A small number of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) spent time in camps in Formosa (now Taiwan), Korea and Manchuria (now in Russia and northeast China). Many of the POWs were senior officers that had been separated from the men under their command.
In August 1942, the Japanese moved the officers to Formosa from Changi in Singapore. The next month, a small working party was sent to Korea.
In 1944, fearing Allied invasion, the Japanese moved the remaining men from Formosa to Manchuria.
While life in these camps was often bleak and harsh, the rates of death and illness were much lower than in Ambon, Borneo, Burma and Thailand.
Arrival at Formosa, Korea and Manchuria
It was cold, by jeez it was cold, no vegetation, just flat uninteresting Manchurian plains. Then we saw the camp barracks. They had these big Russian pachika stoves inside them, decent double decker bunks, blankets, and each of us had an issue of clothes on the bed.
[John Murphy, quoted in Hank Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, Sydney, ABC, 1985, p 163]
A relatively small number of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) of the Japanese spent much of their time in camps in Formosa, Korea and Manchuria.
Life in these north Asian camps was often bleak and harsh, but the rates of death and illness were much lower than in Ambon, Borneo, Burma and Thailand.
In mid-1942, the Japanese decided to separate the senior POW allied officers at many camps across the Pacific from the men they commanded. They did this for a number of reasons, including:
- a belief that officers were more likely to escape
- fewer guards were needed to keep an eye on officers who were separated from the others
- so they could force officers to work, in breach of the Geneva Conventions.
Two parties left Changi in Singapore for Formosa in August 1942. They travelled in primitive, crowded cargo ships the Japanese used to transport POWs across the region.
One party of 47 consisted of senior officers above the rank of full colonel. This party included the most senior Australian officer in captivity, Major General Cecil Callaghan, and 12 other Australian officers. With them were some 400 engineers and technicians.
The second group was a working party of 1,000 prisoners, of whom 96 were Australian, including 6 officers.
Formosa camps
Disembarking at Takao, on the south of Formosa, in late August 1942, the groups were soon split up.
The working party was sent to Korea in late September 1942.
The engineers and technicians of the second group stayed on Formosa until November 1942, when 200 of them were shipped to Moji, Japan.
Initially interned at Heito, near Takao, the senior officers were subsequently moved to Karenko on the east coast of Formosa. A number of US officers from the Philippines were already there. British and Dutch senior officers from the Netherlands East Indies arrived later.
Accommodated in overcrowded barracks, the prisoners were treated in a humiliating way. Sometimes they were slapped and kicked by their guards of much lower rank.
Their diet was poor, although they supplemented it by developing gardens. All officers lost weight, and most contracted dysentery from bacterial infection or the mosquito-borne disease malaria.
In early to mid-1943, conditions improved when the officers were distributed to camps around Formosa:
- Tamasata near the east coast
- Mosak near the capital Taihoku in the north
- Shirikawa, a dismal marshy spot surrounded by hills in the centre of the island.
Manchuria camps
Fearing an Allied invasion of Formosa in October 1944, the Japanese moved the senior officers to Manchuria, via Japan and Korea.
In Manchuria, the Australians were concentrated with British and US officers at Chen Cha Tung (Liayuanchow). The prisoners were held in an old 2-storey stone barracks the Russians built as a prison.
Conditions for POWs in Manchuria were better than in Formosa.
Food supplies were more satisfactory, in part because the POWs received regular Red Cross parcels. This was a privilege very rarely afforded POWs in South-East Asia.
Since they were not needed for manual work, other than digging slit trenches, the officers' main hazard was the cold. In winter, temperatures fell as low as -50°F (-10°C), forcing the prisoners to stay in bed all day to keep warm.
Yet none of these men suffered serious harm.
In May 1945, they were imprisoned with some 2,000 other Allied POWs in Manchuria, near Mukden (now Shenyang).
Korean camps
Around 90 Australians in the working party that had accompanied the senior officers to Formosa were transferred to Seoul, Korea, on 25 September 1942.
The weather in Seoul became bitterly cold. The huts had no heating until a month after the first snow.
From February to August 1943, Red Cross parcels were supplied regularly. And the men were allowed to write letters home.
In September 1943, a group of POWs, including one Australian officer and 50 men, were transferred to Konan in North Korea.
At Konan, the prisoners were employed on hard manual labour, including:
- doing factory work
- breaking up stone
- stoking furnaces.
Like most prisoners of the Japanese, they were subjected to gratuitous violence.
There were few medical facilities for treating those POWs who fell sick.
By standards elsewhere in Asia, the Japanese discipline was more relaxed in Korea, and the food rations were satisfactory, at least in quantity.
Heating was provided throughout much of winter. Together with the Red Cross parcels, this made the experience of the prisoners a little less intolerable.
Glossary
- internee
- prisoners of war