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

by David

  The court case that some countries had pursued in Japan also came to nothing. If it had been successful, the Australian Reparations Committee would have been in real strife, because it had chosen not to join the action.

  In 1997, Greta, David’s wife since 1978, died of lung cancer. She had been the love of his life, and he was devastated. This was the lowest point in his life. He didn’t even care that the reparations project appeared to have failed.

  David had stayed in touch with Nagase and had visited Japan on many occasions. Nagase had also visited Australia, accompanied by his wife. When he heard that Greta had died, he invited David to come to Japan with his daughter, Denise, and insisted on paying for the whole trip. Being surrounded by such concerned and friendly Japanese people aided David’s recovery. It also helped him to appease the deep-seated anger that had driven him all these years.

  During the last years of the twentieth century, most of the governments of the countries with POWs claiming reparations from the Japanese had considered paying these claims themselves. They had certainly let the Japanese off lightly in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, and very gradually they became convinced that the only way to stop continuous action against Japan would be to pay the reparations themselves. The first country to award payment to their ex-POWs (Japan) was Canada, and the others quickly followed suit.

  In Australia, each and every ex-POW of the Japanese – if they were still surviving – received the sum of $25,000, as did surviving widows. The money went into bank accounts around the nation in mid-June 2001. The payments were free of income tax and did not affect other benefits that an ex-POW or his widow was receiving.

  It had been a long haul. In David’s opinion, the POWs should have had the previous ten years to enjoy this money. But it was better late than never.

  Chapter 21

  Reconciliation

  David is still a frequent visitor to Japan. He returned from a recent visit in early December 2011, having gone at the invitation of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the Japanese POW Friendship Program. He was one of five Australian World War II ex-POWs on the trip.

  It is difficult to talk about the Imperial Japanese Army’s brutality on the one hand, and sincere reconciliation on the other, but David and his Japanese friends have been discussing these issues since 1990, when he first visited Japan. In those early days, David thought more about brutality and reparations, but gradually he got to know and respect more and more younger Japanese people. He has found them to be very different from the guards on the railway. Those with whom he has associated have been very knowledgeable about the behaviour of the Japanese military during the war and very eager to apologise for the past deeds of that generation. They have always been quick to assure David that Japan no longer thinks and acts as it did during that time.

  Most of the people David talks to now believe that Japan should pay reparations. Many, like Nagase Takashi, have helped David in his attempts to achieve this goal. David has accepted many apologies, and Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama even offered an apology on behalf of his government in 1995. But of much greater importance were the apologies David received directly from Japanese people he knew as friends. During David’s 2011 visit, some twenty-five years after he founded the Australian Reparations Committee, it was now more appropriate to talk of reconciliation.

  The media followed the Japanese POW Friendship Program members at every turn during their most recent visit. The ex-POWs in this group laid wreaths at the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Hodagaya, and inspected and took photographs of the records of Allied war dead kept at the Ryozen Kannon Memorial Hall in Kyoto. David also met with many of the Japanese friends that he has made over the years.

  At all times, the officials organising the arrangements were very conscientious and went to great lengths to accommodate David’s requests to meet up with his friends. Unfortunately, he was unable to meet with his oldest Japanese friend, Nagase Takashi, who died on 21 June 2011.

  David first met Nagase Takashi – ‘Nagase-san’, as he came to call him – in 1945. Since then, Nagase probably worked harder than any other Japanese that David knew, both for his own forgiveness as a member of the Imperial Japanese Army and on behalf of all Japanese, for what the army did to the peoples of all the countries they occupied in South-East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Nagase worked particularly hard to achieve reconciliation with the Thais and with the Allies, particularly the Australians.

  Although David had only been a private in the Australian army, Lieutenant Nagase had often sought his company during the War Graves Commission trip, probably because some on the expedition wanted to avoid talking to an officer of the Kempeitai.

