My Grandparents’ War

-In 1939, millions of our grandparents went to war.

-This is a man, you know, I loved.

[ Chuckles ] He was my grandpa.

-Now, four Hollywood stars are exploring their family's extraordinary World War II stories.

-You are going to fight an enemy who will kill you.

-Captured Christmas Day.

I didn't know that.

-Yeah.

-She must've been completely bonkers, going out with bombs flying, going out.

What are you doing?

-They'll travel the globe to meet the last survivors... -He was a very good captain.

-Was he?

-Thanks to him, I'm still alive, really.

-...and speak to descendants with a shared history.

-So my grandfather would've known your father well.

-Oh, very well.

– Both: Very well.

-...confronting the terrors their families faced... -"You have to be Jewish, but not go to the slaughterhouse for it."

-Oh, my God.

-...and the threats they encountered.

-This is the first kamikaze strike on a British ship in World War II.

-They'll uncover the sacrifices all our grandparents made... -Young men would be in the water, screaming for their mothers.

-[ Crying ] Absolutely horrific.

-...and learn how World War II changed their lives forever.

-It's exciting because it brings him back again.

-How extraordinary history is, particularly this link of grandchildren and grandparents.

-This program was made possible in part by Elaine and W. Weldon Wilson and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

-We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

My name is Mark Rylance, and I'm an actor.

For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.

Over the years, from Shakespeare to Spielberg, many of the characters I've played have been caught up in the violence and the tragedy of war.

But in my personal life, I've been very committed To the cause of peace.

The only way things are resolved in the end is by talking, am I right?

[ Cheers and applause ] Not in my name!

-Not in my name!

-Not in my name!

My family's story has been shaped by a conflict that began 80 years ago.

[ Explosion ] During World War II, Japan declared war on Britain and its allies, and both my grandfathers were taken prisoner by the Japanese army.

My Dad's dad, Vichy, was held in a civilian camp in China.

He died when I was young, and I never got to know him.

But I was very, very close to my mum's dad, Osmond Skinner, who spent almost four years as a prisoner of war in Hong Kong.

Osmond was reticent to talk about it.

It wasn't something he ever raised.

But he had witnessed things that disturbed him incredibly.

For much of this life, he worked as a banker in the Far East, but he retired here to the Kent countryside with my grandmother, Hazel.

I was fortunate to spend most summers in his house in Kent, which was a great time.

[ Laughs ] A dreamlike experience.

This is me and my younger brother, Jonathan, with Osmond.

He was blessed with seven grandchildren, and he gave us all unconditional love.

Next to my father, he was the most important male role model for me.

I'm going to explore what really happened to my grandfather during World War II and why the Japanese treated Osmond and thousands of other POWs so harshly.

This is the old village, and there's the house up there.

When he was in the prisoner-of-war camp, he had a dream that if he ever survived it, he would love to have an orchard and grow apples.

So it must have been a miracle to find such a property.

Osmond died in 1980, but the current owners have very kindly agreed to let me visit for the first time in nearly 40 years My sister, Susannah, has come to meet me, and she's brought some of our family archive.

Same old doors.

-And it looks like the same table.

Look at this.

-And I have a picture of Os sleeping here.

He used to sleep here in the afternoon.

-That's how I remember him, at nap time.

There's a few more pictures.

This is all of us, all the cousins.

And that's you.

-That's just out here on the lawn right here.

-Then Os.

-[ Chuckling ] Oh, yeah, look at him.

-He looks so happy.

You think of everything he'd been through.

Anyway, I've got a surprise to show you.

-Mm.

-It's the... -Oh, my gosh!

You found it.

-Yeah.

-Mother's written on the front, "This box had all my father's possessions in POW Camp Hong Kong," captured December, Christmas day, 1941.

-Captured Christmas day.

I didn't know that.

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-Mm.

-And this was his box.

-This was it.

It's amazing.

There's a pack of letters, but this is the only two photos he had.

I remember Mum saying that they didn't know whether he was dead or alive for at least 18 months.

-I mean, how would he have shared that experience with them?

That's the question.

How do people share those experiences with their families -- the experience of being a prisoner of war?

-Mm.

Absolutely.

