Australians at War Film Archive

Yes well I enlisted in the Australian Army

in May of 1947 upon graduation at the end of 1946 as a physiotherapist. I had a lot of my colleagues before me had gone into the war and I had an ambition to do that myself because the war was still on and the war suddenly finished and I was still a student. But I still hankered to be an army physio and so consequently I made due application

and was told there was a vacancy for a physiotherapist in the occupation of Japan. So I duly prepared for all of that and I left Adelaide in June of 1947, went to Greta camp to stage, wait for a boat to go up to Japan, and we had about a month there before we went to Japan on the [HMAS] Kanimbla on the 11th of July 1947.

Had quite a pleasant fourteen day trip up there; we bumped across, at one stage, Doctor Evatt, Minister of External Affairs (who) was talking to the teacher of occupation troops in the ship’s company about Australia’s involvement in foreign affairs post war. Anyway we arrived in Japan and my posting to the convalescent

depot was postponed for about three months while I did the physiotherapy job at 130 AGH [Australian General Hospital]. The incumbent physiotherapist, he seemed to be an old man as far as a twenty-two year old like me was concerned, he must have been about forty-five or something, and he came back after three months and I took up my posting on Miyajima and this is the Japanese sacred island,

from there I stayed eight months and then the convalescent depot was cut down to being a convalescent wing of the 130 AGH on the island of Etajima. The contraction of the force happened and we all moved to Kure and there was a Japanese Naval Hospital there that had been taken over by the

Indians, 92 Indian General Hospital. Anyway they pulled out about the end of ‘47 and the Australians took that over. After the end of about ‘48 all of the other troops, including New Zealand and British they all went home so Australians were the inly element left as an occupying power,

so in 1949 or ‘50 things were running down. And then in March 1950 we were told that the occupation for Australian troops was going to finish, so we prepared for that and then in June of 1950 the Korean War broke so. So it meant subsequently a great expansion of medical facilities to service what was going to happen in Korea.

The Australian battalion went to Korea in about September of that year and a British Hospital of about four hundred beds arrived and we integrated with each other in the November of 1950 and to take it from there I lasted up there until 1954 when the Korean War had been finished six months or so.

Well at the end of my service I got to Korea for about five weeks just before the armistice. What happened then? Well I was conducting a big romance up there at one stage with Lorraine and I had to make quick decisions because I was coming home, and I decided well this is it, I asked and was accepted and then I came home.

Lorraine came home five or six months later and then we were married in October ‘54, big fifty coming up in a couple of months or so. Anyway that about sums up my active service.

12th of February 1954.

Well I started to set up a physiotherapy (clinic) in the western suburbs, I was domiciled in Henley Beach where I was raised and bred. And well gradually it sort of developed from virtually nothing, I didn’t have any treatment rooms for some considerable time but I used to visit people in their homes for treatment.

I also took on a job, Royal Adelaide five mornings a week and so that occupied my time until I was getting more work fro ma full time point of view, that’s about it.

I did a locum for the physiotherapist, she could go on holidays for about three weeks in June of ‘54, repat outpatients was a that stage in Keswick Barracks and it was quite interesting going back and doing there work. There was a blind physiotherapist from the First World War; he was working there just as a…

he had a private practice in town and he was an amazing man this chap. He told me at one stage his last sighted memory was seeing the Coronation coach go by in London in 1937. But he must have been completely blind by the time I knew him in 1954, but he got around amazingly this bloke and he seemed to know all of the city councillors by their name.

Well I was the eldest brother of four,

Yeah those four. Phillip was born in 1955, Shane in 1957,

Michael in 1959 the redhead and Mathew, we didn’t think, we thought family of three very nice. But then Mathew came along six years later so we had our four and they have never done anything that has caused us any real concern.

Yeah five. Shane has got two

and Mathew has got two and Michael has got one and Phillip doesn’t have any.

I was born in Henley Beach 22nd of August 1924

and so I have got an eightieth birthday coming up in about six weeks.

Mostly in Henley Beach. The Johns family was a real pioneering family in Henley. My grandfather set up a butchering business in there in 1888 and his sons and grandfather’s

grandsons, they took over the butchering business in there turn. And I think this lasted almost until the ‘70s where there was no Johns or no Johns connection running the butchering business in Henley Beach.

No my father was the local newsagent so I claim that I cut my teeth on an Advertiser.

Well I worked in the business as a child and then as a young adolescent in about 1941 just about the time of Pearl Harbour the bloke that was working for Dad he had had a time in the army, about three months or so, he didn’t like it and so he got himself a nice safe

munitions job and I was looking down the barrel to take over as a newsagent’s assistant and do early morning newspaper deliveries in Henley Beach and I did this for two and a half odd years until the beginning of 1944, until I actually started my physiotherapy course in 1943. I was getting up at four o'clock to

do early morning paper deliveries and I could go to sleep in a nine o’clock lecture; that’s how tired I was during that year. But there was a very strict manpower situation and well, Dad couldn’t get anybody else to do the job until my younger brother left school and he took over the job so I could devote time to being a full time student.

In Henley Beach, Henley and Grange I can’t remember the numbers really but at one stage even later when I had it Dad was doing about fifteen hundred Advertisers a day in two rounds. When I did it it was all horse and cart by that time. Young brother, he used to deliver from an Austin A40 and

my father finally got rid of the horse and cart, I think there was publicity about him being one of the last agents in Adelaide still delivering with a horse and cart and then he went to Volkswagens. Very serviceable vehicle delivering papers, still so was an Austin A40.

Yes, I

used to have to get up at four o'clock in the morning and go and get the horses and at that stage blocked out Henley, well lets see 1942 I was coming on eighteen and walking around in absolute pitch darkness was, the lights all went out, there was no lights like there are these days. Had to get the horses, take them into our service area, which was an area behind Main Street,

Henley Beach there was a big old garage there which had been formerly my grandfather’s slaughter yards, that’s where, in the 1890s and 1900s, that’s where he did all of the slaughtering. But you want the description of the horse and cart; well it was just a small cart, surprising that it could hold about five hundred newspapers. In those

days you rolled and delivered as you went along, not like these days where they are all wrapped up nicely with a bit of plastic about them. Wet days was not very good. Wet and cold and awful in the winter of 1942, my hands just about froze off, I tried gloves for delivery and they were no good so then I tried mittens and they worked, at least you kept your hands warm. But they were always black with ink

and I have to tell the story, when I was starting my physiotherapy training in 1943 I was still delivering papers and so my hands were black and chapped; they were awful for a person who was going to work with their hands, they weren’t a good advertisement. Anyway with the help of my mother and loads of hand cream I managed to get through.

I never had a comment from the senior instructors about the state of my hands, it was only after I had stopped delivering papers in 1944 that they improved and of course we were sort of into treatments and that sort of stuff down at the Royal Adelaide. I don’t think the girls that I did first year with ever knew I was out on the paper cart in the morning and I never told them.

We used to have things to cover them when it was raining. You would roll and throw, or if you got ahead of it, the rolled paper would be down at the bottom of the cart. It was a very active job, I was a left hander and I used to do all of my throws left handed and it wasn’t until I did the job for Lionel one time

I think I came home on leave and using the old A40 and so I got more efficient with the right hand and it was a darn sight easier. It was interesting times in that part of the war actually I was eighteen in August of 1942 I had to go for a medical examination, I have always had bad eyesight

and so they didn’t want me which was a good job because it enabled it to get on with my physio training in 1943 rather than lying up there on the Kokoda trail somewhere.

He was a, he left school at fourteen because it was mandatory those days, it would have been 1909 you went into the family business, that would have been during the First World War, and his slightly elder brother, he would have had the run of the newsagency in Henley and Grange and he went off to the war in early 1916 and Dad took it over and he didn’t stop working until 1971

which was definitely a record for a newsagent in Adelaide and possibly anywhere else. And actually he also died on the job in, he just wouldn’t retire; he was seventy-five and still working. I can vouch for my father’s honesty; I can remember I was out on the cart as a young boy in the Depression days and people

would stop him, “Can I have a look at the paper, there might be a couple of jobs?” And so he would give them a paper and they would stop there talking, papers those days were only a hapenny, half penny but things were so tough half of the people couldn’t afford to buy the paper. And well another time during the war any unsold papers were

done and they were thrown over the fences we knew had somebody overseas in the Middle East or later in New Guinea and you could post them off for a penny.

They were free, gratis, for nothing.

It was a big help to some of the diggers [veterans]

and a number of the fellows they would come home on leave and having received papers they would come down and thank Dad for what he had done.

Very clearly. I was in church when the news came through

an Evensong situation and the then priest in charge was Thomas Thornton who later became the archbishop of Adelaide; this was 1939, he himself went off to New Guinea in 1944 as an army chaplain for a couple of years, so anyway we went home and I don’t know what time it was, but we turned the radio on and heard Mr Menzies [Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia] say

about he had a melancholy duty to inform, to tell Australians we were now at war. Well the previous, the 1st of September 1939, I remember our form master at school said that he was so terribly worried about the international situation. Well to a fourteen year old kid it really didn’t mean much. That same day

Hitler marched his troops into Poland and well that was the start of the Second World War.

Well primary school at Henley Beach I went to Pulteney Grammar for a couple of years and they only went to intermediate and so we transferred ourselves to Prince’s. Normally an Anglican family we couldn’t get into Saint’s

but I am not sorry for that, especially after all of this paedophilia business going on at the moment connected with Saint Peter’s, very unfortunate. And all of the business with the Anglican Church as well, they say the Catholic Church has had a great serve over it and poor Doctor Hollingsworth he got the sack from the governor general’s job over it all. I just relate to that sort of thing.

When I was young, getting a bit off the track, I was a young choir boy and then an altar boy, a young scout and then I was a young lifesaver and there was nothing of that nature going on. Now where were we?

Yes well I

was in the school cadets which was quite interesting. Every boy had the chance, on the small firing range we had at Prince’s I fired five bullets and I think I missed the target all of the time and I think that was all I got because our small 303 rifles were requisitioned by the army and I said…it was June 1940, all

of the 303s out of the Prince Alfred college armoury went back to the army and we were issued with old Boer War 310s which had no ammunition anyway but we did our best with them. Schooling, yes we subscribed to war savings bonds and all sorts of things. They used to give you a better rate of interest than the banks do these days; on a small

investment you’re lucky to get one percent.

Well they were something put out by the government and redeemable in total in about 1947 I think and as I say, well they paid about three percent, which for those days wasn’t bad, a darn sight

better than these days. How did we go about it? You banked your money with somebody at Prince’s and when you had enough to qualify you got a war savings band which was backdated because they would pool all of the money buy the bonds and that was it.

You did that generally out of your own money and I suppose they were all finally cashed later.

Yes well it was probably a necessary procedure; you were doing something for the war effort.

Well it would go to the government to probably allow them to produce more munitions and you would…the financial situation they were under, in my first full year of work during 1942 and ‘43 I was earning about three pound a week which wasn’t bad

money those days but I was horrified that I had to pay thirteen pounds in taxation, which seemed to be a lot for an amount of a hundred and fifty quid. In those days there was no deductions, unmarried and all of that sort of thing, it just seemed to be a lot.

We did rifle drill and all other things., actually three cadet corps at Saint’s and Prince’s and Scot’s were all marched in the 1940 Anzac [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps] Day march, I think they were a bit thin on the ground so the cadet people got a chance to march.

We were terribly disappointed when we didn’t get a repeat in 1941; I was still at school and still in the cadets enjoying all of the activities. We went on several field days, one was up in the hills and one was down at the absolutely undeveloped beach. So there was those, we all went for a swim after it all happened.

I enjoyed being in the cadets, I have got a photo of myself somewhere in my cadet uniform.

Through Adelaide, similar to what they do these days but it was a whole lot longer those days. You went up Rundle Street down Charles Street, down North Terrace and past the war memorial and then down to the Pennington Gardens area, that was break off point and the assembly point in the main was somewhere in Victoria Square for most of the people.

April it was just prior to the attack buy the German forces into France and Belgium. There was the Battle of Britain, it wasn’t a good time.

And of course 1942 wasn’t a good time to be turning eighteen either; it was the year I was due for military call up if my eyes had been any good.

I don’t think they did in 1940, but subsequently my wife would always take the younger kids in

when they were younger, she never marched, she said she was always pregnant and she was for fifteen odd years or so. Finally the fiftieth anniversary of the march was just recently and we are both members of the Korean South East Asian organization and the president kidded her into a march, she was alongside of me, that was the fiftieth celebration of the end of the

Korean War and she said she enjoyed it but last year her leg played up a bit so she bailed out. She got a problem with a thrombosis.

My mother was devoted to her family, she had four of us all together, I was the first, Lionel was born in 1928 and those days there was just the two of us and we didn’t think about other children. But there was a sister born in 1935 early,

and then Roger he was born in 1938. This would be an interesting comment; I could never work out why the rest of my father’s children were born in January, which was usually my father’s busiest period as a newsagent. He wasn’t only a paper deliverer in the morning; virtually an all day job and he would hire boys

and that sort of thing, he worked from daylight until dark. We worked it out, it was a bit of a joke but there was never a paper delivered on Good Friday; April to January, poor mother ,she must have lived in fear of Good Friday morning. Anyway that’s the story about the other three other than me. I was the honeymoon baby.

At least someone will get a laugh out of it if they read it.

Like I said devoted to her family, it was she that was concerned about my lack of proper vision and she said to me in 1937, she heard about

this Mr Whittle, the blind physiotherapist I caught up with in Keswick. She said, “How would you like to do that sort of work?” and I said, “That’s all right.” So by 1938 my course in life was settled. And we went to see a lady, a Miss Zoe Phillips, who was the then secretary of the Australian Massage Association

I think it was called then. That settled it. And you wouldn’t believe it but as a kid I suffered a lot with hayfever, and the day I was interviewed with Miss Phillips I had hayfever something awful and I was snuffly and that sort of thing and she must have thought, “God, fancy having him as a physio.” And I didn’t sight her again until I was due to start the course in 1943 and by then I was barely

eighteen and a half years old, a great change from a snuffly kid of fourteen.

Well as I say my mother was concerned about what was going to happen to me with my vision because it was noted when I was about three that I had a turning eye, I was taken to the specialist and given glasses which I hated. And the doctor then confidently predicted that I had optic atrophy and I could be blind by the time I was

seven and arrangements were even made for me to go to the Brighton Blind school. Happily it didn’t prove necessary so I had a normal education at Henley Primary. I got through all of the work, wasn’t much good at sport in those days because of the eyesight. There is a lot of fuss going on about bullying

these days, I copped enough because my eyesight. I must have been a gawk I guess, but anyway I got through.

Oh four eyes, cop eye and all sorts of things like that, kids are cruel.

Put up with it, several times this one kid seemed to making my life a misery and you know the old nib situation, get a bit of paper break of a nib, stick it in the paper and this kid sat right in front of me, and I slipped the nib

under him and then he say down. “Hmmwoar”, he said. And the teacher said, “What's wrong with you?” and he said, “Somebody has just nibbed me sir.” And because I was sitting right behind him the teacher said, “Gordon was that you, did you do that?” and I said, “Sir I cannot tell a lie, yes.” And he said, “I will deal with you later.” And the same big kid in the following

year was still making my life misery and I up and donged him on the head with a flute, school fife, you know, the metal object. He broke down and howled like a big girl and I said,” I don’t think things are going to be too healthy for me around here, I am going.” And off I went, whoosh. And the others we were with, they were looking absolutely thunder stricken and I thought, “Oh I he is going to get me tomorrow night at choir practice.” And I was left severely alone

and it taught me that a little bit of aggression goes a long way. After that I didn’t get bullied.

You mean completely finished school?

Well that was 1941, I did a year in 1942 while I was a free agent, working for my father on the four o'clock get up and that, but without student commitments I was able to enjoy life, I remember we had some marvellous dances in 1942, Glen Miller [big band leader]

was all of the rage. As you turn eighteen you’re growing up and even the war time situation wasn’t bad, especially if you knew you were going to remain a civilian.

Oh the local town hall. They had the local kiosk down at Henley beach. The ambition was to get one of the girls out and whisk her up the jetty and bash the pash [kissing] was a current expression in those days.

Oh the same as petting or kissing and cuddling and that sort of thing. Bash the pash, I think it was a Bob Hope [American comedian] statement. But actually I needed several prerequisite subjects to study physiotherapy. And one was physics and one was physiology and I hadn’t done anything like that but in

1941 I think my mother engaged a private tutor and I used to go down to Lady Simon for an hours talk, Lady Simon at the university there. The girls’ area down there and she talked to me about aspects of physiology. I passed the exam all right, but I was never any good at physics. I had to study physics in 1942 to ensure

that I passed Leaving physics so I could start he course in ‘43, our form master said, apprised of the fact that I was going to do physiotherapy said, “You might be well of if you did a bit of chemistry as well.” And so I studied chemistry at the School of Mines during 1942, late afternoon evening lectures and I passed chemistry as well no problem but I still had problems with physics.

I just probably couldn’t absorb it well enough. I didn’t dislike it. A knowledge of science is a fundamental thing if you’re going to get on in life, as I say not that I didn’t like, just wasn’t any good at it.

Even in the start of our physio course there was a subject called the physics of medical electricity. I had problems passing that which I did finally, but I didn’t pass well. I must say I enjoyed doing anatomy, the extra physiology that we had to do at the university well it was a piece of cake as far as I was concerned.

Actually I made contact with Miss Phillips in about March of ‘43 and she said, “You’re a couple of days late, the girls that you’re going to go through with have already started down there.”

So I ran about three days late getting down to the anatomy school anyway and so I rang a friend of mine who was in second year med and I said, “I am coming to the uni tomorrow to start studying anatomy, I have got to find my way around.” So he met me next morning at the front part of the anatomy school and said, “Tell me do you turn green at the sight of a dead body?”

I said, “I don’t know, I have never seen one.” Anyway in we went with a dozen or fourteen flints with cadavers on them. Anyway I didn’t turn green, that was the start of my anatomy experience and I must say I enjoyed the study of anatomy.