  During the War Graves trip, as I looked at Nagase, I thought, Poor little bastard. He was in the uniform of those who had been our judges, but now that uniform gave him no authority. He was a pathetic figure. But he wanted to talk to me. Since he was a Kempeitai, I was very interested in what made him tick, so it was a kind of a mutual thing. I would ask him why the Japanese were such bastards – I never minced my words – and he would agree with me that they were. By way of explanation, he would talk of duty and the Emperor.

  I think I probably had an influence on him. I remember Nagase came to Sydney on one occasion in the early 1990s, and people booed him off the podium and would not let him speak. I felt so concerned for him because I knew how devastated he felt at this reception. I knew how much he was doing in Japan to promote our cause. I wanted to protect him, and I wanted all my colleagues to hear what he had to say, but it was impossible because the anger against Japan and the Japanese was so great in the ex-POW community.

  Nagase first started returning to Thailand in 1963. He spent millions over the years, building Buddhist temples to those Allied soldiers who died on the railway, and also repatriating the romusha workers on the railway who had never been able to return to their native countries. He not only paid for their fares but also accompanied some of them home. As David learned, Nagase had returned to Thailand and the site of the railway more than 130 times.

  Nagase once explained to David how the Japanese soldiers – including him – were what he termed ‘cultists’, under the spell of the Emperor Showa (in his lifetime known as the Emperor Hirohito). They were brainwashed as young men into a way of life in the military that required strict obedience, regardless of what the orders were, because all orders stemmed from the Emperor.

  Nagase came to believe that the way Japan had conducted the war was foul and cruel, and that the Emperor Hirohito should have taken responsibility for it. He was very brave to expound this point of view in Japan, because there were – and still are – many in Japan who believed that their military leaders during World War II were heroes. Nagase was a great, generous and brave man.

  I have met many Japanese who have never apologised – or never apologised sincerely – for the behaviours of their military during World War II. One of them was Abe Hiroshi, who never apologised with sincerity. He was the famous engineer officer in charge of the railway track at Sonkurai during the speedo time in the months before October 1943, when the railway was completed. Thousands of British and Australian POWs died through disease, lack of food, beatings and overwork at Songkurai. Abe was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to several years in prison.

  I’ve been at conferences attended by Abe Hiroshi. I have heard him agree with the opinion that all the prisoners ever got by way of discipline on his section was ‘a bit of a slap’. This is far from the truth. My friend Bobby Small survived at Songkurai for many months, and he was sick for most of the time. I held him in my arms on the ground at Kanchanaburi, where he died from a combination of bashings, sickness and prolonged starvation at a Songkurai camp. So I knew that they suffered a lot more than ‘a bit of a slap’.

  In the late 1990s, I was at a meeting on the railway organised by the Japanese POW Research Network at Kanchanaburi on what is now known as
the ‘Bridge Over the Kwai’. The old ex-guards walked towards us ex-POWs to shake hands in a gesture of reconciliation and forgiveness on the bridge. I could see that Abe Hiroshi was headed towards me with his hand outstretched, so I grabbed it. I held onto it and abused the bastard for a full minute before letting go. There was no reconciliation felt by me at that moment, I can tell you, even though the cameras were rolling at the time.

  Cameras were also rolling during David’s recent visit. On Friday 2 December 2011, he met with around twenty university students and their professor, Tomoya Nakao. The students had been learning about the building of the Thai–Burma railway during the war, and about how the Japanese had treated the POWs.

  It was the first time these students had talked to an Australian who had been a POW under Japanese military rule. David stayed with them for about an hour, answering their questions. He was amazed at how keen these students were to know more about him and the war. He doubts very much that Australian students of the same age know much about what happened on the Thai–Burma railway.

  David has many other close friends who have all played a part in gradually persuading him to reconcile with Japan and its people. He met a few of them on this recent visit. One was history professor Yuki Tanaka. David has known Yuki, as he calls him, for many years and is familiar with his writings about the wartime behaviour of the IJA. Yuki is a tireless researcher and peace activist in Hiroshima.

  In 1998 David had been invited to a seminar Yuki had organised in Hiroshima. The topic was whether the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 was an act of terrorism.

