My interview with Eddy Boas survivor of Bergen Belsen and author of I am not a victim, I am a survivor.
Category Archives: Australia
The cowardly execution of Sgt.Leonard Siffleet.
The Japanese Imperial Armed forces did claim they were honorable and conducted themselves in the way of the Bushido. In reality there was very little honour in how they conducted themselves, especially when it came to treating prisoners of war.
The Bushido code consists of a set of 8 virtues, one of them being Benevolence or Mercy this was virtue 3. It goes on to say:
“A human invested with the power to command and the power to kill was expected to demonstrate equally extraordinary powers of benevolence and mercy: Love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, are traits of Benevolence, the highest attribute of the human soul. Both Confucius and Mencius often said the highest requirement of a ruler of men is Benevolence.”
The last virtue indicates Character and Self-Control.
“Bushido teaches that men should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic. What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. The difference between good and bad and between right and wrong are givens, not arguments subject to discussion or justification, and a man should know the difference.Finally, it is a man’s obligation to teach his children moral standards through the model of his own behavior: ”
Len Siffleet, was an Australian special operations soldier,born on 14 January 1916 in Gunnedah, New South Wales. In the late 1930’s he moved to Sydney trying to join the Police. Unfortunately due to his eyesight he didn’t qualify to become a Police officer. In 1940 however he served with a searchlight unit at Richmond Air Force Base but was released after three months and returned to civilian life. In 1941 returned to his family to help look after his young brothers following the death of his Mother.
After completing a radio communications course at Melbourne Technical College, he volunteered for special operations in September 1942 and was posted to the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD) of the Allied Intelligence Bureau in Melbourne.
He was promoted to the rank of sergeant and transferred to M Special Unit in May 1943. Siffleet joined a party led by Sergeant H. N. Staverman of the Royal Netherlands Navy, which included two Ambonese privates, in New Guinea.
The reconnaissance group commenced its mission in north-east New Guinea in July, trekking across New Guinea’s mountainous terrain.
In mid-September the mission, along with members of another special operations team travelling with them to Aitape, were discovered by New Guinean natives. During a short scuffle Siffleet managed to shoot and wound one of their attackers,and he managed to get away.However he was soon caught again and, along with his companions, was handed over to the Japanese.
The men were confined for several weeks before they were taken down to Aitape Beach on the afternoon of 24 October 1943. Bound and blindfolded, surrounded by Japanese and native onlookers, they were forced to the ground.
On the orders of Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada of the Imperial Japanese Navy the men were beheaded. The officer who executed Siffleet, Yasuno Chikao, ordered a private to photograph him in the act.
There was absolutely no valid reason for the executions. The men were prisoners of war and should have been treated as such. Even according to their own Bushido code they should have shown compassion. But instead the executed unarmed men who were bound and blindfolded.
The photograph of Siffleet’s execution was later discovered on the body of a dead Japanese major near Hollandia by American troops in April 1944.
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Soutce
Australian War Memorial
Find a Grave
Bon Scott-Let there be Rock
In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty-five Man didn’t know about a rock ‘n’ roll show
And all that jive.
The above line is the start of the AC/DC classic let there be Rock. The whole song is basically a history lesson in Rock N Roll, brought to us by the one and only Bon Scott.
It is not often I dedicate a blog to a musician but since it is coming up to the 41st anniversary of Bon Scott’s death I thought it only to be fitting since he was the lead singer of one off my all time favourite bands AC/DC
On a side note. something not many people know is that the founders of AC/DC ,Angus and Malcolm Young, had an older brother called George Young who had a massive hit with the Easybeats called “Friday on my mind” He also co wrote “Love is in the Air” and “Standing in the Rain” recorded by “John Paul Young a fellow Scots-Australian but no family.
Like the Young brothers Bon Scott was also Scottish Australian.Scott, he emigrated to Australia aged six, he joined fellow Scotsmen brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in AC/DC in 1974.
His distinctive voice was so recognizable, the second he would start to sing you’d know “That’s AC/DC with Bon Scott”. Not was he only a singer he was also an accomplished drummer. There was always this twinkle in his eyes as if he was up to no good.
In July 2004 the magazinn Classic Rock, rated Scott as number one in a list of the “100 Greatest Frontmen Of All Time” ahead of Robert Plant and Freddie Mercury.
In 1980 he had started working with the rest of the band on the album “Back in Black” but unfortunately he never got to finish it.He had only input on drums on 2 songs of the album.
