Digger’s Story: Surviving the Japanese POW camps was just the beginning

by David

  Don said he could discuss all this discreetly with his contacts in Japan, including Father Tony Glyn, a Catholic priest working there, and several Japanese politicians. While David was glad to have Don’s enthusiasm and advice, he was still unsure how effective such an approach would prove to be.

  I was not comfortable with these ideas from Don Kibbler. He was all charm, and although I voiced my view that hard and embarrassing publicity against the Japanese would be the way to wear them down and eventually get reparations for all our claimants, the others on the committee were suddenly enthusiastic about Don’s proposals. So we went along with it.

  Suddenly, everything had to be secret. We didn’t want anyone to know about this foundation plan until the Japanese had agreed to it. My immediate thought was: what about our claimants? Did we have a right to keep from them what we were planning? Until then, the claimants had been able to read in every Ex-POW newsletter, in every battalion magazine, in Barbed Wire and Bamboo, and in their local newspaper exactly what we were up to.

  Towards the end of 1989, the Reparations Committee had their claim documentation organised. They had also organised for Booralong Press to publish a book, Nippon Very Sorry: Many men must die, which contained all the details about their claim.

  David wrote the letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations that accompanied the Reparations Committee’s two-volume claim document with them to Geneva.

  Dear Sir

  Re: ECOSOC RESOLUTION 1503

  The above mentioned committee being duly so authorised lodges herewith on behalf of ex-prisoners of war (Australian) of the Japanese Theatre of War in World War 2 a claim for reparations for the extreme and barbarous violations of human rights suffered by them at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army during that time.

  The claim is set forth in 2 volumes. Volume 1 contains a summary of the claim, the legal basis of the claim plus an account of the historical facts on which the claim is based.

  Volume 2 lists the names, addresses and particulars of the actual claimants. There are 6057 separate claimants listed in this volume . . .

  It is anticipated that the total number of claimants . . . will eventually be between 8,000 and 10,000 . . .

  On behalf of my committee and on behalf of the claimants my committee represents I respectfully request that the United Nations Office of the Centre for Human Rights will give due and proper consideration to the claim now made.

  David Barrett

  Committee Chairman

  Justice Marcus Einfeld wrote the preface to the submission document in Volume 1.

  Between 1942 and 1945, 22000 Australian service personnel were prisoners of war of the Imperial Japanese Army. Over 7000 of these men and women died while captives . . .

  This very high death rate is in stark contrast to the number of POW deaths of Australians held by the German and Italian Armies

  International law makes clear that persons in declared armed combat commit no crime per se. When captured such persons are entitled to decency, dignity and respect. Yet in one regard after another the Imperial Japanese Army breached what have long been regarded as the customary rules of war. It is hard to believe even now when provided with irrefutable evidence, the inhuman treatment and slave labour, which was the lot of POW. There can be no excuse for or rationalisation of these atrocities and acts of brutality committed by the Japanese Armed Forces and their commanders in the name of Japan and the Emperor . . .

  We now make a plea to the United Nations to ensure that these Australians are properly compensated by requiring the Japanese Government to pay compensation to the claimants . . .

  Such a response will powerfully mark the Japanese people’s regret at what occurred and will signal Japan’s determination that such evil will never be allowed to happen again.

  At this time, the committee decided to consult with Weary Dunlop and gain his perspective on the form that a foundation might take. Peter Collas wrote to him on the topic. It was also an attempt to bring him into the Reparations Committee fold. Peter’s letter explained exactly what was being proposed by Don Kibbler.

  Dear Sir Edward

  I write to you as vice-chairman [of the Federal Ex-POW Association] and on behalf of the Queensland Reparations Committee, and at the committee’s request, to draw your attention to a new twist in this matter which the committee believes may be of interest to you.

  As no doubt you are aware, the prime object of the committee is to prepare and file a reparations claim in the human rights division of UNO in Geneva. The work is well in hand, and the claim backed by over 6,000 separately signed authorities by survivors and next of kin is in the course of completion. The claim is for $25,000.00 for each claimant, which means that if the claim is successful there will be a payout by the Japanese of $150M approximately . . .

  However I can confirm that in addition to the work of preparing the claim, the committee is also through an intermediary negotiating on this matter directly with members of the Japanese Government. These negotiations have been made discreetly for obvious reasons . . .

  The object of these negotiations is to endeavour to persuade the Japanese government to finance the setting up of a foundation to the value of $500M. If the negotiations are crowned with success, then of course the proposed UNO claim will become redundant.

  The object of the foundation will be firstly to pay claims for reparations as may be filed with the reparations committee, and this will take up approximately $150M or thereabouts, and secondly with the balance funds to set up some sort of permanent and practical memorial establishment which can in some way symbolise not only the horrendous hardship and suffering underwent by Australian POW at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army, but also to symbolise a manifestation by Japan of its recognition of the injustice so imposed and its atonement in regard thereto.

