Australian prisoners of war in Asian camps

Captured by the Japanese

South-East Asia map

By March 1942, Japanese forces controlled much of the Pacific and South-East Asia. The Japanese began their advance with attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya on 7 and 8 December 1941. Within 3 months, they had captured:

• British Hong Kong
• Burma (now Myanmar)
• Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia)
• New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea)
• Singapore
• the Philippines.

The Japanese imprisoned more than 22,000 Australian servicemen, as well as around 1,500 Australian nurses and civilians.

Almost 15,000 men from the Australian 8th Division were captured after the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Others were taken prisoner in the Netherlands East Indies, including more than 2,700 on Java and smaller groups on Ambon and Timor. Some were also captured on New Britain.

About 300 men who survived the sinking of HMAS Perth in the Battle of the Java Sea in late February 1942 were also taken prisoner.

Women of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) were captured while trying to escape from Singapore in February 1942. Their ship, the SS Vyner Brooke, was bombed and sunk near Sumatra. Many of the survivors were later killed in the Bangka Island massacre.

Australian POWs on Ambon, Singapore, Java and Sumatra remained more or less where they had been captured. Most Allied POWs were moved to other locations between 1942 and 1945 to meet the wartime labour needs of the Japanese. These locations included Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, Borneo, Hainan Island, Formosa (now Taiwan), Japan, Korea and Manchuria (China).

Conditions in Japanese camps

Places of internment map

Australians were prisoners of the Japanese in camps across Asia:

• Ambon and Hainan
• Borneo
• Burma (now Myanmar)
• Singapore
• Formosa (now Taiwan), Korea and Manchuria
• Japan
• Java and Sumatra
• New Britain and Timor
• Thailand

As in Europe, each of the camps differed. A prisoner's chance of survival was affected by:

• access to food and medication
• disease
• luck
• morale
• the brutality of who was in charge
• the work they were expected to do.

Many prisoners were treated with great cruelty by the Japanese guards. The constant threat of physical and psychological abuse was part of a prisoner's daily experience. Punishment was often handed out with little provocation. Beatings, torture and executions were common. At the end of the war, more than 900 Japanese guards were tried for war crimes.

Read about the treatment of prisoners on the Burma-Thailand Railway.

Starvation and disease

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Of the 8,000 or so Australians to have died in Japanese camps, most did so as a result of disease and lack of food. At Ambon and Hainan, almost 80% of Australians held captive there died from starvation when the Japanese refused to share Red Cross food and medicine parcels. Other camps were almost as bad.

Lack of food was a constant problem for Australian POWs. Most of the time, prisoners were given inadequate rations – usually only a small amount of poor-quality rice. Any 'fresh' produce was often rotten. Protein, such as meat or eggs, was rarely provided. There was not enough food for basic survival, never mind what was needed for the hard physical labour POWs were expected to do.

Without adequate nutrition or medical supplies, prisoners lacked the strength to fight off the diseases that swept through the camps. Despite their best efforts, the 106 Australian medical officers who were also imprisoned could do little to treat the sick prisoners.

Common illnesses in POW camps included:

• beri-beri (severe vitamin B1 deficiency)
• cholera (waterborne bacterial infection)
• dengue (virus transmitted by mosquitoes)
• dysentery (bloody diarrhoeal infection caused by amoeba or bacteria)
• malaria (parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes)
• tropical ulcers (skin infection).

Both the POWs and the Japanese feared outbreaks of cholera. It was highly contagious. Victims suffered extreme vomiting and diarrhoea before falling into a coma. In their weakened state, prisoners could die from the disease within hours.

Camp doctors became experts at using whatever they could find to treat their patients. Anything that could be reused or remade was salvaged:

• Tins and scrap metal were used to make medical equipment.
• Bamboo was used to make needles, splints and artificial limbs.
• Cutlery was used to make surgical equipment.
• Disinfectant was made using alcohol stills.

Changi Prison and Selerang Barracks

Following the fall of Singapore, Allied servicemen and civilians were taken to Changi. This was a group of 7 camps spread over 25 km on Singapore's Changi Peninsula.

Around 3,500 civilians, mostly British citizens and Eurasians, were moved into the overcrowded Changi Prison. Australian and British servicemen were taken to nearby Selerang Barracks.

