Samuel W. Wolfe of the G.T. Fulford Company

The Story of a Patent Medicine Man and His Internment by the Japanese in 1942 and 1943

By Patrick S. Wolfe

ABSTRACT: Starting in the 1890s, Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, an iron-based patent medicine, became an international marketing sensation that in the coming decades would see the product sold in more than eighty countries around the world. Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company was the trading arm of G.T. Fulford Co. Ltd., which was headquartered initially in Brockville, Ontario, and later in Toronto. Samuel Williamson Wolfe (1872-1952) worked for the company for more than fifty years starting in April 1895 and played a critical role in its development. His career, most of which occurred overseas, provides insight into the patent medicine industry. According to Hubert C. (“Pard”) Myers, general manager and a director with the company for approximately thirty years starting in 1930, “The Fulford Co. never had an executive that made as great a contribution to its growth and survival” as Sam Wolfe. Having departed Shanghai in November 1941 and started home to Kingston, Ontario, and retirement, Sam was still conducting company business in Manila when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His experience as a Japanese prisoner-of-war, which he described in a memoir, delayed his return home by almost two years. Thanks to the efforts of George T. Fulford, Jr., MP, who used his connections with Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Sam was one of the first prisoners repatriated from the Philippines. ^[1]

After “a third-of-a-century in China,” Sam Wolfe left Shanghai for the last time on Saturday, 22 November 1941.^[2] His ultimate destination was Kingston, Ontario, where his wife Blanche, youngest son Pierre, and retirement awaited him.^[3] On the way to his new home, he stopped in Manila “to confer upon methods for improving our Philippines trade,”^[4] by which he meant the business of his employer, “G.T. Fulford Co. Limited,” the Canadian patent medicine firm that from the early 1890s had—with Sam’s help—become a worldwide powerhouse, thanks to the popularity of Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, a heavily advertised iron-based fatigue remedy.^[5]

The Manila stopover was a fateful step. Sam was still there “on the 8^th December (7^th to you [in North America])” when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This news arrived “like a galvanic shock,” according to “Philippines Retrospect,” Sam’s 46-page memoir.^[6] Up until the attack, the idea of improving G.T. Fulford Company’s Philippines trade had, he wrote, “seemed entirely reasonable, despite the imminence of war, for no one believed that the Japs, if they really dared start a Pacific war, could stand up successfully for long against the combined might of Great Britain and America.”^[7]

Sam had been scheduled to sail from Manila to North America on the President Madison of the American President Lines. He also had a backup berth on the President Harrison. But when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred both ships were commandeered for military service.^[8] Sam then found a spot “on a freighter called the Columbia” that was departing for Los Angeles on 9 December, but this too fell through. Moreover, as Sam noted in “Philippines Retrospect,” the Columbia “may have been one of those [vessels] bombed and sunk in Manila harbour.”^[9]

News of the attack on Pearl Harbor had been “followed a few hours later by the arrival of the Japs themselves, in the air, … and right over our heads.”^[10] Sam spent most of the night of 8-9 December “in the crowded bomb-proof cellar of the Manila Hotel. There was a complete black-out throughout the city and suburbs, and we were kept running up and down the darkened stairs, from our rooms to the shelter, as successive air-alarms sounded…” The next day he got his “first sight of the enemy air fleet attacking Manila.” He added: “I had often seen Jap air-planes before—over Shanghai—and witnessed the tremendous devastation they wrought in the native areas around that great city in 1932.” He had strong opinions about the Japanese; from the vantage point of early 1944, he asserted:

Wherever the flag of the Rising Sun is planted the sunshine of life disappears. Freedom gives place to military domination, misery supersedes happiness, families are divided, suspicion and treachery destroy friendship and neighbourly good will. The fruits of the earth, on which the people have hitherto lived—especially in tropical Asia—are seized and consumed by rapacious soldiery, spread, octopus-like, over the land, or shipped away to Japan. ‘Co-Prosperity’—‘The New Order in Asia’—means only prosperity to the Japanese, whatever else they may pretend it to be. Such was the lesson learned long ago in Korea and Manchuria, and more recently in China. Its bitterness is now being experienced by the peoples of the Philippines.^[11]

The upshot of the situation in December 1941 was that Sam, as he phrased it, was “caught like a rat in a trap.” It was a tense time for his family. Noël, the oldest child, was a new junior officer with the Indian Army. Désirée, the second child, had recently been evacuated from Singapore with her son, Michael, and her newborn daughter, Carol; they were “somewhere in Australia.” Désirée’s husband, Leslie, had joined the British volunteer army and became a prisoner-of-war when Singapore fell to the Japanese. It would be almost two full years before Sam could rejoin Blanche and Pierre, as well as Désirée, Michael, and Carol, who, in the interim, had made their way from Australia to Kingston.^[12]

*

Born in Cork, Ireland, on 9 January 1872, Samuel Williamson Wolfe was raised there until about the age of seven when his family moved to London, England. The 1891 census for Battersea (London) lists Sam’s occupation as “Ironmonger’s Assistant,” which confirms part of Wolfe family lore that he worked for a time during his teens in a hardware store while also attending night school. Soon after he turned twenty, he answered a newspaper ad for a job, was hired and, in April 1892, was sent by his new employer to Cape Town as a “merchant.”^[13] His employer was the “predecessor” to the G.T. Fulford Company, a Canadian patent medicine firm, which he joined three years later.^[14]

George Taylor Fulford (1852-1905) was a successful drug store owner in Brockville, Ontario. Patent medicines were an important part of his business. In January 1887, he filed a sworn deposition with the Leeds County Registrar establishing “Fulford and Co. … as a manufacturer and vendor of Patent Medicines.” In June 1890, he purchased the patent for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People and soon after launched Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company.^[15] Heavily promoted using testimonial advertising and aided by a timely influenza epidemic in 1891-92, the Pink Pills were an immediate hit in Canada, the United States and Britain where they were initially sold.^[16] The business expanded rapidly, eventually operating in over eighty countries and surviving for almost a century, until 1989, when it went into receivership.^[17]

Despite an international stereotype that “patent medicine men were widely seen as scurrilous characters who sold useless or dangerous remedies at inflated prices to an unsuspecting public,” historian Lori Loeb has concluded that George Fulford was an “ethical self-made man…. [who] marketed a relatively harmless, even beneficial, product with which many customers were satisfied.”^[18] Moreover, Fulford is not an isolated example. Like him, “Francis Jonathon Clarke (1832-88), the proprietor of Clarke’s Blood Mixture, James Crossley Eno (1820-1915) of Eno’s Fruit Salt, and Thomas Holloway (1800-83) of Holloway’s Pills”—all of Britain—were men of “humble beginnings” who “worked remarkably hard. Each risked his security on a heavy investment in advertising. Each marketed a remedy with some genuine efficacy. Having achieved financial success, each became a noted philanthropist and active member of his community.”^[19]

While acknowledging the existence of “fly-by-night operators in the nostrum field,” Loeb points to a different reason—a “polarization of medicine and trade”—to explain why men like Fulford, Clarke, Eno and Holloway did not conform to “the scurrilous stereotype.” These men, she writes, “were entrepreneurs who marketed health as a commodity at a time when professionalism demanded that doctors retreat from the commercial arena. The unease of professionals with the commodification of health was expressed in vitriolic ridicule for patent medicines and their makers. The hyperbolic advertisements of the patent medicine men made them easy targets for the doctors, aspirants to an ideal of gentility, who imagined an artificially large gulf between professionalism and trade, an image further entrenched by the fashionable attribution of ethics and altruism to professionals alone.”^[20]

Although Sam was not a business owner like Fulford, Clarke, Eno and Holloway, his career as a senior manager in a patent medicine enterprise for half a century provides a window onto the industry. Following the establishment of the Fulford Company’s Cape Town office, where Sam started, an office was opened in Paris in 1893, which spun off “satellite agencies” in Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Greece. Cape Town, with the accompanying territory of South Africa, was managed by Charles Fulford, George Fulford’s nephew. Sam subsequently took over the Cape Town operation. This presumably occurred when Charles Fulford was reassigned about 1897 to establish an office in Sydney, Australia. In 1903, Sam too was reassigned to open up the Far East. Despite these early similarities, Sam and Charles’ careers with the company were very different.^[21]

A document in the Fulford Place Archives in Brockville asserts that “All went well” for Charles in Sydney until it was discovered he was running “a separate business of his own—Bile Beans for Biliousness.”^[22] First introduced in the late 1890s, Bile Beans became “a popular liver and digestive remedy.”^[23] Charles was not only fired for this unauthorized enterprise, his Uncle George also “severed contact” with him. But this did not stop Charles starting a Bile Beans business in Britain.^[24] When he “got into full swing he put on the market an additional line[,] Dr Slaters Blood making Tablets[,] [sic] and began a display advertising campaign in South Wales. [His Uncle George] was furious at this attempt to injure the [Pink Pills] business and said ‘Go after him full speed.’ So South Wales was swamped with [Pink Pills advertising] regardless of costs or profits on that section until [Charles] lost heart and let the line fade away.”^[25] What is more, a 1905 court case in Edinburgh (Bile Beans vs. Davidson) concluded that Charles’ “Bile Beans Company was ‘engag[ed] in perpetuating a deliberate fraud upon the public in describing and selling an article as being what it is not.’”^[26]

Although the Bile Beans case, along with the Medical Battery case and the Carbolic Smoke Ball case, both from the early 1890s, “demonstrated that patent medicine advertisers could not operate deceptively with impunity,” problems persisted in other parts of the industry. For example, when Bile Beans “were under a cloud,” Charles Fulford “started a new line called Karnac, a laxative pill…” This product also “had a short life…. an unfortunate error occurred in the mixing room with an effect upon the public not claimed in any [advertising] of Karnac.” Charles was nothing if not determined. “After an interval of years,” he re-entered the Bile Beans market with a product that became increasingly successful, to the point that, by 1944, it was “one of the best sellers in [Britain].”^[27]

During the period when Charles started working secretly on his own behalf, his Uncle George, who had served for twelve years on Brockville’s town council and was on the boards of several corporations, was appointed to the Canadian Senate by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier in January 1900.^[28] According to Hugena Cook, secretary for many years to George Taylor Fulford, Jr. (1902-87), the appointment to the Senate occurred after the senior Fulford “had reputedly donated $5,000 to the Liberal Party.”^[29] (The senior Fulford died following an automobile accident in Boston in October 1905. His Schenectady-based business manager, Willis Tracy Hanson, ran the company for the next quarter century.^[30]) George Taylor Fulford, Jr., who took over the company in 1929, also followed his father into politics, serving as a Liberal Member of Ontario’s Provincial Parliament, 1934-37, and as a Liberal Member of Parliament, 1940-45 and 1949-53. Moreover, Prime Minister MacKenzie King was godfather to Fulford Jr.’s youngest son, Dwight, the future diplomat.^[31] Fulford, Jr., would use his connections with Prime Minister King to help repatriate Sam.