I was so tired and having to get up at four, I didn’t absorb enough of it, so consequently 1943 was a bit of a write-off year and I had to do a repeat in 1944 and I did much better. I like to think I have a reasonable knowledge of anatomy from the

first year; I was a big help to all of my young female colleagues who were with me in 1944.

I was the only male in about three years; there was no men in 1942 group, there were actually two lads who finished in 1943,

wartime accelerated course and one of them went straight into the army and the other one went off to New South Wales and we lost track of him completely. But I can remember this other bloke; he had several years in various army establishments in New Guinea etcetera. And he was in uniform still working in Delores Road in 1946

and he used to come to winter lectures in uniform and he used to tell me all about what was happening in the army especially when I told him that I would be going in next year and possibly to Japan in the occupation force. And so we became good friends. He died perhaps three odd years ago. He was a couple of years older than me at that stage. But that was an

unfortunate loss, three years ago, well he must have been well into his seventies.

Not too many, the girls were quite tolerant of me, one of them said to me years later, “You were such a polite

quiet boy.” And I said,” Well I was a bit overwhelmed being amongst so many nice girls.” One of the girls in the 1944 calls who graduated in ‘46 and for some reason or other she took a dislike to me and I guess I returned the compliment, but I got on all right with the rest of them.

Especially my two dissecting partners. I still have odd contact with them. Only one of our year of nine I think that graduated has died in recent years, the rest of us I think are still going.

Well the university took on the teaching of physio and anatomy and that sort of thing but until 1945, the graduating class that I should have been in

was the first year that physiotherapists graduated with a university diploma. Prior to that it was just the Australian Massage Association diploma and that gave us absolutely increased status. Now these days I think it is a diploma and four years study, you have really got to know it.

Well

in a vague sort of way ,we did anatomy with the med students; apart from that it was a direct, as I say controlled by the Association, then by the university so I suppose it would have been included in the Faculty of Medicine in some way.

Well in 1942, as I say the loss of Pearl Harbour [American Naval Base] was a big enough shock in ‘41 and then the

loss of those two capital ships in Malaysian waters after the Japanese had come into the war. They took Hong Kong very quickly and they ran down the Malaya peninsula and the surrender in Singapore was February 15th. It wasn’t a good time, I remember I was asleep one time and gee I woke up with a start and I thought, “Gee don’t tell

me a Japanese plane has arrived here already?” and was going to bomb us. It was just a plane flying over, that’s all it was and I had been asleep. That was early ‘42, and then subsequently there was the bombing of Darwin on the 19th of February which gave us all a big shock. And then in July or August there was the Japanese midget subs [submarines] came into Sydney Harbour

which caused a few casualties. I think they launched a torpedo at some navy vessel and killed about ten sailors, I am not sure.

Well blackout was total in not showing lights, but there weren’t electricity blackouts like we experience now. Well you had

to put your blackout curtains over your houses and I think even your headlights they were supposed to be painted black in those years. I do remember there was barbed wire on the beach here at Henley at some stage during the war and there was even a pill box on Henley jetty

because I remember I went down there on one morning in the depth of the morning and there was some lads there so I gave them a free paper.

When we went out to the pictures, anti-aircraft search lights

were criss crossed all over Adelaide at that stage, and another thing in early ‘42 the St Vincent Gulf was full of troop ships at one stage, this was the 6th and the 7th Division coming home, must have been February or March or something like that. The 9th Division stayed in Egypt and took part in the Battle of El Alamein at the end of ‘42

but these lads came home and the streets of Adelaide were filled with these handsome looking big soldiers from the two divisions that had fought in the Middle East. They had a short amount of leave and then most of them went to New Guinea I suppose, because that’s where they were needed.

Well I suppose I was because all of my contemporaries in the life savers and the church, they were all going to uniform and I was a civilian. I was surprised I didn’t get a white feather [to indicate cowardice by not participating in the war effort].

There was a home guard of sorts in and around Henley which I joined; didn’t do much there. I was reasonably active; they had a home guard in Great Britain and I suppose they developed

one here but my interest in it wasn’t terribly great, and at that stage I was getting up too early in the morning and I was too tired.

We dissected for about five terms, dissected the whole of the body, most interesting to know about the human body in minute form. It is surprising what you learn about your own body if you study it intimately. As I say I always enjoyed the study of anatomy and

you learn it so well, if you open a Grays Anatomy, I have still got one, it will all come back to you, that’s how surprisingly you had to learn it. Yes I do remember I think it was one time in ‘44 one mad Friday afternoon the

students generally in the anatomy went a bit mad and started throwing things about and I personally quartered somebody who has been a leading Adelaide surgeon, behind the ear here, not often I threw accurately and with a bit of the pectoral muscle. Anyway come Monday morning, God we got a bullocking from the professor, he said,

“You have been privileged to study anatomy and you go and do this.” As I say that never happened again.

Oh you got used to it; I had no problems with it.

Yeah, but the girls

started two days before me, fortunately I caught up. We started on the upper arm and the auxiller in here, a lot of interesting stuff in there that you had to learn. And you knew that you had to get used to it. The advantage of

doing it, you must dissect to learn it properly, you can’t learn it out of books.

Well I will go ahead and deal with what we did in second and third year. You did Swedish remedial exercises, we were exercise specialist and movement exercises and all of that, but it was the application of your anatomy knowledge which helped and then we did a lot of practical treatments down at the

Royal Adelaide under supervision of course. By the time I graduated I knew all that there was to know, but experience is the great teacher. Even when I went to Japan I still had a lot to know and I guess over the years I learnt it.

Well we used to talk about the theory of movement and that sort of thing and you had to detail which muscle did what to the satisfaction of the senior instructors. Interesting, and I must say I enjoyed the fact that I was going to become a male physiotherapist.

You feel a like a real jewel in the crown those days.

I never felt a male couldn’t do it well. I remember one of the girls who was a bit straight laced. She was a year ahead of me, she told me at the end of second year

or had she graduated at that stage, and she told me she didn’t approve of male therapists and I said, “Well Miss Unknown I hope you will have a better opinion of them when I graduate in the year after next.” I must say that when I had to laugh about this, I came home in uniform in 1949 and this particular physio, she was a senior physio at the children’s,

I went out to see the girls I had gone through with there and this lady smiled upon me beautifully, I was approved of finally. Even the uniform got to Helen, that was her name, no surname. Anyway she died just a few years back.

We had a professional relationship and she was an excellent physiotherapist too, this particular lady; she never married.

I think mainly we got the aged. One of my patients about the first one I got, he came in and he had to have both arms massaged right down to his finger tips. Standard treatment time was about half an hour and it took me half an hour to do all of that, and then he had to have

his heat. He used to call it ‘eat, drop the H. He said to me one time, “Oh I am not going to have my ‘eat this time?” I said, “No I can’t Al,” that’s right I couldn’t get myself an infrared lamp for love nor money because they were all in use. I must say it was good to get into the army where we had an adequate amount of equipment. Even in those days the Adelaide Hospital was short on equipment.

But this was 1944 and I suppose things were tough enough.

We had a special conferring of degrees and that was December 1946, I think it was the 13th that’s right,

the 13th and the Chancellor was old Sir William Mitchell and I think he finally died at about the age of ninety-seven. All they give you , you go up and shake the hands of the chancellor, that was my group an there was a few graduating medical students as well on this and if I am not mistaken there was a few dentists as well on this,

because the next day I went down and registered as a physiotherapist. The legislation controlling the physiotherapy had gone through the state parliament that year, so we were among the first graduates to be registered properly with the state. Even then my number was a hundred and thirty-eight. That bloke down

here I went down and had some treatment recently, and I said, “My number is a hundred and thirty-eight, what's yours?” and he said, “My number is two thousand and something.” I said, “I am one of the early ones.”

Well I think there was a physiotherapy board I can’t really remember; I think it was all done by post,

you paid your registration fee I can’t remember how much that was and then you were okay to practice. I was doing some more work for my father and my two colleagues got back and got the good jobs at Royal Adelaide and I got two part time jobs cobbled together even then

they were restricted on the number of physiotherapists they could employ. The students, particularly in second and third year we did a lot of unpaid work, it was well supervised. We weren’t graduated but we were allowed to practice on patients. Some probably got better treatment than others but that’s the way it worked.

I had four or five months down at the Royal Adelaide.

Well I guess so we realised we were on thresh hold and,

well we had all of the theory but no practical experience. Except the stuff you picked up during the time you were in your studentmanship. I remember one time in the 1944 group we across to start treatment in ‘45 and the people who were one year ahead of us, they seemed to know so much more than we did and yet

that was our opinion and it probably wasn’t all that correct anyway.

Well the physiotherapy department was down in the basement of out patients which is on the corner of North Terrace and Frame Road.

I suppose we were welcomed down there, although by the time we had done our work they should have been grateful for our efforts because they were getting it at very cheap rates if you like. I remember one time a senior physio had come out of the army in 1944

and this was ‘47 by this stage I had graduated and I am down there working. And he said, “I want your statistics all of the patients that are coming once a week; in-patients that sort of thing.” and I totalled mine up and took a few off that weren’t coming anymore. And I said to Miss Wilson., “You’re not going to believe this, I am in charge of seventy-five patients.” And she said, “Oh yes that’s about par for

the course.” Seventy-five patients if I would have been able to have seventy-five patients when I was working privately I would have employed somebody else to help me. Well sometimes you might be lucky to have thirty on the go at one stage, but I believed in curing my patients and getting them on their way. And if I wasn’t doing anything good I would tell

them anyway; to put up with it and save their money.

Well I was doing pathology notes with the radio it the kitchen at home and my

mother had gone to bed, and my Dad he was in the newsagents having to get up earlier at four o'clock, anyway they were broadcasting and it was May the 8th and I stayed up and stayed up and listened to all of the broadcasts of the German surrender in the May. And then actually

went to uni, I was in second year at that stage and we had a little procession in town, police controlled of course but we came out of the university, we had Mark Mitchell’s horse and trap and there was an ash can there and they would say, “Hitler was in the can.” and there were three cadavers, one was Musso [Benito Mussolini] and one was Musso’s mistress,

they were actually live bodies, the anatomy kids covered with the canvas, there was somebody else, there was three of them. Plus Hitler in the can. It was a most enjoyable march, demonstration through Adelaide. Anyway we soon go shunted back into the university by the police and went on with our activities; the next one was the surrender of Japan,

that was most interesting. Adelaide on the Thursday, I went to town with my young sister who was ten and millions of people were there, almost as many people were there as for the Beatles way back in ‘64. And so much so between parliament house there was a crush of people on North Terrace.

Helen and I we were close up against the South Australian Hotel and there was a momentary panic, there was too many people milling around and anyway I had to get out of there because I was responsible for my ten year old sister, at that stage I was twenty-one. Anyway we got out of there and I probably

went home. There was, in Tuwellon Street there was a place Recruiting Centre and some bright soul had changed it to ‘Rejoicing Centre’. That was quite an experience. Everybody was glad that the war was over. And six days later I had a little party for my twenty-first birthday.

well that’s about it for the moment.

Well do you remember the caption of the dancing person, it has had publicity in the papers even recently, Adelaide went mad.

Yes it was quite an experience.

Well the war was over, nobody else was going to get killed I had enough of the people I knew that were killed during the war and I was lucky I wasn’t one of them.

Nobody from my own family. We lost an uncle, a member of the second generations of Johns’ in Henley and he was on Gallipoli; twice he was wounded once and he spent time in Egypt in the

various Light Horse brigades etcetera and then unfortunately they were going up into the Palestine area into Syria and those places and apparently he drank poisoned water, purposely poisoned by the retreating Turks and Germans and he died of illness reported about a month before the Armistice in 1918, fortunately in the Second World War

we had no one from our family, although I had two cousins who became POWs [Prisoners of War] in Java and they had a pretty harrowing time. One of them he came home an absolute physical wreck. He died about six years later, he immediately became a TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated]. He had suffered at the hands of the Japanese.

A lady in Henley found out I was going to Japan subsequently and she said, “Gordon how can you go to that dreadful place?” and when I came home on leave about eighteen months later one of the first people I saw was that lady. And she said, “Gordon, I am so glad you’re back from that dreadful place.” And I said, “Mrs T, you will be surprised I am going back to that dreadful place after I have had some leave.”

“Oh”, she shook her head. I said, “It is really not a dreadful place. The Japanese people, they’re just like anybody else, they didn’t want the war.” But like they say, they were forced into it. That’s all for that at the moment.

Yes we caught the tram into town; we were aware of the fact that people were assembling in Adelaide, like I say she was ten at that stage and I was twenty-one. But as I say the experience with the crush of people I decided we were going to get out of here.

We went back home, I can’t remember what I did for the rest of the day but, there was a two day public holiday declared by the government immediately on that day and the next and on the third day I suppose we got back to the brave new post war world. It took a long time for some of the troops to come home.

So much so even the occupation, our troops didn’t get to Japan until February 1947, they were staging in the islands for all of that time.

We were just aware of it in the papers, having gone there

I was a bit perturbed by the dramatic loss of life in Hiroshima and also Nagasaki, the Japanese should have surrendered immediately or I am also of the opinion that they should have dropped the bomb in Tokyo Bay or something like that and minimised the casualties. I have got some photos of the bomb damage, somewhere

in my stuff that I have produced. Nagasaki, I have also spent a lot of time in Hiroshima on recreational purposes and I used to go through it even on duty in a jeep from Miyajima because that’s the only way you could get there from, you had to go by jeep up from Kure although we had a barge which took us from

Miyajima to Etajima because that’s where we sued to get our supplies.

Well as I say I was disappointed, I shouldn’t have been, but I was disappointed that the war

was over and I had missed out on getting in the army. I still had the motivation to perhaps get into uniform as all of my friends and relations had done. And there was an opportunity. And I could go up there and do the work I was trained for which is better I suppose than just being an ordinary infantry soldier. So that was the motivation I guess.

It meant having been a civilian during the war it meant I could take part in, I don’t quite know how to put it.

Well I suppose so yeah, I am a patriotic Australian, I always claim that I am a Queen’s Champion, I remember writing once in 1999 ‘We are going to have a vote for a republic and if it was achieved, it will be done without my positive vote.” That didn’t happen of course.

Sooner or later I suppose we are going to become a republic and I won’t be going out on the street campaigning against it; I will just accept it.

Keswick barracks and that occurred on May the 21st 1947 and I was off on

my travels by about June the 2nd. Got on the Melbourne express, sleeper [train], I had two pips on my shoulders. And I was in the company of a warrant officer who had seemingly had a lot of army experience and we travelled together for two days, Adelaide to Melbourne and Melbourne to Sydney and

he filled me in with a lot of details. He subsequently went to Japan as well.

Well I was the first one to leave home, I came home in 1949 I realised what a hole I had been causing in the family ranks by packing up and going off on my travels. Mum said

“You were doing something you wanted to do and we were happy for you.” So that was mother’s attitude I don’t know that Dad had one.

I was over twenty one at that stage. I remember at the beginning of the war you had to be twenty to join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]

and on that basis also you had to have your parents’ permission. This was seven odd years later.

Lieutenant. I have got a copy of a commission, the gazetted commission here somewhere but you probably won’t want to see that?

Well I think some of the advisory commission under whatever circumstances I was to be awarded a commission because of my professional training. But as far as I know your character is very thoroughly investigated because I remember I had a word with the local policeman and

they said, “Oh they were asking about your regarding a commission in the army.” I said, “Oh well I haven’t done anything wrong.” I must say at one stage the local cop [policeman] said to my father, I was about fourteen or fifteen at the time, he said, “I had to give your lad a clip in the ear the other day for something or other”. And of course I copped it from my father when I got home too. Not like these days you get a clip on the ear

from a local cop and they are up for police brutality.

A warrant officer who had had quite a lot of experience at that stage and as I indicated he also went to Japan.

Well I lost track of him anyway, I was only aware of the fact I sighted him once up there but he was responsible for my initial army education if you like.

Lots, its amazing if you listen to other people you save yourself a lot of grief.

I can’t remember specifically, I am not sure that he hadn’t been in BCOF before and had come home on leave and was on his way back.

Nothing specific, not that I can pin down but I certainly benefited from listening to him.

I can’t bring up anything specific. Play it cool, keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble and you’ll get your, the national medal that soldiers got for long service was usually referred to as fifteen years of undetected crime, but as for pinning anything down I can’t do it.

I knew that Australian troops and other soldiers from other countries were up there. As a matter of fact I got a lot of information from a bloke that was doing civil engineering in the early part of the war, he graduated in

1944 perhaps and went immediately into the army probably in the engineers and he had a short stay in Japan in 1946 and he was home in 1947, out of uniform by then. And we used to meet at the local dance and because I knew I was going to Japan by then I got a lot of information from him on what was going on up there, because he had the practical experience.

He had lost a brother in the war as well.

It’s such a long time ago that I can’t remember anything specific. He had enjoyed it up there and was possibly sorry to come home, but there

was a fair amount of interchange of soldiers and officers in those early days because even when I was in practice I used to get patients come in and say, “Oh yes I was in the army; I could have gone to Japan.” But they had a wife at home or a lot of points up from the war and I used to tell them, “Most of you blokes would have only been up there for nine months and then you would be rotated home.” And I used to tell them, “Oh I am sorry for you blokes, you missed out

on a good time.” But that’s the way it was, once I got into 1948 or so most of the lads were like me, at the age of twenty-two or so, beardless boys, only a smattering of World War II soldiers left.

See there wasn’t too many war service ribbons up there by about 1950.

Nothing. I remember there was five doctors came into camp at similar times before we went on the boat.

They were all from Sydney and we learnt the hard way by perhaps making an odd mistake or two. I remember I fell into line with the full colonel who was in charge of Greta camp and he said, “Now get on the other side of me son, you’re on the wrong side of me, otherwise I will hit you with my hand when I give a salute.”

