Ill, p.326.non-fictionThe story of an RAAF Lancaster bomber crew shot down over France in 1944. On the evening of 24 February 1944, RAAF Lancaster bomber J for Jig took off from an airfield in Lincolnshire. On board was a crew of seven young men - five Australians, two Scots - whose mission was to bomb factories in Schweinfurt, Germany. But J for Jig never reached its target. It was shot down in the night skies over France. This book is about the seven lives on that aircraft - who they were, what they did, whom they loved, and whom they left behind. Some were to die that night, and others were to survive, withstanding incredible hardships and adventures as prisoners and evaders in a war that was far from over. Crew brilliantly recreates J for Jig's final mission but, more than that, in telling seven individuals' stories Mike Colman has captured the achievements, loss and the enduring legacy of the generation that fought in the Second World War.royal australian air force - aerial operations - europe, royal australian air force - biographies

Ill, maps, p.295.The story of 'Lark Force', the 2/22nd Australian Infantry Battalion and support units, which defended Rabaul in 1942, with most of the Force becoming prisoners of the Japanese. world war 1939 – 1945 – campaigns – new guinea, world war 1939 – 1945 – personal narratives – australia

Ill, p.115.non-fictionThis book is based on documents, photographs and maps preserved in the records of the Australian war memorial, and on the experiences of the author.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, burma thailand railway

Index, ill, p.141.non-fictionGeorge Aspinalls photography hobby during captivity has resulted in a unique visual diary.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, changi prison

Ill, maps, p.223.non-fictionWith sixteen other POWs, author Charles McCormac broke out from his POW camp in Japanese-occupied Singapore and began a two-thousand-mile escape from Singapore, through the jungles of Indonesia to Australia. The POWs' escape took a staggering five months and only two out of the original seventeen men survived. This is McCormac's compelling true account of one of the most horrifying and amazing escapes in World War Two. It is a story of courage, endurance and compassion, and makes for a very gripping read.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, prisoner of war escapes - singapore

Index, notes, ill, tales, p.175.non-fictionThe reminiscences of Australian POW's and Japanese historians at a meeting 50 years after the war ended on the Burma Thailand railway.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, burma - thailand railway

Index, bibliography, notes, ill, maps, p.376.non-fictionAfter Singapore fell to the Japanese in early 1942, 70000 prisoners, including 15000 Australians, were held as POWs at the notorious Changi prison. To amuse themselves, a group of sportsmen created an Aussie Football League, complete with tribunal, selection panel, umpires and coaches, a final game, and a Brownlow Medal.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, changi prison - singapore

Ill, p.400.non-fiction The bestselling memoir of life as an Australian POW on the notorious Thai-Burma railway. Rohan Rivett was a journalist in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He escaped south - across the treacherous Bangka Strait - to Indonesia, but was soon captured and became just one of thousands of POWs struggling for existence in a Japanese camp. The struggle was to last for more than three years. Behind Bamboo is unflinching in its honesty and haunting in its realism. It is a vivid, compelling testament to the Australians' will to survive and their unassailable spirit in the face of the most callous inhumanity.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, burma - thailand railway

Index, ill (B/W plates), p.726.non-fictionIn 'Prisoners of War' dozens of interviews with former POWs are used to show the strength and courage of Australians taken prisoner in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. This book was written for those who know little of the experiences of these men and women; their courage, endurance and pain.australia - military history, australia - prisoners of war

Index, bibliography, notes, ill, p.179.non-fictionOver 60,000 Australians and Americans captured by the Japanese during World War II toiled and died to build the Bridge over the River Kwai. Respected military historian Linda Goetz Holmes tells the story of one man's survival in Japanese labor camps during WWII. Amazing photographs, taken secretly by other prisoners, chronicle this dark history of Allied troops in the Pacific theatre of war.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – australia, burma thailand railway

Index, ill, p.470.non-fictionAborigines and army service - Australian women's Army - Burma-Thailand railway - Prisoners of war (POW's).world war 1939 – 1945 – personal narratives – australia, world war 1939 – 1945 – campaigns – australia

Index, bibliography, notes, ill, p.688.non-fictionThe untold story of the Sandakan death marches of World War II. After the fall of Singapore, in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors rounded up tens of thousands of British and Australian soldiers and shipped them to prison camps scattered throughout Hirohito's newly won Empire. The fall of Britain's 'impregnable fortress' was the greatest humiliation in British military history, for which Churchill never forgave the Japanese. But nothing would surpass the wretched fate of some 2,700 British and Australian prisoners who were shipped to British North Borneo later that year. They landed in Sandakan, on the east coast of the island, after a 10-day voyage on a Japanese 'hell' ship, and were herded into a jungle camp some eight miles inland. Thus began the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war - a barely known story of unimaginable horror.world war 1939-1945 - prisoners of war - sandakan, japan - prisons and prisoners of war