Sam was thirty-one when he established the Fulford Company’s Singapore office in 1903. He went on to open offices in Hong Kong, India, Ceylon and, in 1908, Shanghai, which became his home base until the Second World War. Sam’s early business trips also took him to Mauritius, Java, Bangkok, Peking and Manila.^[32] Through similar expansions elsewhere around the world, “The Great Canadian Medicine”—as the Pink Pills were dubbed in 1899—became a global phenomenon.^[33]

While Sam was building the company’s Far Eastern network, he was also putting down his own roots. He married Blanche Louise Victorine Sabatier, who hailed from Lyon, France, on 16 March 1907, in Singapore. They moved to Shanghai when the company office was established there.^[34] Although their first child, Noël, was born in England in early 1908, Désirée and Pierre were born in Shanghai in 1910 and 1918, respectively.

Unlike Senator Fulford and his son George, Sam was not involved in politics. But like them, as well as Clarke, Eno and Holloway, he was an “active member of the community.” He “organized a Rotary Club in Shanghai” and served as its president. He was also a strong supporter of the Salvation Army and a member and president of the St. Patrick’s Society.^[35] According to Pierre, Sam was “A champion for [Shanghai’s] oppressed and the underprivileged.”^[36] Désirée recalled that Sam “visited the filthy Chinese jaols [sic] every Christmas morning with food for the prisoners.  He looked after the rickshaw coolies at the mission—instigated, for their protection, by the British because they were so badly treated by their own people.  He adopted a Chinese boy who was blind—paying his school fees and medical care.”^[37] As a small boy, Pierre accompanied Sam on one of his Christmas morning jail visits and watched his father give “each prisoner an apple, banana and an orange among other things … the memory is vividly etched in my mind.”^[38]

Although Sam said he had an “unorthodox mind” and “never cultivated a very strong desire for scriptural study,” he was nonetheless influenced by “the ‘still small Voice’” and described an experience when “at some chance moment, the cloud lifted, the vista cleared, a portal came in view. It was found in a book, and read, ‘All paths lead to Heaven.’ This comforting dictum remained heart-treasure for many years…”^[39] A neighbour in Kingston characterized him as a man of “so much quiet dignity, culture and charm.”^[40]

F.C. (Charlie) Wise was a Pink Pills colleague and friend of Sam’s. He joined the London office of John Morgan Richards and Sons in April 1896.^[41] This firm had been contracted by the Fulford Company in 1892 to market the Pink Pills in Britain, an arrangement that was later “extended to South Africa, Singapore and Shanghai.”^[42] Wise was assistant to Thomas Baron Russell, who was responsible for the Pink Pills file. Wise assumed this responsibility at a later date when Russell became the advertising manager for “The Times.”^[43] In early 1919, the Fulford Company terminated its relationship with John Morgan Richards and Sons. Wise, however, presumably moved to the Fulford Company, for he continued looking after the Pink Pills until September 1939 when he retired.^[44]

Wise was a vital resource in 1944 when Sam contemplated writing “a history of the business.”^[45] Such a history was a daunting task given that many vital records had been destroyed. The prospect “appalled” Sam.^[46] In addition to “documents lost in a Cape Town fire… others destroyed by the Japs in Singapore and Shanghai, and yet others … looted in Manila” that Sam mentions in a draft Foreword for the projected history, the company’s archives had been lost in a 1916 fire at the Fulford Building in Brockville and the London office at 36 Fitzroy Square had been “demolished by a German bomb… towards of end of 1940.”^[47] As a consequence, Sam wrote to his “old colleagues and friends” around the world asking for information and their recollections. Wise made by far the largest contribution, attaching a 37-page handwritten manuscript to a letter of 8 August 1944, and providing another eight handwritten pages of “Additional Notes” via Hubert C. (“Pard”) Myers, the company’s general manager, during the late autumn.^[48]

Wise’s recollections, which have already been used extensively in this essay, describe how he supplied Sam with part of his sales force:

I recall the procession of young men we sent out to the East to be your assistants—Campbell Sales Craston (or Cranston) Henly Keller and Kerr, some by Steamer some via Siberia…

Some of those young men were not successes, but it now seems to me that they were insufficiently paid. To start at £300 per annum on a five year agreement with moderate increases meant that they soon became discontented.

…some of the fellows you engaged in Shanghai were troublesome customers—Jackson who violently assaulted you in your office when he returned from one trip…^[49]

By the time Sam left the Orient in late 1941, his Shanghai staff exceeded one hundred, consisting of forty men and sixty-plus women. Most of the employees were Chinese. Sam described the men as “a formidable band… of friendly, faithful souls.” Of the women, he wrote: “I loved those little ladies and I know they all loved me.”^[50]

In a December 1969 letter, “Pard” Myers told Pierre: “The Fulford Co. never had an executive that made as great a contribution to its growth and survival, as your father. He built their business in South Africa, in Singapore, and in China. I’ve told this to everyone in the company that would listen to me…” During Sam’s tenure, the “Far Eastern Branch… was the largest and most profitable in the company.”^[51]

*

As internments go, Sam got off lucky. Soon after he’d arrived in Manila in late November, he contacted Désirée’s brother-in-law, Alec Smith (“Smithy”), who he did not know; Smithy was an employee of Nestle’s and a resident of the Greater Manila area. On 10 December, following “a second bad night in the Manila Hotel cellar,” Sam said he “was glad to receive a phone call from my new friend ‘Smithy’ … inviting me to become the guest of himself and his [American] wife in their home at San Juan, a little township some seven miles outside the city.”^[52]

Sam recalled later that the Smith home “stands in a fine garden on an elevation overlooking the whole city, and from its balcony over the front entrance we witnessed many thrilling sights[:] The strafing of Fort Murphy, a mile or two from us; great fires, tremendous volumes of black smoke, and the destruction of huge oil tanks, the contents of which ran flaming down the creeks and waterways out to the sea.” He added: “When at home with the women and children dashes into the sand-bag shelter under the house were frequent, and we all had hand-bags packed with night clothes, an extra suit, passports, money, ready for immediate flight.”^[53]

When the festive season arrived, “despite bombs and blackouts, we had a real Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings, liquid and otherwise…. Ten of us sat down to the table that night. Halfway through the meal we were unexpectedly joined by two American soldiers, one a lieutenant, the other a sergeant…. These men had been out on duty all day, driving a military lorry, hiding as best they could in ditches and under trees when enemy planes were overhead…. The [lieutenant], a thin stick of a man, as dry in appearance as he was in speech, had known our hostess during her school-days in Texas. The sergeant was Falstaffian. Huge, burly, black-bearded, ruddy and jovial, with his stories and laughter he dominated the feast….We were sorry to bid them good-bye when they remounted their lorry and drove away into the darkness.”^[54]

The next day, with the Japanese forces continuing to close in, General MacArthur declared Manila an “Open City” to save residents from a siege. The American troops left the city and “marched out to the wild mountainous terrain of Bataan…. At the same time President Quezon and Vice-President Osmena departed by submarine to Corregidor, leaving a high subordinate official named Vargas in charge, with only the native police to keep order, until the Japs came in.”^[55]

With these developments, Smithy and his wife, Theo, decided it was “too dangerous” to continue living “in the country.” Prior to the end of the month, they, along with their small children, Brian and Susan, “moved into town, to the home of the Swedish Consul who had offered them shelter…” Sam, meanwhile, “found quarters” in the Luneta Hotel, “a much humbler place… [than] the palatial Manila Hotel.” That night the Luneta Hotel’s “Chinese Manager… ran away into the country, as also did his staff, fearing what the Japs might do to them if they stayed.” Fortunately, a number of ships stewards from the President Grant were among the hotel’s guests and “took charge of the hotel kitchen on the morning of January 1^st.”^[56]

The stewards had been enjoying “a few hours sight-seeing ashore, and on return to the pier found their ship had sailed, leaving them behind, with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and a few dollars in their pockets. This… was also the experience of many passengers, who were hurriedly put ashore, carrying a few handbags. Then the ships hastened out of port, to get away to sea, to escape if they could the Japanese bombers. Men, women and children were thus left, bereft of their heavy baggage, to face the future in a strange land, and with the prospect of soon falling into the hands of the dreaded sons of Nippon.”^[57]

Sam’s “Philippines Retrospect” reports that about the same time “the Filipino officials threw open all the wharves and warehouses in the dock area to the native populace, with complete freedom to help themselves, and soon we saw hundreds of people streaming across the Luneta, carrying away huge bundles, cases and packages of every kind of loot. Among these goods, as I discovered afterwards, were the contents of four trunks containing many of my most prized possessions…. things I never saw again.”^[58]

The Japanese army arrived on 2 January. “Knowing the exceeding ill-repute acquired by their troops in China and elsewhere the Jap High Command had given strict instructions that there was to be no bad behavior.”^[59] Guests of hotels

…were forbidden to go out of doors. Japanese officers and men came in, made lists of our names, nationalities, baggage and so forth, and four days later we Britishers and Americans were carted away in open trucks to Santo Tomas University [a short distance from the city centre], which had been selected as a Concentration Camp. We suffered no ill-treatment, but were allowed to take with us only such luggage as we could carry in our hands. Thus I had to leave two trunks behind, which I did not see again for nine months. Then the Philippine Red Cross succeeded in recovering them for me, with locks smashed and the more valuable of their contents missing.

