When the first Australian prisoners of the Japanese began to return home at the end of the Second World War, there was collective shock at their terrible physical condition.
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Apart from the lack of information that the Imperial Japanese Army allowed to escape the prison camps, any information that did make it back to Australia was severely censored by the Commonwealth Government to maintain morale among the populace.
In many cases emaciated soldiers were nursed back to health off the mainland, to reduce the impact of their return on their families.
Over 22,000 Australian soldiers were captured by the Japanese during the war, and 8,000 died.
Eighteen of those men will be in attendance at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the fall of Singapore on Wednesday at the Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat.
Colin Hamley served with the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion in the Middle East and was returning with the 6th and 7th divisions to Australia when his troopship Orcades was diverted to Java by General Archibald Wavell. Landed on the island on February 17, 1942, and woefully underarmed and supplied, they were taken prisoner by the Japanese relatively quickly.
“We retreated to the coast,” says Mr Hamley, “in the hope that the Perth and the Houston might be coming around to pick us up.”
Both ships had been lost in the battle of the Sunda Strait. The captured soldiers were taken to Batavia (now Djakarta) and interned in the prison known as the Bicycle Camp.
“We had to have a dramatic change of diet: we were immediately placed on a diet of rice and stew. That was to be our diet for the following three-and-a-half years.”
Mr Hamley said it was fortunate he liked rice (and still does), even though the rice served to the prisoners was often weevil and grit-ridden and sometimes rotten. He and his fellow prisoners were set to work stripping the city of metals to be shipped back to Japan for the war effort – public statues, even metal house numbers.
He underwent a blood transfusion while still a prisoner – an operation that he credits with saving his life.
A national commemorative service to mark the 75th anniversary of the fall of Singapore, and the service and sacrifice of Australian prisoners of war, will be held on Wednesday, February 15 at 11.00 am, at the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat, Victoria.
A service of dedication for a new memorial to the families of servicemen and women who have been killed in action, the Garden of the Grieving Mother, will take place earlier on the same day at 9.30 am at the Arch of Victory in Sturt Street, Ballarat. All are welcome.