A South Australian businessman digs into why prisoners from his region died at a far higher rate at the hands of their Japanese captors and discovers little-known tales in the process.
abc.net.au/news/war-history-japanese-pow-camps-death-railway-south-australia/101815108South Australian Rex Butler's time as a hard-riding buffalo shooter in the Northern Territory's crocodile swamps stood him in good stead when he went to war, fell into the hands of the Japanese and made an incredible escape.
"I learnt that there were at least half a dozen men from my little area who were captured by the Japanese and I decided to research what had happened to them in the war."For the past nine years, Mr Glynn has uncovered personal letters, diaries and war affidavits, met descendants and travelled across the south-east of South Australia as well as historic battlefields and war camps in Asia to unearth the lost stories of local POWs.
"There was a chap from Mount Gambier — Winston Bucknall — who was sent from Java up to Japan towards the end of the war and he was torpedoed on a boat in Nagasaki Harbour," he said. "But when I was talking to some of his family, they told me about a two-minute meeting that Winston had with his cousin who was also on the boat … the cousin was going up on deck to sleep and survived, while Winston was going down below and drowned.
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