  The purpose of this letter is to invite you to give consideration to the question of what form such memorial should take. My committee has yet to formalise its ideas on this topic. One suggestion made so far is to set up a research hospital in tropical diseases and inclusive of psychiatric research, these being matters closely associated with the POW experience . . .

  My committee would value highly any suggestion you may care to offer in this issue . . .

  We look forward to receiving your favourable response.

  Peter Collas1

  David and Peter were now ready for their trip ‘around the world in twenty-one days’, as David referred to it. They were due to set off on 12 March 1990. They would stop over in Los Angeles and then fly on to Toronto, Ottawa and London. After London, they would fly to Geneva, back to London and on to Osaka via Singapore. They would eventually leave Tokyo on 2 April and fly back to Australia. The trip was eventful, to say the least.

  We met with the Canadians, who explained that their organisation had now been recognised by the UN as a non-government organisation (NGO). Australia’s claim and claims from the British, the New Zealanders, the Dutch and the Americans could now all be submitted to the United Nations under the umbrella of the Canadian NGO.

  In Britain we were met by Bill Holtham, the man in charge of the British claim. He was a great guy. Bill and his lawyer, David Lloyd Jones, an expert in international law, were very interested in our submission. They took us to the House of Commons to meet Sir Bernard Braine MP, who was their hero. Sir Bernard took us into his very tiny office at parliament and talked to us very enthusiastically about claiming reparations from the Japanese.

  It was a different story in Geneva, but the Australian embassy helped us greatly. We met with a UN Human Rights officer. She was very understanding of our mission and gave us information about how the process worked. She explained that the claim first went before a five-nation panel, who could accept or reject it. If it passed, it went to the government against which the claim was made – Japan. The claim could be rejected or accepted at any stage, without immediate notification to the applicant, apparently. That process could
be repeated ad infinitum. We were not very pleased.

  In Japan we were met by Don Kibbler. ‘Feted’ would not be too strong a word to describe our treatment. It was as if everyone we met was in favour of paying reparations to Australia. But I wasn’t naïve enough to believe this. However, there was obviously a large section of the Japanese people who were in favour of recognising their wartime atrocities.

  The press was there and we were interviewed. I held nothing back. They got both barrels about how we had been treated. We met with Tony Glynn, who read and spoke Japanese fluently. He acted as our interpreter. We also met politicians and public servants, all of whom were sympathetic to our claims for reparations. And, of course, I met Nagase Takashi.

  Nagase didn’t recognise me at first, and I had to describe what we had experienced together on the War Graves Commission trip before he suddenly remembered. His eyes opened wide as he smiled and bowed yet again, and he shook my hand vigorously for the second time.

  We were wined and dined constantly, and taken to places such as the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, always with the press in attendance. Nagase had arranged this in order to build a good image of us for the Japanese people.

  I was delighted with these developments. At last, we had our foot in the door with the Japanese media. But my ideas of how we might use the media to our advantage were very different from those of Don Kibbler.

  Over the next few months, the idea for a foundation was developed. The committee decided to involve Professor John McCaffery of James Cook University, who promised to prepare a proposal for a tropical diseases research facility based in Townsville.

  Arrangements were made for further meetings in Japan. David and Gordon Jamieson also met with the new Japanese ambassador in Canberra, in a bold effort to try to set up a meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Toshiki Kaifu, in September.

  By mid-1990, David was becoming less and less enthusiastic about the foundation proposal, and about the way in which most members of the Reparations Committee wanted to proceed with this idea. One proposal from Father Tony Glynn was that an exchange of paper cranes – a symbol of peace in Japan – should take place in Nagasaki’s town hall in the presence of the mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, who was apparently a very outspoken gentleman critical of the behaviour of Emperor Hirohito and his failure to stop the war before the atomic bombs were dropped. David politely turned the offer down, on the grounds that that it was irrelevant to the reparations cause and a gross misuse of committee funds. But Gordon Jamieson saw it as a chance to visit Japan and make progress with the foundation idea. He accepted the invitation, with the support of others on the committee.

  Nagasaki was the city where the Allies had dropped the second atomic bomb, on 9 August 1945. An exchange of peace symbols at this place would certainly be interpreted by the press as a two-way apology. David knew very well that most of the ex-POW claimants would not support such an action from their Reparations Committee. Most regarded the atomic bombs as the act by the Allies that had saved their lives. Ex-POWs knew very well that, had the alternative plan of invading the Japanese mainland taken place, their captors would have followed orders and executed them all.

  It was very obvious by this time that most of the Reparations Committee was hooked on the foundation idea. I did not like it one little bit. Firstly, the $25,000 for each and every claimant now hardly rated a mention, and Don Kibbler kept advising that we cut back on our negative Japanese publicity. This was totally against my opinion. According to Kibbler, our publicity should now be of a ‘philosophical nature’ and not designed, as it had been in the past, to directly embarrass and shame the Japanese.

