News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Sandakan POWs

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 25, 2003

"Little minds won't stop plans to honour Sandakan heroes

By Alan Ramsey August 23, 2003

If you're near Burwood Park at 11am tomorrow (Sunday) you will likely wonder why people are burning gum leaves at the Sandakan prisoner of war memorial, dedicated by the Keating government 10 years ago, and covering it with sprays of wattle and wildflowers. They will be family and friends making their very personal act of remembrance for the 1787 Australian servicemen who died at the infamous Sandakan POW camp in North Borneo in the three years from July 1942, or during the even more infamous Sandakan death marches of early 1945.

The dead soldiers' loved ones apparently do it every year, very quietly, without bands or politicians or RSL officials, on the Sunday closest to August 27, the latest date in 1945 by which time all the Sandakan POWs in captivity are known to have died of disease or starvation or maltreatment or execution. Similar family ceremonies will occur at the same time today in Adelaide and Perth, just as they always do in conjunction with the Sydney remembrance.

These are not to be confused with the official Sandakan service three weeks ago, presided over by Burwood's deputy mayor, David Weiley. I referred to that ceremony in writing later about the Sandakan Six, the camp's only Australian survivors who escaped from their Japanese captors but who, too, are all now gone. The last one, Brisbane's Gunner Owen Campbell, died early last month.

I'm writing again so soon about these long dead young men for one reason only. Two weeks before the August 5 official ceremony at Burwood Park, Sydney's Lynette Silver, author of the book, Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence, wrote to Weiley's office. She told his staff about a project to install a panel of stained glass windows in the nave of the small, stone, century-old Anglican church in Sandakan, in memory of all World War II POWs who died in Borneo as well as a thanksgiving to the local people who risked their lives to help them.

Silver was at Sandakan last Anzac Day. There she learned the church's plain, leadlight windows are to be replaced in one of the only two local buildings to survive the war. Because many Australian and British POWs spent their first night herded into the church when they arrived in Sandakan, Silver felt there would be families who might like to contribute to a window as a memorial. The church's rector has offered a panel above the main entrance and a Sydney master artist who has spent his life designing stained glass windows has come out of retirement for the project. Silver has raised $11,000 of the $30,000 needed to complete the three-panelled window and fly it to Sandakan for dedication next Anzac Day or, if unfinished by then, the year after.

What she wanted from the Deputy Mayor of Burwood was "a couple of minutes" at the end of the official service three weeks ago following the speech by the former prime minister Paul Keating. That would have been time enough, she says, to tell people, particularly relatives, of the project. Weiley's office did not reply, but Silver was told on the day it thought her request "inappropriate."

The people at Reveille, the newspaper of the NSW RSL, also thought it "inappropriate" to give Silver publicity. However, they were willing to accept an advertisement, at a cost, she says, of $1000. Silver declined. Major-General Peter Phillips, RSL national president, did not think it "inappropriate" in any sense. Silver saw Phillips last week at a ceremony at the Changi POW chapel at Canberra's Duntroon military college. He assured her the appeal would be publicised by the RSL national office.

You have to wonder about people at times. When Lynette Silver wrote to me about those little minds who couldn't see past their own self-importance, I could have kicked the dog. Anyone who wants to help with her project can get her on 94893949 or at lrsilver@hotmail.com

©2003 The Sydney Morning Herald"