As Japanese camps went, Changi was relatively comfortable. It was overcrowded, dysentery was common and there was not enough food. But the POWs could supplement their rations by growing fresh vegetables. They could also maintain their morale by organising entertainment and education.

They were also fewer beatings at Changi. Allied officers were responsible for the camp's day-to-day management, at least for the first 6 months. Japanese control tightened by late 1942, but POWs still viewed Changi as somewhere comparatively safe and secure.

The Japanese operated Changi as a transit camp. Thousands of Allied soldiers travelled through Changi on their way to forced labour camps throughout Asia. POWs experienced some of the worst cases of abuse at these work camps.

Selerang Barracks Incident

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In August 1942, 4 POWs – Australians Corporal Rodney Breavington and Private Victor Gale, and British soldiers Private Harold Walters and Private Eric Fletcher – escaped from Changi, but were later recaptured. On 30 August, the Japanese ordered the remaining POWs at Changi to sign a document promising not to escape. This violated the Geneva Convention, which stated that POWs had the right to attempt escape and to not be punished upon recapture. The prisoners saw this as unacceptable and refused to sign.

In response, the Japanese forced around 15,900 POWs to live within the parade ground at Selerang Barracks, originally designed to house 800. It was an attempt to force them to sign the document. Private George Aspinall from the 2/30th Battalion, who took many photographs of the camp, recalled the appalling conditions on the parade ground, where the men were crammed into roughly one square kilometre:

The first and most urgent problem we had to face up to was the lack of toilet facilities. Each barracks building had about four to six toilets, which were flushed from small cisterns on the roofs. But the Japanese cut the water off, and these toilets couldn't be used. The Japanese only allowed one water tap to be used, and people used to line up in the early hours of the morning and that queue would go on all day. You were allowed one water bottle of water per man per day, just one quart for your drinking, washing, and everything else. Not that there was much washing done under the circumstances.

[George Aspinall quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 'Changi: The Selerang Barracks Incident']

The prisoners held out for 4 days. Even the execution of the escaped POWs on the third day didn't force them to relent. However, dysentery began to sweep through due to the unsanitary conditions, and the Australian and British commanders realised more men were going to die needlessly. They instructed their men to sign the document "under duress". Many soldiers signed with false names, with Ned Kelly being a popular choice among the Australians.

Working for the Japanese

Unlike the Germans and Italians, the Japanese were not bound by the obligations of the Geneva Conventions as they hadn't ratified them. Consequently, Australian POWs were forced to work at Japanese:

• aerodromes
• construction sites
• factories
• mines
• railways
• shipyards and docks.

More than 60,000 Allied prisoners and 200,000 Asian indentured labourers, or rōmusha, worked in unbearable conditions on the Burma-Thailand Railway.

Sandakan 

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In October 1945, Australian War Graves personnel began the harrowing search for human remains at Sandakan. Over 2 months, they found multiple mass graves and belongings of more than 2,000 Allied POWs. Mostly Australians, these POWs were executed or left to die by their Japanese captors.

Sandakan POW camp was in north-eastern Borneo (now the Malaysian state of Sabah). It was the biggest of Borneo's 4 camps for Australian POWs and also one of the most brutal. It was the starting point of the war's single biggest atrocity committed against Australian soldiers: the Sandakan death marches. Only 6 people, all Australians, survived out of around 2,500 Australian and British prisoners who were interned there.

Australian POWs were shipped to Sandakan from Changi in July 1942. They were sent to Borneo to build an airfield for the Japanese.

The first prisoners to arrive endured a 10-day journey by sea on the Ubi Maru. Conditions on this cargo ship, and others like it, were dangerous and disgusting. These so-called 'hell ships' were used by Japanese to transport prisoners between work sites around Asia and the Pacific.

As well as terrible conditions on board, there was always the risk of drowning. Up to 15,000 POWs and civilians are believed to have died when ships they were on were attacked by their own side. Of these, some 1,515 were Australians.

The Ubi Maru was overcrowded, stifling and foul with the stench of urine, faeces and sweat. Little fresh water was available, and food rations were poor. By the time Australian prisoners arrived at Sandakan, many of the POWs were weakened by malnutrition.