  I knew that we were letting down our Canadian, American, British, New Zealand and Dutch comrades, who were still in favour of using embarrassing publicity against the Japanese to support the UN claim. Nagase Takashi was most certainly on my side in this. We could see that a secret approach, which Kibbler also insisted upon, was going to cut the claimants out of the picture altogether. Our claimants – who now numbered around 8000 – would be suspicious as hell. They would think we had all run off with the money. And to crown it all, it was bloody ridiculous to think that the Japanese would bother to settle the Australian claim to the exclusion of the other five claimant countries.

  On 31 August 1990, David tendered his resignation to the Reparations Committee.

  The constant work with the committee since 1986 had taken a toll on David’s health. He was advised to slow down, and Greta had been advised to move to a cooler climate. All in all, then, David did not regret his resignation. He had founded the Reparations Committee despite strong opposition, he had raised more than enough money to assure its continuity, he had assembled and presented Australia’s submission of claim against the Japanese to the Sub-Committee of Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva, and he had published the submission in book form, with all royalties going to the welfare of ex-POWs or their families.

  David and Greta bought a house in Launceston, Tasmania. Once they had settled in, David joined the local branch of the Ex-POW Association. Very soon, he began thinking again about how the Japanese could be shamed into paying compensation.

  He wrote to Cliff Chadderton of the Canadian War Amputees Association, explaining the position of the Australian claim, as he now saw it.

  My view now is that the UN has proved the wrong tack for us . . . The Japanese regard it as a ‘victors organisation’ and have no respect for it . . . The UN itself seems pedantic and not actively motivated by our claim.

  I agree, we could sue our own governments for reparations, letting them recover these from the Japanese government, or we could go to the International Court of Justice.

  My suggestion is for the six nation claimants to immediately initiate a combined international media campaign deliberately designed to shame Japan. In Australia we started this two years ago, but since my resignation the committee have abandoned it . . . My contacts in Japan have told me that the Japanese government was greatly relieved when our publicity campaign quietly died.2

  Over the next year or two, David became increasingly concerned about how the members of the Reparations Committee were conducting their business. As he saw it, the committee had an agreement with those who had paid their $10 registration fee. That money had been donated to fund the claim for reparations, not to set up a foundation or a research organisation. The deal was that each claimant would receive $25,000 if the claim was successful. It was very doubtful that claimants would be willing to swap hard cash for a foundation, however grand it turned out to be.

  David began bombarding the Reparations Committee with letters, letting them know that, in his opinion, what they were doing was illegal. They had a duty to inform the claimants of what was going on, he argued. The claimants had heard nothing except rumour.

  By early 1993, the Reparations Committee had set up the Asia-Pacific Foundation Trust with only one trustee, a company it had registered – the Asia-Pacific Foundation Pty Ltd – with all the directors and shareholders being members of the Reparations Committee or their wives. Their intention in all this was becoming very clear.

  They also developed a top-secret brochure containing all the details of their proposal, including a schedule of work and costing, a location map and plans for proposed buildings. These documents expressed the hope that if the Japanese accepted and funded the proposal, these projects would be complete by 1995, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in the Pacific.

  All this documentation was sent to the Ex-POW Association’s Federal Council by Clarrie Wilson, the secretary of the Queensland State Council. The confidential nature of the proposal was stressed repeatedly. In conclusion, it stated:

  Without malice we request that the knowledge gained through this letter and enclosures, not be imparted to our Ex-Chairman, Mr. David Barrett, for fear of media exposure.3

  But David was already a step ahead. He had all the information, courtesy of friends
such as Dave Hassett, from Bundaberg, who regularly kept him informed of what the Reparations Committee was up to. In turn, David tried his best to keep the claimants informed.

  Over the next two years, Resolution 1503 – the claim submitted to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) by the Reparations Committee while David was chairman – ploughed on without result. By this time, the Canadians, Americans, New Zealanders, British and Dutch claimants were considering suing their own governments for failing to hold Japan to account during the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty conference. Some also took the Japanese government to court in Japan. The Australian Reparations Committee was not in favour of either of these actions and took no part in them.

  The Australian Reparations Committee was the only one that was continuing on a course that did not promise to reward claimants a sum of money. In fact, by February 1994 the Reparations Committee had spent most of its claimants’ money, without informing them of what was happening. Now it asked the Australian government for money for the continued promotion of the Asia-Pacific Foundation proposal.4

  In 1996 the Reparations Committee met and considered all aspects of its claim. The committee members came to the conclusion that the Japanese government would never pay compensation to individuals, nor would it fund the proposed tropical diseases foundation. They voted to disband the committee and transfer its assets to the Queensland State Council, for disbursement to all the state ex-POW associations.5