[One of the famous relics of World War II: the River Kwai Bridge in Thailand]
Preface
During World War II, countries such as Australia were involved in the war earlier than the United States, which was directly related to the United Kingdom, and there were two scenarios. The first situation was that South Africa, India and other regions were still British colonies at that time, so the armies in these places were part of the British army.
[Australian Army in World War II]
Australia is in the second case. At that time, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other regions belonged to the British Dominions, and had more autonomy than the colonies, such as having their own armies, but nominally loyal to the British crown, Britain's enemies were common enemies, and if the British royal family formally declared war on a certain country, it was equivalent to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other regions also declared war on that country.
【Australian Army】
1. The Australian army that has been affected
On December 8, 1941 (local time was December 7), the Japanese Navy raided Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War broke out in full swing - on the same day, the Japanese army landed on the Malay Peninsula, and then drove straight into Southeast Asian countries to carry out the established plan to seize strategic resources such as oil, rubber, and iron ore.
[Pearl Harbor in 1946, a few years later]
A few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in order to protect its interests in the Far East and maintain its maritime lifeline in the Indian Ocean, Britain formed the Far East Fleet, the Z Fleet, which was based on the battleship "Prince of Wales" (touted by Britain as an unsinkable ship) and the new battle cruiser "Counterattack" as the core, and four destroyers escorted by Vice Admiral Phillips, sailed into the British Far East Fleet's base in Singapore on December 2, 1941.
[The battleship "Prince of Wales", known as the unsinkable ship]
After air and sea supremacy were seized by the Japanese, the Australian army, one of the main forces in the Southeast Asian theater, was unlucky: the Australian 8th Division participated in the defense of Malaya and Singapore, but due to the distraction of the Allied forces and the complete loss of sea and air protection, it was finally defeated by the 25th Army under the command of Lieutenant General Yamashita Fumi.
[Yamashita Fumi, who was mainly attacking Singapore and other places at that time]
When Singapore fell into the hands of the Japanese in February 1942, more than 15,000 officers and men of the Australian 8th Division became prisoners of war by the Japanese - this battle was the largest number of Australian prisoners of war in World War II, during which the Japanese captured more than 22,000 Australian officers and soldiers.
[Photo of the surrender of the British army to the Japanese army in 1942]
II. The infamous death march
One of the most brutal ways in which the Japanese treated Allied prisoners of war in Southeast Asia during World War II was various death marches, among which the Bataan (in present-day Philippines) and Sandakan (in present-day Malaysia) were the most well-known - the Sandakan Death March was specifically aimed at Australian prisoners of war, and it was carried out three times in total.
【Sandakan Death March】
The first march took place between January and March 1945, the Japanese army deliberately selected about 470 relatively healthy prisoners of war to transport baggage and provisions, including more than 400 Australian prisoners of war, after completing the work, these 470 prisoners of war have been tortured to malnutrition and even serious illness, so the Japanese army arranged a 9-day trip but only prepared 4 days of rations for these prisoners of war, and on June 26, 1945, Of this group of prisoners, only five Australians and one Briton survived.
【Sandakan Death March】
The second march took place on May 26, 1945, the new commander of the Sandakan POW camp, Captain Takuro Gosan, divided about 536 Allied POWs into 50 groups, half deceived and half forced to start the second march, during the 26-day march, the situation of the Allied POWs was even more difficult, the Japanese also tried to destroy the Sandakan POW camp to destroy any evidence of its existence, 1 month later, only 183 of this group of POWs reached Lanau (in present-day Sabah, Malaysia), The data here includes 6 survivors of the first march.
【Sandakan Death March】
After the third march, some 250 prisoners of war remained in the Sandakan prisoner of war camp, all of them weakened. The Japanese had planned to starve them to death, but fearing that time would run out (by this time the Allied counteroffensive was getting closer), the Japanese finally decided to let the 75 prisoners of war make a final march. By the time of Japan's unconditional surrender in August 1945, all prisoners of war who had remained in the Sandakan POW camp and were unable to walk had died of disease, starvation, and beatings, shooting, bayonets, and even beheadings by the Japanese army.
[The equally notorious and extremely cruel Bataan Death March]
3. Alternative torture and killing that make the Australian army hold a grudge
During World War II, the Japanese army not only treated Australian prisoners of war cruelly, but even treated Australian female nurses extremely horrificly.
In February 1942, at the same time as Singapore fell, Australia's nurses' corps was evacuated in two groups. On February 11, 1942, the first group boarded the "Imperial Star", and after a series of bombing by Japanese bombers, they reached India unscathed and turned back to Australia safely. But the second accident happened: at 6 a.m. on February 12, 1942, a second group of 65 Australian nurses boarded the ship Venel Brooke, which sank off the southeast coast of Sumatra in less than half an hour after being subjected to continuous Japanese air raids on the afternoon of February 14.
【Australia's Female Nurse Team】
Although some 53 nurses tried to swim to nearby Banka Island, the Japanese machine guns killed the 21 surviving nurses who had landed, and the remaining 32 Australian nurses became Japanese prisoners of war and began a concentration camp life that lasted for more than three years, eight of whom died in captivity.
