The Canadian army suffered its first defeat of the Second World War at Hong Kong in December 1941, an event that was overshadowed by the debacle at Dieppe nine months later. The Nazis killed more Canadians but they did not ordinarily starve and maltreat their prisoners of war. The Japanese, however, starved, worked to death, and miserably abused their approximately 1,700 Canadian POWs.

This collection of extraordinary letters by Major Kenneth Baird of the Winnipeg Grenadiers adds much to our understanding of both the battle at Hong Kong and the POW experience. He wrote these letters to his daughter and fortunately hid them – POWs were not allowed to write, never mind send, letters home – until his liberation. They provide a fresh account of the struggle for the island, and its defence bungled by the British commanders, “the Powers that Be…. what a flop they were. It really was pitiful, the chaos that filled them all at Battle Headquarters….”

Baird is equally harsh on some of his soldiers, “some of the yellowest scum that any unit could be cursed with.” The reason? Short 200 men when initially sent overseas, training centres “sent us their sweepings … not worth the powder to blow them to hell.” This is the first time these perspectives have been added to the Canadian literature on Hong Kong.

Baird’s letters frighteningly tell a tale of slow starvation – indeed, they are a record of meals eaten or dreamt. “We all seem to think, dream and speak of food,” he wrote 20 days after his capture with three-and-a-half years more to go. The POWs got rice, occasional turnips, and scraps of meat infrequently. The result, made worse because the enemy withheld medicine and Red Cross parcels, was rampant disease – pellagra, beriberi, malaria, diphtheria, and the resulting complications that have plagued survivors ever since.

There is not a shred of political correctness in these letters, most of which curse the Japanese roundly. This brutal honesty, this unsparing record of imprisonment, makes this book all the more valuable.