Oliver resident John Pollard celebrated his 100th birthday on September 1. Photo by Dan Walton
John Pollard, a local veteran of the Second World War, never expected to reach the age of 30 – especially during four years of the 1940s while he was a prisoner of the Imperial Army. So it was a vast defeat of expectations on Sept. 1 when he celebrated his 100th birthday, surrounded by family and friends at Sunnybank Centre.
Born in England, John enlisted with the British Army and was deployed to an Allied-occupied island in the Pacific. In 1942 his base was overwhelmed by Japan and he and his battalion were held captive for the remainder of the war.
As an asset of the Japanese army, he was forced to work and endure brutal conditions. If he didn’t sanitize the camp by catching 100 flies per day, he would be punished.
“I was in charge of nine more men to keep the camp clean – that was a big job.”
On days when more than 100 flies were captured, they cached the extras to lessen the next day’s quota.
Asked about his relationship with the other comrades in captivity, “Well, that’s all you’ve got,” he said.
John’s son Charles recalled an account of his father’s, who told him that some POWs would lose their will to live, and on a Monday would say, “You’ll be burying me on Thursday.”
“And then they buried him on Thursday. He lost a lot of friends from that,” Charles said. “The guys just gave up. Shows you how strong the mind is.”
Charles said his father was tougher than average, and a labour-intensive job before the war conditioned him to better endure his years as a POW.
“He used to haul 100-pound sacks of grain,” Charles said, adding that John would impress the Japanese guards by lifting one heavy sack in each arm.
Charles said his dad’s time as a prisoner was the only period in his life that he didn’t dress prim and proper.
“He didn’t have any clothes except for a linen cloth then.”
John was finally released after the surrender of Japan in the summer of 1945, but he still had a long journey to get home to England.
“I felt free when I got home to my wife,” John said.
His wife, Laura, wasn’t expecting him to return home until a day later. So when he arrived home early and gave the door a knock, Laura was only able to gasp, hug and kiss John before fainting in his arms.
John left the military after returning to England, and immigrated to Toronto shortly thereafter in 1947. He already had a son who was born in 1940, and then Charles was born in 1949. He then had a third son in 1952, and then relocated his family to the mountains of British Columbia in 1953.
“What he did was took apart a sofa, a chesterfield, put it in the back end of the truck and drove from Toronto to B.C.,” Charles said. “It was a mud freeway through the prairies, and in the mountains the road was only wide enough for one-and-a-half vehicles – so if you ran into another vehicle, one of you had to backup into a turnoff lane on the Trans Canada Highway.”
Charles said once wrestling was televised, it became his dad’s favourite sport – he’s still a fan, and he converted Laura into a fan too.
“If my mother was watching it with us we’d have to be careful because she’d be sitting there swinging her fists, saying go! go! You might get elbowed.”
After moving to B.C., they had settled in many different communities around the province, and eventually ended up in Fort Langley where John and Laura ran a grocery store together. Then when Laura began to have issues with her mobility about 40 years ago, they moved to Oliver to retire.
Laura passed away in 2010, and John credits more than 70 years of marriage with her to healthy amounts of laughter and communication.
For as long as he could, John volunteered while living in Oliver, namely helping seniors who needed transportation to Kelowna or Penticton. He also ran the local bowling alley for a number of years and helped to establish a local lawn bowling league.
“Dad’s attitude was, if he sat down too long he’d have to get up and do something. He’d get bored.”
Having lived through so much of the history of the automobile, John didn’t say he had a preference for any particular era or style of car, but brands matter – he only drove Dodges, and made a point to mention that he’s never owned a Ford.
John’s musical tastes predate the era of rock ’n’ roll. He was a fan of the Lawrence Welk Show, which generally featured big band style of music.
“‘Boy what a racket,’ he said about Elvis Presley,” Charles recalled. “He didn’t like the Beatles much either.”
Charles credits his dad’s centennial to a life free of drinking and smoking, and also remaining active upon retirement.
But when John is asked what the secret to his longevity is, he likes to joke that he’s only middle-aged and still has another 100 years left to live.
If he lives up to his word, then mark your calendars for John’s 200th birthday on Sept. 1, 2116.
By Dan Walton