As fighting on both sides became more desperate, conditions in Sandakan and other camps worsened. Rice was scarce, and rations were cut even further. Allied POWs faced more frequent, random assaults from guards.

Richard (Dick) Braithwaite, whose father, Bombardier James Richard (Dick) Braithwaite, was one of the camp's only survivors, described the guards' behaviour as inconsistent and cruel. If prisoners were thought to be not working hard enough, they would be punched, kicked or beaten with pick handles or wooden sword sticks. Some were locked up in small, cramped cages, without water or food for days on end.

Mass punishment was also common. Warrant Officer William Sticpewich recalled the inhumane punishment known as 'flying practice':

The men would then be ordered to stand with their arms outstretched horizontally, at shoulder height, facing the sun without hats. The guards would then form two sections – one behind with rifles and the other doing the actual beatings. They would walk at the back of us and smack us underneath the arms, across the ribs and on the back. They would give each man a couple of bashes. If they whimpered or flinched, they would get a bit more.

[Former prisoner of war, William Sticpewich, Sandakan Memorial Audio Guide, DVA]

By early 1945, Allied bombers increased air attacks against the Japanese. The Sandakan airfield was a constant target, and 33 prisoners were killed by Allied bombs between September 1944 and April 1945. Fearing invasion, orders were given to move the prisoners 300 km west to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu).

The first of 3 death marches left Sandakan on 28 January 1945. The second and third were in May and June. Exhausted, weak and hungry, around 1,100 prisoners slogged their way through thick jungle and mud to the waist, dragging themselves along uneven clearings and up steep slopes. They were weighed down by 45 kg bags of rice carried for the Japanese guards. Any prisoner too weak to continue was shot or bayoneted to death.

Escape

Very few POWs escaped, or attempted to escape, from Japanese camps. Most camps were inaccessible and remote, surrounded by dense jungle, cliffs and rivers. Being as starved and sick as they were, the POWs knew they had little chance of success. 

Only 6 prisoners survived Sandakan. They did so by escaping. With the help of local people and by eating whatever they could find, the 6 Australians eventually made it to safety. They were:

• Private Keith Botterill, 2/19th Battalion
• Bombardier Richard 'Dick' Braithwaite, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment
• Gunner Owen Campbell, 2/10th Australian Field Regiment
• Lance Bombardier William Moxham, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment
• Private Nelson Short, 2/18th Battalion
• Warrant Officer William 'Bill' Sticpewich, Australian Army Service Corps.

The capture of civilians

Some 130,000 Allied civilian men, women and children were held prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. Among them were around 1,500 Australian civilians.

Internees came from a wide variety of backgrounds and many had lived in Asia for decades. As well as Australians, there were Dutch, Americans, Russians, British and foreign nationals of other Commonwealth countries. Up to one-third of internees were people of mixed European and Asian heritage.

Many Western civilians came from privileged backgrounds of wealth and power. They ran the colonial governments, businesses, mines and plantations. Others were:

• administrators
• doctors and nurses
• engineers
• forestry workers
• police
• missionaries
• nuns
• teachers.

Why they stayed

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Escape was difficult, if not impossible, for the thousands of civilians living in the path of Japan's invasion. The speed of Japan's advance was one main reason Australians were captured. Other factors included:

• the White Australia Policy, which made evacuating to Australia out of the question for Eurasians
• complacency that Singapore (and elsewhere) would not fall
• too few ships
• the need to continue essential services.

Public servants were ordered by the Australian Government to stay at their posts, despite warnings of the Japanese advance. Senior diplomat Vivian Bowden was told to remain in Singapore, along with his staff from the Department of External Affairs. Bowden was captured, then shot, by Japanese.

Missionaries and nurses felt an obligation to those in their care. Matron Olive Paschke, who was stationed at Singapore's 2/10th Australian General Hospital, had the difficult decision of deciding which of her nurses to evacuate first. She was killed when the Japanese sank the SS Vyner Brooke.

Others, like 17-year-old Sheila Bruhn (nee Allan), simply refused to leave their family. Bruhn would not leave her Australian father behind. She was captured during the fall of Singapore and imprisoned in Changi for over 3 years.