So that was one of the first valuable lessons I learnt, stay on the left hand side of a superior officer. And there were heaps of other things that you learnt as you went along. At Greta camp after about a fortnight or three weeks in the army I was put in charge of the town picket that went into Maitland. That was all right, but the

second time I got the job there was a big function in Maitland and there were diggers all over the place. And I was down there with a slouch hat wearing a duty type uniform and one of them came up and said, “All of the officers are up the back there boozing [drinking alcohol] like pirates; you had better go and check on them.” And of course I was in the uniform of the picket officer, I had one drink

and went again. And they were actually, we went to the local police station to pick up one lad and take him back to the camp, but there was me, a sergeant and four others to keep order in Maitland. I remember the same Bull Monaghan, I gave him a

great salute as he came in and he said, “I want you to keep your eye on these lads tonight; there is likely to be a bit of playing up.” I had been in the army fully three weeks when I was doing this job. From their point of view, you learnt as you went along .the five doctors and myself and one other bloke that we picked up on the boat. All medical corps and all stationed at

130 AGH when we got to Japan. My first night up there we went to a formal mess and my KDs [Kitchen Duties] were in a horrible way, not having done much in the way of washing on the boat and I lent a set to attend the same formal mess that night by the education officer at the hospital who

subsequently did officer training at Miyajima. After the Con Depot left there they set up an officer training school and he subsequently was the first bloke killed in Korea. It was quite a blow.

I really can’t remember I don’t think so.

No weapons training although I must say I was often given the job as paying officer and seeing you were going to handle money the

officer had to go down with a side arm, just like the one I am wearing in the photo. Well I don’t think I had ever fired a pistol anyway. If somebody had pinched our money, well as far as I was concerned they could have it. That never happened either, the amount of specific training that some people get in the army is not all that great, especially if you’re in the medical corps.

Nothing specific, I talk about the school at Miyajima but that was for people who were going to be in the permanent service, they needed to have a bit of officer training, but apparently doctors and physiotherapists didn’t need any.

Not a lot. I just…because I had a specific job to go and do up there. My original posting was to the convalescent depot but I said earlier I did three months at the AGH, the

army hospital, before I went to Miyajima to do the job of a physio who went home on leave; he came back and I went to Miyajima and finally took up my posting. I must say I wrote an article for Shimbun the magazine of the BCOF association which was titled “We have the best posting in Japan.’ Because some of the blokes on the way up, you would tell them, “I am going to the con depot.” “Oh that a marvellous place,

it is on Miyajima, Paradise Island. You have got the best posting in Japan.” So I used that as the title of my article, which is available for perusal if you wanted it.

It was 1947,

people had probably had enough of the war and Greta camp was a big place, and they were getting young recruits in there. Most of the blokes who had been in there, they were out of it by then, by choice. But the army still had to function, like I said most of the blokes were beardless boys.

Well let’s see, about five weeks or so.

No, do you mean come back to Adelaide? No, I probably didn’t really need it, it probably didn’t occur to me

to want pre-embarkation leave.

A few medical books just in case but really that was all.

We travelled on the HMAS Kanimbla, which was a wartime troop ship. Our draft consisted of about three hundred and twenty people or so. And every man Jack had to go on board in what they call full marching order which meant the webbing. Did I have a pistol? I am sure I didn’t.

Water bottle, hav-a-sac pack and blanket roll; I must say I was dead scared that my young brother Roger was going to say, when I met him on the wharf at Circular Quay, “Gordon, can I have a drink out of your water bottle?” because it was half full of Australian whiskey. Fortunately he didn’t, otherwise my

mother would have had me pulled off that draft then and there. Well I can never work out why we had to do that; it was peacetime, we didn’t need to go on board dressed like that. And of course the nursing officers that came back with us, there was about a dozen of them and they just walked on with their gear,

they didn’t have to go on board dressed up like soldiers. They were in uniform of course that was one thing that struck me as a bit strange.

Well as I said a draft of about three hundred and twenty and I don’t know what the ship’s company ,the Kanimbla came and went to Japan ferrying troops quite a while subsequent to

after I went up there. And I think one of my life saving friends, we were at school together and he was a bit older than me, and he was in the army from ‘43, ‘44 or ‘45 whatever and he had been in Japan for a while but I think he came back on the Kanimbla which landed in Sydney in July 1947, the one that I went back up to Japan on.

This lad, we had been at school together and in the life saving club.

Well troop ship; it wasn’t the concept of the modern day passenger liner. It had mainly troop decks

various. And they had bunks, they weren’t the epitome of comfort. I was in charge of a troop deck which fortunately had no troops on it. I remember the skipper [captain] came down one day on inspection and there I was down there on my own with no troops looking after and he fished under one of the beds and produced an old sandshoe. He didn’t say anything fortunately

but this was captain of the Kanimbla and I felt a bit of an idiot that he had done that to me, but no matter, I didn’t know it was there.

Well it was a lower order troop deck which could carry far more troops that three hundred and twenty and for some reasons I was put in charge of this troop deck which had no troops for which I was duly grateful.

I didn’t have to worry about anybody, I had been in the army at this stage about six weeks or so, people, you knew nothing and learnt fast.

None that were specific, seeing I had gone on board with a number of doctors I was hoping for a bit of work, and I

remember treating several people. One lad with an ankle sprain or something like that and two or three others that I actually treated, give myself a bit of something to do, otherwise we were just waiting around. Doing nothing and enjoying the lovely trip to Japan that you didn’t have to pay for.

We had one stop in Jayapura Harbour which was in Dutch New Guinea. There is a few photos there that we might get a look at; we might not. We overnighted there, and there was a swimming hole a short walk inland

so a lot of us went there for a swim. It was pretty hot in New Guinea, so I am glad I didn’t serve there.

Well exciting to be getting away as a young person in an

army situation knowing that the enemy wasn’t going to fire back on you. Although that wasn’t guaranteed. It was going to be an interesting experience going to Japan. I took the care over the years to learn the language and by the time I had been there six and a half years I was reasonably fluent. My wife said she wanted a pair

of green gloves, and I said, “Okay in we come.” What did I say, (Speaks Japanese) this lady wants a pair of green gloves. She said, “How do you know all that?” And I said, “I have got a good vocabulary, it is as easy as that.” I tell another funny story

when I was president of the Rotary Club we were interested in a student exchange and we had a Japanese student come to visit us one time so with my Japanese I prepared a talk for her, a few minutes welcome and all of that sort of thing, and I delivered it and then delivered it in English for the benefit of the rest of the audience and the (UNCLEAR sarge of the downs) said, “President Gordon he did very well with the Japanese

talking to Uriko but the light only dawned when he redelivered in English.” And the same girl she wrote a letter back saying, “Your president, he speak very good Japanese, I think he learnt it from girls.” There are various methods of speaking Japanese, the girls they spoke very softly.

I mean to say when the occupation troops first went to Japan from Morotai and those places and they had experience with the Japanese troops and the Japanese soldiers’ language, they would use it on the girls and they would reduce them to tears. For instance, “Omori kutchi kai.” Roughly means, “Come here

you bitch.” Otherwise, “Motta kitti kudasai” is “Come here please?” Great difference in inflection. The lads soon learnt not to upset the girls too much by speaking nasty Japanese soldier’s language to them.

We were in Kure Harbour, Kure was about twenty miles from Hiroshima and was the principal base that had been allotted to BCOF anyway. We were in charge of looking after a couple of prefectures in the western end of Honshu. And the New Zealanders were further down, the British were further that way,

east, they were in prefectures up further from Kure. There were Indian troops up there, they mainly had medical facilities up there they had an Indian General Hospital which we took over when they went home in the beginning of 1948.

Well the Kure docks had been bombed out of existence just about because Kure was actually a secret naval base during the war which allied troops didn’t know about for a considerable time. But when they did they bombed the daylights out of the docks. There was plenty of evidence of bomb damage even when I got there. Kure the city

itself well I don’t think it was terribly much. Kure was named after nine hills or something like that. ‘Ku’ is the Japanese word for nine, anyway it was quite picturesque. Not the most glamorous place in Japan but adequate for troops in occupation.

That’s right, that was on an island

in Kure Bay if you like, not all that far from Kure itself, just a half an hour’s ferry ride to Etajima. And the 130 AGH itself, we had occupied the Japanese naval academy building. There are pictures of that too. I think it must have been a real naval headquarters because there was quite a set up there which

the occupation forces took over.

Well most of the offices like physiotherapy department and general x-ray and that, they were all on the first floor, officers’ quarters were in the main on the second quarter and female quarters were,

I am doing it Japanese style, first floor officers, second floor was, first floor was second floor in Japan, they were one more than us. Anyway the officers’ mess was right up on top, it was really heaven sent, seventy-five steps

from the ground floor up to the officers. I was young those days and I could go up and come down three at a time without ever having a mishap, it was my exercise for the day.

Well adequate,

there was infrared lamps, short wave ,material, not as sophisticated and specific as we have in modern day gymnasiums today. There were bars and some of the stuff we had in physiotherapy departments in Australian hospitals. And I have got an article I wrote for physiotherapists in war mainly dealing with

South Australian physios who had been to the Second World War and myself in the Korean War and there was one of my colleagues served for a period in the Vietnam War and she wrote of her experiences as well in this particular book which was written by the senior physio who monitored my approach as a young student in ‘44, ‘45 and ‘46. And it was years

before I got to call her by her Christian name. There was a definite barrier between graduates and students which took time to break down.

Well I was

twenty-two, twenty-three about a month after I got to Japan, most of the work was mainly sports injuries. I remember when I sold my practice here way back in 1990 this young bloke came in he was looking for something and he was turning twenty-three and I said, “Gee that’s young.” And he said, “What were you doing when you were twenty-three?”

“Oh that’s right, I had been in Japan for a month and in the army for two or three months or something.” And he was probably first year after graduation, because the course is four years now and presumably he went in at eighteen and he graduated at twenty-two and turned twenty-three sometime during my dealings with him. I was

sixty-seven in my first retirement.

We weren’t all that busy, although there was certainly enough; we were far busier in the definite stages of the Korean War. If I saw twenty a day that would probably be about it.

At the vital stages of the Korean War, we handled about a hundred and sixty a day.

Like I said mostly sports injuries, there were a few dependant children and wives of servicemen up there. And one specifically I do remember this, one six year old girl was diagnosed with polio which was a bit

strange and there was some thought she might be sent to Australia and I was quite willing to volunteer to take her home and go back with her. That never happened. She had the most gorgeous red hair this young girl. And the Japanese lady in my department who helped me, she was an orderly or something like that, and she loved playing with this girl’s hair,

she was fascinated by it. Japanese in the main are unrelieved black, when my son went to Japan, the blonde, he said, “People used to stop and turn around and look at me with my blonde hair.” He probably wouldn’t have been wearing his scout hat at that stage and so he showed off his

blonde hair to a great extent.

One Japanese lady who was the cleaner mostly, her English wasn’t too bad. I do remember her name it was Hisako, I have got a photo of her somewhere too.

Mainly I did it on my own; I didn’t need an Australian orderly or anything like that; I could do the clerking myself.

BCOF had active rugby teams, possibly the Englishmen they played soccer. There was some Australian Rules

teams up there because there was a proliferation of Australians. The New Zealanders they were into rugby, there was all sorts of sports, tennis, there was always enough work but no war injuries anymore at that stage. And I must say it was marvellous to be amongst relatively young people to treat and I must say that was an experience

I always had in my army career mainly young people all of the time and they got better anyway without treatment.

Muscle re-education exercises, I can’t specifically remember what groups were affected. I had her on treatment for quite a while.

They were living on Etajima in the dependants’ village and she used to be brought up for therapy once a day at that stage. She was probably still on treatment when I went to Miyajima.

About three months.

No, no leave, I packed myself up one afternoon and on the barge and off to Miyajima.

Well we took over the old Miyajima Hotel which was a distinguished building. I believe the Prince of Wales had stayed there

when on a world tour in about 1920 or something like that. It was quite comfortable and there were various buildings there that we used as the sergeants’ mess and the ORs [Other Ranks] quarters and mess. Several buildings that were specifically built for occupation troops and around the corner and up the hill was the gymnasium.

There was a little bit of a trek to go to the gym and there was a tennis court there and I played a lot of volley ball there, the Japanese loved playing volleyball. It was most interesting, the standard stay at the con depot was about sixteen days and if you done the right thing and liked it there you could always get another week. If you did the wrong thing you were RTU,

return to unit and the PTI [Physical Training Instructor] recommends, “Get rid of him, we’re sick of him.” So a lot were sent back to their unit, someone who was enjoying it there, well they got to stay for another week.

Well how could I put it, most lads realised they were pretty well off in the con depot,

The ration of beer was one per night and that was all, no danger of too many of them getting drunk. Oh no general attitude, if you had a good attitude you could get another week, if you were just average well we had to think of our bed state, didn’t want too many people there at once, so people came and went as necessary.

Actually most of the lads were quartered in the old Miyajima Hotel and I think we would have had upwards of thirty or forty there at any one time. If you got too many, some of the others got shunted out. There was three levels of classes from the point of view of the PTIs

and they were fit, the PTIs especially. The final trek on Miyajima before you went back to your unit was up to the highest point on Miyajima which was Mount Misen, M I S E N. It is about eighteen hundred feet, wasn’t as big as Fuji

and that was test enough. I did it myself on two occasions on my own, I didn’t have to go out with the PTIs when they went on their trek, I had enough to do in my own particular small department. The work there was never onerous, but there was sufficient to keep me adequately busy.

Well yes they were fit enough, I mean they started off in an easy exercise class, you graduated to the next one and then you went to the FPE, full physical exercise, and once you had gone there you were expected to go up

Mount Misen at a reasonable trot. They always went up in a group of course; I was only silly enough to go up there on my own.

I wanted to find out what was up the top and really there was a magnificent view of the inland sea. It was well worth the trip.

No I always had sufficient other things to do, I could have if I had wanted to.

Well they were in a favourable view of the first floor of the Miyajima Hotel and so I didn’t have to go far to the mess.

A building on the side, only a short run but I think I had the pick of the place on the first floor.

No. I was very well behaved at that stage.

Well the posting to the con depot was my original posting and I had been to the 130 AGH to relieve the older physiotherapists while he went home and leave, and

when he came back I went to Miyajima. I think the PTIs I think they were quite concerned that there was a posting for a physiotherapist at Miyajima and they never had one until I came there and they were quite concerned at the fact that I would probably take over the place, I didn’t. There was always a bit of work there for me to do but most of the good work there at the con depot was done by the PT [Physical Training] blokes who

were an excellent group. I tell the story one time, I might have been there a couple of months and we all went up to Kure to attend a boxing competition. All of the PT blokes went in it and another bloke who was a cinema sergeant on Miyajima, he went too and they all won their bouts.

The chief PTI he was up against some Englishman and they were badly mismatched and he was pummelling the daylights out of this poor Pommy [English] bloke so the referee in the middle of it, said, “Stop the fight.” Didn’t want to kill him off. And it was a clean sweep for the con depot with twelve victories at the boxing

contest which was up in Kure and it was a good trip. We had a good time. We went well rugged up because by then it was a Japanese winter.

Summer. July and it was pretty hot and getting used to the hot climate there

I think I developed a belt rash at one stage which didn’t cause me too much trouble but you were continuously in a sweat and because I had seven of those all together, seven hot Japanese summers, but you got used to it. I must say subsequent to that I never noticed any sort of belt rash anymore.

Well you say cold, we didn’t have cold until November.

Culture? Sorry. Well gradually there was if you like a ‘no fraternisation with the enemy’ order out. So your contact with the Japanese other than

those employed by the force and there was a considerable number of them who worked for BCOF, I think it was a matter of getting the Japanese economy on the go again, although I think the Japanese paid for it. It was a gradual process, they had books out on learning Japanese and

that sort of thing and I thought, “This is a little bit of an exercise”. It was handy, the Japanese if you spoke reasonable Japanese you certainly got better service out of anybody, especially in the shops. They realise that somebody with a bit of Japanese, they weren’t going to take you down. The word ‘takai’, “Takai!” “Too much!”

Well known Japanese word known by most troops after a while. Culture, well you have read about what the Japanese did, and well I was interested in a bit of their history and I attempted to absorb what I was going to find out while I was there.

There were British troops, by the time I got to Miyajima the Indian Element had largely gone home. They had their partition in

August of 1947. Virtually just after we got there, there was a big celebration in Kure about the Indian officers and their troops and what have you, the dividing between India and Pakistan. But they went home; I think they were on their way out in

‘47 and into ‘48.That’s when the 130 AGH took over the Indian General Hospital and just called it Kure Wing, it was quite well set up as a hospital there and I think it had been a Japanese Naval Hospital in the war time situation.

No Canada didn’t send occupation troops for whatever reasons. The only connection I had with Canadian soldiers etcetera was through the Korean War.

Get up have breakfast go around to the

my small department which was in the gymnasium facility. Treat any patients in the morning; usually get most of your work over in the morning and most times in the afternoon unless there was something special I used to play volleyball with the patients. You could always get into a team; so consequently I was never fitter

and getting paid for it.

Well they found out that I was easy to get along with and wasn’t going to interfere with their side of the situation and we got on okay and all became good friends.

I remember one went home after a while and came back as an infantry soldier in the Korean War and he was subsequently wounded came back and was in a hospital bed. Same as the senior PTI he went off

at one stage and went into military government for a while and then he came back and the good looking bloke, big hit with the girls too, he came across with the hospital when we moved across from Etajima to Kure finally about the end of 1948 he was there for a couple of years as well before he packed up and went home.

Well I was going to say with finding old Spanner in a hospital bed I organised a reunion if you like of the PT staff from the con depot days. It was only a matter of the other three of us congregating alongside his bed and talking to him, this must have been about 1951

at this stage without being too sure of the date.

Well they looked after the exercise section fairly entirely and I looked after anybody who required specific physiotherapy. Like quadriceps drill and that

sort of thing, get it skirted generally by the PT program but you had to be specific if you were tying to build up some of these quadriceps, the muscle here, after a knee injury or something like that. there were enough of them, I treated all sorts of things over there.