In this way over 3,000 of us were herded into Santo Tomas without bedding and, in many cases, without food. However, our ships stewards, having no personal baggage of their own, managed to carry into the camp quite a good supply of tinned meats, etc., sufficient to keep us going for a meal or two. Then outside the University grounds hundreds of Filipinos gathered, bringing with them supplies and meat, fish, fruits, bread, biscuits, honey, jams and so forth, which we bought from them through the railings. Most of this food, doubtless, had been looted from the shops the previous day. This trading, however, was stopped by the Japanese next morning.

I spent that first night in a big classroom turned into a dormitory. There were some 65 men crowded into this room and we smashed up everything in the way of class-room benches, tables and shelving to make beds for ourselves, the less fortunate sleeping on the floor. I was lucky, because one Manila resident whom I had formerly known in Shanghai loaned me a fold-up camp cot, of which he had purchased three.^[60]

Smithy and “another friend of his named Walker” had also been picked up and interned at the university. Their wives and children were allowed to stay “behind because the [five] children [who ranged in age from three months to three years] were so young and small.” The morning after they’d all arrived, Sam “ran into [Smithy and Walker] in one of the corridors.” Smithy then set to work persuading the camp authorities that Sam, who was a week shy of his seventieth birthday, was too old to be a prisoner. Sam was “released only 28 hours after [his] internment” began. He joined the Smith and Walker families at the home of the Swedish Consul “in Pasay, Manila’s most fashionable suburb, just a block from Dewey Boulevard, which for miles skirts [Manila] Bay.”^[61]

One night Sam and the Smith and Walker families “were awakened… by the noise of exploding bombs. Hastily gathering up the children,… we hurried them down into the basement. At the same time we heard our Nippon neighbours across the street dash out and begin shooting guns and revolvers into the air. It turned out to be an attack upon close-by Nichols’ Air-Field by a solitary American plane which came over from somewhere in the dark and, after successfully accomplishing its mission, made a safe get-away.”^[62]

Sam had a close call one afternoon when he was out for a walk with “the family dog.” They “got held up at the end of a side street by a triumphal procession. This consisted of a long train of military motor trucks, carrying hundreds of soldiers through the main thoroughfares, the purpose being to impress the natives with Japan’s magnificence and might. Getting tired of waiting on the corner of the side street whilst truck after truck slowly rolled by, I thought to cross, but decided it would be wiser not to. Luckily, I didn’t, for an unfortunate Filipino who took the risk was promptly pounced upon by soldiers who jumped down from a truck and gave him a terrific beating. He had acted disrespectfully towards the Japanese army, and thus to the Son-of-Heaven in Tokio.”^[63]

At the end of January, Sam and what he termed “our little family” left Consul Jansen’s home “and returned to San Juan, not this time to the home of the Smiths, but to the Walker’s [sic] home.” Sam points out that “[a]ll ‘enemy subjects’ given the privilege of living outside, were instructed not to forget they were still prisoners of war…. For a time, at intervals, I had to report myself at Santo Tomas. Then the Commandant’s Office gave me a permanent release, which was not at all welcome, as these visits to the Camp made a pleasant break in the daily monotony, and furthermore there seemed a real danger that, ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ I might become a forgotten man when repatriation began. So I got friend Smithy to have my name added to the Camp List, later taken by the British Consul General to England, and passed on to the Foreign Office, which, in turn, advised [the Fulford Company’s] London Office. And thus it came about that Toronto Head Office and my wife first got news of my well being.”^[64] It took some time for this information to arrive, however. In the meantime, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported: “The wife and members of the family of S. W. Wolfe, of this city who was reported missing, but believed to have been captured after the fall of Manila, have been unable to get any trace of his whereabouts. It is thought from information obtained from semi-official sources that Mr. Wolfe reached Burma.”^[65]

*

On 1 October 1942 the Fulford Company learned that Sam “was interned” in the Manila area. This phrase was used in a letter of 7 October 1942 that George Taylor Fulford, Jr., wrote to Prime Minister Mackenzie King requesting “a great favour.”^[66] Sam was indeed fortunate to have an ally who was both powerful and well-placed. Fulford’s letter pulled out all the stops, describing Sam as “a trusted and faithful employee” and noting that the Fulford family counted Sam, Blanche and their children “amongst our most intimate friends.” He added that Sam’s

…daughter is at present en route from Australia to Canada with her small child having barely escaped with their lives from Singapore where she was residing with her husband at the time when the city fell to the Japanese. His older boy is somewhere in China with the Imperial Army where he holds a very responsible command, due to his intimate knowledge of Mandarin Chinese language. [Noël, in fact, was one of “a group of China men” who trained in India for the Indian Army, according to a Shanghai newspaper clipping of 24 April 1941. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel with the 5^th Gurkha Regiment, served in Burma and also spent time doing intelligence work behind enemy lines in China.]^[67]

Fulford also said that Sam was “none too robust,” had “recently become extremely deaf” and was “now well on in his seventies,” which was a marked exaggeration. “I am sure that you must realize,” he concluded, “that I would not ask a favour such as this [pursuing Sam’s repatriation on a priority basis] if I did not consider Mr. Wolfe’s very life depends upon his release, and I conscientiously believe that there could be no more deserving case for repatriation than this.”^[68]

A letter of 14 October 1942 from the Under Secretary of State for External Affairs advised Fulford that because “the Philippine Islands [are] a zone of active military operations…. [Canada has] been unable to establish direct contact with this area through the Swiss representatives normally in charge of Canadian interests in enemy and enemy occupied territory, and the present situation with regard to the Philippines is consequently rather obscure.” The letter went on to say: “Although Mr. Wolfe is not a Canadian national, in view of his close connections with this country his name has been included in the list of Canadians eligible for repatriation which has been submitted to the Swiss authorities.” At the same time, the letter cautioned that “the choice of individuals [to be repatriated] must be left largely in the hands of the Swiss representatives on the spot” owing to “limited space available on any one sailing, and of practical considerations such as transportation from outlying districts to the port of embarkation on the exchange vessels.”^[69]

*

Months earlier, in February and early March 1942, “everybody,” according to Sam, “expected American airfleets to come to our rescue.” While this prospect was much desired by those opposed to the Japanese, it was also “rather alarming” to the Wolfe-Smith-Walker contingent for their San Juan abode was close to two obvious targets. Not only was Fort Murphy “only about a mile away,” but “at the bottom of our garden, not 250 yards distant, was a huge underground powder magazine and ammunition dump.” But the situation changed in mid-March when the Japanese-controlled Daily Tribune, Manila’s only remaining newspaper, vaingloriously reported that General MacArthur had fled to Australia. “Probably rarely before in history,” Sam opined, “had a hero’s reputation descended so rapidly to zero.”^[70] The American and Filipino troops that were still active surrendered on 6 May.

During the spring and summer, Sam observed that both Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Walker “were losing weight and showing more and more evidence of nerve strain.” They had to deal with a number of challenges, including the absence of their husbands, although the men occasionally arrived “home… on a few days furlough.” Rationing, of course, increased as many food items became scarce. “Bread soon became a luxury, until it disappeared altogether—for lack of wheat flour. Cow’s milk too—when the Nestle’s tinned products were sold out—became a problem, until we got used to coconut milk as a substitute…. The stocks of popular imported breakfast foods soon gave out. Then we bought ‘cracked wheat’ by the sack…. until, some twelve months later, no more was available. Then we fell back on cornmeal, and after that on rice, not the polished rice of civilization, but the native unpolished variety which is much more satisfying and nutritious.”^[71]

The Japanese soldiers encamped around the neighbourhood were another source of anxiety. The house was periodically “visited by small parties of them. This was unpleasant, but beyond checking up our camp permits of release and suspiciously searching every room and cupboard, these men, who spoke no English, gave us little trouble. This was surprising as from many homes they removed beds, bedding and furniture to equip their own quarters.”^[72]

In early August, Mrs. Smith and her children moved back into town. Sam went with them “to another pleasant house and garden in Pasay,” which allowed him to resume his afternoon walks along Dewey Boulevard, usually accompanied by “little Brian Smith, aged four.” Close to their new home was a big schoolhouse that had been converted to “a camp for American military prisoners.”^[73]

The prisoners were marched away early every morning to work at Nichols Field, and shortly after 5.00 [sic] each evening they could be met, trudging slowly and painfully back. To stand and openly watch this sad procession would be dangerous, and I only did so from a safe distance, hidden up a side street or in a quiet corner. Filipino spectators, looking out from their own gates, had been manhandled by the Japanese guards. A few who had dared to call out to the men had been seized, taken on to the schoolhouse, and there hung up by their wrists in the open as a public warning.

These unfortunate soldiers were a deplorable sight. Unshaven, dejected, burnt deep brown from exposure all day in the tropical sun, they looked like scarecrows, so tattered were their garments. Some wore rags to protect their feet, others limped along in broken boots, shoes and sandals.

