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James Bertram talks to James McNeish of unrest, war and revolution
in Europe and Asia 1930-1950.
Discuses his ability to travel freely in Asia, travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway, living in Peking, communist activism in China, author Edgar Snow, The Long March, the mutiny at the ancient city of Sian
Biographical Note: Prior to the war Bertram performed aid work with the China Defence League, for whom he gave fund-raising lectures in a tour of the US, and led a convoy of supply trucks from Haiphong in Indochina to Yan'an. Part-way through this journey England declared war on Germany, and he returned to New Zealand. Shortly later he returned to Hong Kong to continue work for the China Defence League.
He spent a few months as relief press attaché to the British ambassador in Chungking, but returned to Hong Kong until it was seized by the Japanese in December 1941. A volunteer gunner, he became a prisoner of war in awful conditions until the Japanese surrender nearly four years later.
After the war Bertram returned to Japan as an adviser to the New Zealand delegation to the Far Eastern Commission.
- Adapted from Wikipedia.com