Well the doctor, we always worked with the doctor and the doctor always referred people for specific treatment and you would liaise with the doctor to get somebody put onto a more specific physio program of they needed it. It was…the work was easy,

like I say I worked in the morning and played volleyball in the afternoon.

Mainly knees, sports injuries again, well at that stage there was no gun shot wounds or anything like that. Some

people needed specific breathing exercises, they were mainly young and they came good on their own anyway. They just needed to be guided along the right paths.

Heaps overall, overall I was aware of there was two others in Japan, the

the older man Captain Anderson he had wartime ribbons and he was the bloke I relieved when he went home on leave. He was up there for almost another year because when the convalescent home moved from Miyajima to Etajima to become the convalescent wing most of the

treatments were conducted in the actual hospital physio department, he had his specific patients and I had mine. But come the move to Kure, he went home and I stayed.

Well there was a third because

this bloke that I talked about in Adelaide who had been in New Guinea he said, “When you go up there you will find a bloke from Queensland whose name is Len Lomas.” And I found him, he was posted to 92 AGH on the mainland doing to work there, I met him a couple of times that’s all and he probably went home

when Kure wing was set up. Possibly as early and the February or March ‘48 I think I only met him the once. I can’t remember meeting him another time.

Three physios served in the occupation all together and there was only one served

in the Korean War from Australia anyway .

No.

Yes.

Look it was relaxed; there was no military police over there for a start, although we did have regimental police from the con depot personnel watching things down in the village at night etcetera. It was pretty free and easy; lots of visitors came to the islands. We were always getting requests, “Can I come and stay with you for a few days?”

Art one stage I had to knock back one of my friends because we had such a conglomeration of people over there one Easter, Easter of 1948 I said, “Look we’re full, if I accept another one I will be in trouble with the CO [Commanding Officer].” It was a good place to visit.

We had spare rooms at the Miyajima Hotel that were always full of convalescents and any officers that were

convalescent and there were enough of them, they messed with us in our officers mess. The CO who was a rank of major, a doctor, and there was a company officer who was a lieutenant like myself. He only outranked me by being about twelve or fourteen years older than me. And I used to call him the con man of the con depot.

He was too, he gave me all of the lousy jobs like the paying officer, I was the returning officer for one of the elections, I forget what else. Paying officer, no one wanted to be paying officer you have got to trek into Kure wearing the pistol to get the money. That occupied most of one day. What

else did I do over there that was not…a regimental duty other than my own specific duties? One time it turned out to be a money change, we had British Armed Forces special vouchers and apparently they also had them in Germany and there were rackets being started up , not that I was a member of any of them. We had a

complete money change, had to collect everybody’s money, and this was March the 1st 1948. The CO was away, Steve sent was away I was looking down the barrel of handling the lot. Anyway they got back there the morning after I had started handling it. And Steve said to me, “Gordon, you’re doing such a good job, carry on.” I wasn’t handling all of the money and it wasn’t until the next day,

we were supposed to go and lodge it with the pay office that same day but by the time we had done it all and got the jeep on the ferry across to Kure it didn’t arrive until the afternoon of the following day and the CSM [Company Sergeant Major] wasn’t very pleased with me. He said, “You should have been in here yesterday.” And I said, “We were in Miyajima, sir.

I had work to do for a start and we didn’t get it all fixed up.” He said, “I am toying with you bring paraded to the brigadier to explain yourself.” And I said, “Okay.” Anyway he thought better of it and he gave us our exchange money and we went off to Miyajima again. I must say later I cried my eyes out, I found a BAF [British Armed Forces] pound note in one of my pockets that I didn’t get cashed, I really don’t know what happened to that., it got lost

somewhere, it didn’t get swapped for a new one. Too bad, can’t be helped.

Well it was an interesting situation, what you heard it from somebody in BCOF?

Well from the point of view of a pure changeover they got everybody to bank the money that they had, right down to three pence was a note, threepence, sixpence, shilling, probably two shillings although if it was British they had half a crown I think, probably half a crown British forces so they

probably weren’t too familiar with the Australian florin. Anyway I think there was a five bob note, a ten bob note, and a pound note. Like I say I found one later which I couldn’t cash and I haven’t even got it as a souvenir now, it just plain disappeared. From the point of view of being confused there was no real confusion in the change over.

We were allowed to use Australian pennies and ha’pennies. And another thing I remember is that Australian stamps had a BCOF overprint on them and anyway people made big money out of it; unfortunately I didn’t have the brains to get a few stamps.

They were a valuable philatelic, is that the right word philatelic? You would pay about six shillings and six and seven I think it was; ha’penny I think would get you a full set, you could even have a ha’penny stamp and they were selling them in Australia and they were valuable wit ha BCOF overprint on them.

And I have heard some made quite a bit of money off them, good luck to them if they had the brains to get in there and do it. It wasn’t an illegal activity like the black market in Japan which was illegal. Perhaps I will tell you about that later.

Sacred island, no one was supposed to die

there and nobody was supposed to be born there. There was the occasional slip up but if you were a pregnant woman you got taken off the island when your time was close. Like I said, I suppose people died on the island, we weren’t terribly aware of it where we were, but it was nothing to do with us, but we didn’t know about this little stricture on the local population.

Well because it was a sacred island I think, I don’t think I ever really went into why.

Big enough.

it wasn’t very thick, if I can take time to show you a map of it., Actually I was planning to walk the other end of the island at one stage, I didn’t get very far and I got back to the mess and they said, “Where have you been?” and I said, “I was going to go around the island but it was too far.” I probably would have got lost. If I said it

was, a bit on the, must be about three or four miles long and perhaps half a mile wide, it wasn’t very big.

There was a village close to where the con depot was,

and I don’t know, three or four thousand I suppose. Etajima Island had only four to five thousand all together, no there must have been more than that. Really no idea but it was never terribly crowded.

Japan is full of mountains.

I mentioned Misen and there was a range of hills which went down the spine of the island, Mount Misen was eighteen hundred feet which was the biggest. Japan in the main was mountainous, there was only about fifteen percent of arable land in Japan, all of the rest was mountains.

I was there October ‘47 until about June of ‘48. The convalescent depot left to become a convalescent wing at Etajima and they took our situation over there. A few of our blokes got left there to staff the place, including the company officer.

And they had three officer training schools there, they were developing the Australian Regular Army at that stage and they needed more developed officer. So it was just a matter of supplementing the fact that you’re an officer with extra training. So there were three classes there up until the end of the year and then it became a sort of a leave centre on

Miyajima and I went back there a number of times. Well I knew my way around there.

No the medical corps you seemingly didn’t have to, you just learnt by your mistakes.

Well I didn’t make too many mistakes I don’t think. Like I said just keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble. The army was a great place to learn as you go along.

No I was never bored if I wasn’t working I was busy acquiring a Japanese vocabulary and enjoying life in the mess as well. Other things, most of the lads on Miyajima they had a girlfriend down in the village,

you weren’t supposed to fraternise with them but an army order is always meant to be disobeyed if at all possible.

Well the special wing was always full enough.

The VD [Venereal Disease] wing of the hospital at Etajima, that was behind

the, behind the barbed wire, I remember late ‘47 going on towards Christmas time they were always getting requests from the special wing for a couple of popular songs at the time. One was Don’t Fence Me In because there was a barbed wire fence and the other one was Prisoner of Love.

Well the special wing always had plenty of customers. I read that the 20th Field ambulance they had a regimental brothel actually and

you wouldn’t remember this woman’s name but she was a big time writer for the Women’s Weekly at that stage, her name was Dorothy Drey, I am not too proud to mention that and she was running around there and they said, “Yeah we have got a regimental brothel for the troops” She said, “Close it down otherwise I will spread it all over the journalistic pages of Australia.”

And I think she meant it, so the regimental brothel got closed down which increased the population of the special wing. Yes.

No there was no dependants there.

And well the con depot was only for soldiers, not dependants and their children. No I didn’t have any situation there.

Well 116 ceased to be a proper unit and we became the convalescent wing of 130.

Yes that’s right.

It was in a section of the hospital and we had a big area which we turned into a gymnasium, I think the lads we had that transferred to the hospital, they were in a special bed area close by.

So they were still part of the hospital but they were in the convalescent wing. They had been in hospital previously as necessary, yes.

Etajima was set up as a six hundred bed hospital.

Oh it worked all right we just moved into a couple of vacant areas or a couple of vacant for us, one to take the gymnasium area.

Yeah well as I say there was a bed area, I can’t remember how many beds they had there at the time. Upwards of probably thirty and we had an area with the big gymnasium area and anyway needed physiotherapy they transferred them down to the hospital; physiotherapy department and so we worked in

concert with each other. The old guy and the young guy, I hate that expression, the old bloke and the young bloke.

I don’t know. He was

somewhere between forty-five and fifty and he seemed to be quite an old man to me, at the age of twenty-two and even when I came back and I had my twenty-fourth birthday and he was still there, well he was a year older too. He was a pretty abstemious sort of fellow, although he left to go to Miyajima

to black market his goods. Yes. He often seen me looking across there he must have had more clothes than I did. I will do more on the black market later if you like.

He treated those specifically in hospital and I treated those that belonged to the con wing, well they were my responsibility the hospital people were his. Well the work was easy, you didn’t kill yourself working

and there was an adequate amount to do.

Well I am sure I was given the job of pay officer amongst other things; that was interesting enough anyway. I can tell you a story, we were in the pay office doing the pay on Melbourne Cup day 1948 and

and we were all sitting there walking away and they turned on radio Australia and they turned on the running of the Melbourne Cup of 1890 won by Carbine and this little girl she was the girlfriend of the postal bloke and he was a person…we used to call him Stamps, I have got no idea what his other name was, Stamps

and she listened and she listened and she said, “Oh Carbine won the cup, I must go and tell Stamps.” Anyway Stamps came in and he said, “What's this crap about Carbine winning the cup?” And I said, “That’s right, your little girlfriend was in, wasn’t she? Well Carbine did win in 1890 and now we’re waiting for the 1948 cup to take place.” And then we sat there and listened to Winfire take out the cup.

We had a BCOF radio station, it was called WLKS at that stage, they had people used to put across specials for the special wing and then subsequently they became a BCOF radio station when only the Australian element was there based in Kure because when we left

Etajima the Americans took it over.

Well you would go and get the money the pay sergeant or pay corporal would signal how much money you needed and to get a requisition order for it you would go to the central pay office in Kure when we were at Miyajima and

get it, as I say wearing the pistol. You always had to have a pistol but it probably didn’t have any bullets in it most of the time. But you had to be regimentally dressed for it and scare people if necessary and go back and pay it all out. Put it into the pay books before you did it. Of course a lot of blokes with the black market rackets, they hardly needed to draw any pay.

I remember one of the company officers talked to the British troops during the Korean War, he said, “You never draw any pay; what rackets are you in?” And to the blokes that were really taking some he said, “You’re taking too much pay out; what rackets are you in?” I suppose there were a few rackets there; I never did anything illegal like flogging [selling] the army’s property,

canteen rations, that’s another thing all together, you bought them and paid for them.

The first time was about three months and second time went from June to about the end of November, then we were gradually transferring

the whole hospital across from Etajima to Kure. But I think I am right if I say we were out of Etajima entirely by Christmas of that year and then the Americans moved in and took over the whole box and dice. Headquarters BCOF was actually situated on Etajima as well in another building, that moved across to a complex in Kure and

so we were, Australian forces were completely out of Etajima entirely. Presumably all of the dependants if there were any dependants left there they moved out to the dependants’ village at Hiro which was called Rainbow Village.

I don’t know.

Pre-embarkation leave there was none, I came home in about March of 1949 and it really took me

fifty-six days to have twenty-eight days leave. I wasn’t back in Japan until about the end of May. I remember my final day home here in Adelaide I went with my mother and my aunt, her twin sister to the Adelaide Cup of 1949 and I have always remembered the winner I can’t remember any other winners but it was a horse called Cullen.

Anyway that same night I was on the Melbourne Express going back to Japan.

When we moved to Kure as a hospital we were in the old Indian General Hospital area. I have a photo of that somewhere. I hope I have included them as my stuff.

The physiotherapy department was on the ground floor where the convalescent wing with the gymnasium and that sort of stuff was on the first floor.

Well the convalescent wing was entirely closed and when we moved to Kure I was given a small section of two

rooms for the physio department. See because in 1949 there wasn’t a lot of work anymore, there was a couple of Japanese interpreters slept in the third room, they weren’t any problem, once we needed to expand, once the Korean War had started well they got moved out and we took over that third room as part of the physiotherapy department.

We needed more space and subsequent to that we were moved to a much bigger facility when the special wing closed down and was put into just a ward in one of the hospital buildings, I was given one of their facilities to use as a much more expanded

physiotherapy department, but that was 1951 or something like that I would have to think to get a specific date for that.

Well and truly yes.

Half a dozen of we junior officers were more or less quartered down the end of the place in a small building which would take six, and there was another room that the Japanese house girls used to use and actually my South Australian optometrist friend Don Wittenbry,

I suppose he is still around somewhere I don’t know, he was older than me, he might had departed. He called it the boundary riders hut because it was so far away from the mess. There was no problem being down there in boundary riders hut way away from the mess, we used to have fun and games at night and make all sorts of, not too much noise because we were, we really at that stage we weren’t close to the hospital facility because I think the nearest building was the unit club and that sort of thing and

there were no patients there. That was where we were quartered until such times, it wasn’t all that long. By the time I went home on leave in March of ‘49 we had moved closer to the mess on the other side of the hospital.

These were all buildings which were part of the Japanese naval hospital.

It was in good condition, we had plenty of Japanese contract staff to come in; if it was run down they spruced it up

again. There were lots of buildings built for troops at various stages but not in the hospital.

Yes I think in the original situation you had one house girl per officer.

I think I have got a picture of my first house girl somewhere. Subsequently when we got back to Kure, I used to pick the ugly ones, no temptation.

My behalf yes. The previous…

my last house girl she was all right, but I think she had been married to a Japanese soldier during the war, but I never found out much about her. But I got good service out of her and she was there when I went home to farewell me, in February 1954.

I am sure there was heaps. I remember my mother saying to me, “Don’t interfere with your house girl.” And so that’s why I picked the ugly ones, well not ugly but they had past their best, poor old Omisan she had passed her best. And there is a picture of my house girl on Miyajima and she was an older woman, no interest

a young twenty-two or three year old.

The force paid them. You paid mess fees but that was all, that went to the mess to provide various facilities. And

the employment of BCOF personnel I think was finally managed by the Japanese Government, must have cost them a bundle.

Well you could see them often if you concentrated on them; you might see them at lunch time if you were in the quarters again. They had all gone home by about four or four thirty or something like

in all facilities, even on Miyajima and in Kure and Etajima as well. There was a Japanese village just outside headquarters BCOF area on Etajima and it was called Washabi. It was quite close; they had a guard on the gate if you like restricting the entry

of the people who didn’t need to be in the designated BCOF area.

Economic conditions and that sort of thing?

They were adequate facilities, you couldn’t

complain about them; the facilities were good. Even the boundary riders hut was all right. It was…there was quite a distance to the mess, that was all.

Oh a bit of illicit drinking, I don’t know that there was any illicit love making

or anything like that. I do remember one time one of my colleagues he had one of the AMWAS [Australian Medical Women’s Army Service] with him, Australian nurses, we finished up and went to bed, I don’t know what he did; I never asked him. We left him to it. And then he was the bloke that finally married a Japanese girl anyway. And he

asked me would I go to the wedding and stand alongside of him. But at this stage I was friendly with this other girl and I hate to say it, but she put her foot down. I told her, “But he has invited me to his wedding.” And she said, “You’re not going.” And I didn’t either. At least I didn’t marry her; I knew what she was like.

Not really. I think a lot of the Australian servicewomen disapproved of the fraternisation the troops were doing with the local population. That was just one situation and I have never forgiven myself for not standing with Billy at his wedding. He and his wife are still in Queensland and we still

have contact with him.

Yes. They did all of the work that was necessary, AMWAS’ mess parties and sisters’ mess parties; they had them quite

often so you couldn’t say you suffered from lack of white female company.

All of the way through actually. I

the day that Princess Elizabeth was married, I was on Miyajima at the stage, I took myself into Hiroshima on my own. It was declared a public holiday, we didn’t have to work because the Princess was getting married. So I went to Hiroshima that day and wandered around on my own. I felt quite safe in Japan at all stages, wandering around late at night and into the

mountains on your own sometimes touring. Never felt threatened whatsoever. And yet there was always the potential there, you can imagine. The people were told by their Emperor at the end of the war the quote was translated, “Endure the Unendurable.” Occupation troops on Japanese soil and the Japanese people were told by the Emperor to endure it and not make too

much fuss. In the main they didn’t, and if there were any troubles between soldiers and the local population it was probably drunk soldiers looking for women.

Wasn’t necessary, no. I remember some of my troops, my first leave was to the Kuwana Hotel of January ‘48 and I saw snow for the first time. Didn’t get to see snow in Australia before then. And I caught the train in Kure or even at Miyajima and went on the,

forces train, there were forces carriages on Japanese trains to carry occupation troops. And went to Kuwana and went to Tokyo on one day because I went with some of the lads, I was meant to be doing touring; they just wanted to go to a Japanese beer hall.

And it was a good idea because you would get a huge glass of beer for ten yen and when we got back from there we all hired a rickshaw and we were, “Extra money for the first bloke to get us back to Kure central.” And so these rickshaw blokes they worked like mad to get us back to get us back there quickly and win the extra money. That was January ‘48 in the depth of the cold weather.

One of the hospital blokes on a dare he had a swim in the Kuwana pool next morning. Needless to say he had to be given a little bit of sustenance after he came out, he was shivering. But that was my mad friend Cassidy from South Australia; he had connections with Henley Beach

and subsequently was killed in an accident a number of years ago.

