Several thousand Australians were captured by the Japanese in early 1942 on the islands of New Britain and Dutch Timor. They were part of 3 battalion-sized forces sent to Malaya to defend Australia from the growing Japanese threat. Lark Force went to Rabaul in early 1941. In December that year, Gull Force went to Ambon and Sparrow Force to Dutch Timor.
The small and poorly equipped forces were unable to defend against massive Japanese attacks in early 1942.
The Japanese captured those who could not escape. Many were killed and others became prisoners of war (POWs).
More than 1,000 POWs and civilians died when the USS Sturgeon torpedoed the Japanese auxiliary ship SS Montevideo Maru.
New Britain and Timor
Then there was nothing. Dead silence. All I got was a telegram saying he was missing.
[Wife of soldier captured on New Britain, quoted in Margaret Reeson, A Very Long War: The Families Who Waited, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, p 24]
In early 1941, when the Japanese posed a growing threat to South-East Asia, the Australian Government sent 2 brigades of the 8th Division to Malaya.
However, the 23rd Infantry Brigade of the 8th Division was held back for defence of the islands to Australia's north. The brigade was split into 3 battalion-sized forces:
- Lark Force was sent to Rabaul on New Britain in March and April 1941, the headquarters of the Australian administration of New Guinea.
- Gull Force was deployed to Ambon in December 1941 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
- Sparrow Force deployed to Dutch Timor in December 1941.
All 3 forces, even with the support of local Dutch troops in the case of Ambon and Timor, were too small and poorly equipped to survive the massive Japanese attacks of January and February 1942.
Lark Force at New Britain
Lark Force, the 2/22nd Infantry Battalion and supporting troops managed to resist for only a few hours when the Japanese attacked New Britain on 23 January.
After its defeat, about 400 Australians escaped along the north and south coasts of the island. The Japanese captured the rest of Lark Force, together with civilians who had not been evacuated to Australia.
About 200 Australians surrendered to the Japanese near the Tol Plantation. Here, the Japanese shot or bayoneted at least 158 of them.
More than 1,000 other soldiers and civilians were interned in the old Lark Force camp at Malaguna.
News of the Tol Plantation massacre reached Australia in April and May 1942 through the men who escaped from New Britain.
Sinking of SS Montevideo Maru
In June 1942, the Japanese began removing prisoners from New Britain. The officers and 18 women, including some Australian nurses, made the journey to Japan safely and survived the war.
Around 1,050 prisoners and civilians aboard Montevideo Maru, bound for Hainan, died when USS Sturgeon torpedoed it off the coast of the Philippines. Nothing was known of the Montevideo Maru until after the war. In late 1945, families who had waited anxiously for more than 3 years received the news of the sinking:
It was the longest night of my life [Frank Lyons recalled]. There was nothing you could say to console my mother. There was nobody coming in–when a death occurs, people come and help, don't they? But on an occasion like this, which was so long after my brother died, nobody came. … We were there just the whole night, just myself, my mum and dad and two young sisters.
[Margaret Reeson, A Very Long War: The Families Who Waited, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, p 62]
Sparrow Force at Timor
On Timor, Sparrow Force, consisting of 2/40th Australian Infantry Battalion group and the 2nd (later 2/2nd) Independent Company, were defeated shortly after the fall of Singapore.
The 2/2nd retreated into the mountains. They conducted a guerrilla war with the support of the local population until they were withdrawn at the end of 1942.
Troops in the 2/40th Battalion were taken prisoner. Perhaps 20 Australians were killed by the Japanese immediately. The rest were concentrated in a camp at Usapa (Oesapa) Besar.
Conditions for POWs were poor at first. The camp lacked adequate accommodation, cooking facilities, water supply and sanitation.
In time, food supplies improved through:
- planting of vegetable gardens
- stealing (or 'scrounging') from the docks of Kupang (Koepang)
- trading with the local people
- (briefly) hunting buffalo with the Japanese.
Almost all prisoners soon fell ill with malaria and diseases of malnutrition, including beri-beri, avitaminosis, tropical ulcers and scrotal dermatitis.
Under the Sparrow Force's commander, Lieutenant-Colonel William (Bill) Leggatt, considerable efforts were put into collecting intelligence. The aim was to convey information to the 2/2nd Independent Company still operating in Portuguese Timor.
An unsuccessful attempt was made to escape by commandeering a Japanese DC3 aircraft.
There were plans in Australia to try and retake Timor and liberate the POWs, but these were not supported by the US commander of the South-West Pacific Area, General Douglas McArthur, whose offensive against the Japanese from 1942 to 1945 ultimately bypassed the Netherlands East Indies.
In mid-1942, the Japanese started to move Sparrow Force off Timor, as they did with some of the Australians at Ambon and New Britain. It's possible Timor was too vulnerable to air attacks from Australia and too peripheral in the Japanese empire. In addition, the Japanese wanted to use the prisoners as labour elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.
Sparrow Force sailed in 3 drafts:
- a small contingent of 50, including 14 officers, in late July
- a group of 69 in early September
- a group of 924 men and 33 officers in late September.
The experiences of Sparrow Force in the next 3 years were probably the most diverse of any group of Australian prisoners.
They were not kept together, but scattered throughout the Asian region:
- Java and Sumatra
- Changi in Singapore
- Thailand
- Japan
- Sulawesi
- Vietnam
- Formosa, Korea and Manchuria.
When the war ended, the largest number of men of the 2/40th was in Thailand. More than 400 of them worked on the Burma-Thailand Railway.
Some 340 men of Sparrow Force died during the war, including 29% of the 2/40th Battalion. This rate was slightly lower than Australian prisoners of Japan generally.
Nearly 120 lost their lives when the ships on which they were travelling later in the war were sunk by allied submarines. This occurred because the Japanese refused to mark ships carrying POWs. The loss of Australian prisoners at sea was little known for many years beyond the survivors and families of those missing.
Ceremonies to honour the dead were held at a memorial on Rabaul from as early as 1946.
Decades later, in 2010, a privately donated plaque to those lost on SS Montevideo Maru was unveiled at Subic Bay in the Philippines.
In 2012, a major memorial - the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Memorial - was unveiled near the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Glossary
- internee
- prisoners of war