-You're just gonna distress people, aren't you?

Beautiful how he kept these precious things.

Is that the corps he was part of?

Hong Kong Volunteer Corps.

-Yes.

This was the first letter that Hazel received.

-"My darling wife, I'm just longing to get news of you and the children.

Anne will be 10 next month.

How she is growing up.

I feel sure she and Richard do all they can to help you.

Take great care of your dear self, sweetheart, and don't worry about me.

With all my love darling, ever your own, Os."

My Grandfather Osmond Skinner arrived in Hong Kong as a young man in 1921.

The son of a South London green grocer, he'd come to make his fortune in the city's thriving banking industry, leaving his young fiance, Hazel, back in Britain.

Hong Kong was then the British Empire's key trading post in the Far East.

And I want to know more about my grandfather's life here before the Second World War.

So I've come to the bank where he worked for 37 years.

Hi, Helen.

-Hi, Mark.

-Thanks so much for seeing me.

-Great to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you, too.

-Welcome to HSBC.

Head Archivist Helen Swinnerton has been researching Os' early career at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

So I arrived today [chuckles] only taking 11 hours, compared to my grandfather's six or seven weeks, I imagine.

-Yeah, and he would have arrived by ship, and from the boat in the harbor... -Oh, wow.

-...he would have seen the building that he was going to work in.

It was very much not just joining a bank but a way of life... -Yes.

-...when he came out here.

He also played rugby for the bank.

-1924.

There he is.

-There were a number of bachelors because the staff weren't allowed to get married until they'd done 20 years of service.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah.

They would have this long separation before they could get married.

-As like my grandmother had.

It was quite a sacrifice.

-Yes.

-No wonder they played a lot of rugby.

-[ Laughs ] They called it "being on ice."

-[ Laughing ] Being on ice?

Oh, my!

My Grandmother Hazel did eventually travel out to the Far East, and having waited a decade, she and Os were married there in 1931.

My mother, Anne, was born two years later, followed shortly by my Uncle Richard.

And I know from a home movie Mum left us that Osmond and his young family were posted by HSBC to Kobe, in Japan, which many people forget had been an ally of Britain during World War I.

Do you know anything about the time when he went to Japan?

-Yes, I do.

He was there for over six years.

-Six years!

-Yeah, long posting.

We have pictures of him with the local staff.

-Where is he here?

Is this him over here?

-That's him.

-He must really have got to know many Japanese -- his fellow workers and his friends.

-Yes, so you can imagine that as tension increased, in the build-up to the war, that would have been a very difficult time.

-After the First World War, the refusal of Britain and its allies to treat Japan as an equal fueled a rise in nationalism and military expansion.

In response, Britain and the U.S. limited Japanese access to oil reserves in Asia.

But this only reinforced Japan's ambition to replace Britain as the dominant imperial power in the region.

In the summer of 1940 as the threat of war grew, British women and children, including Os' young family, were evacuated from Hong Kong, while men had already been called up to serve in the island's defense forces.

Osmond, however, continued working for HSBC in Japan.

-We have here a record that shows when Osmond was finally posted out of Kobe.

-September 25th.

-Yep, 1941.

-Date of arrival -- October 15th.

-He is going back to Hong Kong.

-How close is that to the outbreak of war with Japan?

-Very close.

It's less than two months.

-I had no idea.

-Most important obstacle in the path of Japan's plan for a greater Pacific empire is the crown colony of Hong Kong.

Long-range defense guns command every strategic approach to the island.

[ Shots booming ] -I now know that my grandfather returned to Hong Kong at the end of 1941 to serve in the island's Volunteer Defence Corps.

But I still don't know what role he played.

I've come to Cape D'Aguilar, where some of the largest artillery batteries that defended the island were sited, to meet military historian Philip Cracknell.

Hello, Philip.

-Hello, Mark.

How are you?

-Very pleased to meet you.

-Very nice to meet you as well.

-Philip has been researching Osmond's part in the defense of the island and has pinpointed where he was based as Japanese troops prepared to attack.

-So here we are, number-one battery.

And this battery has elevation, giving the guns' greater range.

We know Osmond was here because we have this military record.

-"Number 4999.

Rank -- gunner.

