. Amazing. Well, I just want to say a huge thank you, Barbara, for coming on and telling us all about it. Well, thank you. It's very, very moving. I look forward to seeing you again next time I'm in Wiltshire. I love watching your programmes. That's very, very moving. I look forward to seeing you again next time I'm in Wiltshire. I love watching your programmes.

That's very kind. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end

of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial to that project. If you did feel like doing me a favour, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic. And feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners, depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you.