1st Bn The Royal Rifles of Canada
General Information | ||
| Rank: | First Name: | Second Name: |
|---|---|---|
| Rifleman | Frederick | Orland |
| From: | Enlistment Region: | Date of Birth (y-m-d): |
| Orillia ON | Eastern Quebec | 1924-10-10 |
| Appointment: | Company: | Platoon: |
| HQ Coy | 3 Mortars | |
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
No wounds recorded.Hospital Information
No record of hospital visits found.POW Camps
| Camp ID | Camp Name | Location | Company | Type of Work | Arrival Date | Departure Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HK-SM-01 | Stanley | Fort Stanley, Hong Kong Island | Capture | 41 Dec 30 | ||
| 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 | N/A |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| USS Ozark Passenger List A | SF | 1945-10-02 | evacuated from Japan via USS Ozark |
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
No other or additional related information found. Please submit documents to us using the contact link at the top of this page.
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 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001-11-03 | Post War | ||
| Cemetery Location | Cemetery | Grave Number | Gravestone Marker |
| Kingston Ontario Canada | Glenhaven Memorial Gardens Cemetery | ||
Gravestone Image
Obituary / Life Story
E30553 CHAPMAN, Frederick Orland - Hong Kong Veteran Royal Rifles of Canada WWII RCL Branch 631
Peacefully after a courageous struggle at the Kingston General Hospital on Saturday, November 3, 2001 in his 78th year. Loving husband of the late Dorothy Graham. Dear friend of Alma Hannah. Beloved father of Stephen (Trudy) of Orleans, Judy Conway (Wayne) of Kingston, and Alan (Lori) of Saskatoon. Cherished Grandpa of Ben and Emily Chapman, Jeff and Erin Conway and Alicia Chapman. Sadly missed by sister Ida Krelaty of Toronto, brother Clifford of London, brother-in-law Donald Graham of Toronto, nieces and nephews Doug, Jane, the late David, Faye and Jo-anne, Cathy, Jill and Arlene.
STAND EASY DAD
Friends will be received at the Township Chapel of the Gordon F. Tompkins Funeral Homes, 435 Davis Drive (Waterloo Village), on Tuesday, November 6, between the hours of 6-9 p.m. Members of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 631 will gather for a Service at 6:30 p.m. Private family service will be held Wednesday followed by cremation. Burial to follow at Glenhaven Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation of Canada or the Canadian Cancer Society would be thoughtfully appreciated by the family.
IN CARE OF THE GORDON F. TOMPKINS FUNERAL HOMES TOWNSHIP CHAPEL 435 DAVIS DRIVE, KINGSTON (613) 546-5150.
Links and Other Resources
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Related documentation
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General Comments
The Toronto Star Tuesday, July 22, 1975 by Ron Lowman (in Richmond, Ont.)
HONG KONG VETERANS ARE STILL SUFFERING 30 YEARS AFTER THE WAR
Fred Chapman wasn't even 21 when he emerged from four brutal years during World War II as a prisoner of the Japanese. Today he's 50, retired two years because of "an almost total breakdown" in health. He putters about his house in Richmond, near Ottawa, and does a little upholstering.
Aug. 14 will mark the 30th anniversary of VJ (Victory over Japan) Day.
Despite the passage of the years, Chapman still shudders when he hears the phrase "scalded cat." He once parboiled and ate one in a prison camp. "My buddy was a farmer and knew what to do," said the white-haired, white-bearded Chapman. "When you're starving, you'll eat anything."
In the prison camps, he suffered from beriberi (a disease in which inadequate diet affects the sensory nerves, with feet and fingers first to go), pellagra (another deficiency disease which causes spinal pain, digestive troubles, drying and scaling of the skin, spasms and mental disturbances), dysentery and conjunctivitis (inflammation of the eyes).
Chapman is a member of a group of ex-soldiers known as the Hong Kong Veterans' Association of Canada. About 500 people, including wives, are expected at the group's national convention, which starts tomorrow in Toronto.
According to Canadian Pension Commission figures, there are only 1,106 Hong Kong survivors left. Of these, 1,023 belong to the association.
They maintain membership because theirs is a brotherhood forged in misery, tempered in suffering thousands of miles from home and because in unity there is more muscle in the fight for higher pensions.
1,975 SET OUT
Their story began when 1,975 officers and men of the Royal Rifles of Canada, the Winnipeg Grenadiers and a brigade headquarters staff, including two nursing sisters, landed in Hong Kong on Nov. 17, 1941. With British and Indian troops, they formed a garrison 12,000 strong.
Three weeks later, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, they struck Hong Kong. Bitter fighting lasted from Dec. 7 to Christmas Day, when the shattered defending garrison surrendered.
In the 17 days of fighting, 290 Canadians were killed, including Chapman's best friend Ray Oakley of Midland, Ont.
In the three years and eight months of captivity that followed, in Hong Kong and on the Japanese mainland, 265 more Canadians were shot, starved or beaten to death.
Only 1,421 members of the original Canadian contingent returned home from the war. Some, Chapman among them, looked like living skeletons.
Chapman, a boy of 17 when he laid down his rifle in Hong Kong got into the war when he and Oakley, fed up with long hours at a laundry and drycleaning establishment in Orillia, quit and hitch-hiked to the east coast.
They were enjoying a soft drink in a Sussex, N.B. restaurant when they were approached by a recruiting sergeant. To the sergeant's suggestion that they enlist, Chapman said: "Are you out of your mind?"
