You never know what kind of a story your next door neighbour has to tell, until you ask. Or, in the case of 35-year Slave Lake resident Mik Bergersen, until she springs the news that her father spent nearly four years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Hong Kong.
Not only that, he kept a diary, which has never been published.
Bergersen was in The Leader recently to talk about her dad, Lt. Leonard B. Corrigan of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. This past month, she and her three sisters attended a convention of Hong Kong vets in Ottawa. To say it was a memorable experience is a bit of an understatement.
“We were in tears all the time!” says Bergersen.
It seems Len Corrigan was a very well-liked man – an officer who put little distance between himself and his men. A guy, according to his youngest daughter, who “tried to keep the morale of the men as high as possible.”
Wearing their ‘Corrigan’ name tags, Bergersen, Kathy Clarkson of Lethbridge, (also formerly of Slave Lake), Shelagh Purcell and Pat (or ‘Paddy’) Turcotte of Ontario, participated in two days of meetings and ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. There are only 70 Canadian Hong Kong vets left, and they must have met most of them.
“Invariably they knew my dad,” says Bergersen. “They all had either a good story, or tears.”
Turcotte, who is the Ontario director of the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association, also had a chance to meet with Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, herself a refugee from wartime Hong Kong.
The story of their experience at the convention, plus a bit about their dad, appeared in the Aug. 31 edition of the Cobourg, Ontario Daily Star, the hometown newspaper for sister Shelagh. It was that article that prompted Bergersen to approach The Leader to see if this paper might be similarly interested. Here’s an excerpt of the story by Selena Forsyth:
‘For the Corrigan girls it was a remarkable weekend. One of the highlights was when they found a photo that was taken just after their dad and the others were liberated. It was taken in the corner of the hut in which the men had lived for most of the three-and-a-half years they were in captivity at Sham Shui Po in Hong Kong. The girls met many of the men who were with their father in the camp and learned that his participation in the camp musicals had been a great source of joy. Music was a great part of the Corrigan family life.’
Len Corrigan was not your average wartime army recruit. He enlisted at age 30, already a married man with two young daughters. He did it, Bergersen says, “because it was the right thing to do.”
Initially a member of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, he volunteered to join the Winnipeg Grenadiers in the fall of 1941. They were just being mustered for overseas duty in Hong Kong.
The Japanese attacked on Dec. 8, about three weeks after the Canadians arrived. Seventeen days later, the garrison surrendered, and the long years of internment commenced.
Corrigan’s diary reveals a man whose sense of humour seldom deserts him, even in time of hunger and sickness. He comes across as relentlessly fair-minded, even to the extent of giving his captors the credit he thinks is their due. Remarkably, he never (at least not in the first 155 pages) once expresses any bitterness towards the Japanese. In fact he’s tougher on the behaviour of certain snobbish (and in some cases crooked) British officers.
Corrigan suffered quite severely from amoebic dysentery during the latter part of 1943, spending 2 ½ months in hospital at one stretch. Among his other tropical ailments was beriberi, caused by a vitamin B deficiency. Others died from such ailments, but Corrigan managed to get away with losing only about 50 of his 200 lbs.
An entire year is missing from the Corrigan diary. Bergersen thinks it may have been lost. He apparently had parts of it buried in different places in the camp on Hong Kong island. Perhaps it was some of the missing stuff that came to the attention of the authorities after liberation, because he was warned that if he had it published, he could lose his army pension.
Lt. Len Corrigan and his gang of fellow internees arrived back in Canada on Oct. 5, 1945, 22 days short of four years since they had left their native shores. He returned to Swift Current and resumed his interrupted postal career, eventually become post master. Nature had its way and the two youngest Corrigan children showed up in due course. As noted above, they turned out to be a musical bunch. Mik and Kathy were well-known in the Slave Lake musical theatre scene, while sister Shelagh used to do gigs around Cobourg with Bob Homme, the Friendly Giant himself. Len and Gladys had a dance band called ‘The Serenaders’ for years in Swift Current. He died in 1994 at the age of 83.
Corrigan returned once to Hong Kong, with his wife, in 1985 for a 40-year commemoration. He said many times in his diary that he’d like to do it – even to live there – which was remarkable given the unpleasantness of his experiences.
On that score, the usual report one hears about Japanese POW camps is that conditions were horrible. It says quite a lot about the man that the worst he ever has to say about internment is that it was awfully boring and that there was often not quite enough to eat. He notes that the unfortunate Chinese of Hong Kong had it much worse.
All in all, a fine fellow, - one of Canada’s war veterans well worth remembering.
“We’re so proud of him,” says Bergersen.

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