  There were about 200 Japanese there, as well as history professors from London, Tokyo, New York and Melbourne. They were all giving papers. Towards the end of the meeting, during discussion time, everyone had agreed that yes, dropping the bombs were acts of terror. Anyway, Yuki then introduced me to the audience and said that perhaps I, with my POW experience, could give my point of view.

  I thanked him for inviting me, and the Japanese audience for accepting me. I just said that in the fourteen years from 1931 to 1945, the Japanese performed cannibalism, raped, tortured, starved and murdered more than 30 million people. In comparison, in my view, dropping the atomic bombs was not an act of terrorism. It had saved the lives of all the Allied prisoners of war. That ended the seminar and they all trooped out quietly.

  Yukako Ibuki, whom David knows as Yuka, is another person for whom he has great respect. They met again during his recent visit. Yuka is a teacher, journalist and translator, and is an activist for those who suffered under the oppression of the IJA during World War II.

  Yuka was six years old when World War II finished, but she has learned a great deal about the war experiences of various people over the years.

  ‘My heartfelt apology as a Japanese goes to the people victimised by fanatic brutality caused by the Japanese,’ she says.

  Currently, she is Tokyo’s representative at the US–Japan Dialogue on POWs, a bilingual website dedicated to the 27,000 American soldiers and 14,000 civilians who were imprisoned by the IJA. Many died as a result of the inhumane treatment they suffered. The website’s aim is to promote understanding and dialogue among and between the people of Japan and the United States.

  Perhaps the most important organisation for David, and for all Australian ex-POWs of the Japanese, is the Japanese POW Research Network. David has known and respected its two founders, Taeko Sasamoto and Yoshiko Tamura, for many years, and he met them both during his 2011 visit.

  The aim of the POW Research Network is to work to ‘dig out’ the buried historical facts about all that happened during World War II, particularly information relating to Allied POWs, civilian internees and the trials of war criminals. After the end of the war, the IJA destroyed as much documentation relating to the POW camps as it could. Sasamoto and Tamura feel it is important that Japan’s younger generations learn about the truth of what happened in World War II, so that they will not make the same mistakes in the future.

  Queen Elizabeth II honoured both Taeko Sasamoto and Yoshiko Tamura with MBEs for their excellent work with this organisation. These were presented by Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, at the Australian Embassy in Tokyo in 2006.

  The POW Research Network is still working hard to help ex-POWs and their families and friends. It seems to be an obligation that they feel. It is more than a hobby. A lot of Japanese feel very obligated because they know what happened to us during the war, and they feel a very strong impulse to make amends. The POW Research Network knows better than anyone else what the IJA was guilty of, and they cannot do enough for us. These women are great. I admire them both very much.

  David fought for years, through the Reparations Committee, for an official apology and for monetary compensation from Japan, but had little success. But on his many visits to Japan, he always came away with pleasant thoughts and new friendships.

  I think perhaps reconciliation was first sown in my mind by the actions of Mariko Matsuo. She introduced me to her young students at the railway at Kanchanaburi in Thailand in 1995.

  It was the first time I had met Mariko. The children were delightful. Every child there presented me with a card that they had made themselves, each saying how sorry they were for what had happened to POWs during the war. And yet all were different!

  It was probably the fact that they were so young and so innocent, and yet here they were apologising for the actions of their grandfathers or great-grandfathers. I defy anyone not to be moved and impressed by such actions.

  This gradually convinced me that there was another way to think about the whole thing. That visit enabled me to separate the brutal wartime Japanese – including the Emperor – from the new generations of beautiful Japanese people. I love them all.

  Mariko is now a teacher at Kamisaibara Junior High School, and during David’s 2011 visit she again brought him a letter from every student in her current class. He has now replied individually to each and every student.

  Mariko has been teaching for many years, gradually contributing to the change in Japanese knowledge of the war.

  Think how many children Mariko has influenced, how many have now learnt about the futility and evils of war, and how many this will ultimately influence, through their children and grandchildren. This is how great changes happen.