For compatriots to intervene on behalf of these Americans would have been useless. So the matter was taken up by Swiss, Danish and other neutrals who lived nearby the road along which the prisoners passed and were shocked at their appearance. By the efforts of these good folk some slight amelioration was brought about. Clothing, boots and shoes were collected and permission was obtained to send them in to the prison. Money was contributed monthly by internees in Santo Tomas and other civilian camps, to enable these neutral friends to purchase other necessities, as well as cigarettes, for distribution to the men. Towards the end of 1942 a group of women got busy making socks and other garments, also cakes and candies, with the thought to help make Christmas happier for them. But when Christmas came the Military Commandant refused to allow any of the food into the prison.

Then, one afternoon two ladies visited us and our neighbours bringing with them the cakes and candies, and these we bought at their request, so that the money could be used to provide more cigarettes for the soldiers. I especially remember this event because of one of these ladies. She was young and pale and very sweet looking, and came limping in on crutches, for she had only one leg. The other she had lost during the Jap air-attack on Baguio, where she was living at that time. As the planes came over she rushed out into the street to save her little daughter, throwing herself upon the child for its greater protection. Then the bomb fell.^[74]

An edict from the Japanese High Command in early January 1943 required “that all enemy subjects must wear red arm-bands, to differentiate them from neutrals and pro-axis nationals…. Thus marked, the Japs thought we would become objects of derision in the eyes of the natives. But exactly the opposite happened. The symbol created greater sympathy for us, as ladies shopping in the markets discovered when kindly stall-keepers pressed little extras upon them in the way of additional fruits and vegetables, as a gift they would not be gainsaid.”^[75]

Another edict required “that we must salute every Japanese sentry on duty, by raising the hat and politely bowing to him as we passed. Failing this we were liable to reprisals. We could be stopped by the sentry and slapped across the face, the least of punishments from a Japanese point of view. Soon after, when walking along a wide but almost empty avenue in Pasay, I spied a sentry on duty across the way, in a place where no sentry had been posted before. I thought the avenue wide enough for me to pretend not to see him, but did not get away with it. The man shouted to me to stop, called me over, and then sternly, with grim face, showed by signs how he expected me to act. This I did, fully expecting to be slapped for my negligence. That I was spared may have been due to my venerable appearance, certainly not to a smile, for a smile is likely to be interpreted by a Jap sentry as a slight rather than a compliment. Had I been a Filipino or a younger man undoubtedly my face would have suffered.”^[76]

A third edict followed soon after: “all wearers of red arm-bands [were forbidden] to appear upon the boulevard, avenues or main thoroughfares; we must confine our walks to the back streets. Then they sent patrols out to watch for those who ignored this ruling, every now and then rounding up delinquents caught shopping in the markets or main business streets, and hustling them off into Fort Santiago. There these offenders, men or women, were detained for several days, sleeping in cells and subsisting on prison food.” This put an end to little Brian accompanying Sam on his walks, for his mother feared if Sam were seized Brian “might be taken along” too.^[77]

March 1943 brought another change in living arrangements. Mrs. Smith “decided that she and the children would be safer and happier in Santo Tomas with her husband.” Sam went into Sulphur Springs Camp in the township of San Francisco Del Monte, located a little north of San Juan and about as far distant from Manila. Affiliated with Santo Tomas, the Sulphur Springs Camp was “used as a home for aged people, invalids and convalescents.” Sam “was told it had formerly been a country hotel, road house, or rendezvous for sailors from the American fleet and their ladies, Filipino or otherwise.” Before becoming a resident, he made the long trip “by caratella, street car and finally, strap-hanging on the step of a much overcrowded little bus… to investigate on the spot.” Upon arrival, he “entered the grounds with considerable misgiving.” But he found himself “most agreeably surprised by the place.”^[78]

The hotel building was two storied, the lower portion very solidly built of reinforced concrete; the floor above of wood, supported on stone pillars and covered by an iron roof. The ground floor consisted of a spacious, cool dining room wide open to the terrace. Bedrooms and cubicles extended down either side of it. Upstairs the accommodation was similar as regards bedrooms, but had a lounge or sitting room filling its entire length. There were ample rattan chairs and settees everywhere, and quite a number of pleasant looking people sat around.^[79]

Sam was one of twenty-eight internees when he joined the Sulphur Springs Camp. “Then our number increased to 92, among them merchants, architects, accountants, engineers, planters, insurance men, army nurses from Corregidor, a journalist, and a retired Supreme Court Judge, many with their wives.

“An interesting group [was] the ‘squaw men.’ These were mostly elderly fellows, veterans of the Spanish-American war, who had remained in the islands, married native women and raised Filipino families. I found these men self-respecting and agreeable companions. Their women-folk continued to live outside, and brought them in fruit and delicacies to augment the camp fare.”^[80]

Sam’s internment—what he called “my seven months’ sojourn in Sulphur Springs Camp”—was hardly typical of what other internees experienced as the war ground on into 1944 and 1945. Security was “[a]lmost farcical.” From March through July, “we never saw [any] Japanese in the camp. The big iron gate at the bottom of the front garden was rarely closed except at night, and the rear of the grounds, some distance away down the other side of the hill crest, had no wall, fence, or wire obstruction to prevent us walking out. In fact there was no sentry posted either front or back at any time.” But escape wasn’t really an option. “We could not have gone far in any direction without being seen by natives; a telephone message from the camp, once we were missed, would have promptly set the local police on our track, inevitably resulting in speedy capture and a trip to military headquarters in Fort Santiago.”^[81]

Another distinction of being an internee at Sulphur Springs was paying room and board. “Up to the time I left the rate was two pesos [$1.00 U.S.] per day, and the Japanese augmented this by a daily allowance of 70 centavos (35 cents) per person, which helped cover camp expenses such as cost of electricity, servants’ wages, and charcoal for the kitchen fires. For this total sum we were provided with three meals a day and sleeping accommodation, two in a room or one in a cubicle, but supplied our own mosquito net and bedding.”^[82]

In addition, Sulphur Springs internees were not required to work. “Most of us, however, made our own beds, and did our own laundry,” Sam reported. “Some worked, spasmodically, in the fruit and vegetable gardens.” For his part, Sam voluntarily “kept the recreation ground clean and in apple-pie order” for several months until he had a run-in with another man. It appears Sam enjoyed recounting this episode, which is nonetheless revealing of what at least one of his children regarded as his often-unbending nature.^[83]

Every morning saw me out bright and early, armed with garden broom and bucket. Taking great pride in the job, after about an hour’s labour I would survey the results with intense satisfaction. Then, woe betide the miscreant caught sullying my work! All went well until a certain Mr. “Buster” Brown joined the camp. “Buster” was a fat, choleric type of individual. I am a thin man with an Irish temper. One morning we had a row over his untidy habit of throwing cigarette-stubbs [sic] around, after which I resigned my honorary job in disgust and the recreation ground reverted to its old dishevelled state.^[84]

Overall, however, Sam considered the Sulphur Springs community “a pretty cheerful crowd.” Their “daily routine was monotonous,” he said, but “time seemed to pass quickly enough. We got up at 6.30, breakfasted at 7.00, played miniature golf on the recreation ground, or took sun-baths, or strolled around for exercise until the sun got too hot, then went indoors to read or play dominoes. Tiffin was at noon, after which a siesta was in order. Then more golf, a game of horse-shoes, or another walk. Dinner was served at 6.00, followed by music, singing, dominoes and cards. At 10.00 o’clock ‘lights-out’ was the rule in the dining room and lounge. Most people were glad to turn in by 9.30, excepting the poker-players.”^[85]

Sam described their board as follows: “The morning meal consisted of one small banana, or piece of papaya, a bowl of cornmeal mush with coconut milk, a very small egg, and a cup of darkish brown liquid vaguely suggesting coffee. Tiffin was a bowl of soup, hash or stew, a modicum of vegetables. Dinner again soup, a little meat, fish or fowl, and another small portion of vegetables. At every meal there was ample boiled rice, but no bread. So long as they could afford to, most internees added to these rations bananas, melons, papayas or other fruits, purchased for them outside. Sugar—though we lived in one of the greatest sugar-producing countries of the world—was very strictly rationed. It would seem from the foregoing that we did rather well; actually many internees were under-nourished, the diet did not suit them, and all lost weight.”^[86]

Food and repatriation were popular topics of conversation. “The favorite time for camp chat was between dinner and dark. Then folks gathered in the dusk on the big terrace outside the dining hall, and under the trees in the grounds, talking about this and that…. But somehow or other the conversation almost invariably drifted round sooner or later to ‘exchange’ ships, home-going, and the good things we would eat when we got back to the other side. Believe it or not, no matter what menu was selected, items never omitted were coffee and pie, with hot dogs running a close second.” No doubt, as a self-described “hungry person,” Sam was a keen participant in these discussions.^[87] He added:

When sugar was rationed to a meagre quantity issued fortnightly, the Dahlon family [which owned and operated the camp] went out of their way to secretly give me an extra supply because they heard the doctor had said I needed it. A Scottish lady and her husband insisted that I should be their guest every day to afternoon tea—Lipton’s no less—almost worth its weight in gold, so scarce was it. They had a little reserve stock of their own, and I had none. To be invited to coffee after dinner—Chase & Sanborne, not the Camp’s “jus-de-chapeau”—by people who could afford to possess such a luxury, was another very occassional [sic] privilege. Such an invitation in itself was a high compliment. These may seem trivial matters, but in those days of scarcity, and in the circumscribed circumstances under which we lived, they meant very much.^[88]

About July, “the sudden influx of newcomers” arrived. As a result, Sam and a number of others “had to remove to another and much older house on top of the hill which formed the crest of Superintendent Dahlon’s domain. This shift was necessary to provide accommodation in the main building for the really old, asthmatics, rheumatic cripples, and married couples….

