Individual Report: E29878 Thomas LUCAS

Rank:	First Name:	Second Name:
General Information
Rifleman	Thomas	Stanley
From:	Enlistment Region:	Date of Birth (y-m-d):
Belle Anse QC	Eastern Quebec	1918-10-31
Appointment:	Company:	Platoon:
	A	7 Plt

Transportation - Home Base to Hong Kong

Members of 'C' Force from the East travelled across Canada by CNR troop train, picking up reinforcements enroute. Stops included Valcartier, Montreal, Ottawa, Armstrong ON, Capreol ON, Winnipeg, Melville SK, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper, and Vancouver, arriving in Vancouver on Oct 27 at 0800 hrs.

The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the local soldiers that were with Brigade Headquarters from Winnipeg to BC travelled on a CPR train to Vancouver.

All members embarked from Vancouver on the ships AWATEA and PRINCE ROBERT. AWATEA was a New Zealand Liner and the PRINCE ROBERT was a converted cruiser. "C" Company of the Rifles was assigned to the PRINCE ROBERT, everyone else boarded the AWATEA. The ships sailed from Vancouver on Oct 27th and arrived in Hong Kong on November 16th, having made brief stops enroute at Honolulu and Manila.

Equipment earmarked for 'C' Force use was loaded on the ship DON JOSE, but would never reach Hong Kong as it was rerouted to Manila when hostilities commenced.

On arrival, all troops were quartered at Nanking Barracks, Sham Shui Po Camp, in Kowloon.

Battle Information

We do not have specific battle information for this soldier in our online database. For a detailed description of the battle from a Canadian perspective, visit Canadian Participation in the Defense of Hong Kong (published by the Historical Section, Canadian Military Headquarters).

Wounded Information

Date Wounded	Wound Description	References
41/12/25	Shattered ankle	36

Hospital Information

Name of hospital	Date of admission	Date of discharge	Comments	Reference
HK-UNK	N/A	N/A

POW Camps

Camp ID	Camp Name	Location	Company	Type of Work	Arrival Date	Departure Date
HK-NP-01	North Point	North Point, Hong Kong Island			41 Dec 30	42 Sep 26
HK-SA-02	Shamshuipo	Kowloon, Hong Kong			42 Sep 26	43 Jan 19
JP-To-3D	Tsurumi	Yokohama-shi, Tsurumi-ku, Suyehiro-cho, 1-chome, Japan	Nippon Steel Tube - Tsurumi Shipyards	Variety of jobs related to ship building	43 Jan 19	45 Apr 16
JP-Se-4B	Ohashi	Iwate-ken, Kamihei-gun, Katsushi-mura, Ohashi, Japan	Nippon Steel Company		45 Apr 16	45 Sep 15

Transport to Japan

Draft Number	Name of Ship	Departure Date	Arrival Date	Arrival Port	Comments	Reference
XD3A	Tatuta Maru	43 Jan 19, left Shamsuipo Camp, 0500 hrs; left Hong Kong 1300hrs	43 Jan 22, 0400 hrs	Nagasaki, Japan	Boarded train, arrived in Tokyo on 43 Jan 24 at 0700 hrs, boarded electric train for 10 mile ride to camp	Tony Banham

Transportation SE Asia to Home

Transport Mode	Arrival Destination	Arrival Date	Comments

No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.

Post-war Photo

Other Military or Public Service

No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.

Death and Cemetery Information

Date of Death (y-m-d)	Cause of Death	Death Class
1994-11-10		Post War
Cemetery Location	Cemetery	Grave Number	Gravestone Marker
Shelburne Ontario Canada	Shelburne Cemetery	St. Lawrence Section #238

Gravestone Image

Obituary / Life Story

Tom was born in the Gaspe. Quebec area and joined the Royal Rifles of Canada in 1940 when he was 22 years of age. He was assigned to A Coy.

He served with the Regiment in the North Atlantic and was then sent with the Regiment to re-inforce the Colony of Hong Kong. When the Japanese invaded the Island he was wounded in the battle that followed. When the Colony surrendered he was first imprisoned in Hong Kong and then subsequently sent to a POW Camp in Japan where he worked in a mine until the Japanese surrendered and he was evacuated to an American Hospital Ship. Honourably Discharged in 1946.