Japan invades

One by one, between December 1941 and March 1942, each of the European colonies of South-East Asia fell to the Japanese.

• Fall of Java and the Netherlands East Indies, January to March 1942
• Fall of Rabaul, 23 January 1942
• Fall of Ambon, 4 February 1942
• Fall of Singapore, 15 February 1942
• Fall of the Philippines, March 1942.

Fighting was fierce and brutal. Civilians suffered daily bombings and mortar attacks by the Japanese, and casualties were high.

Among those killed was 11-year-old Richard Harvey, who faced a Japanese firing squad along with his parents following the Japanese invasion of Rabaul. On New Britain, 160 Australian civilians and military personnel were massacred after they surrendered to Japanese forces at Tol Plantation.

By the time Allied civilians were taken into captivity, they were traumatised and shocked. They were ill-prepared for captivity.

Civilian internment camps

Allied civilians were interned in hundreds of camps across Asia, including in:

• Burma
• China
• the Netherlands East Indies
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• Malaya and Singapore
• New Guinea
• the Philippines.

These varied in size and conditions, from small camps of less than 100 to overcrowded places packed with thousands of inmates. Some, like Changi, split families up. Others, like Stanley in Hong Kong, allowed families to live together. Male and female internees at Santo Tomas, in the Philippines, lived together during the day but were segregated at night.

For internees from Allied countries, in particular, imprisonment was a dramatic and traumatic change to their way of life. Before the war, many expatriates had enjoyed comfortable lives, with large homes staffed by servants. Few had experience with physical labour.

How internees were treated was inconsistent and often unfair. But, in general, detainees had little to eat or drink, they were malnourished and they suffered from the same diseases as other POWs.

Unlike military POWs, civilian internees were not forced to work for the Japanese war effort. But they were expected to self-govern their camps using all their prewar skills. This included:

• administration work
• building latrines and other camp facilities
• cleaning
• cooking
• growing food
• health care
• mending clothes
• teaching.

Regardless of social background, everyone was required to work.

Internees worked hard to find some form of normality. They organised concerts, plays and libraries. They celebrated national days and birthdays. Religious services were held. Some also attempted to restore beauty to their surroundings by sketching, painting and gathering flowers. 

Japan finally surrendered in August 1945, but many internees waited months to be freed. When they came home, adjustment to postwar life was not easy. Former internees had to deal with many challenges, including:

• a lack of formal recognition of their experiences
• broken families, damaged by separation in the war
• financial insecurity
• mental and physical health problems caused by captivity.

Civilian internees were also reluctant to compare their experiences with those of other prisoners, particularly as the horrors of the Japanese work camps and the Holocaust came to light. It took 50 years before many shared their experiences in memoirs.

Army nurses in Japanese camps

Some 4,000 Australian women signed up as nurses in World War II. They were first sent to the Middle East, and later to England, Greece and Crete. In early 1941, Australian army nurses arrived in Singapore and Rabaul, in the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Of these, 38 nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) were taken prisoner by the Japanese. One-quarter died in captivity.

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Rabaul

Six nurses of the AANS were the first to be captured, in Rabaul in January 1942. For 6 months, they were detained at the mission hospital at Vunapope, along with patients and Methodist missionaries. There was little food, no medication for the patients, and nurses regularly fended off sexual assaults by Japanese guards.

In July 1942, the nurses were sent to Japan on the MV Naruta Maru, a Japanese prison ship. Along with the 6 army nurses were 4 mission nurses, 7 civilian nurses and 2 other Australian women.

The women arrived in Yokohama, the first of several camps where they were held until the end of the war. They were put to work sweeping streets, digging trenches and working on farms for the Japanese.

During their captivity, the Australian nurses were given barely enough food to survive. Over time, their rations dropped to starvation levels. The women resorted to eating glue from the envelopes they made for the Japanese. They also stole whatever food they could find. The nurses suffered from tropical diseases and malnutrition.

After 3 years and 9 months in captivity, the nurses were released. They were freed by US troops after Japan's surrender. After processing in Manila, the women finally returned home to Australia.

Sumatra

By February 1942, conditions in Singapore were desperate. Japan had invaded, the British had retreated, and Singapore was battered with daily air raids.