“During bad weather we had to walk through the downpours to the main building for our meals; everybody living in our ramshackle building got badly wet, coughs and colds were almost universal. Often, too, we were temporarily washed out of our rooms, and our bedclothing and baggage were always damp until a spell of good days came, enabling us to take them out to dry in the welcome sunshine.”^[89]

Toward the end of Sam’s stay at Sulphur Springs, the camp received “a visit from some plain-clothes Japanese police officials. They were searching for a Filipino dentist whose photograph, which I saw, showed him to be a handsome, middle-aged man of intelligence and education, probably trained for his profession, as many Filipino professional men have been, in America or Europe. We learned that the Jap military had [suspicions] that the dentist possessed fire arms, so sent three soldiers to investigate. They found him in his office, seated at his desk, and demanded his gun, whereupon he quickly opened his desk drawer, drew a revolver therefrom, and shot each of them dead where they stood, one after the other. Then he bolted down the stairs and disappeared. Whether he was found I do not know.” Sam included this vignette in a section of “Philippines Retrospect” that discussed several attempted assassinations of prominent, pro-Japanese Filipinos. He maintained that “guerilla risings and associations by patriotic gun-men began to grievously worry” the Japanese early in 1943.^[90]

*

As the end of summer neared, Sam “had abandoned all hope of early repatriation,” but “one day in early September… a gentleman named Browne…. an envoy from Santo Tomas” arrived to advise him that his name was on a list “of internees to be sent home at the end of the month by an American exchange ship” and that he was to report to Santo Tomas on 22 September.^[91]

“I could hardly believe this wonderful news,” Sam recounted. It was all the more remarkable because he was one of “only 151 out of 5,000 or more, internees in Santo Tomas, Los Banos, Baguio, and the remaining few camps throughout the islands…. How was it possible that I… could have been selected for freedom, and especially—as a Britisher—on an American exchange ship! It was not until some time later that I discovered my repatriation was due to the efforts of my good friend George T. Fulford, MP.” On the appointed day, Sam and two others from Sulphur Springs who were being repatriated were sent on their way by “a big gathering of [their] fellow internees…. It was an emotional scene.”^[92]

At Santo Tomas, Sam “made all haste” to find his friends Alec and Theo Smith. As Smithy “had done so much for [him] already, with financial aid as well as in other ways,” Sam presumed “that Smithy was the person responsible for [his] coming repatriation.” Sam found the Smith family in “’Shanty-town’… a village of shacks fringing upon the big market gardens which lie behind the Camp’s main buildings. Another similar village enjoys the more alluring title of ‘Glamorville.’ Some 600 shacks [owned by ‘usually more affluent’ internees] comprise these little townships. They were built by the internees themselves and are laid out in lanes which, though narrow, bear such distinguishing names as ‘Fifth Avenue,’ ‘Broadway,’ ‘Market Street,’ ‘Piccadilly.’

“With the exception of a few privileged bachelors no internees are permitted to sleep in these shacks. When night falls husbands and wives must separate, the former to the men’s sleeping quarters, the women to theirs, a most effective method of birth control.” At this point Santo Tomas held “some 3,800 men, women and children” (3,000 Americans, 800 British).^[93]

Smithy and Theo were surprised and pleased to see Sam, “the more so when they heard that [he] was homeward bound.” As part of this exchange, Smithy, who “was astonished” by the pending repatriation, corrected Sam’s belief that Smithy was somehow responsible for Sam’s “extraordinary good luck… [and] this further benefaction.”^[94]

During his brief four days back in Santo Tomas, Sam devoted much of his time to “studying the Camp life…. Out of the chaos which prevailed during … January, 194[2], complete order had evolved, a well-managed, largely self-governed and self-supporting little city had grown.”^[95]

Of course supreme control is in the hands of the Japanese. In the main, so far, it had been reasonable and humane…. Apart from Commandant Kuroda, and his small personal staff, the internees had very little contact with Japanese.

The Camp is managed and run by an American-British Committee elected by the internees themselves. It consists of seven members. Its chairman is Mr. C.C. Grinnell, formerly chief executive of the General Electric Company of America in the Far East, who lived in Japan up to the outbreak of the war for a number of years. Under this Central Executive Committee are sub-committees and staffs taking care of finance, health, sanitation, education, policing, fire-safety, kitchens, work-assignment, and other essential services. All those officials, office staffs and manual workers give their services without pay, as also do the doctors and nurses in the camp hospital. Every internee is expected to share in the daily public duties. It is a matter of honour with most of them to carry out this obligation.

Santo Tomas internees are not supposed to have to pay for their food and lodging. The Japanese authorities, up to the time I left, were granting an allowance of 70 centavos (35 cents) per head per day for internees’ support. How they supposed their prisoners could live on this miserly sum is difficult to understand. Yet incredible as it may seem, all internees do receive at least two meals a day, and money is set aside also from the allowance to provide assistance to destitute persons and for other camp purposes.

Children and the aged get three meals daily…. Shack owners… provide and cook their own midday meal. My friends, the Smiths, took only camp breakfast, and cooked for themselves and children the rest of the day. I was always their guest at tiffin and dinner, so did very well during this short sojourn in Santo Tomas….

There have been several references within these pages to internees who are ‘affluent,’ who can afford to buy what might be considered luxuries, or who have sufficient, at least, to purchase extra food. It may quite reasonably be asked where does the money come from[?]

The answer is that ‘affluent’ folk are those who were wise enough to withdraw substantial cash funds from their banking accounts before the Banks closed at the end of December ‘41: Strange to say, the Japanese did not search internees when we were taken into Camp, nor did they ask people, like myself, who were subsequently let out on parole, what cash they possessed. The only demand they made—and that came several months later—was for a detailed statement of what monies we had in the various Banks. No doubt these lists were checked against the Banks’ records later.^[96]

Sam reported as well on the camp’s daily activities, outdoor and indoor recreation, educational opportunities, and noted that in the evenings, concerts and plays were presented on a large stage. He also pointed out that the Japanese prohibited alcohol and dancing, and that attempted escapes had “been few and far between. The tragic fate of three men who did get away in the very early days of the camp is too well remembered. These men were speedily caught, brought back and shot out of hand.”^[97]

The repatriates were saluted with “a farewell entertainment” two nights before their departure.^[98]

It was a gala affair, featuring all the best talent the Camp possessed. Among the performers were a number of professionals, internees like the rest.

Long before the show opened men, women and children came trooping out, most of them carrying their own chairs, until an audience of over 3,000 was seated or standing facing the big stage. A remarkable sight, that great sea of upturned faces, illuminated in the darkness by the glare of powerful electric lights.

During the proceedings, Mr. Kodaki appeared, accompanied by Commandant Kuroda and the members of the Camp’s “town-council,” or Central Executive Committee. [Mr. Kodaki was head of the Department of Internal Affairs in the Philippines and Mr. Kuroda’s superior.] His purpose was to tell us how good the Japanese really are, good in heart and purpose, and how well we ought to speak of them when we get back home. To speak otherwise, of course, might accentuate ill-feeling, to the disadvantage of our compatriots still remaining in the Orient. Kodaki spoke in fluent—though broken—English, and he really seemed a very well-intentioned little man.^[99]

Those departing “were forbidden [by the Japanese] to carry any money… other than Japanese Military Notes” to a limit of “One Thousand pesos.”^[100]

“Most of us,” Sam commented, “contented ourselves with Ps. 200.”^[101]

They were also forbidden to take any “diaries, manuscripts, letters, books or printed matter of any sort.” Sam left some of his personal papers with Smithy.^[102]

After an early and especially large breakfast, those being repatriated left Santo Tomas on a “procession of busses and trucks” at dawn on 26 September. “For unexplained reasons Jap headquarters had decided to ship us from the port of San Fernando, some 240 miles up the island, instead of from Manila. The journey, in a slow-going ‘special’ train with hard wooden seats, was long, hot and tiring, especially for the children and sick.” They reached their destination by late afternoon and were transported in open lighters to the Teia Maru, a French mail steamer, anchored “some distance off-shore.”^[103]

She had accommodation for, at most, 600 passengers. Now she had to carry and provide for 1503 repatriates from Japan, North China, Shanghai, the Philippines and Saigon. So we were terribly overcrowded, and before long lacked for food. No fire or boat drills were ever held, because there were not nearly enough boats to carry us away should catastrophe come….

We saw nothing of the Japanese captain and his officers; they kept to themselves in their own quarters. So far as we were concerned the ship was run by stewards, exceedingly overworked it is true, but a nasty, hostile crowd who soon began to rob us of food—bread, butter, coffee, meat—in order to sell it to the hungry in the afternoons and as supper at night….

Insolence was one of the chief characteristics of those Jap stewards. They demanded a tip from every passenger coming on board, then invariably declared that what was given was insufficient. If additional food was asked for at meals they said “No more,” or else “Pay,” holding out their hands. One elderly lady who sat opposite me at table could not drink the miserable coffee and tea supplied at meals—only half a cup as it was—and sent her daughter one day to the stewards for a glass of iced water. For this a charge of one peso (fifty cents) was demanded, and paid….

“Adversity makes strange bed-fellows,” says the proverb, and this proved entirely true with us. The Japs, regardless of the lists of “desirables” submitted by Washington, Ottawa and the Swiss Red Cross, decided to substitute a number of “undesirables” of whom they were anxious to get rid. Among these was, at least, one murderer—maybe two—I was warned by my friends in Santo Tomas. Also there were habitual roughs, professional toughs, irredeemable drunkards, and several ladies of more than exceedingly doubtful virtue.

It proved impossible during the early days of our voyage to distinguish between the sheep and the goats. We were all so deplorably patched and shabby, ill-shaven and down-at-heel, that many saints looked like sinners, and highly reputable college professors like tramps….