On Feb. 19, 1980, he was found dead. He had been out drinking with friends, in a London nightclub — but the casual evening took a terrible turn as Scott passed out in his car, and ultimately choked to death on his own vomit. He was only 33 years old.
The album was finished 5 months later with AC/DC’s new front man Brian Johnson.
To end this tribute to Bon Scott I will use the words sang by the other AC/DC singer, Brian Johnson. “For those about to Rock we salute you”.
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Rum Rebellion-Happy Australia Day
The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history. During the 19th century, it was widely referred to as the Great Rebellion.
The Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh, was deposed by the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston, working closely with John Macarthur, on 26 January 1808, 20 years to the day after Arthur Phillip founded the first European settlement in Australia. Afterwards, the colony was ruled by the military, with the senior military officer stationed in Sydney acting as the lieutenant-governor of the colony until the arrival from Britain of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie as the new governor at the beginning of 1810.
Brandishing bayonets and advancing to the tune of ‘The British Grenadiers’, the uniformed officers surrounded the governor’s residence. It took about two hours to find Bligh hiding inside – a political cartoon (above) from the time shows three soldiers dragging him out from under a bed.
Bligh had been appointed in 1806 to lick the colony into shape and reign in the powerful NSW Corps.
He started by shutting down the rum trade, taking back land for public use, and listening to the concerns of poorer settlers.
Individuals like Major George Johnston, who led the NSW Corps, and the wealthy entrepreneur John Macarthur, soon felt threatened by Bligh’s moves to assert his authority.
Rising tensions and repeated clashes between Bligh and the military elite prompted Johnston to propose an armed takeover – today known as the Rum Rebellion. in reality rum had little to do with it. Some officers made money in the rum trade, but Bligh’s treatment of property rights and prime real estate was much more concerning to them. It wasn’t called the Rum Rebellion until 50 years later.
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The Fuzzy Wuzzy angels-Forgotten Heroes.
During the war in Papua New Guinea, the local population who were sympathetic to the Australian troops would assist where they could. Notably they would help in transporting stores and equipment over the rough terrain. Teams carried seriously wounded and sick Australian soldiers all the way back to their bases. Their compassion and care of the casualties earned them admiration and respect from the Australians, who dubbed these men their fuzzy wuzzy angels. The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were named for both their frizzy curly hair and helpful role.
In 1942, during the Pacific invasion, the Japanese had built up a force of 13,500 in the Gona region of Papua with the intention of invading Port Moresby. The key to the offensive was an overland trail across the Owen Stanley Ranges. The trail ranged from the small village of Buna on the north coast of Papua and went up the slopes through Gorari and Oivi to Kokoda. The trail was approximately 100 miles (160 km) long, folded into a series of ridges, rising higher and to 7,000 feet (2,100 m) and then declining again to 3,000 feet (910 m). It was covered in thick jungle, short trees and tall trees tangled with vines.
On 29 August 1942, the Japanese task force broke through the Australian line forcing the Australians to retreat further back to Templeton’s Crossing. Eventually, the Australians were forced to retreat to Myola.
650 Australian lives were lost in the campaign. It is speculated that this number would have been much larger had it not been for the help of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. As one Australian digger has noted:
“They carried stretchers over seemingly impassable barriers, with the patient reasonably comfortable. The care they give to the patient is magnificent. If night finds the stretcher still on the track, they will find a level spot and build a shelter over the patient. They will make him as comfortable as possible fetch him water and feed him if food is available, regardless of their own needs. They sleep four each side of the stretcher and if the patient moves or requires any attention during the night, this is given instantly. These were the deeds of the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’ – for us!”
No known injured soldier that was still alive was ever abandoned by the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, even during heavy combat.
An Australian soldier, George “Dick” Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, at the Battle of Buna-Gona. Whittington died in February 1943 from the effects of bush typhus, this little-known killer of many Allied and Japanese soldiers in the Pacific.
In July 2007, grandsons of Australian World War II soldiers and grandsons of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels took part in the “Kokoda Challenge”
The last known Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel, Havala Laula, 91.
In June 2008, Australian senator Guy Barnett called for his country’s Parliament to give official recognition to Papua New Guineans’ courage and contributions to the war effort: “I was stunned to learn that Australia has not officially recognized these wonderful PNG nationals who saved the lives of Australian servicemen. They carried stretchers, stores and sometimes wounded diggers directly on their shoulders over some of the toughest terrain in the world. Without them I think the Kokoda campaign would have been far more difficult than it was”. The government agreed to consider the motion. Recognition may entail a medal, a small ex gratia payment, and additional Australian aid to improve people’s education and health in villages near the Kokoda trail.