The damage caused by the atom bomb. I first went to Hiroshima in August 1948, we had only probably been there ten days and Hiroshima was like a magnet to, you had to get on the ferry from Etajima and go across to Kure and I can’t

remember whether you caught the train down there or you went down on sponsored buses and came back like that. Anyway we got to Hiroshima and really in two years after the atom bomb there had been virtually no rebuilding, the whole place was still flattened, it was still a dreadful state there in 1947 but they gradually got it rebuilt it because

when I back in 1985 you couldn’t recognise anything. It is a long time between ‘47 and ‘85 and they even had odd elevated roads running into Hiroshima at that stage in 1985 after the place that had been made such a mess of by the atom bomb in 1945.

Steel buildings that were still rabble where they stood. Nothing had happened, the Japanese didn’t have any money at that stage; needless to say they made a good comeback. The Korean War put Japan on its feet again from an economic point of view, but there was still a lot of general devastation and you really had to feel a bit sorry for them.

Well I suppose we had, I must say we weren’t concerned. Our urgings from one of our service friends we both registered ourselves in the Atomic Ex-Services

Association in case we had anything which you could describe as perhaps caused by picking up radiation in Hiroshima. I was there times, out of number only the other day I said to one of my friends at a KSEAFA [Korea and South East Asia Forces Association of Australia] meeting and he was in Japan in about 1950 for a period, he also went to

Vietnam for a period, and I said, “How many times did you get to Hiroshima, Geoff?” He said, “Heaps of times.” And I said, “Well so did I.” There is always the possibility, but nothing has happened up until now.

Well I did get one I wonder where it is, this little pot that had been totally flattened, it must have melted and then reconstituted itself all stove in, they can do the same with beer bottles and I bought this souvenir in 1953, so it could have been manufactured by then but it looked legitimate enough

as an atom bomb souvenir. And I also have a photo somewhere of one of the victims of the atom bomb where the skin of his back was, for lack of a medical word, keratoma, it had all gone thick. Anyway I think that’s somewhere, I have seen the photo just recently while I was picking up memorabilia

photos and also the little ornament is somewhere in the study but that’s all my atom bomb souvenirs anyway. Other than some of the photos.

I wasn’t aware of any, it was two years after the bomb was dropped that I first went there.

Also then in 1950 we spent an overnight situation in Nagasaki the other atom bomb place. I think they dropped the bomb out of the city central so the damage in Nagasaki I was far more minimal, if you can call it minimal a thing like that; on people at Hiroshima,

that was direct. I have got a photo of the atom bomb target which is left as it is still the same. There is now a big peace memorial in Hiroshima around this particular place.

Well we didn’t specifically go to see Nagasaki, there were three or four of us and we went to Beppu first, Beppu is the house of the hot springs. Where matron and I went through the geisha house together, plus the other two and anyway we went there and we went across to Nagasaki for no specific reason other to have a look at the place. One place we did see was the reputed home of Madame Butterfly.

You know the Puccini opera? I have got photos of that too I think. Unfortunately one of the chaps I went with was an infantry lieutenant belonging to 3 Battalion and this was Easter 1950, March or April and then the Korean War broke out in June.

He unfortunately was killed in the November, I think he was a platoon commander in one of the 3 Battalion Companies. I have got a photo of him too somewhere.

Well it was very interesting.

I went with four officers, three other officers on the first time, girlfriend on the second time and was there on the third time with matron and Sister Cavenar and Bunty and myself. Three time to Beppu and once.

Well it was a Japanese hot springs area and there was pools of different colours, red and green of course and probably even blue. It was most interesting. And when we went back the other times it was highly organised they had these big Japanese bath houses, the Japanese they don’t seem to worry; with Europeans the men were separate and the

women were separate, in our party we went into different times into the special bathhouse and we did the same at Hakone, this is the trip we made as civilians in 1985.

Well at the Kuwana Hotel?

Well it was interesting.

You got into Japanese hot baths and that sort of thing. Hakone near Mount Fuji was a hot springs area as well and we didn’t do it in the BCOF time but then the other time we went to the Japanese bath house, and it was the same as Beppu on the other

occasion. When we were there as soldiers, I don’t think we went.

I don’t think so I don’t remember doing it. Should have I suppose but we didn’t.

Good look around Beppu and there was some brand of monkeys that Beppu was famous for and

it was a real pleasure resort anyway. I have got photos of Beppu somewhere.

Yes that was in Nagasaki.

Well it was interesting because there was a Japanese wedding going on there at the same time. Now we didn’t get in, we were just on the outside of the

reputed house of Madame Butterfly. I suppose based on the Puccini opera there must have been some relativity of truth in it because the American Naval Lieutenant fell in love with, what was her name, ‘honcho san’? That’s the Japanese word for butterfly, Cho-Cho, and they had a baby

and it was called Trouble. And that’s all I knew about that and I know ‘One Fine Day’ aria was the principal from that Puccini opera. While we were there, actually when we were all there, the other two and the lieutenant that was killed we went to some dance hall and there was the Japanese hostess, they were very nice and

then at the end of the night we had to pay for the pleasure of their company by the hour or so, and that’s all we got, just dancing.

In that particular situation mainly European dress. Most of the Japanese appeared in their traditional dress on New Years Day

even little kids in their little kimonos. My wife has got a very nice one which I paid…four thousand yen I paid for it, now that sounds like a lot of money but you wouldn’t believe that it was five dollars in our money, on then

standards, the Australian pound was worth eight hundred. No it must have been five pound not five dollars. Anyway that’s a double side you can wear inside out or outside in, a double sided kimono and when we went back in 1985 the price of the same kimono would have been astronomic, four thousand yen.

Well I must say I remember during the war being quite furious at some of the reports of atrocities committed on Australian troops and you know became aware of executions and that sort of thing. One of our VC [Victoria Cross] winners, he was executed by the Japanese sword. The Japanese in their samurai code, it was an honour to lose your head like that.

They were finally ambivalent, they realised they were a defeated enemy, although all of the stuff they did during the war, it was the militaristic people. Most of the Japanese males on the street they seemed to be quite harmless and the girls

were a different thing all together. And I am often quoting the phrase that we kicked the men of that defeated nation and cosseted the women from eight to eighty.

Well with the fraternisation with young females etcetera Australians troops really never had it so good. And anybody else as well, other

nationalities. A lot of our lads finally married Japanese girls, the one that I told you about, the wedding that I didn’t get to go to. Because of distaff type interference.

Not from a personal point of view. I wasn’t struck on what the Japanese had done to two of my cousins. This particular cousin when I came home in 1949 he said, “I would like to see him and know what he thinks of the Japanese from that point of view.” So I went down and seen Arthur and that was the last time because when I came back home again in 1951 he was dead.

I told him about aspects of the occupation and that sort of thing, wasn’t like being under Japanese POW camps and all that they had to suffer.

I felt very sort for those

people that got the atom bomb in Hiroshima, having seen the devastation and all of that sort of stuff as well. You had to realise that your personal contact with the Japanese, they are just the same as any other population. They don’t want war; they are just like the Iraqis at the moment

they don’t want it but they’re getting it. Even the Germans, one of my friends in the Rotary Club, he was in Holland during the war, and he suffered at the hands of the Germans, I don’t know whether physically, but the we have a couple of Germans in our Rotary Club as well and there was this bloke who was a butcher and John May said to somebody, “Who could hate Harry Krueger?”

Of course he unfortunately is dead as well. Actually only picked up his wife the other day for the most recent Rotary change over, they must have invited some of the Rotary widows, well that’s by the by. But that illustrates some of my points.

It was after I came home on leave in 1951 some of the fellows up there were buying American cars and while I was on leave I got a sum of money posted back into my pay book, sufficient to have the money in Japan when I wanted it to pay about a million yen, so I have been a

millionaire at some stage, a million yen, about nine hundred pounds sterling I think I paid for this car, can you imagine that in today’s prices? Anyway you saw the big 1951 right hand drive DeSoto, it was my pride and joy, I brought it home and I had it for ten years.

Allowed me to get around more, you weren’t dependant on jeeps and that sort of thing, they were far better.

I will have to think about this one a bit, North Koreans came across the parallel quite early in the morning on the 25th of June but it didn’t percolate through to us

until the evening or so. Consequently we were immediately on a ‘you’re not going home’ type footing, we would be staying for the duration. So we had been told in March, I think it was March it doesn’t really matter that the occupation was going to finish for Australian troops and I remember writing home and

saying, “I am due for leave in July or so but I will stick it out and come home when the force pulls out.” We didn’t finish up until three years later for me and a considerable time for other Australian troops. Lorraine was in Japan for another six months after I was there.

I suppose there was if I wanted to. But I was happy doing the job I was up there doing and I was young free over twenty-one unattached, I could write my own ticket. The point was I was doing the work I was trained for and a lot of

other people weren’t. And the point was there was still a job for me in Japan, albeit it wasn’t vert arduous, certainly once the Korean War started it made up for it.

We were then told to wear our identity discs at all times. Previous to that your ID [identification] disc which soldiers during the Second World War conscientiously, we didn’t have to trouble. But that’s one message we got. And immediately our hospital

CO instituted all of the male personnel of the hospital going on a route march in and around Kure and at one stage we had a ten miler one night and a twenty miler another night, mainly after four the personnel that could be spared from hospital duties went out on a route march in charge of a company officer and that lasted about a

month. And the company officer decided to assault a hill and send us up but by the time we got there he was the worse for wear and so he must have said to the CO,” Sir why don’t we chop out the route march; there are other duties to do in the hospital rather than walking around Kure?” It was good though, you had a

raging thirst by the time you got back. The first bottle of beer went down with great ease.

Well it was, we started to expand, realising that we were going to get ourselves involved in the Korean War.

Some of these lads were specially selected and underwent a degree of training under one of the medical officers who finally went to Korea as a forward medical field ambulance, just to supplement the medical facilities that 3 Battalion would need when they were in the field. And 3 Battalion of course had its own RMO [Regimental Medical Officer]

responsible for troops medical welfare, the field ambulance probably provided the stretcher bearers and that sort of thing, supplement to the overall medical facility. And actually 3 Battalion got to Korea about the end of September when the United Nations were virtually going to be pushed off the Korean

peninsula because there was only a little box which they call the Taegu box; Taegu was a Korean city half way up the peninsula that hadn’t been really occupied by the North Korean troops. It was all North Korean at that stage because the Chinese didn’t get into it until they got up close to the border in November and it was starting to get cold. The UN [United Nations] troops were doing so

well there was this business, “We will all be home by Christmas.” Whether that was one of Macarthur’s [General Douglas Macarthur] promises or not I don’t know. But down at the KSEAFA meeting the other day somebody had published a book called Home by Christmas; of course we got home by Christmas, three years later.

Well we didn’t meet personally but he came onto Miyajima in November of ‘47 in a rather whirlwind tour of the western area of Honshu. So he came onto the island and they provided him with a black car to take

him up to the Ryoso Hotel which is in Napal Park, another beautiful area of Miyajima and he was sitting on there and the street down on the waterfront was lined with Japanese and I was the only soldier in town at that stage and I have to say that as this continuous wave of bowing Japanese I thought to myself, “He is not going to get a bow out of me”. So as he came past

as I said before, I tried to give him a hard stare. I had a slouch hat on, so if he did see me he knew that was an Australian soldier maybe. But he didn’t even see me. There was a post script to that because when another friend of mine and myself went up to the

northern area, Aomori it was called, the north coast of Honshu with my Japanese and her English and we understood we were in the Emperor’s bedroom, he had stayed about twelve months beforehand in this particular room. So that was a bit of an achievement. Further to that I have to comment that my scout son, the one that

went to Japan in 1971, the scouts were on the Japanese train and the lads were told, “Don’t go into that carriage.” And of course being scouts they wandered in. My son and a couple of his friends and they were greeted by some Japanese gentleman. And he said, “Come and meet my family.” Good English and so he went and met the family, I

think there are some photos somewhere of this incident, but it was Crown Prince Akihito, now the Japanese Emperor. And just at that time we were hosting a Japanese exchange student in our house when Phillip got back and told us about all of this, and poor Fongio and I told her about my experience and she said, “That’s not fair; I am Japanese and I haven’t seen any of them.”

Well perhaps a little bit of hidden antagonism I possibly had towards the Japanese for atrocities they had done on Australians during the Second World War. They took a whole division into custody, the 8th Division

in Singapore, eighteen odd thousand troops mainly in Changi and on the Burma/Thailand railway and so on. My two cousins I think they were both in captured in Java, I think they were living in POW camps in Thailand. So there you go.

Antagonism and that sort of stuff. No, when it comes down to dealing with people you can’t blame individuals for what the country does.

Not really you heard the story from Lorraine about the Japanese soldier up on the wall. There was one time

when the peace treaty was coming in and I was with some Japanese and we were all talking about it and they were full of apologies still at that stage. I don’t think I really talked about the war to any Japanese at length.

Well after a while we got a whole lot more work. Considerable, especially before the British Hospital arrived, they came out in late November of 1950 and we had started to get Commonwealth casualties from the moment 3 Battalion went to Korea and there was the

two battalions came up from Hong Kong, probably didn’t want to be disturbed from their lovely nice posting in Hong Kong to actually go and fight a war in Korea, they were the Middlesex Regiment and the Arglye & Sutherland Highlanders. They were the two first in and I am sorry to say this, but you know what Americans are like dishing out friendly fire.

I think the Middlesex people got a friendly greeting from an American plane in their trenches such as it was. Anyway that’s by the by. That was late September. The Inch’on landings by the Americans troops in the west of Korea and they swept into Seoul, that happened on September 15th of that year, great success; they

quickly took Seoul and then all of the Commonwealth troops broke out of the Pusan box pressed north and they were over the parallel in no time. Took Pyongyang the North Korean capital after a while and some of them even penetrated through to the Yaroo River which was the border of North Korea and China, Manchuria. And that’s when the Chinese

came into the war. We were doing so well, it was going to be home by Christmas which never happened. Anyway by then of course it was freezing cold, the troops really weren’t equipped with good winter gear and all of that sort of gear, so in the first year we had a lot of lads coming right back to the hospital with frostbite. Really there was no physical

treatment for that you just had to wait for them to thaw out and just hope they didn’t suffer any gangrene or anything nasty like that, quite possible if you had been sufficiently frozen then you would have to have a toe or a finger cut off. It wasn’t a good time.

I am sure there would be quite a lot of muscle damage if your hand

was really frozen. I think most of them had gloves, I remember reading just then that fingers would freeze to the metal parts of the rifle and that sort of thing. Definitely had to have glove protection. But fighting in all of that cold, the book if the Australian involvement in the Korean War is called Out in Cold and can I put my hand on it? No I don’t know where it is.

Well there was only me to do it, plus my Japanese masseur, he was quite useful, he used to give me a massage when I needed it after I had been slaving all day. The casualties were starting to come back and the only medical facilities they had right back in Kure

was the BCOF hospital; which was not well equipped to handle an onrush of war type casualties. We had been running the place and planning to go home, although we had July, August and most of September to re-equip as necessary for a war type situation.

One of the sisters told me recently, as a matter of fact the same girl that was with matron in the Geisha house in ‘53, she said she remembers

cutting sutures with just an ordinary pair of scissors and not a pair of suture scissors. That’s how a lot of the stuff had been sent back to store and we had to get it out again to cope with all of this. There were great changes in the hospital to cope and then of course the British hospital arrived and it was a whole lot better.

Well anything up to fifty a day.

Gun shot wound and shrapnel wounds, that sort of stuff. Burp gun wounds, the Koreans seemingly only had a

small bore machine gun which was called a burp gun and it was only small bullets but it still inflicted rather grievous injuries.

When the wounds, probably the stitches are out you can get them. Mainly gentle activity to keep their limbs mobile. I

remember we had quite an organised hands class, we had all sorts of classes there we developed them, there was knees, even a foot class if you would believe. Shoulders of course even backs and this was in the days of Kure and when I went to Korea it was a similar situation.

A group, anything from three to eight or ten or how ever many needed to be in the class at the moment.

Well at that stage it was me. I was the only one there.

Oh eight to half past five.

Sometimes, if there was somebody you neglected on one of the wards you would go and visit them after tea, so the hours were long enough. When the two British lads arrived I said, “We will always try to knock off [finish] at half past five because we always have to be here in the morning.” And what killed me, those two lads, one was a corporal

and the other a private and they got marched up from the sigs quarters and they would get up there about ten past eight and I always had to be in my department before them to set them an example. Remember there was another time in the summer days of BCOF if you like and the company officer said, “I was looking for you”. And the Japanese bloke said, ‘He hasn’t come to work yet’.”

And I said to the Japanese bloke after, “If anybody rings and wants me, tell them he is on the wards.” Sometimes it was the truth, most times it was probably the truth but this morning I really hadn’t come to work.

None of mine,

only the odd nursing procedure stuff.

We had a number of infrared lamps, never had to beg like we did at the Royal Adelaide and there was a short wave unit and exercise equipment, we had some of that from the old con depot and con wing days ,we had managed to salvage it and put it around. That was about it,

had a faradic battery for simulating reluctant muscles and a short wave unit.

Well it is mainly a section of pads, say you’re treating the back you put one on the abdomen and one on the back and it is a lovely warm feeling right through.

Brings more blood to the part and helps the bodies natural healing

process; it is a slow process.

Well bed patients those people that couldn’t get out of bed and I was often I suppose, about half of my work was on the

wards it was a matter of individual treatment there. That was especially so in the days of the Korean War, far less so in the so called summer days of BCOF.

Well mainly exercise. There was a lot of cartilage operations, meniscectomies and they had to be gotten onto straight away so they wouldn’t lose the

muscle tone and that sort of thing. I remember, this was probably a bit nasty of me, but I used to get them before they came out of the anaesthetic now, “Come on son, lift your leg.” And up it would go. And then the next day you would get them and they would be completely out of the anaesthetic and the pain barrier had set in and there was no way they could lift their leg. “Why can’t you lift your leg today, you did it for me yesterday?”

And they all used to be grouped together in the ward and so they would egg each other on, there was always more than one.

