MOOSE JAW — Imperial Japan’s formal surrender to the Allies on Sept. 2, 1945, officially ended the Second World War after six long years, while it also kick-started the process to repatriate thousands of prisoners of war (PoWs) — including Canadian soldier Adam Schnell.
Japan had announced on Aug. 15, 1945, that it would quit the war, a decision likely influenced by the United States dropping two atomic bombs earlier that month and the Soviet Union invading the Imperial power’s puppet state of Manchukuo, in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in northeast China.
The surrender ceremony occurred in Tokyo Bay on the battleship USS Missouri, with hundreds of dignitaries and military personnel from the Allied powers in attendance, along with senior Japanese officials.
Representing Canada was Col. Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, who was the military attaché to Australia.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong and Japan, roughly 1,400 Canadian soldiers were still awaiting their release, including Adam Schnell.
Schnell had originally enlisted with the South Saskatchewan Regiment in 1940, but because he wanted to see some overseas action, he transferred to the Winnipeg Grenadiers.
Lance-Cpl. Schnell was one of 1,975 soldiers who were later sent to defend Hong Kong in November 1941, but the garrison surrendered to the Japanese on Christmas Day, and the remaining 1,689 Canadians were sent into captivity at the Sham Shui Po PoW Camp.
The garrison could have held out longer against the invaders, but equipment that was destined for Hong Kong was rerouted to Manila, Philippines, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.
“We lost 557 men (in total). Two hundred and sixty-eight of those died in captivity,” Schnell told the Times-Herald in 1991, according to an archival article.
Many men spent “the best years of their lives” dying from malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases, he recalled. What was worse was that Japan hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention, which meant prisoners didn’t have much protection.
“It was wicked. In battle, you have a chance. In the prison camp, you didn’t know what to expect,” Schnell said. “Any of the guards could call you and slap or beat you.”
Adding insult to injury, one of the guards, a Japanese-Canadian named Kanao Inouye, was the worst of them all. The article noted that after the war, while the Allies gave some camp guards life sentences, they executed Inouye for treason since he killed three prisoners and injured many others.
Schnell recalled living in the PoW camp for 18 months before being shipped to Japan for slave labour. He spent a year working in a shipyard in Yokohama and then worked in the coal mines at Sandai before his liberation in September 1945. He noted that prisoners of war worked seven days a week.
“There was no such thing as Sunday,” he said, adding that men could wash their clothes every three weeks, while cleaning the latrines was their only break. Even though they worked hard, the Japanese fed them poorly.
“We ate rice, dried fish and grasshoppers,” the veteran continued. “We used a lot of animals in the shipyard, and if one of them died, it would be in the stew for a few days.”
During his 44 months of captivity, Schnell, who stood 5-9, went from 145 pounds to 85 pounds, although he noted that he “was in good shape compared to others.”
Schnell and just over 1,400 other surviving Canadian PoWs returned to Canada in late 1945 and were released in 1946.
According to the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association website, in March 1946, Schnell married Joan Allen and worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway for a few years before rejoining the military in 1953. He then served with the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps until 1970.
Schnell, who was born in Rhein, Sask., in 1923, died in Moose Jaw on Sept. 29, 2000, at age 77, and was buried in the Rosedale Cemetery.