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The unfortunate and yet fortunate adventure of Oskar Speck
Oskar Speck (1907–1995) was a German canoeist who paddled by folding kayak from Germany to Australia over the period 1932-1939. A Hamburg electrical contractor made unemployed during the Weimar-period Depression, he left Germany to seek work in the Cypriot copper mines, departing from Ulm and travelling south via the Danube. En route, he changed plan and decided to “see the world”, continuing to Australia via the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. On his arrival in Australia, shortly after the start of World War II, Speck was interned as an enemy foreigner. He remained in prisoner-of-war camps for the duration of the war. On release, Speck worked as an opal cutter at Lightning Ridge, before moving to Sydney and establishing a successful career as an opal merchant. In later life he lived with his partner, Nancy Steel, in Killcare, New South Wales.
Oskar Speck, an amateur canoeist and unemployed electrician from Ulm, set out to paddle from Germany to Cyprus in May 1932, hoping to find work at a copper mine. Seven years and four months later, on September 20, 1939, he landed on a remote island in the Torres Strait, just off the coast of northern Queensland.
Using two canoes, the first of which was adorned with a swastika, he had travelled more than 30,000 miles.
During his epic voyage Mr Speck was robbed, shot at, hailed as a god and accused of being a Nazi spy, although the extent of his Nazi sympathies is unclear. Belatedly, Sydney’s National Maritime Museum is devoting an exhibition to his strange and dangerous job search.
Mr Speck lost his job as an electrical contractor in Hamburg in 1931. He was desperate to leave Germany, then in the grip of economic depression. “The times in Germany were catastrophic,” he later recalled. “All I wanted was to get out for a while.”
Travelling on a tight budget, with limited supplies of tinned meat, chocolate, cheese and condensed milk, Mr Speck paddled down the Danube and Varda rivers to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
After reaching the Mediterranean at Thessalonika in Greece, he hoisted a small sail and island-hopped through the Aegean. The kayak then hugged the coast of Turkey all the way to Cyprus.
By this time, according to the exhibition organisers, the prospect of life in a copper mine was less attractive to the former electrician than a journey into the unknown.
Postponing his job hunt, Mr Speck paddled on to Syria and made his way to the Euphrates river, where he was shot at after refusing hospitality from local tribesmen. Undaunted, he continued to the Persian Gulf, where he had to order a replacement kayak.
In his white pith helmet and khaki shorts, Mr Speck then skirted the west coast of India, around Ceylon, and up the east coast to reach Burma in 1936. He financed his trip by giving lectures along the way, including one to a troop of Boy Scouts in Madras.
Pursued by curious journalists from local newspapers, he proceeded down the west coast of Siam toward Malaya and through the Dutch East Indies. On arriving in Timor, he was beaten up by suspicious locals and suffered a perforated eardrum. Yet such mishaps failed to dampen his enthusiasm for further discovery.
Black and white cine film, taken by Mr Speck during this phase of the journey, shows that he had become a passionate anthropologist.
Timorese villagers are filmed performing a dance with swords; Balinese children use a bow and arrow to spear fish in shallows and New Guinean tribesman are shown killing and eating a large turtle.
In 1939, as Hitler prepared to invade Poland, Mr Speck, who was suffering from bouts of malaria, arrived in Dutch New Guinea. On New Britain, off the east coast of New Guinea, the exhausted German became the subject of cult worship, hailed and feted by locals as a god.
This was to be Mr Speck’s last adventure. Three weeks after war was declared in Europe, he landed on Australian territory. After so much trauma and excitement, Mr Speck’s final destination turned out to be an internment camp for enemy aliens in Victoria.
Although at one point Mr Speck demanded to be placed alongside “fellow National Socialists”, the Speck exhibition curator, Penny Cuthbert, said there was no other evidence that he was a committed Nazi.
“It’s debatable,” said Ms Cuthbert. “His friends have always said he had no sympathy for them.”
On his release, Mr Speck set up a successful opal-dealing business in Sydney. He died in 1995, aged 88, apparently with no regrets.
“Everywhere I went I was surrounded by crowds of people,” he said in a rare interview. “No one had ever seen this type of boat before. But I had no idea in 1932 that I would end up in Australia.”
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Cowra breakout
The Cowra breakout occurred on 5 August 1944, when at least 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from a prisoner of war camp near Cowra, in New South Wales, Australia. It was the largest prison escape of World War II, as well as one of the bloodiest. During the ensuing manhunt, 4 Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed. The remaining escapees were captured and imprisoned.