Well I think more sporting injuries that occasioned a cartilage operation, twisting and turning at football and soccer and all of those other things. There was probably, no doubt

there would be ordinary injuries that happened in trenches and that sort of thing. There was always enough of them and of course the radical treatment we used to give them; they used to stay about fourteen days in bed. They used to have the cartilage operation or even when I was working at the Royal Adelaide after, I got call in to see a cartilage operation at one

stage and I went back and complained to the senior physio, I said, “This bloke is seven days after the operation and I am asked to go and treat him it; should have been done at day one. If that had happened in my army there would have been ructions.” Anyway I said to that girl about seven days later, “Remember that cartilage patient I complained about?” and she said, “Yes.” I said, “Perfect result at fourteen days.”

So some were better than others, they have more of what you need here.

Well be gentle with him for a while and then encourage him to take the bull by the horns, mainly a matter of getting the leg

lifted because the pain barrier often prevented it and they didn’t have enough ability in their quadriceps to make it work. So you had to be nice and gentle with them and just get them to try and flick your muscle here and they would get it after a while and a couple of days later they would be a whole lot better.

Serious enough, well some of them if they were serious enough they were evacuated home. We still did a lot of work which didn’t need to go home and was going to be fit for RTU that’s return to unit, at some stage later. Well three or four weeks. At that stage

there was no convalescent depot in Kure. A few people were going back to Miyajima which was a fundamentally a leave centre at this stage and we turned it into a bit of a con depot after a while and then the authorities got together and organised a proper convalescent depot

somewhere else in Kure with a medical officer in charge.

Well I will start off with one that impressed me rather a lot, strangely enough we got a couple of Turks down from the Turkish Brigade and they had a devil of a lot of casualties because they believed in being right up the front,

within sight of the enemy. And they were tough; I can only describe these two Turkish blokes as tough, they didn’t admit to pain, they went onto somewhere else fairly quickly. But generally speaking the average soldier he was all right. Some were worse than others.

You didn’t, you just had to go, “Move your hand etcetera.” They had no English and we had no Turkish. As I say they, my two male colleagues at that stage they were impressed with them too. Actually come April

1951 the Turkish, they sent a whole brigade, we had one battalion of troops and two British battalions formed into a lose brigade, but they had sent a whole brigade and the Australians, they were right next door to each other in the front line and they were planning to have a big celebration of Anzac Day in 1951 and the Battle of

Kapyong happened about a day before and everyone got busy so the celebration didn’t take place.

It wasn’t easy but they did all of this. Both of them had hand wounds, so they

probably dealt with a grenade or something like that. Perhaps it blew up in their hand; a good one perhaps would blow your hand off. As I say these lads they were only with us for a few days but they created a lasting impression with me and my two male colleagues who were there at the time.

In the second year we dealt with a lot of burns, having experienced the Korean winter and the following Korean winter it was freezing cold too but at least they all hand plenty of warmth like, but they had petrol stoves which had the habit of blowing up from time to time and so you had badly burnt people coming back from time to time for various forms of surgery, mainly skin grafts and that sort of thing

and it was my job to mobilise their limbs as far as you could do it. Most of them came good I think anybody who was really bad well they got evacuated back to England. I remember one lad that one of my blokes was dealing with and he was having great difficulty with him, anyway he was put on the boat. And we later heard that he died on the boat and

Harry Richards said to me, “I should have gone with him at last then he would have got home to England and so would have I.” That didn’t happen, the poor boy he was a British casualty.

He was badly burnt.

Well there was one Australian soldier that I dealt with had his leg off below knee and he was evacuated home and I remember

reading later that I think he went home by a civilian aircraft, Qantas used to run to Japan, anyway this Korean wounded solider he kept the rest of the aircraft entertained with his wit and this sort of thing. They were most impressed with Curly, he was a great bloke he really was. And undoubtedly he didn’t deserve what had happened to him.

Well I guess so. You always get people they go to the depression level and they’re that bad that you really couldn’t do anything for them. They’re only young; hopefully most of them made a satisfactory recovery and, although with some it took a whole lot longer than others.

I remember at one stage I treated one of the brigadiers back from Korea, he got wounded in the hand and he came to my department and I had the treatment of him. He was okay and he went back and he later became the governor of Western Australia this particular bloke and he was governor of Western Australia for about ten years, name’s Ken Drew was it?

Anyway by this time he had a knighthood as well.

Well the department itself didn’t grow, that’s when the interpreters got booted out of the third room because we needed the extra facility and it wasn’t until about twelve or

eighteen months later that we moved to this other bigger place, but the two original lads that came out from England, we claimed we were a very good time. You wouldn’t believe it, one was a trained Chartered Society Physiotherapist, my professional equal, he was a private and I was a lieutenant. And the other lad was an army trained corporal in modes of physiotherapy. He was pretty good too, like I said

we formed a pretty good team; we didn’t need anybody else.

Well he called me sir. But we dropped all that after a while and especially when we met socially. The difference between the

British and their other ranks, they were poles apart. I remember in the mess someone saying, “Half your digs call you by your Christian names.” “Yes”, said the registrar, “We get better work out of them that way, and if they need to be slapped down, they get slapped down.” And I remember when I was at Miyajima there was these two young Pommy second lieutenants lowest form of animal life really

oh they were carrying on about their own soldiers. I said, “Listen, the Aussie digger he is the equal of his officers and what's more he is likely to often give you a punch in the nose just to prove it.” But no it was a vastly different situation between the Australian officers and the other ranks and the Pommies, they were treated like dirt under certain circumstances.

When we finished our work at half past five I said, “What time are you blokes having tea?” And they tell me and I said, “Slip up the fire escape, my room is at the end there and we will have a couple of drinks.” I couldn’t take them up through the mess so we did it sneakily, otherwise they would have been in trouble and so would have I. We used to have a friendly drink and we became great

friends. As a matter of fact I saw my Chartered Society friend in Canada when we went there. We had a great twenty-four hours reminiscing. I find I have lost track of him, I don’t know if he is alive or departed.

Well I think Harry looked after a lot of the classes and John Meares he did general work, we all did ward work because there was wards one, two and three and later there was more wards as the casualties came back. Basically it became a six hundred bed hospital, the British came out prepared for four hundred and we had two hundred so the integration meant a six

hundred bed hospital in service for the Korean War. In the so called summer days of BCOF again we had to struggle to keep our bed state up because nobody was getting sick or anything like that. Mainly sports injuries which came in and out very quickly.

If they needed it yes. There was always some wife who needed some treatment, the odd kid or two. The little six year old girl she had gone home years before that. I remember one lad he had a postural problem

and I had him on treatment for a considerable time but I think that was before the Korean War started, but he went off treatment after a while, after that when we got busy.

Well he done me a favour the first day I was in Japan by lending me a set of KDs. He was a great personality. He did the extra officer training in Miyajima and at one stage he was ADC [Aide-de-Camp] to the C in C [Commander in Chief], General Robertson

and when the Korean War started he asked to go back to the battalion and in the meantime he had married a RAANC [Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps] sister and they were living out at Nejimura, around the village place and it impacted badly.

Well I suppose I would have to say that I got on with my work. This nursing sister he was married, she left the army and after he was killed she went home. Within three or four months she had rejoined the nursing corps and was back in Japan and she had quite long career as a

theatre sister. I remember the CO saying, he was shaking his head, saying, “Fancy her doing that.”

Well a number of us had remember Ken and we had great respect for him so I guess we were all a bit upset.

No.

That was generally fun, no wonder some people like being criminals. It was illegal, if the MPs [Military Police] caught up with you, you were gone. I used to disguise myself, off with the peak cap on with the beret, on with the

capes, waterproof number two, you wouldn’t see my badges of rank and the old wogging bag would be underneath the elbow, you would go down to your designated place of disposal, there was agreed prices for everything, mainly cigarettes. It was a good job I didn’t smoke in Japan. Cigarettes at the later stage were bringing eight yen a cigarette would you believe, that was a lot of money those days, that was the top price.

The canteen ration was a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty cigarettes a week and also we got a free issue of fifty cigarettes, some British sort, I think we got that through the whole of the occupation, so it kept going after the Brits left but having two hundred cigarettes a week to flog to someone

I often used to give some to my Japanese friend who worked in my department but not all of the time. And consequently I also always had plenty of yen in my pocket to buy lots of things.

Wogging bag, ordinary bag, travel bag, canvas bag that’s all.

Cigarettes mainly; saccharine sometimes, chocolate, all sorts of stuff you could buy from the canteen. I never flogged anything that didn’t belong to me or I hand paid for. Like I say it was fun.

Down into the town in Kure and even when I was on Miyajima you had various sources that you could sell the stuff to. One of our

doctors he died recently and I was telling this to his ex-wife, who is also my cousin. I said, “I used to do Graham’s wogging for him when we were in Japan because he didn’t really want to do it himself. I always took ten percent commission and gave him the rest of the money.” Unfortunately he died recently.

We always had a source where you could dispose of the stuff, well just by knowing. I remember one time I got paid and we had agreed on the price and I got back and counted it and found that my lady friend had given me a thousand yen too much. And you wouldn’t believe it but I took the thousand back and gave it to her,

she couldn’t believe my honesty, I could have ripped her off but lord here I am talking about it fifty or more years later, something I did right.

Shops and that sort of thing to do business and I went into enough Japanese homes at various stages.

Probably buy something. They were great on souvenirs and that sort of thing. There was a store in Kure called Kamina’s they had all badges and this sort of thing. We tissued them up and there were soldiers wearing these badges, they were called Kamina soldiers because of the BCOF flash, I think I have got one

over there. They had them embossed and all sorts of things, real flash. But after a while the authorities got sick of it and they forbade it. So anybody who was a Kamina soldier had to go back to his ordinary stuff.

Well you have got to be a bit clandestine and I am sure that they would prefer to do the business with nobody there. Actually I don’t think I ever had too much in the way of shop transactions from the point of view of wogging or whatever we like to call it. I have still got my wog book. I think I racked up a figure of about eight hundred thousand yen.

Converted back at eighty a pound it was a considerable amount, so you were never short of spending money and the canteen rations didn’t cost all that much. It was forbidden which made it attractive.

Just a little book I recorded all of my transactions in.

Well I don’t know I never discussed with anybody; it was something you really had to keep quiet.

Cigarettes, soap was a good seller. Saccharine was a good seller in the early days and wool, they couldn’t get enough wool and then I came home to Australia on leave in 1949 I took quite a bit of wool back and saccharine.

Didn’t have to buy cigarettes, you could get them there. Like I say I never sold anything that I hadn’t paid for. Some lads got into trouble selling petrol and various things that they shouldn’t have, that was their lookout, if you do naughty things you have got to expect to pay for it.

Technically the Kure brothel was out of bounds but I think a lot of people visited it. I remember one time it was late in the day and I was down there with some bloke and we were just wandering around and this Pommy MP jeep roared around

the corner and stopped. He said, “Sir, do you know where you are?” And I said, “Yeah Kure.” And the Pommy MP said, “This is the heart of the Kure brothel district, the quickest way out is that way.” If we had have been a couple of lurks we would have been thrown into the back of the jeep and carted to the whosego if you like, because we had pips on our shoulders we were okay. I damn well knew where we were, I

had been in the place, not for any real business purposes, but I had been in Kure for such a long time I knew where the Juso and Chome was and that’s what it was called Juso and Chome, number thirteen street. I will tell you something funny about Lorraine, she will come in if I say anything wrong. But when we were first courting she said, “I am have some dresses made down in Kure.” And I said,” Well I will pick you up

at half past five and we will go down and get them.” So we were on the Nakidori and she said, “Now you turn down here.” And I said, “This is Judo Street, this is where I practice judo.” And she said, “Now turn here.” I said, “Oh bloody hell.” And I am sort of driving from the floor boards. I said, “This is the dressmaker street?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Well it is also the heart of the Kure brothel area Juso and Chome.” I didn’t want some bird [girl] to race out of one of the houses,

“Hey John san why you butterfly? You got Australian girl now?” That’s just a little bit of welted talk. Anyway Lorraine said, “Gee I wondered why everyone up here was so friendly.” And there she was having her dresses and even part of her trousseau made in the red light district.

So much so, one of the Rotary fests we had and I got a big board and it had Juso and Chome written on it, I was going to bring it in, was going to call our new house Juso and Chome and Lorraine said, “No you’re not.” So this place has never been called the Juso and Chome.

If you like, well this AMWA came up from Japan, first night I sighted her was in the canteen; she was friendly with the canteen sergeant, so was I. I didn’t know her from Adelaide; she had only been up there a month.

And I will never forget this I said, “Junior who is that bag?” We’re not terribly complimentary men generally if somebody is not like the Russian girl who won the tennis. Anyway the same night we went to a unit dance and we sort of got coupled up together and didn’t look back. We had a reasonable romance,

kept me off the streets. I think I had about three girlfriends at the one go and I probably kept the wrong one perhaps I don’t know. She finally went home and I stayed. I went home on leave in 1953 and we sort of got engaged, she came over and met my parents and I said,” I am going back to Japan.”

During that time I had remained faithful to the girl for a good twelve months.

No Bunty.

The first one. I don’t know, I tried to break it off in about the July, I sent a telegram or a letter and got one back. Anyway we kept going and I thought to myself,

I don’t know about this one, absence is certainly not making the heart grow fonder. After my mother died I applied for compassionate leave and they gave me compassionate leave all right, they said I could conclude my service which meant I was going to come home in January February of ‘54 and I had to make some quick decisions.

I had taken up with Lorraine and she was going to be the one. I dumped the other one. I gave advice to my son I said, “Where are you going Mathew?” He said, “I am going to give Belinda the flick.” This is my fourth son, the good looking one. I said, “The flick, what does that mean? In my day it meant you’re going to dump her?”

“That’s right Dad.” I said, “Always be the dumper and never the dumpee or the dumped.” That was my advice to Mathew; he has had a series of problems. Anyway back to the subject in hand.

Two and a half years including her home stay in Australia

well most of ‘53 we were technically engaged. Lorraine thought she was safe, I had a car, I was engaged and look what happened to the poor girl.

Actually just after she came up, August 1953 I observed

that there was a new girl on ward four. We always had an eye for the whites as well as the local population. I thought you don’t look too bad but I was busy elsewhere until about November. As I said Jack Webb was coming across from Korea and we needed to make up a party and Lorraine was invited to accompany him and I had the pashing at Ostrel in tow, allegedly Lorraine and Webby were serenaded coming back from the

Etajima on the boat by a mob of drunken Canadians. And the following night we were down in the female AMWAS mess and Lorraine was sitting across the way and this was when the sailor was hanging up the hat to…I asked for a couple of dances which I got. I don’t know if I was as good a dancer as the sailor; probably not. And

the sailor got quite snappy because the bloke with three pips was hanging around. Anyway didn’t do much about it and I met her on the covered way about three weeks later. I said, “Let’s go for a burn along the Hiroshima highway tonight?” She said, “Okay.” And this is the story of the blue duck, when that happened. I have actually written a story about the blue duck, I have got it somewhere.

And I indicated to my lads, “You lot are lucky I persisted.”

Well when you get stood up. Somebody stands somebody up. We were quite familiar with the expression those days. A bit like ‘poppy show’, nobody seems to know what a poppy show is these days. Perhaps you do?

You show me yours and I will show you mine.

All right for kindergarten kids.

Well I said she got one of her friends to ring in to say she was not feeling well, could she cancel? And I said, “Okay.” I wasn’t going to argue. And I went back and said

to my table, Arthur Etridge had said, “You’re going to get a blue duck Johnsy.” And I said, “That won’t happen.” and I said, “The first one that mentions the words blue duck is going to get a bunch of five [going to be hit].” So we played canasta that night, I didn’t have time to go down and find out how she was, like the sailor did, I was stuck playing canasta. And there again canasta, Lorraine said to me one time slightly later, “Can you play canasta?” And I said, “Yeah but don’t ask me to teach you; it is a romance buster.” Because

with Bunty we played canasta so much so I was sick of it. Especially one time when I did the wrong thing and held onto two cards and then picked up the whole pack do you think she got annoyed and the table went phwoom. So I went home. That was another nail in the coffin if you like.

There again…there was a place called ‘engineers hill’ which overlooked the Kure harbour and it was a magnificent sight. And having a car, that’s where Lorraine got proposed to over a box of American fudge and

I don’t think she really finished telling you the story. She said, “I had better get home and get an early nights sleep.” After the big question had been asked and accepted. And I said, “Yeah well, I had better get home because there is Keith and Ray wanting to know what you said.” My friends in the mess. That was it. And of course technically officers weren’t supposed to fraternise, you weren’t supposed to fraternise with the Japanese and you weren’t supposed to

fraternise with the other ranks. But you know what it is like, love will out.

Yes.

Well you had to sign up to go is that what you mean? I signed and said, “I will go on the condition I am not sent.” Which was trying to be funny, but I didn’t go for two years after I signed that document.

Well a document to say you are willing to go to Korea to serve in an operational area. I think we all signed, some of us finally got there and a lot of us didn’t. Really we were in support of a wartime operation and yet the people who stayed in Japan, they’re entitled to no benefits,

no war pension, no gold card, virtually nothing.

Yes well there were no real facilities for me to operate there. At that stage is was just the fighting battalions. It was later when they formed the 1st Commonwealth Division

and they had a field dressing station operated by the Canadians fairly well up the line. And they had female nurses there, female officers but no other ranks, similar to the Australian nurses who were attached to the medical centre in Seoul. About thirty of them got across from Japan, but there was no other ranks went.

Well I did it when I got the job as the courier officer over and back in the one day. Mainly delivering safe hand documents. You landed in Pusan first, Taegu and then Seoul and then on the way back. I have written about that too. My statement was, “I wonder how all of the lads up the front are getting on?” It was freezing cold, me I was all

right I was back in my nice safe bed in Kure that same night. I did that once in the cold and then about three times in 1953 when the battalion must have been out of the line at some time because the casualties got less and my job went down and I did the courier run to Korea about three times in four or five weeks. I didn’t mind a day off; it was fun flying into the

war zone providing you had a guarantee you were going to come back.

