Dark Side of the Sun

I’ve always loved history. Looking back, I now realize I’ve always had a preference for social history. I avoided military history at all costs in University and remember being annoyed at the ‘guns and boats’ history students (mostly boys) who felt nothing else mattered in the grand scheme of things.

My grandfather Eugene Francis Rossiter served in WWI. It wasn’t until his war medals surfaced ca. ten years ago did I experience my first flicker of interest in military history. Once it became a personal story I could relate to, I saw military history in a completely different light. I placed an order for his Attestation Papers from Library and Archives Canada (that are now available online) and it provided me with more information than I had ever previously known about him.


His regimental number was 713255 and he enlisted on May 30th, 1916, when he was nineteen years old. My Grandfather served in the 105th Battalion along with many other Island men during WWI and he saw battle in France. Because my grandfather died when my father was only ten months old, we know very little about him. I was therefore grateful for every little piece of information gleaned from these papers – including the fact that like me he had “grey” eyes.



For Christmas, my brother Peter gave me the book Dark Side of the Sun by Michael Palmer. The book is about the author’s grandfather George Palmer and the Canadian Prisoners of War (POWs) in Hong Kong, and subsequently in the Omine Camp in Kyushu, Japan. It just so happens that George Palmer is from my hometown, St. Peters Bay. So again, this is story concerning military history is one that I had a connection to.

I babysat for George’s son Norbert and his daughter Joan – seven of his grandchildren in total. And a lot of those evenings where spent in his old home – the Palmer homestead in Cable Head. Before George passed away in 1991, my Mother (a nurse) did private duty with him in Souris hospital. I remember babysitting for Norbert and Mary the weekend of George’s wake and funeral. As I read this book I thought of all these connections but realized I knew nothing of George himself.

I had always heard that George would seldom talk of his war time experiences. I knew that he had been a POW in Japan and that was about it. I remember telling his daughter Joan that I was going to Japan to teach English. She responded be counting to ten in Japanese. I asked her how she knew to do that and she said her father George had taught her (he had learned from the Japanese guards who counted the POWS several times daily). It was these accounts and memories of George’s children that Michael Palmer relied on and incorporated into the book to trace George’s military service during WWII. With his children’s memories, personal letters written by George during the war and a myriad of primary and secondary sources, Michael weaved together his grandfather’s story and it was a fascinating read.

I learned a lot reading this book. For instance, the Geneva Convention (1929) marked the first time in history the treatment of military prisoners was governed – on paper. Unfortunately for the Allied Forces, including George Palmer, who surrendered in Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1941, Japan ignored the provisions of the Geneva Convention, as did the Soviet Union and Germany.

Descriptions of the initial Japanese POW camps in Hong Kong were shockingly bad. The lack of food, quality of food, dysentery, no running water or electricity, no medical supplies, blankets, the mice, bed bugs, mice and rat infested conditions. It was shocking to read so I can’t even begin to imagine the reality of it all. The POWs were transported to Japan and arrived in Kyushu on January 22, 1943. The Allied Prisoners of war imprisoned in Omine Camp were ‘employed’ by the Farakawa Mining Company, from January 1943 until Japan’s surrender in August of 1945. Having changed its name several times his company is still in existence and is now called the Furukawa Equipment and Metals.

The camps in Japan were not as bad as in Hong Kong, but conditions were still dire. There was never enough food. George weighed 165 pounds upon enlistment and went down to 99 pounds by 1945, having lost approximately 40% of his body weight. As the war progressed, food shortages also took their toll on the Japanese homeland. It wasn’t only the POWs who suffered. Food was scarce for civilians too. Japanese army personnel often did not get much better food than their prisoners. Red Cross parcels were a godsend for prisoners, but were rare, and often did not make it to the POWs in the Omine Camp. The Japanese camp commanders camp them for themselves in case of invasion.

My great-uncle Pius Steele was also a Japanese POW in WWII. I was always told growing up that he knew George Palmer because they had met in a POW camp. This book dispelled that story as the book provides a list of Canadian POWs in the Omine Camp and does not include Pius’ name. I am now left to question if Pius was in other POW camps near Tokyo?

One quote from the book struck me: “George just happened to survive.” I am not sure if it was that simple. Surviving the conditions George faced as a POW took a special kind of emotional, mental and physical strength. Growing up, I always heard George Palmer described as a hero in our community. After reading this book, I now understand why. This book has also left me wanting to know more of my Grandfather’s military story.