I won't dwell on the abuses these Australian female nurses suffered by the Japanese in the concentration camps – it's part of Australia's history that still haunts and cannot be forgiven.
[Allied counterattack on the Philippines and other places]
4. Australian prisoners of war in the Dead Railway
Wouldn't a prisoner of war camp without a death march have a better mortality rate and level of abuse? Absolutely not, the only difference is: one is to let the POWs fall as soon as possible; The other is to drain the prisoners of war and then let them fall.
The Japanese imprisoned Allied soldiers who had surrendered in Malaya and Singapore in the Changi prisoner of war camp, which had been an Allied fortress. The Changi POW camp was the largest POW camp established by the Japanese army in the Malay Peninsula during World War II, and its main function was to serve as a labor transit point for the Japanese army.
[Do people now know that this railway was built by prisoners of war with their lives]
From June 1942 to October 1943, Allied prisoners of war were transported from Changi, Singapore, to the construction site of the Thai-Burma Railway. On each departure, the Japanese guards deceived the Allied prisoners of war: they would be sent somewhere nice in the northern mountains, where they would meet up with other Allied soldiers and recuperate.
[Former Changi Prisoner of War Camp, now Changi Prison]
The Thai-Burma Railway, once known as the "Death Railway", was built to send reinforcements and supplies from the Malay Peninsula to the Japanese army occupying Burma through Thailand, and Japanese engineers estimated that the railway would take at least five years to complete based on the rugged mountainous terrain, but the Japanese army finally completed it in 18 months by driving more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and more than 300,000 Asian laborers to work intensively - under the conditions of starvation, sickness, no medicine, no large machinery and equipment for construction, and clubbing and bayonets at any time, you can imagine how high the mortality rate will be.
[The current railway looks beautiful, have you ever thought about the scene at that time]
The film "Bridge over the River Kwai" has a certain description of this atrocity of the Japanese army, but it is not realistic and comprehensive, and many of these prisoners of war are from Australia. More than 5,500 Allied prisoners of war were buried here, including about 29% of British prisoners of war and about 69% of Australian prisoners of war.
It is said that the vast majority of prisoners of war died of malnutrition, but in fact they died of starvation: prisoners of war were given only two bowls of rice a day, and were extremely vulnerable to various tropical diseases, such as cholera, dysentery, malaria, miasma, etc., and there was no medical treatment at all. By the time the railway was completed, there would be a prisoner of war corpse under almost every sleeper, and a body of an Australian prisoner of war under every two sleepers.
[The Death Railway is not alarmist, but chilling]
5. The overall mortality rate of Australian prisoners of war is the highest
In the autumn of 1943, the POWs who had been involved in the construction of the Burma-Thailand Death Railway returned to the Changi POW camp, and all the POWs were moved to Changi Prison in May 1944, where they were eventually released from the Allied counter-offensive in Changi Prison.
Among the Allied POWs at the Changi POW camp, the mortality rate for British POWs was about 26%, the death rate for American POWs was about 33%, and the highest for Australian POWs was about 36%.
[Thailand in September 1945: Japanese troops after unconditional surrender]
There is a shocking photograph at the Australian War Memorial of Australian prisoner of war Ryan Seafritt who is blindfolded and kneeling on the ground, next to a Japanese officer holding his saber aloof and slashing at the prisoner's head. Sievert volunteered for the army in 1941, and his family did not learn of his death until 1946, but his bones were nowhere to be found.
[That's how they were at the beginning]
There are many more atrocities like those committed by Sifriet, and even more cruel and heinous crimes. For example, in a military tribunal in New Guinea, a Japanese officer was charged with cannibalism, and the victim, an Australian prisoner of war, was immediately hanged at the end of the trial.
[Australia's Special Military Tribunal in Singapore in 1946: Now they are like this]
Throughout World War II, more than 30,000 Australian soldiers were taken prisoner of war during the war, of whom more than 22,000 were captured by the Japanese (most after the fall of Singapore in 1942), and only about 14,000 made it back to Australia alive in 1945.
[Australian Special Military Court Sentenced Japanese War Criminals]
epilogue
As punishment for the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, Australia has always insisted that Japanese war criminals be tried harshly, so in addition to participating in the trial of Japanese Class A war criminals at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Australia has also set up independent military tribunals in Labuan, Wewak, Morotai Island, Darwin, Rabaul, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manus and other places to try Japanese war criminals.
[At the same time as the war against Japan, the Australian army also participated in the war against Germany and Italy]
According to post-war Japanese statistics, the Australian military court tried about 294 cases involving about 949 Japanese war criminals, of which 153 were sentenced to death, 38 were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the others were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment. To this day, the words are engraved in the Australian War Memorial: We will always remember.
Although the United States and Britain are now pulling Australia and Japan to cooperate in defense, Australia's historical imprint cannot be changed - this is one of the important reasons why we continue to release friendship to Australia and take the initiative to resolve trade disputes between the two sides, Australia is well aware of the great damage it has suffered in the war and the cunning and ferocity of its enemies.