They were called safe hand; they had to be handed from somebody to somebody else who signed for them. I don’t know what was in them. Being a wartime situation they had to be delivered by an officer.

Well you just picked up the bag from HQ [Head Quarters] BCOF and went down to Iwakuni

and got on the plane next morning, the courier plane which came and went the same day, delivered the documents to the air head, somebody would always be there to get the from you.

It would be about three quarters of an hour from Iwakuni which is about

fifty miles away from Kure. It was the air force case and there was a lot of Australians in the BCOF Air Section .and then up into central Korea and onto Seoul, I don’t think, that first time I went over was a time when the Chinese were coming down and I think they had retaken Seoul and I

think we went somewhere else, we didn’t land at Kimpo of K-16, the airport near Seoul. Anyway that changed back because I didn’t get there for another couple of years until the latter end of the Korean War when I did the courier job another

three times and then I got to Korea off my own bat to do medical work.

You didn’t leave the airport; you kept close to the plane actually. I must say I was standing on the airstrip at Pusan thinking

my feet are never going to be warm again. It was January 1951 and it was freezing cold. I should have worn two pairs of socks at least, but nobody told me.

A DC3, an old biscuit bomber from the war, the Dakota. Wasn’t the epitome of comfort just

had things down the side where you sat. A famous wartime plane which was still in operation in the Korean War. Because they made quite a bit of use of helicopters and that sort of thing, if you watched MASH [television comedy set during the Korean War] closely you would get the message, some of those situations didn’t happen; some things were added to it. My lads when they watch MASH, “Was it like that in Korea Dad?”

“Well not really.” That was a long time ago and MASH was a highly successful series.

Well the first instance we had the two lads who subbed for me, they did my work for the day and then we got back to normal. Second, third and fourth time we

had war office civilian female physiotherapists and there was six of them all together, came out in batches of two at a time for all twelve or fourteen months or whatever it was the British term they had, twelve to fifteen months.

British girls yes, fully trained physios.

Oh yes, sometimes people could do without treatment for a day if you’re pushed. There were always plenty of casualties to handle. Although, are we

going to do when I got to Korea and do medical work later?

Excellently I would suggest although there was less consciousness of it once the Korean War started, I mean to say the hospital put in a team in the Kure-Hiroshima run but that was

pre-Korean War and I remember I did a mile and I was puffed out at the end and the registrar came along in his big beautiful Buick, “Come on Gordon!” and one of the other blokes was there, I didn’t even have the breathe to tell them what to do. The mile finished and it was all over. But when they wanted to run another one the hospital declared that it had more to do than to worry about a run

from Hiroshima to Kure which was correct. We were short of personnel .we had sent quite a few lads from our own ranks to Korea in the first wave with the field ambulance section that we sent under one of our MOs [Medical Officer], one of our doctors.

Interesting story, you have already got it on the stuff I sent to Elizabeth but I will recount. Canada had quite a commitment to Korea, we had an infantry brigade in the field they had two or three medical facilities, they had nursing sisters and doctors with us at the hospital. They had a field dressing station up close to the line with doctors

and sisters and other ranks, very functional it was. We asked Canada to supply physiotherapist to us, they in their wisdom sent her to the field dressing station. I met her, I was hanging my hat at one of the sisters at the time, I met this girl; she was already a captain so she must have been in the Second World War as well I think. I met her in the company of the Canadian matron.

I won’t tell you what we called her. And she said, “Oh no she is not staying here she is going to Korea.” And I thought to myself, “Over my dead body will you get to Korea before me.” So in the morning I started the ball rolling and paraded myself to the AMF [Australian Military Force] component commander and the CO of the hospital who was a British

full colonel. He referred it to the director of medical services with the result overall he wasn’t pleased that the Canadians had altered his request and so the result was that I was sent and she stayed in my place in the department. I was over there about five weeks. Went straight to the field station and started work there and quickly gathered that they were moved on far too quickly for me to be effective here

and so I went down to the medical unit in Seoul and did a couple of days work there and then went down to they had developed a division rest centre in Chong near where the American seaborne invasion was. And they had a convalescent set up to a certain extent and anyway we went there and organised classes and all of that sort of thing. I did a useful amount of

work in Korea as far as I considered, I only had my hands and my voice, no other equipment than that. It all happened rather quickly. But it has been a part of my overall career that I have remembered, there were highlights in my own physio career. Anyway this girl turned up at the FDS [Field Dressing Station] after a month or five weeks and I went back to Kure

and it was a good job I did because we got boys handling the casualties from the third Battle of the Hook, quite a lot of casualties came back.

This was getting close to the ceasefire, you couldn’t call it an armistice; all it was was a ceasefire. Fifty years and they achieved nothing more.

We had enough work for another person, the three of us that were there were carrying quite a load, myself and the two other females, and there was still heaps of casualties coming back all of the time. We were glad

when they sent air medical evacuation back to the home countries, it relieved us of some of our load if you like, I wouldn’t call stress or trauma, just the work load.

Well it is entirely possible we asked for the physio to be sent to the British Commonwealth Hospital.

It wasn’t as though they didn’t have any personnel there, they had Canadian doctors and Canadian sisters and the place was loaded with Canadian padres too, we had three Canadian padres in the hospital, sin must have been rampant in the Canadian army I think. Although we had enough padres ourselves at various places.

Well that was going to be their intention until I succeeded in putting a stop to it. I must say the Canadian matron; her nickname still to remain unmentioned wouldn’t talk to me when I got to Korea. She was the matron of the FDS. She didn’t like what I did.

Well it didn’t; I hardly saw her from a work point of view and none of the others probably knew about what I had succeeded in achieving. The girl that came over she was probably posted to the field dressing station; according to the rules you had to be on the posted

strength of a unit sent to Korea, you only had to do one day there, all of the rest of the odds and sods had to do at least thirty days in Korea to qualify for various medals and benefits and medals and all of that sort of thing.

That’s right but because I hadn’t been I was still entitled to nothing.

Well it had occurred to me,

really there was technically no real posting for me in Korea except this one that seemingly was created for this Canadian physio. She must have had a sober of a job at the FDS after I left because the work got less and less. They weren’t handling hot casualties anymore, my work for the fortnight I was there I was quite convinced that a physiotherapist was wasted there and would be far better off

in Seoul or Inch’on where there was a whole heap more work.

That was Coronation Day 1953.

By the old Dakota, the RAAF’s [Royal Australian Air Force] workhorse to transport

people.

I had to be there for at least thirty days and I think I was there for thirty-five or thirty-six all together.

Nobody that I particular remember just people in transit going back or going there for the first time.

Dakota could probably hold up to twenty comfortably.

Not that I know of. There was plenty of Australian medical staff in Korea. Went and serviced the battalions. There were Australians and British doctors in the medical unit in Seoul.

There was no real medical personnel at the divisional rest centre except a visiting MO and he wasn’t really needed.

From the point of view of getting up to the field dressing centre I

landed at Kimpo airport and well there was a jeep waiting to take me up the line; I think it was main supply Route 33 to the field dressing station, it was close enough to the front line. There were field d ambulances in front of that, there was a British Field Ambulance and an Indian Field Ambulance, there perhaps should have been another, perhaps that was the FDS technically,

they seemed to be enough and when I got there we were still handling enough casualties.

It was mainly a tented area, there was a couple of permanent buildings because the war had gone quite static, nobody was really moving by June 1953.

Everyone was expecting them to sign the armistice but there was various factors that kept postponing it. Like I say, all huge EPIP [English pattern, Indian product] tents, all looked together. They had good facilities they had immediate operational facilities and you would go around to try and encourage people to move their limbs,

but they most often moved on very quickly because the need for beds coming from up the line was continuous. So they got sent to Seoul or to Inch’on and those who were worst injured than that they got sent back to Kure which was a devil of a long line of communication .That was achieved by ambulance, the RAAF

nursing sisters did a good job ferrying people back and then we had sisters on the train from Iwakuni to Kure which must have taken about three hours and there was always an intake back at the Kure hospital late in the afternoon.

Yes.

None really, I visited the patients in their beds because none of them, well, few of them were ambulatory. So there was no real physio facilities there, we just managed as best we could.

Well a few of them would be but a lot of them they were confined to bed; depends where they were wounded. They had a very short stay; they either went back if it wasn’t that serious or they went more down the line, down to the hospital in Seoul or from there evacuated to Kure.

Murray Drew was an Australian surgeon who was at the FDS at the time. His job was mainly at the Kure hospital but he had been given the opportunity to go forward and look at the facilities of the FDS. Jack Webb himself he arrived in Japan at the end of 1951 and he was the optometrist attached to the

Kure hospital but he used to often go to Korea, so much so that he had about sixty days up in next to no time and he was offering to sell anybody the extra thirty if you get my drift, he was making a joke. That sort of action wasn’t allowed to happen. When I came back from leave in 1953

he as there and he was stuck there for the whole time, it was only when I got over to Korea that I caught up with him. We were very good friends.

Yeah summer in Korea you really didn’t need much in the

way of protective clothing, you have seen the photo of myself and the gun that’s really all you needed. It was hot, it rained a bit, but I wouldn’t have given a thank you to go to Korea again in the winter.

It really wasn’t,

that was a field, other situations. Did you see the film yourself? That bathroom scene that never happened at the FDS, the sisters showered first, the officers there. And there was a big window, when the girls were in the window was, a blank window was inserted so they could shower in private. When they finished and

they left well they bussed the window out again providing none of the girls came close all boys in together if you like. Although the officers and sergeants and other ranks were all separate from the point of view of showering.

Yes it was a good system; we didn’t have to have cold water showers fortunately. Not like the early days of BCOF; there was no hot water. I am glad I wasn’t there.

Well that’s a funny story, I was talking to my dead Bunty on the phone, she was in the female AMWAS mess somewhere and I said, “There is a new Australian officer just marched in here fellow with two pips on his shoulder, big fellow.” And I didn’t realise it was going to be the start of a fifty year friendship.

As I say he died about May of last year, he had a cancer which we knew about; it was more or less expected and fortunately I said to Lorraine, “I wonder how Webby is getting on?” and I rang his number in Buderim and there was no answer and I got a call to say Jack was in hospital; he was not too good anymore.

He was in Buderim Hospital and I actually spoke to him on the Sunday morning. He said, “Thanks for the call; look after Lorraine.” and that was virtually it. And I rang one of our friends the pharmacist up there, we were a terrible trio as lieutenants I tell you. And he said, “I will go up; I have been meaning to go up for a while.”

I said to Jack, “I have spoken to Peter and he is going to come up and see you.” And he said, “Oh gee, I wish he wouldn’t.” He said he just wanted to go off with as much dignity that he could muster. I got busy and sent him some literature that I had been preparing about…I think some of the stuff I sent to

Elizabeth and I was going to give him a read of that and anyway I had the good sense—‘If not delivered return to sender’; he died on Monday night.

In Korea he was doing eye examinations, refractions they were called. He went up to the Indian Field Ambulance to do it and also to the British Field Ambulance; I grabbed the opportunity to go with him. I didn’t have any work up there but I went anyway and had a bit of a day out, it was only half a day; I got most of my work done when I got back to the field dressing station. You wouldn’t believe it, we called into

Div headquarters and who should we meet but the GOC [General Officer Commanding] Major General West and some elderly bloke who was a brigadier in charge of artillery. And about twelve days late I was working down at Inch’on and who came in for a bit of a look but General West? And I aid to him, “Sir I am glad you caught me working.” He remembered and I said,

“I was just in there on a swab, doing nothing, down here I am working.” That was my adventure with General West. I have also had General Robertson C in C, BCOF on my treatment list at one stage when he had a cork back. I had to go up there and treat him at night. I must say I drank some of his Kirin Beer, his ADC was one of the

1948 Duntroon graduates who had been into the hospital in charge of the detail there. So a lieutenant general, major general, a couple of brigadiers, I have treated them all right down to privates.

I was doing nothing.

I think I read somewhere, it was either the Indian or the other field ambulance and there must have been an artillery piece close by and I have always remembered this, they fired off something and didn’t my ears reverberate, I suppose everyone else but me had earplugs. You thought, in latter years you would think you were at the Grand Prix where everybody had to wear earplugs. That didn’t cause too much in the way of ongoing

problems. And also we had a lovely curry meal at the Indian field ambulance, the real thing.

Lord no we used to often have a curry in our own officers’ mess on a Sunday and all sorts of stuff, I loved it.

However far from the front line? Either one or the other two field ambulances were…that’s as close as I got. Which I suppose is close enough, I mean to say you don’t expect the field ambulances which are meant to be out with stretcher bearers, they don’t need to be too far away from the front line.

I think see we were still getting casualties at the FDS; the action during the time I was over there was fairly static.

War devastated country. I must say the road…I was doing an excerpt on my school days,

Henley Primary, for our anniversary and I wrote that in 1936 we learnt about a country called Korea which featured Soya beans as its main products and had a capital called ‘Serious’ and I wrote in this thing that I never thought seventeen years later I would be in this war devastated country. That was from 1936; a schoolboy until I actually got there.

It was just a by the way thing that I had remembered.

Well I don’t know what it was like before; I know it was war devastated; it had been taken three or four times, first by the North Koreans and then taken back by the Americans and then taken by the Chinese and then taken back

by the Americans. Four times it changed hands and well I must say that when the Olympics happened in 1988 I looked when they ran the marathon and there was nothing whatsoever you could recognise.

Quite bombed out, down at heel, holes in the road and all of that sort of thing. They just didn’t have the money or the facilities to do much in the way of repairs. The unit in Seoul was a former school and they had suffered bombing

and some of the statements by a couple of sisters showed how spartan [basic] the situation was there from the point of view of nursing patients and that sort of thing.

Well I don’t think there was much in the way of running water, well personal facilities weren’t that good. If you missed out on a shower, you were told times for showers and if you were too busy you missed out.

One statement said, “Have a bit of a sponge in your room.” This is from the female officers that were there, and yet it had been an all male bastion considerably before that and yet when the girls came the lads weren’t too struck on it. No doubt you would have got better service from female nursing officers.

Well I spent several days in the medical unit at Seoul in June of 1953 and they had come a long way. I couldn’t fault the facilities. British unit notoriously noted for bad food and I couldn’t complain about that either

in the several meals I had there. I do remember one balmy night in the middle of June ‘53 when I was there, there were Australian and British personnel out, there was a swimming pool there and nobody was keen to go to bed. At this stage the place had been bombed previously and

they didn’t trouble about bed checks, not like they did in Kure, even the girls they got bed checked, Lorraine was checked, we used to sneak out after. And the…no, I had no real fault to find with the medical unit in Seoul for the time I was there. The food conditions up at the FDS were good and

I suppose the only ones that did it hard were the ones on what they call sea rations out in the field.

Good question.

Well it was being managed by British doctors. They wouldn’t have minded and Australian doctors, perhaps the nursing orderlies and that sort of thing, they actually had to take orders from somebody with pips on their shoulders to get the jobs done.

Well there was, how does any husband feel?

I am sure they managed, one of my colleagues, friend anyway and he said a lot arrived back at this particular unit and I think they were Canadian in charge and he said, “What I don’t want to see is you fellows putting up your Korean ribbons too quickly; you haven’t earnt them yet.”

Anyway they wore great coats and the next day they are all on parade wearing ribbons. And he did his nut and one of the Australians said, “Sir we were in Korea before you had even heard of the place.” All of these fellows from the hospital wearing these various ribbons, you got two, a Korean and a United Nations ribbon. I have got mine and Lorraine’s medals out there.

If you want to have a look at them? It is all very interesting.

Well fortunately the situation was fairly static, there was no pressure from the front line or anybody coming down, as I say we were still getting casualties abut up there I wasn’t concerned particularly. Webby was going up to do a job and I just got the opportunity to go with him. The countryside was

pleasant enough in June. There was no danger of any breakout of the North Koreans or the Chinese coming down the main supply route to take a few of us prisoner, I went up there; perhaps I did have a gun. Medical corps people aren’t supposed to wear sidearms but they varied the rule in Korea.

Yes somebody from the field dressing station, a

Canadian, drove us up and back.

Hard to tell probably British field ambulance, Indian field ambulance and then back to headquarters and back to FDS, probably about forty k’s [kilometres].

I remember when I was down at Inch’on it was a much freer area down there you could move about when you didn’t have any work to do and there is one photo of some Korean children that I took and one photo I was going to take and a father raced outside grabbed his child and raced back inside. And I thought, “Well he didn’t make me very welcome”. The other two kids that I have got a

photo of, they just stood there and were happy to have their photo taken. Really I didn’t have any contact with any Korean families similar to what I had with Japanese families I was only there on a rather temporary basis.

Korea was a poor country and the houses were simple so

those people that I saw down in Inch’on must have been impacted upon in the seaborne invasion in September 1951 but the war had long past them by and so I suppose they were getting on with their lives again. I should mention there was two hospital ships in Inch’on harbour that

one time one of the doctors who came down to the divisional rest centre, he out went out onto the Jutlandia which was a British [actually Danish] hospital ship and the Repose which was an American hospital ship, it was interesting. They were good on the use of helicopters. We had a look and then came off again.

I have to say about three weeks before all of this the Jutlandia had been in Kure harbour on a few days R & R [Rest and Recreation] and the hospital messes, the sisters and the officers we were invited to go on board and we were introduced to a smorgasbord, unknown in Australian at that time. And also we drank Tuborg and Carlsburg beer, good quality Danish beer

and I was sitting alongside a Danish nurse and one on the other side and one of them said to me, “Drink up your schnapps before it gets hot.” And the other one said, “Drink up your schnapps before it gets cold.” Even those days, blonde Nordics and quite good looking; we didn’t have time. I have to say that I made a bit of a mess of myself that night doing what those girls said. I came off the boat

and I remember lying in a drunken stupor in the bus that we were on, and I thought, “I am not that drunk”, as the two British matrons in front of me looked back and said, “Coarse, crude Australian drunkard.” Anyway you wouldn’t believe it there was a hospital wedding happening on the Saturday and the OC [Officer Commanding] surgical who was in charge of proceedings he said, “Gordon can we

organise your vehicle to drive the two British matrons down to the church for Maxine’s wedding?” I said, “Certainly sir, no problems.” So there I was togged up to the nines, dress blue uniform, nice shiny car, the two matrons came out, I had already piled the English sister that I was hanging my hat up to at that stage in the front and the two matrons came out, brilliant salute and I thought I wonder if they remember me as this drunken idiot from last Wednesday?