Date of enlistment -- 8-12-41."

-Monday the 8th.

War began that day.

-So he had no training... -He had no training.

-...prior to that.

He just volunteered as a civilian.

The Hong Kong Voluntary Defence Corps.

What was that?

-They were militia.

They were like the territorial army.

And the British forces, including the 2,000 odd that belonged to the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, numbered about 12,500.

-And they were facing how many men coming?

-Certainly there were in excess of 30,000 well-trained, front-line Japanese infantry who had been fighting for some years in China and who had a pretty ruthless reputation.

This is how the war began on Monday the 8th of December -- Japanese troops crossing the border at Lo Wu.

-Oh, was this one of the first encounters between them and the British Empire?

-It was.

It was the first encounter.

And the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, they had attacked Malaya and Singapore, and they had attacked Philippines, all more or less simultaneously.

-How extraordinary.

I never knew that.

On his first day as an untrained soldier, my grandfather was about to be thrown into one of the key battles of World War II.

-On December 8th, the British garrison of Hong Kong is besieged... [ Explosion ] ...by land on the edge of Kowloon Peninsula, by sea, major units of the Japanese fleet hammering relentlessly at the harbor defenses, hurling their fire into the center of the city.

-After 10 days of constant bombardment, the Japanese army landed on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, avoiding the huge coastal defense batteries in the south.

The speed and ferocity of the attack threatened to cut British forces in half.

Isolated on the southeastern tip of the island, Osmond Skinner's first battery were ordered to blow up their guns and retreat west to the Stanley Peninsula, where British troops were gathering to mount a last stand.

-Number-one battery were put into what was almost the frontline, barely 500 meters from where we're standing now, without any infantry training.

And the Japanese were on top of the hills, and they were moving down and approaching Stanley.

-So you would have seen thousands of men coming down the slopes.

-Yes, the Japanese were closing in from all sides.

And the troops had received this message from Sir Winston Churchill.

-And that message would have come to Os.

-Yes.

-"We were greatly concerned to hear of the landings on Hong Kong Island which have been affected by the Japanese.

There must, however, be no thought of surrender.

Every day that you are able to maintain your resistance, you help the allied cause.

We expect you to resist to the end.

The honour of the Empire is in your hands."

If you'd shown me that sentence complete, and said, "Is this a message from the Japanese emperor or from Winston Churchill?"

I would have probably thought it was from the Japanese emperor to his troops.

[ Explosion ] On Christmas Eve 1941, the Japanese army attacked the last British soldiers defending Stanley, including Osmond and the first battery of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps.

-Your grandfather was just behind us in a slit trench with a .303 rifle.

This is a diary written by Osmond Skinner's platoon sergeant.

-"I have seen films and pictures of warfare, but never in all my life have I seen anything like the sights or heard such a noise as came from Stanley Village that night.

There were six or seven machine guns of our own, then the Japs' machine guns and a weird sort of howl, a sort of Japanese war cry.

Harry's gun and his crew opened fire along the road, and I saw several figures running towards us across the tennis courts.

So with my chaps, we opened up a rapid rifle fire.

It was pretty hopeless.

I again ordered the lads to rejoin Harry, which we did, with the loss of another chap, Skinner."

Skinner?

What's that about?

-Your Grandfather Osmond Skinner was wounded in the stomach.

He was reported as missing in action, so when the platoon withdrew, they assumed he was killed.

-He was left behind.

-He was left behind.

-But I remember Osmond, at only one occasion, showing me his wound.

-Oh, really?

-But he never told me about this occasion.

-Well, during that one night, out of a battery of 65 men and 3 officers, 35 men were killed.

-The Japanese were about to lose a lot of men as well.

-They did.

They lost a lot.

But that didn't seem to worry them.

-It didn't seem to worry us either, did it?

We threw men at this mortal battle, too.

To think of that moment that he was -- that any soldier, Japanese or English, is involved in something so -- so terrifying and just barbaric, it's very upsetting to me.

This is the truth of empire, isn't it?

This is the truth of empire.

He's a civilian casualty, really.

He's not a soldier.

He's a civilian being thrown at battle-scarred warriors who scream and howl, and he's coming up with a rifle he probably doesn't even know how to fire.