A little police force of able-bodied men was organized among our passengers. These plain-clothes officers patrolled the ship day and night. At times there were fights with the drunks long after all respectable folk were abed. The ship’s brig was rarely empty. Petty thefts occurred at intervals, and a “Dead End” gang, sequestered somewhere down in the holds, stole bed-clothing, travelling rugs and shoes as opportunities came. But fortunately, nothing really serious happened of a criminal kind. ^[104]

The Teia Maru “steamed up the Mekong River in French Indo-China… [t]hree days after leaving the Philippines.” On 2 October it reached Singapore. “We spent two days [there], taking on much-needed water, of which there was always a scarcity on the ‘Teia Maru.’ Those two days many got their first bath since leaving Manila. Water again became strictly rationed, down to very small quantities issued for short periods twice a day, immediately after we started on the final leg to Goa,” which Sam described as “an ancient Portuguese possession, a tiny patch in the centre of India’s west coast.” The Teia Maru arrived there in mid-October, followed twenty-four hours later by the Gripsholm.^[105]

Then, on the morning of the 19th October Freedom came; the long-looked-forward-to “exchange” took place. We 1503 repatriates marched in file from the “Teia Maru” to the “Gripsholm,” whilst a similar stream of Japanese men, women and children poured out of the “Gripsholm,” and on into the quarters we had vacated. We were supremely happy. They gave no indications of joy, knowing only too well the discomforts that awaited them in Japan….

On reaching the “Gripsholm’s” main deck each of us was handed a large slab of Nestle’s chocolate, and every one who wished received also a package of American cigarettes. An enormous and hungrily-devoured alfresco lunch followed, whilst meanwhile the ship’s crew were fumigating and refurbishing the cabins. Then mail was distributed. Thousands of letters and cablegrams, a supreme event to us, many of whom had not heard from home, relatives and friends, for nearly two years. That night the “Gripsholm” cooks and stewards served us an enormous dinner, chief features of which were roast turkey, ice-cream and coffee—such coffee as Canadians and Americans enjoy. And then to bed—after one of life’s most memorable days.^[106]

Sam and the others were provided “with much-needed changes of clothing and other necessities.” He commended the Gripsholm’s “Swedish staff” for making the voyage not only comfortable, but also “health and strength restoring.” He added: “Every passenger was given a box of Vitamin capsules by the ship’s doctors, with instructions they must be taken every day; we were vaccinated, fed upon scientifically planned ample diet, provided with books and magazines, entertained with movies and concerts, attended lectures and classes, sing-songs and sermons, each according to his or her will. We Rotarians on board—there were 44 of us—had two Rotary dinners during the voyage. Everybody regained weight, some more than they desired.”^[107]

On 3 November the Gripsholm landed at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Sam was met by Mr. Pat Gleeson, representative for G.T. Fulford Company’s agents for South Africa. Sam’s “first move there was to go shopping, to exchange [his] dirty, dilapidated khaki pants and worn-out foot-gear (relics of internment) for respectable trousers and shoes.” He discovered that Mr. Gleeson, who was “freshly back from a long spell of war service in West Africa and Abyssinia,” was “a brother southern-Irishman and a great fellow. In his office I met colleagues of his, Mr. Field from Natal and Mr. Godwin from the Eastern Province. It was a real pleasure to me, going over the South African map with them, and resurrecting memories of my own experiences and travels throughout that vast territory more than forty years before.”^[108] As Sam was being delivered from bondage and moving on in his life, his career with the Fulford Company came full circle.

The penultimate port of call for the repatriates destined for North America was Rio de Janeiro, a city Sam had long wanted to visit. The Gripsholm landed there on 15 November for a “36-hour stopover.” On 24 November Sam and his fellow repatriates crossed the equator for the fourth time since leaving the Far East. They docked at Jersey City early on 1 December. After an all-night train ride, Sam arrived in Montreal “soon after breakfast, and there, to welcome me, were my dear wife, whom I had not seen for two and a half years, and my good friends George Fulford and ‘Pard’ Myers. That afternoon the journey to Kingston was completed, and on Kingston platform we found my daughter Desiree, my grandchildren, Michael and Carol Anne, the latter born in Singapore whilst I was in Manila, and my medical-student son, Pierre, all waiting to give me a loving welcome home.”^[109]

*

On 9 December 1943, one week after he had returned to Canada, Sam addressed the Kingston Rotary Club.^[110] A month later, on 10 January 1944, he told the Gananoque Rotary Club:   “As the war moves toward their own country, then the Japs will become more brutal toward those helpless people [the thousands of British and American military and civilian prisoners of war]. I could sense that feeling and change when I left [the Philippines] last September.”^[111] The Kingston Whig-Standard said Sam feared “the Philippines will have to undergo much greater suffering than they have yet experienced.”^[112] During August and September 1944, he spoke to the Kinsmen Club in Picton and to Rotary Clubs in Ottawa, Trenton, and Picton. The total number of his speaking engagements is not known. When Brockville’s The Recorder and Times reported on his 19 March 1945 talk to the Brockville Rotary, the story noted that it was the fourth time Sam had addressed the club (one or more of these other talks may have been from the pre-Pearl Harbor period).^[113]

By leaving the Philippines when he did, Sam avoided the last twenty-two months of the war in the Pacific, during which time conditions became progressively more desperate for the Japanese, their prisoners, and the people of Japanese-occupied territory. “I was so fortunate… to escape mal-treatment at Japanese hands,” he wrote in an April 1946 letter. “Many of those who remained in Manila after I left suffered very badly indeed, several having died of starvation, and others at the hands of Japanese executioners for no justifiable reason…”^[114] He knew he was doubly fortunate: first, to have been among the first internees to be repatriated; and, second, while interned, to have been at the Sulphur Springs Camp, which he said was “one of the best in the Philippines,” even though “the meals… were barely enough to keep the [camp’s] civilian population… above the subsistence level.”^[115] He credited his freedom “to months of work on the part of George Fulford of Brockville, my very good friend.”^[116] “Philippines Retrospect,” which Sam completed in February 1944, is dedicated to Fulford with the tribute: “To Whose Untiring Efforts I Owe My Deliverance from Bondage.”^[117]

Sometime after his repatriation, Sam was given the title assistant general manager of the company.^[118] In the early months of 1946 he was helping General Manager Myers plan for the return of Hubert Cohen to the company’s Singapore office.^[119] Sam had also been assigned the job of writing a history of the company.^[120] But, likely due to failing eyesight and other health problems, he made little progress on this beyond soliciting and collecting information from his friend F.C. Wise and a number of others, which is now held in the Archives at Fulford Place in Brockville.

Sam and Blanche resided in Kingston until the summer of 1946 when they moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where both Noël and Désirée had attended school in the 1920s and where Pierre began his medical internship on 1 March 1946.^[121] Noël and his family moved to Victoria in mid-1948.^[122] Désirée and her children went to England in November 1945 to meet her husband, Lieutenant Leslie Caton Smith, who had “arrived there after being a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Thailand for nearly four years.”^[123] After he regained his health, their family returned for a number of years to Singapore where he worked in the rubber business with Boustead & Company. They eventually settled in England. Leslie’s brother Alec and his family, who had been so important to Sam during the twenty-two months he was “stranded” in the Manila area, continued to reside there after the war.^[124]

Sam died in Victoria, B.C., on 2 November 1952. He was eighty.

Text copyright © 2024 Patrick S. Wolfe
All rights reserved. Short segments may be quoted with due attribution.

