Jack Edwards (Hong Kong) - Trivia

Trivia

• It took him 45 years to write his book Banzai You Bastards!.
• The first translator of his book, the Japanese journalist Shinji Nagino, was murdered in Montreal with two-thirds of the way to go.
• After being requested by Diana, Princess of Wales to find the grave of Major-General Merton Beckwith-Smith, the father of Princess Diana's lady-in-waiting who had died as a POW in Japan, Edwards managed to locate it.
• In 1981 the National Film Board of Canada released A War Story: Based on the Diaries of Dr. Ben Wheeler, docudrama produced, written, and directed by Anne Wheeler who's father was the Canadian doctor in the Kinkasekihe camp. Jack Edwards was a featured commentator in the film, along with several other former POWs who were interviewed in the documentary.
• In 2000, a memorial was erected in Kinkaseki to which Edwards returned for the second time with the help of a grant of £10,000 from the British Government.
• Edwards and his other POW survivors escaped impending death at the hands of their Japanese captors by a mere two days due to the dropping of the two American atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• When American aircraft began to drop supplies into Edwards' POW camp near the end of the war, several POWs and civilians were killed by the supplies which were dropped too low for their parachutes to work. Edwards was the only one to know flag semaphore in the camp as he had learned it in the Boys' Brigade. As Edwards frantically signalled "Don't Drop" the American aircraft circling overhead was about to drop supplies on top of him until the crew realised Edwards' signals. Interestingly, there was only one crew member on the aircraft who could read semaphore and he had learned it in the Boy Scouts of America.