curtain of silence

[Tina Greco - Melbourne]

The Historical Account

 

In January 1946, the Australian military began the trial of over 90 Japanese officers and men, the largest Allied War Crimes trial conducted in the Pacific or Japan in the wake of WW2 on the small Indonesian island of Ambon. Situated 1,000 kilometers north of Australia, the Allied Prisoner of War camp at Ambon Tantoey was maintained by the 20th Japanese Naval Base Unit. The Japanese, now prisoners themselves in the custody of the Australian Occupation Force on Ambon following the actual Japanese surrender in mid September 1945, were charged under the Australian War Crimes Act 1945 with deliberate and concerted ill treatment of Australian and Allied POWs and under international law for crimes against the civilian population  on Ambon.                                                                       
   

Japanese defendants


"Military History Section - General Staff LHQ AIF 1945"                  ©Estate of John M. Williams 1994

 

On the 4th of February 1942, 807 Australian soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese. 239 Dutch soldiers were captured soon after. Two additional Australians were captured in July. For the next three years these men were beaten, starved and tortured and when the camp was liberated in August of 1945, only 139 Allied POWs survived. Many of the men were in urgent need of medical attention with several dying shortly after their repatriation.

The real curtain of silence, however, was that maintained by the Japanese over the fate of nearly 300 Australian soldiers who were executed by the Japanese at Laha in early February 1942 just after the capture of Ambon.

[newman]

Only white people get dragged over the coals for this sort of thing. Non-europeans can do as they please.