Oakley was eligible but insisted he wouldn't join the Royal Rifles without Chapman, who was only 15. Chapman added three birthdays and became 18.
"I don't think we were properly prepared for what happened in Hong Kong," Chapman said. 'We never had the rigorous training we should have had; there was no heavy battle drill."
During his years as a prisoner Chapman loaded and unloaded coal on a diet of poor rice, bad potatoes, carrot tops and fish the Japanese wouldn't touch. His dysentery was monumental.
Between Jan 1, 1942 and Aug. 23, 1943, when he was sent to Japan, Chapman was admitted to hospital 26 times. In Japan, he had dysentery almost continuously.
LONG ORDEAL
His long ordeal ended when the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan's surrender.
When Chapman landed at Victoria, B.C., there was a telegram informing him his mother had died at the family home, which by then was in Toronto.
From October 1945, to June 1946, he was in hospital at Chorley Park. Just before his release from the army, his father collapsed and died of cancer. Chapman moved in with an aunt.
With a Grade 10 education and not much experience at anything, Chapman asked the army to give him some sort of light administration job. He was given one with Royal Canadian Army Service Corps at Camp Borden.
During a variety of postings he worked hard at correspondence courses for five years to upgrade education. He was rewarded with a diploma of management from the Canadian Institute of Traffic and Transportation.
Chapman was a sergeant based in Ottawa in 1962 when he switched to a civilian job with the old air transport board. Two years later he achieved civil service officer status. Two more promotions followed and he became a program administrator.
But the long hours and enthusiasm for his job proved too much for his health, and in 1973 he quit on the advice of his doctor.
According to Charles Brady of Montreal, president of the Hong Kong Veterans' Association, about 150 members have had to retire prematurely and another 150 are borderline cases. The majority of those who had to quit are receiving less than 100 percent disability pensions.
The association wants all Hong Kong veterans in early retirement because of bad health to get the full pension - $575 a month, tax free, for married men and $460 for single ones. One dependent child adds $60 to a pension; two children, $104, and three $138. Chapman is one of the more fortunate Hong Kong veterans: His tax-free pension is 85 per cent, or $489 a month. He also receives superannuation for his 324 years of public service, which brings his monthly total up to $1,130.
He and his wife, Dorothy, have three children: twins Judy and Stephen, 26, both married, and Alan, 20, attending Algonquin Community College.
It's expected in Ottawa that the government will accept a recent recommendation from the standing committee on veterans' affairs to change the pension formula for former prisoners of the Japanese.
The last change, in 1971, decreed that all would receive at least a 50 per cent pension. It also provided that if a veteran died, his widow would automatically receive $345 a month, and double the normal rate for each child.
The pensions are hooked to the consumer price index and rise with it. Last year, the increase was 10.1 per cent.
The anomaly of the 1971 change was that it gave large increases to men with minor injuries but nothing to the seriously disabled former prisoner who already was getting 50 percent or more.
The latest recommendation from the Commons committee would provide a minimum of 50 per cent pension and add an assessed disability payment.
Under that formula, Chapman's pension would automatically go to 100 per cent.
Murray Forman, deputy chairman of the Canada Pension Commission, recalls that immediately after World War II, Hong Kong veterans were treated like any other ex-prisoners of war.
Then it was realized they were suffering from avitaminosis (lack of vitamins) and the government began to consider them more as a group than as individuals.
By 1948, because of tropical diseases the government didn't know much about, "we were giving fairly generous pension assessments," Forman says. "Because of residual effects on the heart and possible psychological problems, we were giving 40, 50 and up to 100 per cent in some cases."
COVER INTANGIBLES
A study in the 1960s by Dr. H. J. Richardson, chief medical adviser to the commission to determine the effects of avitaminosis, convinced the commission it should increase pensions to cover "intangibles."
The change came in 1971 but was slow to be implemented because the commission was used to dealing with set figures, such as 3 per cent ($17.25) for the loss of a little finger; 5 for the right finger; 10 for the index finger; 60 per cent for a hand ($270): 90 per cent for a leg up to the hip joint.
Putting a price on what the association called "premature aging" and forced retirement was something new. But the association kept chipping away.
A breakthrough came last year with the testimony of Dr. Albert Haas to the Commons committee. Haas, a survivor of Hitler's concentration camps, now director of a cardio-pulmonary laboratory and chest rehabilitation unit at New York University Medical Centre, cited a French law that gives every former camp inmate a 100 percent disability pension.
In Germany, he said, if the probability is 51 per cent that a citizen's disability was contracted in the camps, it is recognised for pension purposes.
Haas' studies showing premature degeneration in former camp inmates was confirmed by U.S. social security statistics. While most of the normal population went on social security at 65 women at 62), most former German camp inmates began receiving chronic disability payments before the age of 60.
The doctor told the committee that the concentration camp experience without any doubt" had some psychological effect on each man. On the average, he said, these veterans were dying five years earlier than the norm.
Forman says that if the Commons committee recommendations are accepted, only 327 of the surviving Hong Kong veterans will be left with less than 100 percent pensions.
Here, packed ready for a move to what he hopes will be a kinder climate in Cobourg, Chapman recalls the day he and a friend wandered out of Niigata camp in Japan a few days after the war ended.
"We walked slowly downtown, just looking" he said. "On a corner, a young Japanese came up to us and said in impeccable English "Are you chaps lost?"
"Then I believed it was all over."
End of Report.
Report generated: 27 Apr 2025.
Additional Notes
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- 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.
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