Letters to Harvelyn: From Japanese POW Camps: A Father’s Letters to His Young Daughter During World War II

Out of Canada’s darkest experiences of World War II comes an uplifting, deeply moving book about the courage and sacrifice of Canadian prisoners of war. Major K.G. Baird of the Winnipeg Grenadiers was one of nearly two thousand Canadians who were given the hopeless task of defending Hong Kong from the Japanese in November 1941. Letters to Harvelyn is an annotated and illustrated edition of Major Baird’s journal. During his three and a half years as a POW, Baird kept his journal as a series of letters to his wife and daughter in Winnipeg. A raw account of Canadian courage in the face of starvation, disease, and brutality, the journal offers a detailed picture of life in the camps and one man’s intense homesickness. “I feel as hollow as a drum,” he writes, and the reader can begin to imagine his pain. Well illustrated with photographs, drawings, and enough supporting documentation to satisfy even professional historians, Letters to Harvelyn is an important contribution to Canada’s military heritage. –William Newbigging