Shot in the stomach and separated from his fellow soldiers at dawn on Christmas day.

My grandfather Osmond told me that after that he was wounded, he was taken to a field hospital.

He didn't tell me the name of it, but he did say that he witnessed something there he could never forget.

Os was shot on the grounds of St. Stephen's College, which during the battle was a temporary hospital for British Imperial forces, including many Canadian troops.

I've come to meet Mike Babin, whose father, Alfred, was one of those here at St. Stephen's on Christmas Day 1941.

-My dad actually was a well-trained soldier, but he ended up at this hospital, at St. Stephen's, being an orderly.

But I understand that your grandfather was also here.

-Well, I know he was just outside here fighting and was wounded.

When I was a little boy, he described passing through a hospital where there had been an atrocity.

-There certainly was an atrocity here.

I can let my dad tell you in his own words what took place.

-The Japanese came, and they -- with rifle butt, they banged on the door.

And when it was opened by Colonel Black, he kind of resisted.

They just shot him and bayoneted him and came in.

They started to bayonet the wounded.

Now, some of them hid under the beds, and they managed to escape being killed.

But the rest of them were bayonetted.

There was one body had been mutilated, eyeballs taken out, so on.

It was a stench of blood, really, in the air that was -- it was terrible.

-Wow.

-It was a terrifying situation.

I cannot even imagine being in that situation.

-Me neither.

How did he survive?

-The soldiers like my dad, probably along with your grandfather, were herded upstairs, and then when they were eventually released the next morning, perhaps something that your grandfather did witness was my father and some of his colleagues were given the task of building a big bonfire to burn the bodies of the men the Japanese had murdered.

Of the bodies that he threw on the fire, he said there were at least 75.

-How did -- how did it affect him?

-He kept a lot of this inside.

He didn't talk voluntarily about his experiences.

He would only talk about it when somebody asked him a question.

-Hmm.

-How did his experience change your grandfather?

-He just couldn't understand and forgive them, and this event was the thing that he cited to me at that time when I was showing him a lot of Japanese films and Japanese culture that I as a teenager was falling in love with.

-And did that upset him, do you think?

-What upset him was that he couldn't appreciate the beauty that I was seeing.

-Mm.

-I knew him as a very just man and a very loving man, a very traditional Christian man.

He believed in forgiveness and mercy, and yet he couldn't forgive the Japanese.

I don't think he had ever imagined human beings were capable of such a thing.

And we're in the very space where it happened.

Isn't that incredible?

-It is.

-The last British forces in Stanley finally surrendered in the early afternoon of Christmas day, leaving the Japanese in control of the island.

They chose the HSBC building as their headquarters.

More than 1,500 British Imperial troops lost their lives in the battle, and many are buried here at Stanley Military Cemetery, including dozens of Osmond's comrades from the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps.

There are no Japanese soldiers buried here, but their losses were estimated as being even higher.

I do understand Osmond's dilemma and his inability to forgive them for this.

But he was of a different age, you know.

He was of an empire as much as the Japanese were of an empire.

You can start any war thinking you're right and the other person is wrong, and that may even be the case.

But in the end, where did it lead?

It brutalizes everyone.

We're the children and grandchildren now, and we can look back and see that both of us were fooled by ideas of empire.

I've heard in my lifetime, you know, so many people talk about war in such an impersonal way.

It's people that fight wars.

It's people that are affected.

Mm.

This is a very, very beautiful marker, isn't it?

Black on a kind of granite.

Without incredible good luck, that's where my grandfather would have been remembered.

On Christmas Day 1941, my grandfather Osmond Skinner was taken prisoner by the Japanese army following their victory in the battle of Hong Kong.

With a bullet wound in his stomach, Osmond was marched with hundreds of other soldiers to a holding camp on the north side of the island.

I know that during his captivity, he worked as an officer's servant, or batman, but I don't know where he was imprisoned, and he told us very little about his life as a POW.

Tony Banham is a leading expert on the experience of prisoners of war in Hong Kong.

He's asked me to meet him at the hotel where the British officially surrendered to the Japanese.

Hello, Tony.

-Mark, nice to see you.

Welcome to Peninsula Hotel.

