James Kerr - Australian morale

Transcript

Most of the camps I was with had mixed nationalities. Mainly British and Dutch, Dutch that had been brought over from Java as it was then. Yeah. But the Australians were the ones that, I'm not saying this because I'm Australian, but the Australians were the ones that stood out as POWs. Just the way we stuck together and helped one another and our hygiene and that sort of thing.

The Australians were a pick above the others… Ah, that was just my joke, just what Id' say as a joke. I've had this: "I'm underaged, I should not be here, I'm gonna have to tell them that I should not be here and that I wanna go home!", and it'd give them a bit of a laugh.

We never, ever lost morale. Our morale during those three and a half years was fantastic. You were being taken prisoner, we accepted that. You adapt to the conditions, particularly up in Thailand. But our morale, we never, ever lost it. We were never beaten.