Index, bibliography, notes,maps, ill, p.334.non-fictionIn 1939 Marsden Hordern's mother refused to sign the paper allowing her seventeen-year-old son to fight overseas with the Royal Australian Air Force. 'I did not rear you to be killed in an airplane,' she said. 'Join the navy.' He took her advice and in doing so determined his future. In small patrol boats, Fairmiles and a Harbour Defence Motor Launch, he patrolled the shores of Japanese-held territory, assisted beleaguered commandos in Timor, and was finally caught up in the drama of rounding up Japanese prisoners of war and guarding them in New Guinea.world war 1939-1945 - naval operations - australia, royal australian navy

Index, bib, notes, ill, maps, p.318.non-fictionThe book investigates aspects not often covered fully in works on Gallipoli, including treatment of the sick and wounded, the plight of prisoners of war, and the place occupied by Australian issues in the wartime port-mortem on the campaign, the Dardanelles Commission of 1916-17. It also deals with origin of Anzac Day and the place of Gallipoli in the Australian ethos.world war 1914-1918 - campaigns - gallipoli, australia - military relations - great britain

Index, ill, maps, p.198.A 25 year old Australian, James Boyle, was one of thousands of prisoners of war who worked in inhuman conditions to build the Thailand/Burma railway. He was determined to record his experiences and thos of his mates - at the limits of human endurance.japan - prisons and prisoners of war, burma - thailand railway

Index, ill, maps, p.224.non-fictionOn June 23 1943 Lieutenant Jack Champ of the 2nd/6th Australian Infantry Battalion was marched into one of the most famous prisoner-of-war camps in Germany. Known then as Oflag IVC, it is now better know as Colditz. By the end of the war there were nineteen Australians in Colditz, and this is the first book to look at life there specifically from their point of view. It was a very special camp. It was designed to retain under escape-proof conditions, a select group of Allied prisoners who had already escaped from other camps and who had been recaptured whilst still in occupied territory. Having seen action in the Western Desert and in Greece, Jack Champ had been captured by the Germans in 1941. He was, however, a reluctant prisoner and took part in two escapes from different POW camps, one of which was a mass break-out of sixty officers through a tunnel that had taken weeks to make. Although the guards frequently outnumbered prisoners, there were more escapes from Colditz than from any other prison of comparable size during both World Wars. In this vivid book Jack Champ and Colin Burgess explain what it was like to be a prisoner in Nazi Germany. It is a curious blend of brutality and humanity, of routines and dreams, and occasional and dramatic excitement as men tried to turn those dreams into the reality of freedom.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – germany, world war 1939-1945 - personal narratives - australia

Ill, maps, p.159A collection of stories of capture, imprisonment and escape in World War I and II. Covering experiences in Europe and in South East Asia, the book presents contrasting PoW experiences - of daring escapes from Colditz Castle, and of endurance and slow suffering in Japanese camps.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners - japanese, world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – germany

Ill, p.165non-fictionAustralian prisoners of war in Japan in the aftermath of The Japanese surrenderworld war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, world war 1939-1945 - personal narratives - australia

Index, ill, p.162.non-fictionThe story of the experiences of Australian Army nurses as Japanese prisoners of warworld war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners - japanese, australian army nursing service

Index, bib, ill, maps, p.224.Within three months of the Japanese entering World War II on December 8, 1941 over 22 000 Australians had become prisoners-of-war. They went into camps in Timor, Ambon, New Britain, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Singapore and Malaya, and a few were scattered to other points in what was briefly part of the Japanese empire. Later most of the prisoners were to be shifted further north into South-east Asia, Formosa, Korea, Manchuria and Japan itself. They were captives within lands and cultures and to experiences alien to those known to all other Australians. At the end of the war in August 1945, 14315 servicemen and thirty service women were alive to put on new, loose-fitting uniforms and go home. One in three of the prisoners had died. That is, nearly half of the deaths suffered by Australians in the war in the Pacific were among men and women who had surrendered. Another 8174 Australians had been captured in the fighting in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: but of these men only 265 died as a result of wounds, disease or execution.By any quantitative measure the imprisonment of so many Australians is a major event in Australian history. For many soldiers it was living --and dying --in captivity which made World War II different from that of World War I. But the prisoners have received no permanent place in Australian history. Their story is not immediately recalled on celebratory occasions. In a general history of the nation in which a chapter is given to the war the prisoners might be mentioned in a sentence, or part of a sentence. Where the horror, stoicism and gallantry of Gallipoli have become part of a common tradition shared by all Australians, the ex-prisoners are granted just the horror. The public may be sympathetic; but the horror is for the prisoners alone. To make another comparison: in five months of fighting on the Kokoda Trail in 1942 the Australians lost 625 dead, less than the number who died on Ambon. Yet the events on Ambon are unknown to most Australians. There were no reporters or cameramen on Ambon and, for the 309 who defended Ambon's Laha airfield, no survivors. How many of them died in battle or died as prisoners will never be known. But there are more than just practical reasons why the record of the prisoners of war is so slight and uneven in the general knowledge of Australians. They have not tried to find out. No historian has written a book to cover the range of camps and experiences, and only in specialist medical publications has anyone investigated the impact of prison life on subsequent physical and mental health. The complexity of the experience and its impact on particular lives have not been expressed in a way to give them significance for other Australians.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners – japanese, world war 1939-1945 - personal narrativies - australia