-Thank you very much.

-It's good to have you here.

I'm sorry about the weather.

-This was the first occasion of English men being taken prisoners by the Japanese.

-In the Far East, absolutely.

Aside from a handful who escaped the Japanese or evaded the Japanese on day one, everybody else was captured if they weren't already killed in the battle If you take a look at this picture, that's where Mr. Skinner went, called Argyll Street.

And it's a roll call, so Osmond Skinner will be there somewhere.

-Will be in there somewhere.

-Right.

-Oh, my.

-Argyle Street was the officer's camp, so -- -And Osmond wasn't an officer, was he?

-He wasn't an officer.

They also moved in 100-plus batmen to take care of duties around the camp.

This came from one of Mr. Skinner's friends, William Sprague.

-Really?

-He was also in the volunteers They were both batmen.

And Sprague's diary is very hard to read, so his family have typed it all up.

They've given us the transcript.

-"What a night.

At about 1: 30 I went down to piss and was greeted by none other than Skinner, obviously pretty exhausted, as he explained, by diarrhea and sickness.

It was quite a grizzly scene with puke and squitters all over the place.

Skinner was some time getting to sleep as his pains continued."

-1942 was very bad for everybody 'cause of the diseases.

-Mm.

And what were the diseases?

-Diphtheria struck first, and diphtheria was scary.

I think the maximum death in a single day was seven.

Cholera came through at one point, beriberi, pellagra, scurvy.

Then the dysenteries -- those were the biggest killers, the diarrheas, because it just saps the energy from you.

Far more men died in the camps than were killed in the Battle of Hong Kong, and the Battle of Hong Kong was bad enough.

'43, the hunger started cutting in.

These are examples of what malnutrition does to people.

-What a horror.

-It's summer, obviously.

They're just wearing their Jap Happies... -Yeah.

-...the loin cloth.

-Jap Happies, they were called?

-Yeah.

The hunger they couldn't do anything about, apart from talk about food and write about food and wait for the next Red Cross parcel.

But your grandfather was quite well connected, so the bank and sometimes his friends would get things to him.

That's how he survived.

Here's a chap they all knew.

This is Tokunaga.

He was the commandant of all the POW camps in Hong Kong, and he was known as "The Fat Pig."

Although food wasn't getting through to the prisoners of war, he got some food.

He was sentenced to death as a war criminal, but then it was commuted to life imprisonment.

-And what were his crimes?

-He could have done more to get medicine in.

People were tortured after escapes, and people were tortured for, and executed, for having illicit radios.

-Was there anything like the Geneva Convention?

-There was, but the Japanese never ratified it.

I spoke to 200 veterans.

-Yeah.

-I reckon they all suffered some sort of long-term stress, but they wouldn't talk to their own families about it, especially their children and their grandchildren.

-It would have just ope-- taken the scab off and opened the whole thing up for them.

-And that they were scared of exactly what would be released.

-Oh, that's very helpful.

That explains a lot.

-Very common.

-So these are letters from Osmond to his wife, Hazel, from this camp.

"My darling wife, I keep very well indeed.

It is a joy wearing only shorts, and I am tanned dark brown The batmen's concert was a huge success."

But did you know something about the batmen's concert?

-Boredom was a problem, and the men had to find things to do.

So in terms of in-camp entertainment, this is a program from one of the concerts they put on.

-"The Argyle Melody for 1943 At the Argyle Hippodrome."

[ Laughs ] -Sometimes there were plays, sometimes there were concerts, sometimes it was like music hall.

-That's incredible.

Well, look at that.

"'Operatic Orderly Room,' written by Osmond Skinner."

-There you go.

And performed.

-That's amazing.

-They also had critics in the camps.

-No!

Not even in prison camp.

Who let those people in?

"Skinner, as well as singing effectively, was as smart a colonel as one could wish to see anywhere."

-And, of course, they had to illustrate it, and there's at least one person you should recognize from the caricatures.

-[ Laughs ] There he is.

Look.

Oh, it's the BFG, isn't it?

-[ Laughs ] Yes.

-It's the Big Friendly Giant.

-How funny.

So the sticky-out ears.

-[ Laughing ] Yeah.

