THE EXPERIENCES OF

AUSTRALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR

(POWS)
An emaciated Australian POW
shows the effects of malnutrition
typical of many Allied prisoners of
the Japanese.
POWs on their sleeping platforms in an attap (bamboo and palm leaf) long hut in the
Tamarkan camp near Kanchanaburi on the Burma-Thailand railway. The huts were
approximately 100 metres long and each of the men had about 75 centimetres of
bed space.
A urinal at a POW camp on the Burma-Thailand railway. This urinal is typical of the urinals constructed by
POWS in the railway camps. The large bamboo tubes, filled with a metal funnel, carried the waste into a
pit. The men wore the 'G' Strings or 'lap laps' to preserve their precious shorts since virtually no clothing
was issued by the Japanese during the three and half years the men were prisoners. This photograph was
probably taken some weeks after the Japanese surrender as the men's condition seems much better.
An advanced tropical ulcer on the leg of a POW at Tarsau Camp, Thailand, 1943.
The most common treatment for the ulcers was to scrape out the rotting flesh from the ulcer.
It was performed without an anaesthetic and the pain was unimaginable. Once an ulcer had
developed beyond a certain stage it was necessary to amputate the limb to save a man's life.
'the feeling of hunger went on for days, weeks and years we were always hungry.' In 1945, the prisoners
from Sandakan in North Borneo (modern Malaysia) were trying to survive on this amount of rice per day.
[DVA] Not only was there not enough rice but the Australians were not used to eating rice nor were they
used to cooking it. Many of the men remember the awful watery 'mush' that the camp cooks produced
during the early days of their imprisonment.
Many of the prisoners have written and spoken about eating whatever they
could find, sparrows, pigeons, rats, snakes, lizards, birds, snails and even
leaves. According to Roy Harris who was captured in Ambon and transported
to Hainan camp:
A mother, overcome by emotion upon receiving a telegram announcing the safety
of her son, a POW since the fall of Singapore three and a half years earlier,
embraces the female postal worker who delivered the news to her door.
James Chidgey's artificial leg containing pieces from a Ford truck is on display at the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park
in Sydney.
The large ventilation hole in front of the leg was used to hide stolen beans and chillies from the Japanese Guard's
rations. I was the driver for the team that brought in their rations. Corporal James Chidgey, 2/19th Battalion, lost
his leg when it was crushed by building debris just before the fall of Singapore. This artificial leg was made for him
in Changi. All the tools used to manufacture his leg had to be made from other scraps before the leg could be
constructed.
AUSTRALIAN POWS RECALL MEMORIES OF WAR
WORLDNEWSAUSTRALIA