By August 1944 there were 2,223 Japanese prisoners of war in Australia, including 544 merchant seamen. Of these 1,104 were housed in Camp B of No. 12 Prisoner of War Compound near Cowra, in the central west of New South Wales. They were guarded by the 22nd Garrison Battalion.
On Friday 4 August, in response to information that the Japanese were discussing a mass outbreak, notice was given that all Japanese prisoners below the rank of Lance Corporal would be transferred to the Hay Prisoner of War Camp. About 2 am on Saturday 5 August 1944 a prisoner ran shouting to the camp gates. Soon afterwards an unauthorised bugle was heard and prisoners, armed with knives and improvised clubs, rushed from their huts and began breaking through the wire fences. Sentries opened fire but several hundred prisoners escaped into open country, while others who remained set fire to the camp buildings.
On the night of the breakout three Australian soldiers were killed and another three were wounded. Privates B.G. Hardy and R. Jones, who were overwhelmed while manning a machine gun post, were posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Cowra, a farming district, 314 km due west of Sydney, was the town nearest to No. 12 Prisoner of War Compound, a major POW camp, where 4,000 Axis military personnel and civilians were detained. The prisoners at Cowra also included 2,000 Italians, Koreans who had served in the Japanese military, and Indonesian civilians detained at the request of the Dutch East Indies government.
Although the POWs were treated in accordance with the 1929 Geneva Convention,
relations between the Japanese POWs and the guards were poor, due largely to significant cultural differences.A riot by Japanese POWs at Featherston prisoner of war camp in New Zealand, in February 1943, led to security being tightened at Cowra. Eventually the camp authorities installed several Vickers and Lewis machine guns to augment the rifles carried by the members of the Australian Militia’s 22nd Garrison Battalion, which was composed mostly of old or disabled veterans or young men considered physically unfit for frontline service.
In the first week of August 1944, a tip-off from an informer at Cowra led authorities to plan a move of all Japanese POWs at Cowra, except officers and NCOs, to another camp at Hay, New South Wales, some 400 km to the west. The Japanese were notified of the move on 4 August.
At about 2 a.m. a Japanese POW ran to the camp gates and shouted what seemed to be a warning to the sentries. Then a Japanese bugle sounded. A sentry fired a warning shot. More sentries fired as three mobs of prisoners, shouting “Banzai“, began breaking through the wire, one mob on the northern side, one on the western and one on the southern. They flung themselves across the wire with the help of blankets. They were armed with knives, baseball bats, clubs studded with nails and hooks, wire stilettos and garotting cords.
The bugler, Hajime Toyoshima, had been Australia’s first Japanese prisoner of the war.Soon afterwards, prisoners set most of the buildings in the Japanese compound on fire.
Within minutes of the start of the breakout attempt, Privates Ben Hardy and Ralph Jones manned the No. 2 Vickers machine-gun and began firing into the first wave of escapees. They were soon overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers and killed. Before dying, Private Jones managed to remove and hide the gun’s bolt, rendering the gun useless. This prevented the prisoners from turning the machine gun against the guards.
Some 359 POWs escaped, while some others attempted or committed suicide, or were killed by their countrymen. Some of those who did escape also committed suicide to avoid recapture. All the survivors were recaptured within 10 days of their breakout.
During the escape and subsequent round-up of POWs, four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed and 108 prisoners were wounded. The leaders of the breakout ordered the escapees not to attack Australian civilians, and none were killed or injured.
The government conducted an official inquiry into the events. Its conclusions were read to the Australian House of Representatives by Prime Minister John Curtin on 8 September 1944. Among the findings were:
- Conditions at the camp were in accordance with the Geneva Conventions;
- No complaints regarding treatment had been made by or on behalf of the Japanese before the incident, which appeared to have been the result of a premeditated and concerted plan;
- The actions of the Australian garrison in resisting the attack averted a greater loss of life, and firing ceased as soon as they regained control;
- Many of the dead had committed suicide or been killed by other prisoners, and many of the Japanese wounded had suffered self-inflicted wounds.[
Privates Hardy and Jones were posthumously awarded the George Cross as a result of their actions.
Australia continued to operate No. 12 Camp until the last Japanese and Italian prisoners were repatriated in 1947.
Cowra maintains a significant Japanese war cemetery.
In addition, a commemorative Japanese garden was later built on Bellevue Hill to memorialize these events. The garden was designed by Ken Nakajima in the style of the Edo period.
On the 5th of August 2014 Japanese and Australian survivors and descendants gathered in Cowra for a memorial service.
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History of Sorts 
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