He suffered lifelong effects from starvation as a result of being a POW and limped as a result of his wounds.

He and his family lived in the Gaspe area and then moved to Ontario in 1964. Shortly after he was employed as a carpenter at the Dominion Lighthouse Depot in Prescott, Ontario. On his retirement he and his wife moved to Alliston and then Amaranth, Ont., to be nearer to his family.

He passed away on 10 November 1994.

Links and Other Resources

There may be more information on this individual available elsewhere on our web sites - please use the search tool found in the upper right corner of this page to view sources.

General Comments

'The last letter I got from Tommy'

Orangeville woman reflects on the horrors her father saw during the Second World War

Nov 10, 2016 by Kelcey Wright-Johnson Orangeville Banner

She walked into the coffee shop in Orangeville cradling two large and overflowing binders.

When she sat down at the table, she opened one binder revealing countless photos, certificates and letters. These binders are all she has left of her father.

Darlene Lucas-Kolodziechuk's father, Thomas Lucas, died in 1994 at Orangeville's Headwaters Health Care Centre just hours before Remembrance Day.

My father was a soldier during WWII, she said. "He was 22-years-old when he joined. He did training in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and then they went overseas in October and he celebrated his 23rd birthday in 1941 on the boat to Hong Kong."

Lucas-Kolodziechuk still has a three-page love letter that her mother had labelled "The last letter I got from Tommy" dated Oct. 20, 1941. That's because on the morning of Dec. 7 the attacks on Pearl Harbour were carried out and just eight hours after those attacks, the Empire of Japan attacked the British Crown colony in Hong Kong.

During these attacks, Lucas took refuge in a small ditch that narrowed-in near his feet as he lay, shielding himself from enemy fire. But as the ditch got smaller, he was forced to place one foot on top of the other, heel to toe, exposing the top foot.

He was shot directly through the ankle, shattering the bone on Dec. 25, 1941.

"Japanese were taking all the wounded and dead men off the battlefield, so one of his comrades helped him get on the other truck because he couldn't do that himself," Lucas-Kolodziechuk said, recalling the stories her father later shared with her. "He was then taken to St. Stephen's College. It was a college being used as a frontline war hospital."

But the horrors of war weren't over for Lucas.

Mere hours after he was taken to St. Stephens, the hospital was attacked. The Japanese entered the building killing doctors, sexually assaulting and killing nurses, as well as killing wounded soldiers.

Lucas was held prisoner in one of two rooms on the top level by the Japanese soldiers. The soldiers removed two Canadian soldiers from the room where Lucas was, and killed them outside the doors.

Lucas, the wounded Canadian soldier, was then taken to Bowden Hospital in Hong Kong.

"He could never remember exactly how long he spent there," she said. "But he does remember that they poured boiling water on his ankle as a disinfectant because he had developed gangrene. That likely saved his life or at the very least saved his leg."

Lucas remained in Hong Kong until 1943 when the Japanese brought Canadian, British and Indian soldiers to Japan as prisoners of war.

He spent time at four different POW camps including Sham Shui Po, North Point and 3 D camp making shoes, ship building and mining.

"We know the names of some of these camps because he kept a secret little journal on the inside cover of his bible," said Lucas-Kolodziechuk.

Throughout his time at the 3 D camp, he ate small amounts of rice and worked over 12 hours per day in the mine.

"One time he was given a can of asparagus and the only reason they gave it to him was it was a food they weren't sure of and also they wanted to make sure it wasn't poisoned," Lucas-Kolodziechuk said. "And he always liked asparagus after that. Imagine how good that would have tasted."

Lucas had another stroke of luck when a package from his mother made it through, past the Japanese soldiers who were keeping most packages from family and from the Red Cross for themselves. At the time the package arrived, Lucas was suffering from pneumonia and inside the box he found two pairs of long johns.

Lucas wasn't the only one who was catching a few lucky breaks. His family back home also received a surprise and welcome package.

"During his time there, someone had made a little make-shift radio," said Lucas-Kolodziechuk. "They got on air and each said their name and their address back home. The signal actually got picked up in California and the people that heard recorded these names and addresses and send a tape to each of their families."

Lucas-Kolodziechuk, who is now retired, can remember listening to the tape when she was around 12-years-old.

