All of the men of C Force were volunteers. The force under the command of Lawson departed Vancouver on 27 October and arrived in Hong Kong on 16 November. The New Zealand ship that had been contracted to carry C Force, the HMT "Awatea" was a troopship, not a freighter as was expected, so C Force was forced to leave behind most of its vehicles and heavy equipment. Only 20 of the 212 vehicles allotted to C Force were carried by the HMT "Awatea" with the rest behind left behind on the Vancouver docks. The equipment and vehicles left behind in Vancouver were supposed to be picked up by another ship, but the Canadian government had still not charted a ship by the time Japan invaded Hong Kong. Owning to a lack of space, one company of the Royal Rifles had to sail aboard the merchant cruiser assigned to guard the HMT "Awatea", the HMCS "Prince Robert". Unknown to C Force, on 5 November 1941, the Japanese cabinet in Tokyo approved the final plans for war and the final offers in the negotiations to end the oil embargo. The same day, Lieutenant-General Sakai Takashi was appointed to take command of the Japanese 23rd Army with orders to move the 38th Division to the territory just outside of Hong Kong and to finish off the plans for taking Hong Kong. On 15 November 1941, the cabinet recommended to the Emperor that Japan go to war. During the voyage across the Pacific, the men of C Force were for the first time instructed on how to use mortars, Bren guns and grenades. Lawson reported to Ottawa four days after settling sail for Hong Kong that training with the Winnipeg Grenadiers was going well, but with the Royal Rifles it was "sticky". Other soldiers learned other things, for an example the French-Canadian signalman Georges "Blacky" Verreault was introduced for the first time to the distinctive language of the English-Canadian soldiers, which mostly involved using the word fuck as much as possible with one soldier telling him the proper way to ask for butter was to say: "Please, private, kindly pass the fucking butter or for fuck's sake, give me that lovely piece of cake".