More than 100 army nurses were stationed in Singapore as part of the 8th Australian Division. As conditions worsened, the nurses were ordered to leave. Sixty-five escaped on board the hospital ships Wah Sui and Empire Star, with 2,000 evacuees. Both ships were attacked by the Japanese but returned safely to Australia.

On 12 February 1942, the remaining 65 army nurses braved bombed streets and burning buildings on foot to reach the ship SS Vyner Brooke. Overcrowded and carrying mostly women and children, the Vyner Brooke sailed for Sumatra. The ship was bombed 2 days later by Japanese aircraft. It sank in Bangka Strait, off the south-eastern coast of Sumatra. 

Of the 65 nurses who embarked on Vyner Brooke:

• 12 drowned
• 21 were murdered by a Japanese patrol on Bangka Island
• 32 were taken prisoner
• 8 died in captivity.

The surviving nurses spent the rest of the war in a series of internment camps in Sumatra. Conditions were appalling. Food, water, medicine and hygiene facilities were inadequate.

The women set up committees to administer the camps. Each group took responsibility for organising:

• education
• entertainment
• food
• hygiene
• nursing.

Rations were supplemented by trading with locals. Other supplies were smuggled in from the nearby men's camp. 

In April 1944, conditions worsened when a new commandant was appointed to administer the camp. On even smaller rations than before, the nurses now had to work for the Japanese, growing food for their captors, carrying water for them and unloading their trucks.

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In October 1944, the nurses were moved to Muntok on Bangka Island. This camp was in a malaria-prone area and many of the nurses, weakened by starvation, were hospitalised. Four nurses died in early 1945.

As the war drew to a close, the women endured a hellish journey to their final camp. Here, they resorted to eating grass and fern fronds to survive. By this time, the nurses were gaunt and ill, having lost 20 kg or more. Four more nurses died, one just days after Japan's surrender.

An Australian war correspondent, Hayden Lennard, followed information from local villagers to track down the nurses at their camp and helped get them repatriated to Australia. On 15 September, one month after the war's end, survivors were flown to Singapore for medical care. In October, the nurses' arrival in Australia made front-page news.

Later that month, Vivian Bullwinkel testified about the nurses' experience at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The Tribunal was prosecuting Japanese personnel for war crimes. The Japanese camp commandant was sentenced to 15 years in jail for his cruel treatment of the internees.

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End of the war in Asia

World War II ended on 15 August 1945. Japan surrendered to the Allies after the United States (US) dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945).

The 2nd and 3rd Australian Prisoner of War Reception Groups were sent to locate and bring home all Australians who had been captured by the Japanese.

Based in Singapore and Manila, the Reception Groups dispatched recovery teams throughout Asia. Their role was to:

• arrest any enemy personnel suspected of the maltreatment of prisoners
• find all POW camps and any surviving records
• identify war graves
• tell families the fate of captured family members.

Most Australians who survived being captured by the Japanese returned to Australia by mid-October 1945. The return of ex-POWs in this short time was remarkable, given the difficulties faced by the specialist units in locating military and civilian prisoners of war.

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Before coming home, ex-POWs were sent to either Singapore or Manila, where they were deloused, supplied with new uniforms, given basic medical care and fed lots of high-fat food to make them strong enough to travel.

Almost 15,000 ex-POWs returned to Australia between September and October 1945. Their transition back to civilian life would be far from easy.

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Indian POWs of Wewak

In December 1944, after the 6th Division AIF assumed responsibility for operations in the Aitape-Wewak area and extended its campaign along the northern coast of New Guinea, the unit began to liberate large groups of Indian POWs. Many Australians described these encounters with the sick and starving Indians in unit and battalion histories.

Read more about Indian POWs in New Guinea.

On Bougainville, Australians found more Indian prisoners. By the end of the war, almost 6,000 Indians had been recovered in Australian New Guinea.

Jemadar (Lieutenant) Chint Singh was one of the Indian prisoners rescued by the 6th Division in Wewak. He became a key witness to the experiences of Indian POWs in New Guinea. In his affidavit to the war crimes trial of the Japanese commandant of Wewak, Colonel Takano, he described the prisoners' suffering after an Allied air strike killed and wounded some of them.