-So it wasn't all light entertainment.

This is the "Twelfth Night," and -- -"Twelfth Night"?

How amazing!

He never told me that.

"'Twelfth Night' rehearsals were very active this afternoon.

It is a good thing the concert will be on soon, as the chaps are stalling in the rehearsals and getting on one another's nerves.

Skinner and Richmond had a bust-up last evening [laughing] which nearly broke the whole show."

-I wonder what they were arguing about.

-Oh, dear.

I'm afraid I inherited a bit of his stubbornness.

That's incredible.

"Twelfth Night's" been a very resonant play for me in my life.

You've revealed the root of my profession to me.

-This photograph was taken right at the end of the war in another camp on the other side of Kowloon called Sham Shui Po, and there's one person that you should definitely recognize.

-There he is.

There he is.

That's the man.

-He'd become a medical orderly.

-That's an amazing picture, isn't it?

-That's the only photograph I ever found of him.

-I'm impressed mostly by the techniques of survival and the ability of human beings to survive.

And, yes, they're very, very thin, but it's interesting how they maintained a little society, that it didn't all break down.

The whole scene, of course, of theatrical life was there in "Twelfth Night," which I've played many, many times.

I now know my theatrical roots touch back to Argyle Street Prisoner-of-War Camp "N." How extraordinary history is, particularly this link of grandsons, grandfathers.

In May 1944, Argyle Street POW Camp was shut down, and my grandfather was moved to Sham Shui Po, the largest and harshest camp in Hong Kong, housing more than 6,000 prisoners of war.

One of them was a cook called Leo Landau, and I've come to Jimmy's Kitchen, which he ran before and after the war.

Leo kept a secret diary of his life as a POW, and his daughter Barbara Harding has kindly agreed to show it to me.

-At the end of the war, Leo went back and said he needed to get the diary, which he'd buried.

-And they've found it?

-Yes.

[ Laughs ] So here it is.

-Wow.

Look at that.

-So the First Battalion, both Leo and Osmond were in there together.

There's your grandfather.

-So my grandfather would've known your father well.

-Oh, very well.

– Both: Very well.

-Both your grandfather and my father had outside people that were helping them.

-Yes.

-You had the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

-Indeed.

-And my father had his family outside.

-Here on the island?

-Here on the island.

And he was saying that, "I'm doing well, and I'm so sorry for these other people who actually died in '44."

-This is the 11th of May.

"A Canadian attempted suicide yesterday by cutting his throat with a razor.

Another man attempted suicide by jumping from a beam in the...house.

He died early this morning.

Now the end is approaching, signs of more men cracking up mentally... -Yeah.

-...becoming more noticeable."

-Yeah, they were cracking up, and a little bit further on, one of the Japanese sentries commits suicide, too.

He shoots himself.

-Really?

How awful for them all.

-Mm.

-Almost 2,500 internees died in the Hong Kong prisoner-of-war camps before the war finally came to an end in August 1945.

Like my grandfather, Leo Landau was one of the lucky ones who survived.

Did he have an account of things that took place when the Japanese surrendered?

-Well, yes, this is very Leo.

Here it is.

-"16th of August, Thursday, 1945.

Officially, the Japanese are still in charge, though the newspaper came in.

Japan signed acceptance to unconditional surrender on the 15th.

The Fat Pig, Tokunaga, has not made an appearance as yet."

And then he writes, "I left camp.

Our people were very angry indeed and wanted to arrest me."

-Yes, the British.

-"Should have a permit to leave our camp.

Bull to you..." [laughs] "...camp command officer, whoever you are."

-And he storms out, and they can't catch him.

-"Bull."

[ Laughs ] -Now, Leo had this autograph book, and he went around his friends and asked them all to sign it.

-This is an amazing little book.

Oh, and look at that.

"Wishing you the best of luck.

Sincerely yours, Osmond Skinner."

In late August 1945, after being interned for almost four years, my grandfather and the surviving POWs were finally allowed to walk out of Sham Shui Po and into the city.

Today, apart from the odd street sign, nothing remains of the camp, now a bustling market area, except a park where some trees have been planted around a small memorial.

It's got a beauty to it to me.

You know, it's one of the greener places that we've come upon in this busy city.

