Australian prisoners of war (POWs) interned at Ambon and Hainan faced severe malnutrition, disease and neglect.
Only 123 of the 532 Australians left on Ambon in late 1942 remained alive by the end of the war in the Pacific. It was one of the highest death tolls of Australians in captivity.
POWs didn't fare much better at Hainan. They suffered a severe regime of malnutrition, disease and neglect. Around one-third died.
Australians captured
Ambon, Borneo, Hainan and New Britain were the sites of some of the greatest disasters for Australian prisoners of the Japanese during World War II.
We'd go out and dig the graves, and then bury them. And by the time we got back from one there'd be another one ready to go out … You couldn't keep up with it. You'd wake up through the night and you'd hear them, you'd hear the death rattles.
[George Williamson quoted in Joan Beaumont, Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941–1945, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1988, 138.]
The Japanese posed a growing threat to South-East Asia in early 1941. The Australian Government sent 2 brigades of the Australian 8th Division to Malaya.
The 23rd Brigade of the 8th Division stayed back for deployment north of Australia if the Japanese threat materialised. The brigade split into 3 battalion-sized forces:
- Lark Force went to Rabaul on New Britain in March and April 1941, the headquarters of the Australian administration of New Guinea.
- Gull Force went to Ambon in December 1941 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
- Sparrow Force went to Dutch Timor in December 1941.
All 3 forces, even with the support of local Dutch troops, were 'penny packets'. They were far too small and ill-equipped to withstand the Japanese attack. They were defeated and taken prisoner in the first months of 1942.
Some 250 men of the Australian 2/2nd Independent Company sent to Portuguese Timor stayed there as a guerrilla force.
Ambon camp
Chaplain Charles Patmore, 2/21st Battalion, AIF, conducts a church service at the Japanese prisoner of war camp at Ambon. Chaplain Patmore was later killed on the island, in a bombing raid on the aerodrome. After recapture of the island by the Australians, a roll of film, of which this is one frame, was found in the camp. AWM 136290
On Ambon, Gull Force immediately suffered tragedy. The Japanese executed 2 companies at the airfield at Laha after their capture. The remaining prisoners were interned in a camp at Tan Toey, near Ambon town. Only 2 groups escaped Ambon to Australia, island-hopping across the Arafura Sea ahead of the Japanese.
The Japanese treatment of the prisoners became harsh after March 1942 when a small party of Australians successfully escaped. Japanese marines took over command of the camp in mid-1942.
In October 1942, Gull Force split. Some 263 Australians, together with a similar number of Dutch prisoners, were sent to Hainan off the coast of Vietnam. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel William (John) Scott DSO and most senior officers and medical personnel went with them. The Australian prisoners on Ambon were almost leaderless.
This problem worsened in February 1943. An allied air raid detonated a munitions dump in Tan Toey camp. Nine Australians including 5 officers, and the only Australian doctor officer, died in the explosion.
A second air raid in August 1944 killed 3 Australians and devastated the camp again.
From 1943 to 1945, illness and death among the Australians on Ambon progressively rose. This was despite the ingenuity of the Australian dentist and the single Dutch doctor.
From late 1944, the malicious Japanese interpreter controlling the camp also introduced a crippling work regime, the 'Long Carry'. Emaciated prisoners were forced to carry heavy bags of cement and bombs between villages along precipitous jungle paths. All, it seemed, for no purpose.
With food reduced to starvation levels, the death toll soared in 1945. By the time the Japanese capitulated, only 123 of the 532 Australians left on Ambon in late 1942 remained alive. It was one of the highest death tolls of Australians in captivity.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the situation on Ambon caused deep divisions among the POWs.
Trying to maintain discipline, the most senior Australian officer created a cage in which to hold thieves. This action caused controversy as it violated the dominant values of mateship and solidarity in the face of the enemy.
A Japanese working party excavates a mass grave at Tawiri, Ambon, in December 1945, as a member of the Australian War Graves Maintenance Unit examines the remains of Australian and Dutch prisoners of war executed by the Japanese in February 1942. AWM 030388.06
Hainan Island camp
On Hainan, the Australian POWs from Gull Force suffered a severe regime of malnutrition, disease and neglect.
The men tried to help themselves by developing an ongoing trade in medicines with the local Chinese population. A more sympathetic Japanese command from mid-1943 onwards also helped to avert a looming medical crisis.
Then in 1944 and 1945, conditions worsened.
In April 1944, local guerillas ambushed an Australian work group outside the camp. The guerillas killed 9 Australians and abducted 10, whose fate has never been fully resolved.
Six Australians who broke out of the camp in April 1945 were luckier. They joined Chinese nationalists in the mountains and, apart from one who died of malaria, survived the war.
The ultimate death rate on Hainan was 31%.
As on Ambon, the intense stress caused deep divisions among the Australian POWs.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott suffered an emotional breakdown. He handed men guilty of offences within the camp to the Japanese for punishment. This included electric shocks and life-threatening beatings.
In October 1944, the men took discipline into their own hands. They set up a vigilance committee to judge and punish their peers.
Lieutenant Colonel William Scott DSO, 2/21st Battalion AIF, senior Australian officer at the Bakli prisoner of war camp, at work in his quarters, Bakli Bay, Hainan, August 1945. AWM 030359.06
Commemoration of those who died
The dead from Ambon lie at Tan Toey, Ambon. In 2000, Vandals attacked the cemetery during civil violence, destroying the Cross of Sacrifice. It's been replaced with a Stone of Remembrance.
The bodies of the dead from Hainan were transferred after World War II to a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Yokohama, Japan.
From 1967, the Gull Force Association maintained a program of medical aid to Ambon in recognition of the support the local population had given the prisoners during World War II.
Glossary
- internee
- prisoners of war