Richard Corbett

Richard (Dick) Corbett was born in June 1921 in the west end of Toronto, the youngest of 4 children, and died in June 2011. He enlisted in 1941, and served in the Air Force as a Fighter Pilot. He was shot down over India, was taken prisoner in 1944 by the Japanese, was held in Rangoon Burma, and was released in 1945.

Excerpts from “Testaments of Honour, Personal Histories of Canadian War Veterans”, by Blake Heathcote are included below, giving details about what Richard experienced. In addition, there is also a book called the "Rats of Rangoon" that was written about the prison Richard was held in.
"I wanted to get into the service to win the war! Everybody was hyped up in high school. I really wanted to fly, because I was an airplane nut. I took a lesson down at the Toronto Island Airport, to get a jump on things. The instructor was a gal named Harrison, who later became a Ferry pilot (ferrying aircraft between Canada and the UK). When the war first started, you practically had to be a university graduate to get accepted by the Air Force as a pilot. So I worked in munitions for a while before I got accepted into the Air Force in September 1941, maybe when things got a little lower in the barrel. I was sent to Malton and learned to fly Tiger Moths. I eventually got my wings down in Alymer, Ontario and Billy Bishop pinned them on me. A significant part of that graduation was the Rolex watch my parents gave me. It was beautiful to have, and it played an important part in my life a few years later.
We were shipped off to England on the Queen Elizabeth in late 1942. We were shipped to Bournemouth. We started training on Hurricanes. We also did some training on Typhoons. We shipped out of the UK in 1943 on the first convoy to go through the Mediterranean through Gibraltar. We were then loaded onto trains and shipped across to the Red Sea. We ended up in Bombay. Then we went to place called Poona, where the British Army was stationed. I was assigned to 11 Squadron RAF, which was a mixture of guys from Australia, Canada and RAF. Our squadron was Lord Mountbatten's personal squadron.
We were operational but the Hurricanes we flew were just terrible. I don't know where they got them from but they had the hell beaten out of them. There wasn't a decent airport so we had to land in a flattened paddy field. Typically a mission would be to fly down and hit the Japanese airstrips south of us. There wasn't any anti-aircraft fire, but the Japanese were great for concentrated rifle fire.
Early in 1944, our communications weren't working half the time. because people were always stealing the wire. But this one particular day things were working just fine and we got the word to scramble. A whole pile of Japanese planes were coming over and we had to get our planes the hell off the ground because they were all lined up on the ground like sitting ducks. One of the English officers said to me. "To hell with them Dick, Let's go up above and hit them from the top". So we did.
We got up as high as we could, then came diving down on them. I was banging away at some planes, and may have knocked down a couple, when all of a sudden another bunch of Japanese who were flying above us came down and banged away at us. I got hit in the leg. It wasn't too bad, but I lost some control of my plane. There wasn't much time to think but instead of bailing out, I decided to put it down in a paddy field.
It was late afternoon, and I thought I landed on our side of the line. After I got my Hurricane on the ground, I tried to set fire to it. That was the routine. You had to also take the crystals out of the wireless set, but I thought I heard someone coming and I was bleeding pretty badly, so I just got out of there and into the jungle. I was within a kilometre of my own lines, so I thought I would just crawl back. It was strong moonlight and I was aware I was in enemy territory.
As I was crawling back , trying to figure out how to get back to my own line, an enemy patrol walked right in on top of me. Even though I had a revolver. I surrendered. I wasn't going to be a dead hero. I think they were as surprised as I was when they stumbled across me. I shoved my Rolex up my arm and under my tunic before these guys tied me up to a stake. In India at the time, there were about forty thousand Indian troops under the British that defected to the Japanese side. I never knew any of this until I was taken prisoner. The fellows who were guarding me had British army uniforms and were Indians. These soldiers were in kind of a phony war. They were wearing British uniforms, but working with the Japanese. But that didn't stop them going back and forth across the border and buying cigarettes and things. They had the okay from the Japanese, but I don't know what the hell was going on, on our side. Our guys were probably sleeping. I found out that my English buddy who I'd been flying with had also been hit and bailed out, but the Japanese had shot him in mid-air as he was parachuting down. Also, when I was being tied up, one of these turncoat Indians guarding me found my watch and took it. It was devastating being captured, but at least I was alive.
From that experience I learned the will to survive is something else. I was brought back to the Japanese lines and held in various work camps. There was another RAF guy in camp with me who had been shot down. They shot most of the army guys after taking them prisoner, but for some reason they didn't shoot us air force guys. The Japanese did not usually take prisoners, so I was fortunate. I didn't know anything about the Japanese or what to expect, but there is no question they were pretty hard on us. Guys with wounds were often shot. I'd bandaged my leg where I had been hit, but it cleared up.
They decided to move us out of India. They put us on a boat and we ended up in Rangoon, Burma, in the city jail. We got about a salmon tin full of rice every day and something you might call soup, but I don't know what was in it. We were isolated in this one section of the prison with only air force guys. The Americans were bombing Japan, so you knew it was only just a matter of time until they were going to kill us in retaliation. Some of the guys went out of their minds with this hanging over their heads.
There was no medical attention. We had one fellow who got gangrene in his hand and we had to cut his hand off. A Canadian doctor in the prison did it but with no anesthetic. Most of the guys in the camp eventually died from disease or starvation. Every days bodies were carried out.
We were in that Burmese prison for about fifteen months before we were released. During that time, my philosophy on life changed. I'd had strong views on race and the world from a limited point of view. I eventually shared a cell with his RAF fellow who had a pretty good philosophy of life and I learned a lot from him. This RAF fellow used to say to me. "you can't hate. Hate's going to kill you faster than anything else. So you got to take things as they come. I know you don't like the Japanese but you have to stop hating them. We'd talk for hours trying to rationalize the Japanese behaviour. Basically, I came to understand that a lot of them had been at war for ten years and as a result, probably had a completely different philosophy of life from anything I would ever know. But they were still human beings, and that helped me immensely. It helped me later in life and has stuck with me.

One night, I couldn't sleep. I got up and was walking around and it became clear that the Japanese had left the prison. We were alone. I came across a note they'd left on the gate. It said "we have guarded you with honour and hope to meet you again on some other battlefield" . So that was that. But then we were in for few hairy days, because the British were starting to come into our area and didn't know we were holed up there. The RAF bombed our prison! On April 19, 1945, the British evacuated us from the prison and put us on a hospital ship to Calcutta and finally we were flown back to England on an old DC-3.

When the tide turned against the Japanese, The Indian soldier who'd take my Rolex tried to defect back to the British lines with a friend, but was captured by Gurkhas. Lucky for him he was wearing my watch, because it had my name engraved on it and they figured he must know something. They killed his buddy. The watch was handed over to the authorities and my family was informed that, at the very least, some trace of me had been found. This was enough to convince them I was still alive. Unlike Europe there was no Red Cross in India, and no communications with POW's. When I made out of the prison and got my things back, there was my Rolex, still working.