Ill, p.151non-fictionPeter Firkins has produced a heroic figure comparable in courage and selflessness to that of the legendary 'Weary' Dunlop, and whose story should be known by all Australians in the same way. What a wonderful epitaph to a man born into a humble Yass family at the end of the nineteenth century who, by his own determination and intellect, won a scholarship for his secondary education at St Patrick's College, Goulburn and an Exhibition to study medicine at Sydney University. Almost by pure chance he pursued his medical career in an outpost of the British Empire then known as British North Borneo to become Principal Medical Officer at the time of the Japanese occupation during World War II. The Japanese allowed the civilian medical staff to remain at their posts with the status of 'simple confinement' while at the same time the bewildered local people looked to someone for leadership in their new and unaccustomed circumstances.Aided by his wonderful wife Celia he was imperceptibly drawn into the key role of organising the underground movement among loyal native and giving support to the Australian Prisoners of War transferred to Borneo from Singapore. In 1943 he was exposed to the Japanese, arrested and terribly tortured. Donated by Major General M.P.J. O'Brien, July 2018. Signed by authorworld war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners - japanese, world war 1939 – 1945 – personal narratives – australia

Index, ill, maps, p.715.non-fictionStory of the 8th Division in the campaigns in Malaya, Singapore, Rabaul, Ambon and Timor where most of the Division was captured by the Japanese in 1942. Also the story of the Australian Prisoners of the Japanese, including Changi and the Burma-Thailand Railway.world war 1939-1945 - australian involvement, world war 1939-1945 - campaigns - south west pacific

Index, ill, bib, p.559.non-fictionFor months during 1943 there was no night in Hellfire Pass. By the light of flares, carbide lamps and bamboo fires, men near-naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific, they struggled, died, and survived with a little help from their mates. 'Hellfire' was researched in Australia, Japan and across South-East Asia. It draws on 50 first-person interviews, ranging from former prisoners to an old Mon villager deep in the Burmese jungle, and from Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew to veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army. The result is a tour de force, a powerful and searing history of the prisoners of the Japanese. world war 1939-1945 - prisoners and prisons - japan, burma - siam railway

Index, bib, ill, maps, p.237.non-fictionPresents a riveting account of the experiences of a unique group of 145 Australian officers who were held prisoners by the Japanese, at Sandakan, and later Kuching, from 1942 to 1945.world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners - japanese, prisoners of war - sandakan and kuching

Ill, index, p.192.non-fictionBiographical account of the travails of an p Australian risoner on the Burma railwayburma - thailand railway, world war 1939 – 1945 - prisons and prisoners - japanese

Given to former prisoners in Japanese camps in the former Dutch East Indies after liberation 1946. Dutch colonists suffered incarceration under the Japanese occupation of former Dutch East Indies. Post-war many returned to The Netherlands where they suffered from the cold. It was difficult for them to settle in and this gift would have been a welcome gesture of acceptance.Hollow cylindrical copper tube with copper screw top with circular handle. Handwritten label says: Warm water kruik aan ons gegeven toen wij koud en berooid uit de Japanse kampen kwamen Jan 1946 (Hot water bottle given to us when we came out of the Japanese camps, cold and destitute, Jan 1946).hot water bottle

Black material cap with POW*MIA "you are not forgotten" embroidered on front with black image of a man and a tower on white background. Laurel leaves embroidered. Two Enamel Badges joined Australia and USA on frontcap, prisoner of war commemorative, mia

In the Vietnam conflict, Australian troops used these ropes at night and crossing rivers to assist in keeping soldiers together. They were also used with wooden poles when making stretchers in the field and to secure prisoners.Green fibre rope assembly, single leg, polyester toggle rope. Rope is coiled with a loop at both ends.toggle rope, vietnam war, military equipment, rope, vietnam

Built in 1942-1943, the Thai-Burma Railway was a 415 kilometre stretch of railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma. It was constructed by the Japanese using civilian labourers and prisoners-of-war. It is estimated that 90,000 labourers and more than 12,000 POW’s died during construction of the railway.This is a commemorative object highlighting the role of medical personnel during the war and its impact on them personally and preofessionallyThis dogspike and its attached sleeper came from the Thai-Burma Railway. A dogspike is a rail fastening with a pointed end and a ‘plate holding’ head, giving the impression of a dog’s head. Built in 1942-1943, the Thai-Burma Railway was a 415 kilometre stretch of railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma. It was constructed by the Japanese using civilian labourers and prisoners-of-war. It is estimated that 90,000 labourers and more than 12,000 POW’s died during construction of the railway. The dogspike was donated by Bill Sharp in 2014. It commemorates the Australian Medical personnel who became prisoners-of-war. they are listed on the plaque behind the spike.thai-burma, japanese, 1942-43, commemorative gift