1. When Sam spoke to the Brockville Rotary Club on Monday, 19 March 1945, Mr. George T. Fulford, Jr., MP, in his introduction, said that as of 1 April of that year Sam “will have completed 50 years in the service of the G.T. Fulford Company.” Wolfe Family Records: “Christian Beliefs of the Filipinos Bar to Japanese,” Brockville Recorder and Times, Tuesday, 20 March 1945. ↑
2. Wolfe Family Records: S.W. Wolfe, “Philippines Retrospect: A Hard-Luck Story With a Happy Ending,” February, 1944 (unpublished), 2. ↑
3. Fulford Place Archives, Brockville, Ontario: A letter of 15 October 1942, from George T. Fulford, Jr., MP, to Walter Turnbull, Private Secretary to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, advises that Sam’s “retirement from the Company with pension was to have taken place last December” (1941). ↑
4. “Philippines Retrospect,” 3. ↑
5. The company name is taken from company letterhead used in Britain in 1944, per Bev Robey’s letter of 12 October 1944 to Sam Wolfe (Fulford Place Archives). According to historian Lori Loeb, “The name patent medicine was in fact a misnomer; few were actually patented. More properly they were proprietary medicines whose manufacturers were unwilling to reveal their ingredients to competitors through the patenting process.” Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People was a patented product, however. “It had been patented in 1886 by Dr. William Frederick Jackson, a McGill-trained doctor who practiced in Brockville.” Lori Loeb, “George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men: Quack Mercenaries or Smilesian Entrepreneurs?” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (Vol. 16: 1999), 127, 133. ↑
6. “Philippines Retrospect,” 1. ↑
7. Ibid., 3. ↑
8. Ibid., 4. According to “Believed S. W. Wolfe In Manila” (Kingston Whig-Standard, 9 December 1941 final edition, 2, Sam “had booked passage on the steamer President Madison.” ↑
9. “Philippines Retrospect,” 4. I have found no information on the fate of “a freighter called the Columbia.” ↑
10. Ibid., 1. ↑
11. Ibid., 6, 7, 26. ↑
12. Ibid., 1. ↑
13. Wolfe Family Records: Pierre Wolfe in conversation with author, 25 November 2001 – see author’s “Dream Book #2,” 126-128 (went to night school). H. Eileen (Harris) Wolfe, The Harris History, September 1993, privately published, 198 (answered newspaper ad). According to “UK, Outward Passenger lists for 1890-1960,” Sam departed Southampton 9 April 1892 for Cape Town on the Grantully Castle. Sam recalled that he made this trip “early in 1892”— Wolfe Family Records: S.W. Wolfe, “The Wolfes of Ireland as I Remember Them,” 13 September 1952, unpublished, 5. The passenger manifest for the Grantully Castle listed Sam’s occupation as “merchant.” The same term is used on his Canadian arrival card in April 1922. ↑
14. “At 20 in 1892 [Sam] went to S. Africa for Fulford Co. or its predecessor.” Pierre Wolfe to author, 25 November 2001 – see author’s “Dream Book #2,” 126-128. Fulford Place Archives: F.C. Wise manuscript, 6 (a margin notation by Sam states that he started with the Fulford Company in April 1895). See also footnote 1. ↑
15. Loeb, 133. Paul Adolphus Bator, “Fulford, George Taylor – Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online,” <http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40847> (accessed 2 November 2012). ↑
16. Loeb, 134. According to Sam, John Morgan Richards and Sons, which had been hired to market Pink Pills in Britain, “were much opposed” to testimonial advertising, which G.T. Fulford insisted upon and which proved to be a great success. “Hence the deluge—of orders,” as Sam states in a margin note on the Wise manuscript (4). The testimonials were a subject of occasional mirth among some of those associated with Pink Pills. According to F.C. Wise’s “Additional Notes” (7-8; they’re “additional” to the “Wise manuscript”; the “Additional Notes” are also held by the Fulford Place Archives), Mr. Kulnow of Kulnow’s Carlsbad Powder, upon visiting the offices of John Morgan Richards and Sons in the early days, commented to Wise: “Hello, my boy. I am doing good business with my Carlsbad Powder, and no b….y [bloody] miracles either.” Wise repeated this to his boss, Thomas Baron Russell, who “just rocked with laughter.” ↑
17. Wikipedia’s article on “George Taylor Fulford” says the pills “were marketed in 87 countries” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Taylor_Fulford> (accessed 6 December 2011). In his letter of 15 October 1942 to Walter Turnbull, Private Secretary to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, G.T. Fulford, Jr., MP, stated that his company operated in 72 foreign countries “before the war.” “G.T. Fulford & Co King Street – Heritage Brockville” states the Pink Pills “were sold in over 80 countries” <https://heritagebrockville.com/industry/node/376> (accessed 14 December 2011). Wikipedia’s article on “Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People” says “the product came to be advertised around the world in 82 countries” <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Williams%27_Pink_Pills_for_Pale_People>(accessed 14 December 2011). Loeb, 138. ↑
18. Loeb, 125-126, 138, 139. ↑
19. Ibid., 138. ↑
20. Ibid., 140, 139. ↑
21. Wise manuscript, 14 (satellite agencies), 28. Loeb, 134-135, 137. Fulford Place Archives: A letter of 7 October 1942 from George T. Fulford, Jr., MP, to Prime Minister Mackenzie King states that Sam was “Manager in Capetown [sic] but more laterly [sic] as Manager of the Company in Shanghai.” ↑
22. Wise manuscript, 28. ↑
23. Loeb, 131. Charles Fulford’s Bile Beans went on to be “marketed around the world through the offices in Sydney, Leeds, and Toronto and Far Eastern subsidiaries.” (Same reference.) ↑
24. Wise manuscript, 28. Loeb, 143 (footnote 44). ↑
25. Wise manuscript, 29. ↑
26. Loeb, 132. Loeb adds (131-132), “Advertising literature claimed that the explorer Captain Cook had discovered a vegetable remedy which kept the natives free from ‘disease or any bodily complaint.’ Subsequently, advertisements proclaimed,Charles Forde, an eminent scientist, thoroughly investigated the healing extracts and essences of Australian roots and herbs and after long research he found himself the discoverer of a natural vegetable substance which… was beyond all doubt the finest remedy yet discovered.That remedy, the advertisements said, was Bile Beans. The story was completely invented.” ↑
27. Loeb, 130-131 (includes summaries of these cases). Wise, “Additional Notes,” 6, 7. Wise also said (7) that Charles Fulford’s eventual success with Bile Beans was “A truly wonderful come-back.” ↑
28. Loeb, 137. Bator. ↑
29. Bator. ↑
30. Loeb, 137-138, 134. ↑
31. Email of 4 September 2014 to author from Pam Brooks, Coordinator of Eastern Ontario Museum Sites, based at Fulford Place (re: Dwight Fulford being Prime Minister King’s godson). Dwight Fulford died 23 January 2009. His life and career were summarized in an article by Buzz Bourdon, “Posted to the Canadian embassy in Havana from 1961 to 1964, he went on to become ambassador to Argentina,” The Globe and Mail, 24 February 2009. ↑
32. Wolfe Family Records: Patrick Wolfe’s notes on a conversation of 25 November 2001 with Pierre Wolfe in which Pierre stated that Sam opened offices in India, Ceylon, Hong Kong and China. Margin notes by Sam in the Wise manuscript state (8 – “In 1903 when I went on to Singapore to open the first Far Eastern branch there.”) and (26 – “…after initiating [James Mackenzie] into the S. African business I sailed for Singapore about the middle of 1903”). Bator mentions the offices in Bombay and Hong Kong. A collection of 55 postcards from October 1903 to November 1911 (Wolfe Family Records), most of them from Sam to F.C. Wise, documents many of Sam’s early business trips. The Shanghai office became the head office for the Far East. Per a typed copy (by Pierre) of Hubert C. (“Pard”) Myers’ handwritten letter of late December 1969, Pierre added a notation on the bottom that the Far Eastern territory included Hong Kong, the Federated Malaysian States, the Philippines, and an agency in Japan. It appears, however, that the territory reached beyond these limits. F.C. Wise writes in the Wise manuscript (37) that “Craston [sic] distributed India and Burma for you” (i.e., Sam). ↑
33. Loeb, 137 (“Soon known as ‘The Great Canadian Medicine’”), 144 (footnotes 101 and 91). ↑
34. Wolfe Family Records: On a postcard of “Singapore from the Harbour” dated 28 October 1909, and sent to F.C. Wise, Sam advises that Blanche is furnishing their new house. ↑
35. The quote “organized a Rotary Club” is from “Rotary Hears Thrilling Story By Sam Wolfe: Relates Experiences As Prisoner-of-War In Philippines and Subsequent Return on the ‘Gripsholm’,” The Picton Times, Thursday 10 August 1944. Wolfe Family Records. ↑
36. Wolfe Family Records. ↑
37. Wolfe Family Records: Désirée’s letter of 11 March 1987 to Pierre in which she also observed: “Rickshaw coolies were made to run with far too heavy burdens and paid a pittance.  One woman and five children and a panting coolie made to run miles was to be seen to be believed.” ↑
38. Wolfe Family Records: Pierre’s letter of 9 June 1987 to Désirée. ↑
39. “Philippines Retrospect,” 41, 38, 40. ↑
40. Wolfe Family Records: Letter of condolence of 7 December 1952 from Hilda C. Laird to Pierre. ↑
41. Wise manuscript, 6. ↑
42. Loeb, 134, 144 (footnote 74). Wise manuscript, 3. ↑
43. Wise manuscript, 6, 3, 4, 11. ↑
44. Ibid., 19, 20, 21-22. ↑
45. Fulford Place Archives: Sam’s handwritten draft Foreword to the projected “A Brief History of The G.T. Fulford Company Ltd.” ↑
46. Ibid. ↑
47. Ibid. Information on 1916 fire provided by Pam Brooks, Coordinator, Eastern Ontario Museum Sites, based at Fulford Place, during author’s visit of 25 October 2012. Loeb 145 (footnote 107). Wise manuscript, 20-21 (German bomb). ↑
48. Sam’s draft “Foreword.” The Wise manuscript is usually referred to as a 39-page document, with pages 1 and 2 being Wise’s 8 August 1944 cover letter. It and Wise’s “Additional Notes” (sent by Myers to Sam 4 December 1944) are in the Fulford Place Archives. During his employment with John Morgan Richards and Sons, it appears Wise had considerable loyalty for the Fulford Company. In his “Additional Notes” (Fulford Place Archives), he told Sam (5): “Don’t think for a moment that I am vindictive towards JMR and Sons but you have no idea of what I endured over many years because I preferred to watch the interests of the G.T.F. Co. closely. There is no need to refer to all this in any of your notes.” According to The Canadian Who’s Who, 1958-1960 (828-829), Myers had been general manager and a director with the Fulford Company from 1930 through the later 1950s. This is the last volume of The Canadian Who’s Who that includes Myers, presumably indicating that he retired during 1958-60 or soon after. He was born August 2, 1893. ↑
