70th Anniversary of Hiroshima.
History is being re-written. Some are now portraying the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an unforgivable crime committed by the is Americans, while the crimes of the Japanese are
being glossed over. Instead of re-writing history, we should look at what was
actually happening, and the best way is through the eyes of those who were
suffering though it.
'But Sir: the Autiobiography of a
Twentieth Century Australian'
Merv
McRae
originally published 1987, republished 2014.
This excerpt is from Chapter 14. The author was one of
thousands of POWs, Australian, British, Dutch, and Americans. He and his
brother Dunc, had survived the Death Railway, and were back in Changi prison.
The
Death Railway had a 50% death rate from starvation, over-work, disease and
beatings.
We had been
working on the aerodrome for some time;
it was a long walk, and hard work
when we got there, with many bashings
from the Japs. One day two hundred of us
were sent out on a last working party,
not far from Singapore city.
There was another party of two hundred working not far away. Our task was to dig large holes, twelve feet deep by twelve feet square, and there were six men to dig each hole. What were they for? we wondered,
and I remember one man saying that if the Allies landed we would be shot
and buried in these holes. I didn’t like
that idea at all, and I well remember
telling him not to be stupid, but he was
spot on. It was found after the war that
if the Allies had landed in Malaya we were all to be shot and disposed of. There had also been a proposed date for a
landing on Japan, so it was the Bomb
which saved us and untold thousands of others from extinction. If the bombs hadn’t been dropped, who knows how long the war might have
lasted? There wouldn’t have been one
P.O.W. get home, and thousands of soldiers, and as many civilians again would have
perished.
I have
just read a book written by James Bradley called "Towards the Setting
Sun," in which he quotes some
figures. As he had had access to
official records which I haven’t, I
obtained permission from him to use some of his figures. The two A-bombs killed about 170,000
people, and as opposed to this over
102,300 Allied P.O.W.s and coolies died as a direct result of the dreadful
treatment handed out by the Japs on the railway. To this must be added all the others who died
in the camps in Borneo and other places from the inhuman treatment, and also
the mental and physical suffering of the survivors ever since. How many more would have died had it not been
for the bombs?
James Bradley also confirms that had an Allied
landing in fact taken place the big holes we were digging were for us and the
civilian internees. A landing date had
been set for November 1945 on Japan, and
had it taken place the Japs were prepared to lose ten million men in opposing
such a landing. The Allies instead
dropped those two bombs which ended the war,
thus liberating 14,400 Australian P.O.W.s, 37,500 British and Indian troops, as well as 16,912 Americans.
I feel that if the present generation had more
knowledge of this side of the story they may understand why we must go along
with the advanced technology of the Americans,
but instead we find these very vocal minorities getting good coverage in
the media. If Australia doesn’t
co-operate with the Americans now, how
will anyone have the hide to ask for their help next time? Owing to nuclear weapons we have more or less
had peace for forty years, but I wonder
how much longer we will be lucky.
Everyone wants peace, but not at
any price, and the lesson that to stop a
bully one must fight, should be learned
in the school yard.
If countries such as Germany and Japan are
able to gather their powerful forces and go all out on aggression as they did
(both used the "kinghit" tactic and bombed cities without a thought
for the civilians) then they must expect
something back. Japan had the chance to
come to terms before both these bombs were dropped but refused, so I blame the Japanese government entirely
for the suffering their people had to endure.
The Japanese and German peoples were behind their governments to a
certain extent, and so could not be
held entirely blameless for what happened in the finish. The Italians,
on the other hand, were never
right behind Mussolini, and stopped as soon as they decently could. Mussolini was never more looked up to than
when he was dead, being murdered by a political faction and strung up by the
heels. He was really in disgrace with
the Italian people, who even destroyed
all the statues of him he’d had placed all over Rome. So to all the people who say the bomb should
not have been dropped, all I can say is
they must have been well out of it somewhere where the war would not affect
them. Those bombs were well placed, and they ended the war.
'Those bombs were well placed, and they ended the war.'
These are the men of one unit, who were ordered to surrender. They were treated poorly from the start, but the worst was when they were marched off to work on the 'Death Railway.' Fewer than half survived. The crosses next to the names are those who did not survive.
If the bomb had not been dropped, none would have survived.
 |
| The unit |
A
few individuals mentioned in the book:
Jimmy
Burr, teacher, Ch 4.
Curly
Kirk from Ballarat, Ch 11, and a mention
of his death in Ch. 13.
Sunda
Singh, Indian trader, Ch 9.
Major
Kidd, Ch 12
Tom
Chowns, and Nora Chowns, spoken of in Ch 12.
Lew
Lemke and Ted Burrage, a mention in Ch 13.
Major
Hunt, Ch 13
Frank
Lebas, Allan Scott, two who died, Ch
13. Also Jock, a Scotsman.
Horace
Roberts, a mention in Chapters 13 & 16.
Jimmy
Andrews, Ch 16
Lance
Basset, a mention in Ch 16 in relation
to sheep breeding.
Rob
Jamieson, Stony Point station, a mention
in Ch 16
Significant
events mentioned
The
depression years, ch 7.
The
Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Ch 14.
The
beginnings of the breed of sheep known as the Zenith. Ch 16.
No comments:
Post a Comment