Os was very, very enamored of the Earth's ability to regenerate.

I just think of what it would feel like to him to be here again.

Though the suffering isn't so apparent in his life, it was inside him.

That affected his children and affected his grandchildren.

But I suppose we are a bit of the sweetness that he felt came from his endurance, and how much the ghosts of those 6,000 men who were in this dreadful camp, guards and prisoners, must have sometimes wondered and longed for grandchildren and for a long life and to be free of this dreadful situation that they all suffered from.

My grandfather Osmond Skinner could never forgive the Japanese for how they treated him and his comrades during the Second World War, but it's really important for me to get a different perspective on what happened here in Hong Kong.

So I've decided to travel back to Stanley, where nearly 80 years ago Osmond witnessed the St. Stephen's massacre.

I've come to meet Japanese academic Dr. Tomoyo Nakao.

Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-St. Stephen's Chapel is dedicated to the memory of those that died here during the war, including its military and civilian internees.

And Tomoyo has spent years studying the Japanese's treatment of POWs like my grandfather.

What led you to this enquiry?

-History doesn't repeat itself all on its own.

[ Laughs ] We repeat it.

So I thought it was very important to know what happened and what was the reason behind.

-I'm wondering what your impression is of the training of the Japanese soldiers and atrocities... -Yeah.

-...like the St. Stephen's massacre.

How were they able to kill people in their beds?

-I brought something to explain how the Japanese commanders tried to train the Japanese soldiers who were just ordinary people.

This is a notebook, and all the soldiers had to read it every day.

There's the translation.

-"You must not avoid death when you should die.

Do not live in shame and dishonor by being captured as a prisoner of war."

-You have to fight until you die.

-Yes.

-Until you are killed.

-That was the culture?

-And to take care of the weak was not very accepted.

-I see, I see.

-Mm.

-Os couldn't understand the suffering inflicted on the prisoners of war.

-It must have been a great shock to your grandfather, but being a POW was a shameful thing for the Japanese.

But that doesn't justify the Japanese maltreatment of the POWs.

-Do you know what the people of Japan think about what took place in the prisoner-of-war camps and in the war generally?

-There are many people who said compared to the other atrocities done to the Japanese, that this POW issue is exaggerated.

-Really?

-I must say that not so many people actually understand the real horror of the fire bombing, as well as the hydrogen bomb and the atomic bomb.

This is one of the records of the Tokyo fire bombing.

67 cities were all bombed.

400 towns were also bombed.

They are the burned bodies.

-Oh, my.

-Yeah, it was a -- -What a horror.

How many people perished?

-In all, about 300,000 people were killed, and about 400,000 people were injured.

It's more than Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

-More by the bombing before those atomic bombs.

-Mm-hmm.

-31,000 feet over Hiroshima, at 9:15, the bomb is dropped.

-My Grandfather told me that the two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki in August 1945 saved his life.

He believed that without those bombs, the Japanese army would have fought to the last man and killed all their prisoners of war.

Instead, over 200,000 civilians died.

-There's always a mushroom cloud, and they don't show the people underneath.

And this is soldier.

Radiation made strange spots all over his body.

This is the heat.

And the trouble is that the damage going to the tissues and the organs underneath.

That is the difference from the fire bomb.

-Yeah.

-Many people said that the two bombs ended the war.

Unfortunately, it was not necessary.

The Japanese were surrendering.

The emperor sent the letter before the first bomb, before the first bomb.

-Before the first bomb.

-Mm-hmm.

First bomb was dropped on 6th of August.

Second bomb was dropped the 9th.

-Oh.

-If they were serious to stop the war, -Yeah.

-...they should have given 10 days at least for the decision.

-Yeah.

-You know that it was different bomb?

The first one was a uranium.

-Uranium bomb.

-And the second one was a plutonium bomb.

-I'm afraid it looks like they were experimenting.

-Hmm.

Hmm.

-It's unbelievable that we still talk about the use of these weapons, we still buy them, and... -Yeah.

-People can't have looked at this history How can anyone call themselves civilized and talk about these weapons?

It's unbelievable.

-My grandfather must have witnessed this.

-Really?

-Mm.

-Where was he?