"It was very scratchy because his family had listened to it over and over and over," she said. That tape is one of the only pieces of history that Lucas-Kolodziechuk doesn't have of her dad's and hopes one day she can come across it again.

In 1945, the prisoners of war were rescued and picked up by a hospital ship that would take them back to Canada.

"When liberated, a lot of the men weighed between 70 and 90 pounds," Lucas-Kolodziechuk said. "And after not eating much for years, they had a huge breakfast on the ship and it made all of them sick."

It was a long journey from Japan to Vancouver, having to make many stops on islands and San Fransisco on the way due to the soldiers becoming sick, but eventually the soldiers made it back to Canadian soil.

Upon arrival, each of the was handed a certificate that said, "The Mayor, Reeves and Councils of Greater Victoria have great pleasure in extending to you a sincere and hearty welcome to Victoria (Vancouver Island) Capital of British Columbia on your repatriation from the hands of the enemy. We sincerely wish you and yours the best in health and welfare in the future."

Lucas walked with a limp for the rest of his life where he lived in Alliston. He had the bullet entrance and exit scars, as well as the scars from melting his skin with hot water.

"He was going to the veterans hospital every six months or so, and every time he went they wanted to amputate his leg but he wouldn't let them," said Lucas-Kolodziechuk.

"When he came home, he couldn't even eat a full meal. It took a long time before he could. It took a long time for those men to get their health back."

Although Lucas survived the war and being held as a POW, it was the aftereffects that eventually led to his death years later.

"When those men came back from the war, they weren't really recognizing PTSD like they do now. They would just say relax, go have a beer, go have a smoke," said Lucas-Kolodziechuk. "He died from lung cancer from smoking, that spread to bone cancer."

She remembers her dad as a fun and generous man who enjoyed music and making wooden items like shoes and clocks for his family and friends. Most of all, he enjoyed telling stories.

"He came from a family of eight and my mom from a family of nine so at all our family dinners, my dad and my uncle, who fought in the war in Europe, would chat about it," Lucas-Kolodziechuk said. "I heard stories growing up but in my late 20s, I started interviewing him myself."

When Lucas-Kolodziechuk's father was diagnosed with cancer, she began asking more questions and researching more details so she could really know her father's heroic story.

"Dad and all the other prisoners of war suffered from various diseases including diphtheria, beriberi, dysentery, pneumonia and avitaminosis," she said. "My dad surviving despite being wounded, starved, beaten and abused is nothing short of a miracle."

With another Remembrance Day upon us, Lucas-Kolodziechuk can't help but think of her father and the life he lived.

"He would go to a Remembrance Day service and he would wear his medals," she said, remembering his volunteer medal, six years medal, pacific star medal, (much later in life he got a bar with barbed wire on it which means he was a prisoner of war). "But I think it was a very sad day for him. He lost a lot of friends in that war."

End of Report.

Report generated: 27 Apr 2025.

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Additional Notes

(These will not be visible on the printed copy)

Service numbers for officers ("X") are locally generated for reporting only. During World War II officers were not allocated service numbers until 1945.
'C' Force soldiers who died overseas are memorialized in the Books of Remembrance and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial, both sponsored by Veterans Affairs Canada. Please use the search utility at VAC to assist you.
Some birthdates and deathdates display as follows: 1918-00-00. In general, this indicates that we know the year but not the month or day.
Our POW camp links along with our References link (near the bottom of the 'C' Force home page) are designed to give you a starting point for your research. There were many camps with many name changes. The best resource for all POW camps in Japan is the Roger Mansell Center for Research site.
In most cases the rank displayed was the rank held before hostilities. Some veterans were promoted at some point prior to eventual post-war release from the army back in Canada. When notified of these changes we'll update the individual's record.
Images displayed on the web page are small, but in many cases the actual image is larger. Hover over any image and you will see a popup if a larger version is available. You can also right-click on some images and select the option to view the image separately. Not all images have larger versions. Contact us to confirm whether a large copy of an image in which you are interested exists.
In some cases the References displayed as part of this report generate questions because there is no indication of their meaning. They were inherited with the original database, and currently we do not know what the source is. We hope to solve this problem in future.
We have done our best to avoid errors and omissions, but if you find any issues with this report, either in accuracy, completeness or layout, please contact us using the link at the top of this page.
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