Western Canada
During World War II
Reginald H. Roy
Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher of For King and Country: Alberta in the Second World War;)
Western Canadian troops, however, were among the first to fight the Japanese face to face. Late in 1941, Canada had agreed to send two infantry battalions to Hong Kong to help strengthen the British garrison there. One of these was the Winnipeg Grenadiers from Manitoba. These troops arrived in Hong Kong on 16 November 1941, just three weeks before the colony was attacked. By Christmas, following three weeks of vicious fighting, Hong Kong was forced to surrender. Many of the Grenadiers had been killed or wounded, while the remainder faced over three and a half years as prisoners of the Japanese.
It was this enemy success combined with the perceived savagery of the Japanese that had led to the large number of Canadian soldiers being stationed in British Columbia. But they did not have the means to attack the Japanese in the Aleutians, and when the Americans launched their assault on Attu in May 1943, they were cheered by their Canadian allies who were anxious to join them in their next assault.
Even before the "thoroughly nasty little campaign" was over, plans were being laid for an attack on Kiska. This time Canada was to be involved. The 13th Canadian Infantry Brigade from Pacific Command was selected and during the summer trained in combined operations on Vancouver Island.4 When the American-Canadian assault on Kiska went in on 16 August 1943, there was no defence; the Japanese had evacuated the island about two weeks earlier. They had given up their last foothold in the North American zone without a fight, and in all probability they were as pleased to go as the Canadians were three months later when they, too, began their withdrawal from that cold, bleak, windswept island to the milder climate of southern British Columbia.
With the Japanese gone from the Aleutians and the tide of war pushing them back from their bases in the South Pacific, there was a reduction of Canadian servicemen in Western Canada. The last indirect attempt by Japan to harass Western Canada was in November 1944 when they began to release hydrogen-filled balloons from the island of Honshu. Relying on the prevailing winds to take them to North America, the balloons carried high explosive and incendiary bombs timed to be released by automatic devices. Some reached beyond Manitoba, but the only deaths from them occurred in Oregon.
It is almost impossible to give a statistical account of the contribution of Western Canada to the wartime effort of the nation. The highest formation where battalions from anyone region were grouped was in a brigade or, to use the American equivalent, a regiment. Western Canadian units fought in Hong Kong, the Mediterranean, and Northwest Europe. Western sailors and airmen, sometimes fighting with the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force as well as with the Royal Canadian Navy and RCAF, fought on almost every continent and on the high seas. Fortunately, Western Canada itself was never a battleground, but it provided tens of thousands of men and women who were willing to serve wherever they were needed.
Notes
4. Two of its four battalions were from Western Canada - the Rocky Mountain Rangers and the Winnipeg Grenadiers. The latter were reconstituted in Canada after the original unit was lost in Hong Kong.