  Over the years, the actions of all these people influenced David greatly. His attitude gradually changed from anger and hatred to an acceptance of things past, and to a love and respect for the great many Japanese who have not only apologised on behalf of their countrymen but who, in so many ways, through their activities and their writings, now live their lives as an act of apology. David senses that these are acts of atonement, on behalf of the Japanese men of his own generation.

  In 1995, Japanese Prime Minister Murayama did apologise on behalf of his government for the way the IJA treated people in South-East Asia during World War II. It was right that he did so, although there were many in government at the time who disapproved. Yet apologies from concerned individuals and from the children of a country are of even greater worth, in David’s view. Their apologies are most certainly from the heart, and in many cases they are backed by personal actions.

  And what is reconciliation?

  It has a lot to do with forgiveness but has nothing to do with forgetting. It is about acceptance, new experiences and getting on with living.

  I no longer have any hate or thirst for revenge in my heart. I carried that with me for far too many years. I am very glad that I can now say that I have gradually found reconciliation with the people who are the present generations in Japan today.

  Digger proudly shows off his Light Horse uniform, about 1938. (Chapter 1)

  Joe Milledge (left) and Digger at Port Dickson, 1941. (Chapter 2)

  A sketch of the Queen Mary as drawn by Joe Milledge, Digger’s mate, at the time of departure from Sydney in February 1941. (Chapter 2)

  Digger with two Malay ser
vicemen. (Chapter 2)

  Angela Siawa outside her parents’ house in Port Dickson, 1941. (Chapter 2)

  A copy of General Percival’s letter of surrender in February 1942. (David Barrett collection) (Chapter 4)

  Digger and Max Wall photographed in late 1945 in Melbourne. (Chapter 5)

  Sketch map of the Changi area as Digger remembers it in 1942/3. (Chapter 5)

  Selerang Barracks square on 4 September 1942. (AWM 132940) (Chapter 5)

  This is the layout of No 2 Coolie Hospital at Kanchanaburi as Digger remembers it in 1943/4. The river was about two kilometres away. (Chapter 7)

  A drawing by Ronald Searle of elephants hauling logs on the railway somewhere near Hintok in 1943/4. (Chapter 9)

  A drawing by Ronald Searle of POWs working in a cutting near Hintok in 1943/4. (Chapter 9)

  This bund surrounds Chungkai POW camp just North of Kanchanaburi. It is deeper than the bund the POWs had to build at most camps including at Lop Buri camp. Machine guns were strategically placed to cover these bunds, and there is evidence that the Japanese intended to use them as mass graves after a massacre of the POWs occupying the camp. Such massacres were, it is believed, set to take place towards the end of August 1945, in anticipation of an Allied invasion of the Thailand-Malaya area. (AWM P00761.019) (Chapter 10)

  Feeding time at Nakhon Nayak, late August 1945. (Chapter 11)

  Digger, centre, with a few friends. (Chapter 11)

  Nakhon Nayak camp buildings, late August 1945. (Chapter 11)

  All 16 members of the War Graves Commission Survey party. Left to right – Back row: Sergeant T. Lee (8 Division Provost Company), Private G. H. Kindred (1st Fortress Signals), Sergeant Jack H. Sherman (2/4th Machine Gun Battalion), Acting Warrant Officer 2 Les Cody (in dark glasses; 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion), Padre H. C. F. Babb (ex POW British), Lieutenant J. Eldridge (British), Captain J. Leemon (Australian War Graves Unit), Captain R. K. A. Bruce (Malayan Colonial Force), Sergeant Lloyd Rankin (Australian War Graves Unit); Front row: Leading Aircraftman (RAAF) S. O. Simpson. R. McGregor, E. S. Wheeler, Private D. W. Barrett (Australian Army Medical Corps), Lieutenant G. H. Schroder (Dutch Force), Privat H. R. Lees (2/20th Battalion) and Captain A. R. White (2/26th Battalion). (AWM P01910.001) (Chapter 13)