49. Wise manuscript, 37-38. ↑
50. “Philippines Retrospect,” 1. ↑
51. Myers’ letter of December 1969. The Harris History, 198. ↑
52. “Philippines Retrospect,” 3-4, 8. The Harris History, 221 (worked for Nestle’s), 222 (American wife). In “Philippines Retrospect” Sam wrote (4) that thanks to Smithy “I was saved fifteen months of internment camp, found a comfortable home instead, and made a number of good, kind friends.” ↑
53. “Philippines Retrospect,” 8, 9. ↑
54. Ibid., 9. ↑
55. Ibid., 10. ↑
56. Ibid. ↑
57. Ibid. ↑
58. Ibid. ↑
59. Ibid., 11. ↑
60. Ibid., 11-12. ↑
61. Ibid., 12, 13. ↑
62. Ibid., 13. ↑
63. Ibid., 13-14. ↑
64. Ibid., 13, 14, 15. Prior to the arrival of the Japanese army, Sam had sent two telegrams to his family, which had been received on 19 and 29 December 1941. ↑
65. Wolfe Family Records: “S. W. Wolfe, Former Resident, Still Unreported in Far East,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 30 September 1942 final edition, 3. ↑
66. Letter of October 7, 1942, from George T. Fulford, MP, to Prime Minister King. ↑
67. Ibid. Wolfe Family Records include the 24 April 1941 Shanghai newspaper clipping which includes a photo of twenty-two men captioned “China Volunteers in India,” as well as “Noel Wolfe Is Promoted,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 26 June 1945 final edition, 3. The Harris History (221) mentions “the 5^th Ghurkas” (sic) and Noël’s intelligence work in China. According to “Three Members of Wolfe Family in Active Theatre of War,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 17 December 1941 final edition, 2: “Lieut. Noel Wolfe is with the Indian Army in Burma.” “S. W. Wolfe, Former Resident, Still Unreported in Far East,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 30 September 1942 final edition, 3, adds that “Lieut. Noel Wolfe… was last reported to be in China. He was on service with the Indian Army during the invasion of Burma by the Japanese.” The death of Noël’s wife, Freda, on 28 December 1997 was marked in the Victoria Times-Colonist’s “Passages” column of 22 March 1998, which stated: “With the approaching war, the young family moved to India where Noel was a lieutenant colonel in the secret service. Both husband and wife had to have cyanide capsules implanted in their teeth to protect military secrets in case of capture.” Wolfe Family Records: In a letter of 15 January 1988 to his friend Bob Riley, Pierre commented: “My brother was 2^nd in command of the 5^th Gurkha regiment when in Burma during W.W.II, he was also in M.I.5, largely because of his fluency in Chinese and French—he also understood some Japanese.” In fact, Noël was a member of the “India Mission,” established in late 1940 as part of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). The India Mission subsequently became “GS I(k)” and ultimately “Force 136,” when its headquarters relocated to Ceylon. Disbanded in 1946, the SOE was a distinct entity unrelated to the British Security Service, founded in 1909, with separate home and foreign sections. (The home section became known as MI5 during the First World War.) ↑
68. Fulford’s letter of 7 October 1942 also claimed: “Although his ship was two days outward bound from Manila [when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor], the Captain was ordered to turn around and return to port.” Sam says nothing about this in “Philippines Retrospect.” According to this memoir, after disembarking at Manila in November 1941, he didn’t board another vessel until late September 1943 when he was starting the process of being repatriated. ↑
69. Letter of 14 October 1942 from the Under Secretary of State for External Affairs to George T. Fulford, MP. ↑
70. “Philippines Retrospect,” 16, 17. ↑
71. Ibid., 17, 15. ↑
72. Ibid., 17. ↑
73. Ibid., 17, 18. ↑
74. Ibid., 18-19. ↑
75. Ibid., 19. ↑
76. Ibid. ↑
77. Ibid. ↑
78. Ibid., 19, 20. ↑
79. Ibid., 20. ↑
80. Ibid., 21. ↑
81. Ibid., 27, 24. ↑
82. Ibid., 23. ↑
83. Ibid. Wolfe Family Records: Pierre said Sam had a “Victorian shell” and “was a rigid soul, and a colossal worrier.” ↑
84. “Philippines Retrospect,” 23. ↑
85. Ibid., 22. ↑
86. Ibid., 23. ↑
87. Ibid., 22, 31. ↑
88. Ibid., 27, 21. ↑
89. Ibid., 23, 24. ↑
90. Ibid., 26-27, 26. ↑
91. Ibid., 27-28. ↑
92. Ibid., 28, 29, 28. On 7 January 1944 the Kingston Whig-Standard final edition, 10, carried the second of two articles written for “the NEA Service” by Clifton Forster, the “19-year old, Manila-born son of the Red Cross manager there” (sic). Clifton was one of 850 men interned “in Los Banos, 40 miles southeast of Manila…. In mid-July [1943] we got official notice that 27 of us were classified as prospective repatriates. I was among them…. we left in September…” ↑
93. “Philippines Retrospect,” 28, 29, 30. Sam added (34): “Marriage, of course, is out of the question…. Eleven babies were born in the first three months after the Camp was formed. Gradually the birth rate declined until it ceased altogether. Segregation had proved effective. Then suddenly there was a scare. The startling news went round that some six or seven couples were expecting…. This revelation angered the Jap authorities so much that they had the expectant mothers removed post-haste to a maternity hospital outside. As for the husbands, they were given a period of confinement inside, so that they might have ample opportunity to brood over their sins. Only one case was an unmarried girl. She was no more than 17 years old. The man concerned got a longer sentence than the others, and ‘solitary’ it was, in the camp coop.” ↑
94. “Philippines Retrospect,” 29. ↑
95. Ibid., 30. ↑
96. Ibid., 30-31, 32. ↑
97. Ibid., 33-35. ↑
98. Ibid., 36. ↑
99. Ibid., 36, 30. ↑
100. Ibid., 36. ↑
101. Ibid. ↑
102. Ibid. ↑
103. Ibid., 37. ↑
104. Ibid., 37, 38, 39, 40. Wolfe Family Records: An AP wire story, “Japanese Ship at Mormugao,” filed from “Mormugao, Portuguese, India” and dated 15 October 1943, states: “The Teia Maru carried 1,236 Americans, 221 Canadians and 40 Latin Americans” (for a total of 1,497). But the article’s opening paragraph also states that the ship carried “1,500 American, Canadian and Latin American civilians…” ↑
105. Ibid., 42, 43. ↑
106. Ibid., 43. ↑
107. Ibid., 43, 44. ↑
108. Ibid., 44. ↑
109. Ibid., 45, 46. ↑
110. “S. W. Wolfe Rotary Speaker,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 10 December 1943 final edition, 3. ↑
111. “S. W. Wolfe Tells Club Of Jap War,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 10 January 1944. The Allies, having gained the upper hand in the Pacific Theatre, had recently pressed forward through the central and northern Solomon Islands in mid-1943 and taken Bougainville during the autumn and, by the end of February, would be in control of the eastern part of New Guinea and, to its north, the strategic Admiralty Islands. Arthur S. Link, American Epoch: A History of the United States Since the 1890s, Alfred Knopf, Third Edition, 1967, 558, 559, 553. ↑
112. “Filipinos Not Pro-Jap Speaker Says: S. W. Wolfe Describes Situation to Rotarians,” an undated clipping from an unidentified newspaper, possibly the Kingston Whig-Standard as it pertains to an address by Sam at a Kingston Rotary Club luncheon at the Hotel La Salle. This talk was either the one he gave on 9 December 1943 or another from a later date. ↑
113. Wolfe Family Records: Sam’s “Scraps” book contains the following six newspaper clippings: “Rotary Hears Thrilling Story By Sam Wolfe: Relates Experiences As Prisoner-of-War In Philippines and Subsequent Return on the ‘Gripsholm’,” The Picton Times, Thursday 10 August 1944. “Kingston Man At Rotary,” Trenton Courier Advocate, Thursday 24 August 1944. “Relates Experiences While Prisoner of Japs: S. Wolfe, Repatriate, Tells of Attack Upon Philippines – Kinsmen Speaker,” The Picton Gazette, Wednesday 30 August 1944. “Filipinos Ready To Rise for Allies,” Ottawa Morning Journal, Tuesday 19 September 1944. “Prisoner of War In Philippines Harshly Treated,” The Ottawa Citizen, Tuesday 19 September 1944. “Christian Beliefs of the Filipinos Bar to Japanese,” Brockville’s The Recorder and Times, Tuesday, 20 March 1945.  A seventh clipping from a Rotary Club of Brockville publication states: “In his [19 March 1945] discussion of ‘The Philippines at Peace and at War,’ Sam Wolfe gave us probably the best of all the four talks he has delivered in the course of his various visits to the club.”  A clipping of a partial article (with no title) of 15 July 1940 from The Recorder and Times notes that Sam, as immediate past president of the Shanghai Rotary, presented a silk flag on behalf of his organization to the Brockville Rotary at its luncheon that day.  Sam and Blanche were the guests of Mrs. George T. Fulford at Fulford Place. (Sam’s “Scraps” book.) ↑
114. Fulford Place Archives: Sam’s letter of 8 April 1946, to Hubert Cohen in Sydney, Australia. ↑
115. “S. W. Wolfe Tells Club Of Jap War,” Kingston Whig-Standard. ↑
116. Ibid. Sam also paid public tribute to Fulford in a lengthy story, “S. W. Wolfe Tells of Life Under Japanese in Manila,” Kingston Whig-Standard, 2 December 1943 final edition, 2, 15. ↑
117. “Philippines Retrospect,” title page. ↑
118. Wolfe Family Records: According to “Relates Experiences While Prisoner of Japs,” The Picton Gazette, Wednesday 30 August 1944, Sam held the title of assistant general manager of the Fulford Company. ↑
119. Sam’s letter of 8 April 1946. ↑
120. In his “Foreword” to the projected “A Brief History of the G.T. Fulford Company Ltd.,” Sam states that about 1930, “when on one of my periodical visits to Canada from China, I suggested to Toronto Head Office that it might be worthwhile… to get one of the senior members of the staff to write a history of the business…” The person Sam “had in mind was Mr. John A. MacKenzie, who had been closely associated with the Senator, and his business, from earliest years.” Although “the idea was received with favour,” nothing was done until Sam was repatriated, “raised the subject again” and found himself tasked with the project. ↑
121. Wolfe Family Records. ↑
122. The Harris History, 221. ↑
123. Untitled news item in the Kingston Whig-Standard, November 9, 1945 final edition, 6. The first sentence of the item reads: “Mrs. L. C. Smith and her two children, Annandale apartments, left today for Montreal and are sailing tomorrow for England, to meet her husband, Lt. L. C. Smith, who has arrived there after being a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Thailand for nearly four years.” Sam’s letter of 8 April 1946, states, “Leslie experienced [illegible] hardships and much sickness in Thailand, which pulled him down badly[;] he is now looking remarkably well.” ↑
124. The Harris History, 221-222. “Philippines Retrospect,” 5 (stranded). ↑