-He was from -- originally from Hiroshima.

-Hiroshima.

-Mm.

He went into the cities one week after, and now he was radioactive.

-And did he become ill?

-He just deteriorated and died relatively young.

He must have seen a lot, but he never talked about it, so we didn't know what he witnessed.

-And both our grandfathers suffered in this war.

[ Woman vocalizing ] It's very upsetting -- these accounts of this bombing.

I've been to Japan, and I know many people.

And the horror of it's very difficult to talk about.

These were brutal experiments in warfare.

In my mind, there's no question about it.

Absolutely, absolutely horrific.

Absolutely horrific.

We have a long way to go, a long way to go.

And I think it's so important, if we do care about what happened to our ancestors, when they suffered, that we try and work towards a world where that suffering doesn't occur to those who are coming, to our children.

You know, we're not separate.

There isn't an other.

There isn't really an enemy.

[ Typewriter keys clacking ] "My darling Haley, the excitement since the 10th of August when we first heard rumors of peace has been really terrific in the various prison camps, and in fact the joy, relief, and happiness of it all has been rather overwhelming.

I was granted leave by the military three days ago to assist in the job of starting the bank up again, and what a job it's going to be.

The Japs have been using this building as their government headquarters and offices, and they marched out yesterday, watched by me with gloating eyes."

Before I leave Hong Kong, I've come to HSBC's main office.

It's on the same site as the building that Osmond returned to after his release as a prisoner of war and before he was reunited with his family in Britain.

My mum, Anne, died many years ago, but my dad, David, who knew Osmond well, has come to meet me here.

[ Laughing ] Wow.

I'm suddenly really struck by Why this bank would have meant so much to Os.

But this would have become his family.

-Yeah.

-This would have become his home.

-Os was not the center of the bank but was the hardest worker there.

In other words, he was terribly important.

-He made things happen.

-He made things happen.

It's wonderful to repeat this journey.

-Osmond worked for HSBC for another 11 years after the war, rising to the rank of chief inspector.

These days it's a very different and far larger institution, but Os is still remembered here, and we've come to meet Senior Executive Kevin Martin.

-Your grandfather, right, I mean, from 1919 to the mid-'50s -- he gave his life to the Hong Kong Bank.

And Osmond actually wrote an extraordinary manuscript, which we still have in our archives, giving advice around retirement.

-Did he?

-Wow.

-And it talks about buying the house when you go home, and do you go near a village or near a bus?

But the final piece in here is about gardens and gardening.

-"On Retirement" by Osmond Skinner.

[ Chuckles ] "The poet tells us that a garden is a lovesome thing God wot but neglects to qualify this by saying that it can also be a burden and an expense!"

-- exclamation mark.

"Whilst I must advise against taking on too large a garden, three acres of trees and flowering shrubs with one or two grass paths running through them can provide beauty and privacy, yet will need very little labor."

In my grandfather's retirement, there was a ritual for him every morning and evening of walking up to the orchard.

And later as his legs failed him, I would walk beside him.

But I think it was just probably an excuse [laughs] for him to be able to go and see the orchard that had been in his dreams when it seemed very unlikely he would ever see England again, much less his family.

I've dreamt often of Os, and once I felt his hand on my shoulder.

I turned, and there he was.

And he said, "I want you to tell Hazel that I'm fine."

And I began to weep, and I said, "Os, you're alive."

I missed him terribly when he died.

By the way, I'm sitting in my grandfather's chair.

That's why there's this creaky noise.

[ Chair creaks ] When it squeaks, it's him saying, "No, that's not true!

What is he saying, that idiot?"

[ Laughs ] -Next time... -75 years ago, Lieutenant Commander William Scott Thomas sailed for Normandy.

I'm his granddaughter, Kristin.

-Now, I don't really remember Grandpa talking about the war.

-And I'm going to explore what my grandfather actually did during that conflict.

He sailed for Dunkirk at 12: 35.

-Important to keep your wits about you.

-Yeah.

-While you're dodging bombs.

-That's unbelievable.

I mean, it's crazy.

-"My Grandparents' War."

-This program is available on Amazon Prime Video.

-This program was made possible in part by Elaine and W. Weldon Wilson and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.