… In August 1943 we were working on the airstrip at Wewak and Allied aeroplanes bombed the area. This was the first big air raid and about five or six Indians were killed and about thirteen were wounded. The wounded men were brought to camp by Col TAKANO in a big truck and the Indians were crying out in pain. Col TAKANO picked up handfuls of sand from the beach and threw it at the Indians in anger. He said in broken English 'Why are you crying? This is not my fault. It is Roosevelt and Churchill.' They were taken out to the truck and placed on the beach. The Japanese medical officer attached to Col TAKANO's staff examined the men but then he did not give them any treatment. The Japanese medical officer gave the Indian medical officers some bandages and medical necessities but the quantity was not nearly sufficient. After a few days the wounds of the Indians became infected and they all died within a short time thereafter.

['War crimes and Trials – Affidavits and sworn statements – Chint Singh, Indian Army.' AWM 54, 1010/4/31]

By the time Takano relinquished his command at the end of 1943, hundreds of the Indian POWs had died:

… Up to December 1943 when Col TAKANO relinquished his command about four hundred men had died from ill treatment, lack of food, heavy work and long hours of work, lack of medical necessities and lack of medical treatment. In addition to the four hundred men who died about three hundred had become almost permanently disabled through tropical ulcers and sickness.

About 40,000 Indians were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. Most were captured at the Fall of Singapore in February 1942. About 30,000 of those captured appear to have joined the pro-Japanese Indian National Army (INA). Those who would not join the INA remained captive.

Indian POWs were held in Singapore, Malaya, Sumatra, British Borneo, Dutch Borneo, Hong Kong and Burma. But more Indians were transported to New Guinea than to anywhere else.

Their Japanese captors formed the prisoners into 'working parties'. They sent 9 companies (approximately 5,000 prisoners) to Rabaul in Papua. They sent 6 companies (approximately 3,000 prisoners) to Wewak in New Guinea.

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Among all the Allied POWs under the Japanese, the Indians sent to Wewak were the only group of prisoners to protest against their conditions. They mounted a petition, a hunger strike and what Japanese witnesses described as an 'uprising'. Towards the end of July 1943, their officers submitted a petition in English to Takano. The Indian POWs asked for:

• better food
• medicines and medical attention
• shorter working hours
• a day of rest every week
• safer living conditions to protect them from Allied air attacks.

The Japanese responded angrily to the POWs' requests. Takano asked his officers to enforce tougher working conditions on the prisoners.

Undeterred by their unsuccessful petition in July, the Indian officers staged a hunger strike the next month. The weakened prisoners were forced back to work with threats of death. For a few days, conditions improved slightly but then returned to normal.

In August 1943, there were about 20 Indian casualties after an Allied air raid on Wewak. Five or 6 were killed immediately. Without medical treatment, the others soon died of infected wounds.

By April 1944, US forces were planning to land along the Sepik coast of New Guinea. The Japanese ordered many of their Indian prisoners to march towards Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea (part of the Netherlands East Indies). The debilitated prisoners were marched through the coastal jungle from Wewak to just inside the border of Dutch New Guinea, 300 km to the west.

The advancing Allied forces recovered the first Allied POWs captured at Singapore in March 1944. When the US 1st Cavalry Division seized the Admiralty Islands, the troops rescued and liberated 69 Indian Sikh prisoners who had been used as labourers at Los Negros. These prisoners were taken to Australia before being shipped to India in October 1944.

Initially, the Allies were unfamiliar with Indian troops, many of whom spoke Urdu rather than English. Despite their best intentions, both the US and Australians breached cultural and religious sensitivities, offering the troops meals they could not eat.

By late 1944, First Australian Army headquarters had issued instructions for the 'processing' of the thousands of Indian survivors they had recovered. The survivors were issued with Australian uniforms and kit, including some muslin for turbans. They were also given individual cooking utensils if caste rules required them, Australian pay books, and varying levels of pay according to their ranks.

The liberated soldiers were placed in temporary camps on the islands. From there, they were moved to detachments of the Indian Returning Allied Prisoners of War and Internees (RAPWI) Mission. Many of them passed through a depot in Brisbane before being repatriated by sea to India.

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