If they did, they never said. That was another little war aside if you like. Further to the situation about the English sister, we went to the church and we got a seat and I said to her, “I had better go and check the car, there has been a little bit of vandalism on foreign cars recently.”

And went out and made sure it was locked and came back and who was sitting in my seat but the padre who was also hanging his hat up to this particular girl. Within three days I was in Korea and the OC [Officer Commanding] of the con depot, he responded to a letter from me, come across and investigate possibilities of setting up more of an organised

convalescent centre at Inch’on. And we were in the mess there and he said, “My God, the padre, has he got under your neck?” He had taken over. I don’t know whether it did him any good or not. Anyway she went home shortly after I got back from Korea and that was the end of that romance, if you would call it that.

Yes well we mainly organised them in classes so that helped the voice and then anybody who required individual treatment, after we organised all of the classes, there were knees, abdominals, some of the boys had slight wounds, backs, all sorts of joints classes.

And at one stage we even organised a cricket match between British blokes who were down there and the Aussies and the Kiwis [New Zealanders]; I forget who won but I made eleven runs, I always remember that it was about my best score in cricket. But it was an Ashes year in England for Australia and I remember up at the FDS listening to Radio Australia and picking up a test score

and then also when I was down at Inch’on, the second test was being played and we stayed up all night the last day listening to this and there was some irascible English major and he came out the next morning he said, “I hope you lot are not going to disturb my sleep tonight being up all night watching the cricket” so with three on my shoulder I said,

“Sir what sort of an Englishman are you not to be interested in cricket?” Actually young Australian officers got away with a lot. Taunting the Poms; I have got another expression for it that I won’t use.

If you like, taking the piss out of them.

It is very effective, it was amazing, you would have an Australian lieutenant arguing with Pommy majors in the mess, most people would flee. Even back in the mess in Kure, the pommy blokes they took themselves too seriously and we refused to do it. The biggest insult, they took over the mess and they refused

to have shouting each other; you had to buy your own grog [alcohol] which irked we Australians so we more or less observed it in the breach and we got away with it. Next question.

I wouldn’t say he was a toughest challenge. Down at the dressing station at the line he came in from 3 Battalion with a dislocated shoulder and they

reduced it and then I got him as a patient. It was just about the end of my tenure at the field dressing station and I found him down to Seoul and a couple of days later he was down at Inch’on . And I worked on him there doing what you needed to for him and at one stage I said to him, “You’re fit to RTU.” And he went back to his battalion in about nineteen days which was a good result for a dislocated shoulder and I

said, “That’s bad luck having me trail you all around Korea; if you had had half an ounce of luck you could have gone all of the way back to Kure and then you could have tasted the delights of the Juso and Chome as well before you came back”. He went back to his unit; I have never forgotten that little job. I always say that the army got their

money’s worth out of me in Korea and I always remember my service there with a sense of pride I guess. Well then later we went back to Kure and we were handling casualties from the Battle of the Hook and it got quite busy again after being a bit slow. We were busy back in Kure right up until the end of November before people

got evacuated home or they got better or whatever and as the war was over it is surprising the number of lads that tell me they were wounded after the ceasefire, I suppose some of them died, I didn’t get them. You would ask them the date and they would say, “It was on the 28th or the 29th.” “But there wasn’t a war on then?” “I was still wounded.” Enemy action

didn’t really cease with the ceasefire for a while anyway. That was one amazing thing that stood out, I possibly mentioned that in my article. As I say we were busy clearing the decks if you like. By December I was coming home and so we had a nice relaxed Christmas and I had a very pleasant romance.

Well they were soldiers and they just went. I don’t think we sent anybody back who didn’t need to go. You had the feeling of things by the beginning of July that things were going to come to an end.

There was still a fly in the ointment, the North Koreans and Chinese they didn’t want to come to the party, we would have been happy to come to peace because the peace talks had been going on for two odd years or so. They finally agreed there was quite an action; I think I featured it in the article I sent to Elizabeth [Archive researcher], just before the ceasefire the troops

had gradually noticed the scaling down of patrols and that sort of thing but the Chinese had other ideas and they attacked. Considering the finish of the war was so close the casualties, particularly on the Chinese side were tremendous there was half a dozen Australians were killed in those last few days of the Korean fighting and they needn’t have been.

I didn’t give him any treatment but I saw him and he was a sad looking sack for want of a better word, looking sorry for himself. Didn’t realise how lucky he was, he was out of the war. But subsequent to the ceasefire there was the prison exchange

called operation Big Switch.

Well the only bloke that I had a real problem with was the bloke that I told you about and there was no problem with him. He was fit enough to go back after nineteen days and we regarded that

as quite an achievement for a nasty dislocation .That would have been late June so I mean he probably went back to his unit and if he survived the next month he was right.

Well I certainly wasn’t aware of it.

I remember there was one bloke up at the FDS and he was in the hands of the psychiatrist and I don’t know what happened to him. Some people react well to that situation, others are just plain scared just like I probably would have been if I had been faced with a Chinese bloke going to fire a bullet at me or something like that. It never happened.

Inch’on thing was all over; it was a seaborne invasion and it was suitable, the tides were very tricky. It was mounted by Macarthur as supreme commander. Probably mainly his other generals because he was in a nice safe job back on Tokyo; he probably got all of the accolades.

Anyway it was a high success. They swept through Inch’on and left all that there and they had more, that was 1950 oh no the Chinese came back and took Seoul but I doubt whether they got as far as Inch’on.

Oh you heard shots being fired in anger as it were; they would reverberate all over the place. The first day I was out with the FDS which was close enough to the front line something went off and I said, “Was that one of ours Jack or

a shot at the enemy in anger?” Anyway he said, “It was a shot being fired in anger.” Fortunately I wasn’t real close to the action.

I don’t know, I got the statement from Jack Webb.

One of the Canadians’ MOs [Medical Officer] he was an absolute guts [liked to eat a lot] and when Jack found out I was coming, I have never been bad on the tooth, he put him and me up in an eating competition and I gave him the victory after a short while, he ate seven wieners, these huge sausage things and I packed it up at two and a half.

Anyway the same officer and doctor, he got an adverse report from his CO and I quote what it said, “This doctor would rather eat than be a doctor.” Because he was well known for his propensity to eat. He wasn’t a bad fellow, just liked food.

Not necessarily. He wasn’t

carrying excess weight, just an ordinary bloke. He was back in Kure at one stage later this same bloke but he was a renowned eater. Another thing in the FDS, one of the first breakfasts we had this bloke got the strawberry jam out and whacked it on his bacon and eggs and I said, “That doesn’t have much appeal.” And he said, “Try it, you might enjoy it.” And so I did and it was a really new taste sensation if you like.

Well it was a bit of sweet and sour sort of thing. Strawberry jam on eggs and bacon, it was different. I must say I haven’t done it really since.

No well I went, I spent time down at the unit in Seoul and Inch’on for a fortnight or so and then I went back and just missed out on Canada Day, I got back there on the 2nd of July and I resumed my work there and the Canadian physiotherapist

turned over on about the 5th and so I handed it over to her and left her to it. And then came to get myself on a plane to come back and find out that the pharmacist, my other lieutenant friend, he had gone to Korea as well. I don’t know what he did over there, probably looked at pharmacies and various things like that.

Webby and Peter Iric and myself; we were all in Korea. I am looking for a film a photo which I can’t find, three of us in a Japanese bath together at Beppu, we went there with three girls, three AMWAS, and one of them snuck in there and took a photo. All very respectable, but I remember this photo and I can’t find it. Not to worry.

Probably to say if you want to go away with a girl you go on your own, not three lots of three or two lots of three, the girls are too busy keeping their eye on each other.

No I went before her and after I had my month of qualifying period if you like

she came over and took over from me and I went back to Kure. And then subsequently we got busy again handling casualties from the Battle of the Hook and so they must have been busy over there but then the armistice occurred. She only had to do one day in Korea because she was on the posted strength on the unit committed to Korea to get any extra medals or benefits and whatever.

And anyway I never heard from her again but Jack was over there and, what was her name? June Nicholl, Webby must have had pretty well nothing to do with her; he didn’t come away from the field dressing station until February of 1954, I had gone home and then Jack was in Kure preparing to go home to Australia for discharge.

And well things scaled down, they had units holding there in Korea with virtually nothing to do.

I don’t know, I never discussed the subject with her. When I was sent to Korea I went and got my Korean stuff, lost track of her.

I will bet she bitched about it to the other girls that were there no doubt. The couple of female physiotherapists that worked in my department. I think they resented having an Australian officer working over them. I didn’t really like them and I would suggest that they didn’t like me. But when the next

lot of girls came over it was virtually after the Korean War had finished and we were scaling down the work and these two new girls came over, and I used to come down in the afternoon from my work on the wards and say, “I didn’t really like those two that were here before but I am determined to like you two.” And they were a couple of pleasant girls.

These other two I had to shake my head.

They thought they were in Germany I think where there was nothing going on because they both applied for leave at one time to go to Miyajima and I said, “No. The two lads working in the department asked for leave, a couple of British soldiers, and I said no to them a fortnight ago and I am

going to say no to you.” Anyway I said, “Look we’ll manage you two girls to go.” Anyway it was left at that and I turned up for work on the Saturday morning and one of them appeared to do her work and I said, “I thought you were going to Miyajima; you could have gone. “She said, “I thought under the circumstances I had better stay.” And I said, “Thank you, you did the right thing.”

They were war office civilians and weren’t subject to much in the way of army discipline which the two lads that I had working there, one was a corporal or a sergeant, British trained physiotherapist at the army place at Woolich. They did what they were told.

End of tape

Well we had extra casualties, they were being cleared out.

Anyway there was a last fling by the Chinese to make an impression before the ceasefire was going to come into effect and really they lost a lot of lives that they really needn’t have. But you know life in China is pretty cheap, there is so many of them. At one stage they said if the Chinese came across the Yaroo at a rate of twenty a minute they could still be coming across in

twenty years time. So there is that many of them. Anyway I am sure that the Australians watched the Chinese collecting their dead; at one stage I remember reading in one publication and they said ‘they held their fire, there was no point in having further killings that were unnecessary’,

this is the Australian troops. July 25th or 26th, they knew the ceasefire was imminent. It came through about ten o’clock on the night of the 27th of July and all troops moved back to a perimeter of about four kilometres between the warring factions and the so called demilitarised zone as set up then still remains

in force fifty years later. They haven’t been able to settle anything and I think the two Koreas are still as divided as they ever were. It is unfortunate.

Still shrapnel wounds and gun shot wounds of varying descriptions. There was still a lot of trench [foot] and that sort of thing that had happened.

But that was mainly it, in the first year as I said the frost bite and the second year and subsequent in the winters, burns. From exploding petrol stoves etcetera; not from enemy action.

Well watching them heal up

and making sure they didn’t get contractions of muscles and that sort of thing which is a pretty hard thing to put right if it happens. Giving them movement when they needed it, half of them didn’t like it of course you were moving a shoulder against a contracted situation down here but it had to be stretched otherwise

if it had been left the bloke would never be able to move his arm over there again and it would require surgery when he became an older man. But the burns were treated with what they call the exposure method, they let the crusts of skin form and after a while they all came off revealing skin underneath, you had to be careful taking it off and

you had to keep their movements going during all of that time.

Only those two Turks. All the rest they had pain all right but you could gather what sort of a patient he was, whether

he was a namby pamby [soft]; there was very few of them I must say; most of them put up with their injuries with great fortitude. Enough people died in the hospital, remember we had a morgue there and about five o'clock at night they used to play the Last Post if there was a body in the morgue.

And often enough they were busy playing the Last Post, and this was back at the base hospital. One of the Korean soldiers or somebody else had died.

It is; anybody deserves it that has been in a war zone.

The first time I went to Korea January the 19th I wrote home and said, “I am going to Korea tomorrow,” and the message would arrive home by the time I had been there and back. I said, “By the time you get this I will be back from Korea I am only going for one day and if the plane goes down in the Sea of Japan you will be notified quicker than this letter

gets to you.” That was my first experience of being in a war type area.

Not one. We had enough people dying along the way, in the occupation even a couple of wives died,

the chief paymaster died at one stage but that was no great moment. I remember going into the morgue to have a look at him. I didn’t attend one military funeral; I have done more since I came home but even then not a lot. You always get a Union

Jack or an Australian flag around your casket if you have served anywhere.

Well all knew it was going to happen, even the troops on the front line knew it was going to happen which is why they didn’t fire on the Chinese collecting their

dead and wounded out in the field and we were glad of it because it had been a long time, I had been there right from the jump. I suppose there were plenty of people there who were there when it started and finished, what did they say? You were in ‘B’ Company, ‘be’ here when it starts and ‘be’ here when it’s finished. But in that little joke you

are at home all of the time, not away in a war situation. My cousins, I talked about the two POWs, there was about nine all together and I must say I was pretty glad to be able to join them having seen war service. They had all seen war service during the Second World War; I had a group of cousins who were virtually a half of a generation older than me. And even the cousin I grew up with during the war he joined the air

force and went to England but he didn’t ever get on operations which I suppose he was glad of. He was in training command I think when the war finished; even then it took him about six months to get home. So things were pretty slow moving in those days of 1945.

You mean POWs of the Koreans or the Chinese, I probably did, there was bound to be a few that needed specific treatment. I remember meeting a couple of them socially and there would have been one or two that would have needed some therapy but I really can’t remember much about them, I can only

remember that we were pretty busy in August, September and October and it was only in November that things started to taper off. And that’s when, Lorraine was there by then and she specialised in people who were sick and dying and that sort of thing. And she enjoyed her work,

she didn’t get over there until the war had been officially over for about three weeks.

Not a lot no.

I am sure there would have been; there were enough of them needing some sort of attention or medical attention. Most of them apart from one or two didn’t need to come to my department. Anyway I would have suggested if they were at all ready to go home they went.

We were handling the returning casualties and you know there were still blokes coming out of the line to go back to Kure for various reasons, there were only a few POWs anyway. I think they all came back through Kure although I am not entirely sure about that.

By November when there was a whole lot less work, so many of the lads had been sent home that needed to go home on an air medical evacuation, both to Australia, Great Britain, Canada

and New Zealand. We had a New Zealand artillery unit in Korea that acquitted themselves well. And well come by about December and Christmas we didn’t have as much work to do as we needed and had and I was due to come home anyway and I came home in

about February I left Iwakuni and came home via Hong Kong and Labuan and as a matter of fact we had gone to the Labuan War Cemetery at one time during that period and we had gone to a huge cemetery and we stayed at the grave of Derek VC, we stayed at his grave we were interested in finding that

because he was there, he didn’t have to go back but he did, he elected to. He didn’t make old bones in consequence, he had already won his VC but he said, “Somebody has to finish the job.”

Yes.

We had been to Miyajima, the sacred paradise island, I have got a photo there, it was a rainy day and bought an umbrella, we have been doing (nothing) but buying blooming umbrellas from time to time; she even bought a new one last week.

We have bought thirty odd umbrellas during our married life for various reasons. But that rainy day on Miyajima was where it all happened. I have even written on a photo I have got and she and myself which I haven’t produced. And from there I thought, “Well I am more interested in this girl than I am in Bunty,”

like I said absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder. Anyway I proposed and was accepted. Lorraine knew about the fact that Bunty was on the line because she had been told by all of the girls that were still up there in the Bunty era, “You want to watch him; he was engaged to that girl”. I finished up giving her the wallop, I wrote her a nice

letter, I said, “Please don’t write again.” And I came home in early February and really I was expecting a one gun salute on Spencer Street station aimed at me. Of course it never happened, but that’s the story, Lorraine was up there and I was back here. And you

might remember the tear jerking song, Dear John Letter, and I said to my brother when I was home, “Looking back it all happened too quickly, do you think I might get a “Dear John” letter?” this tear jerking song, “Dear John oh I hate to write…” and my brother said, “You don’t have to worry Gordon, your name is Johns,

not John.” That’s the most sagest bit of advice I have ever had out of my brother. Anyway I never got a “Dear John” letter fortunately otherwise I would have been devastated. Lorraine came home about six months later, went home to Western Australia to be with her mother for a while and then came back here, was discharged here, and she did a few

weeks nursing duty up at Woodside Nursing Hospital and the matron up there was an old friend of ours, this girl went up to Japan on the Kanimbla with me. She was returning, she was a war time sister who had had a long career in the army and she had been home on leave and coming back. This particular sister, there was one of the doctors

that I went up with. He was in Greta camp with me and he was there crying on the end of his bed that he was leaving his lost love, anyway it didn’t take him long to take up with her, this sister and…anyway they were romancing on for a while this particular bloke finally in 1949 the romance of this particular year was John Brine and Betty Milburn

who was a beautiful sister and then Joanie Irvine she got onto Don Beard, you might know him in this area because he is a well known, virtually retired surgeon. He and I were in the anatomy school together too, you might have read that in my article. A valued friend, not close quarters for all of that length of time,

from 1944 the days of the anatomy school. Don went home after a while and I suppose Joanie went home too. She married a bloke who was OC of Kuwana Hotel for a while and she died of the grand old age of eighty-nine a couple of years ago and since then he has died.

Sent back on the ship, paid for it etcetera, it was too good to miss, anyway I had the DeSoto here for ten odd years until we packed it in and got a Valiant station wagon and we found that far more functional for a family of kids. By then we had three.

About ten days or so.

I didn’t like it very much. I was enjoying

my life up there, I didn’t need to come home, Lorraine was up there and I was back here and I guess that forced to me request for compassionate leave. The army decided, “Well this is one bloke we can get rid of”. So I was packed off home discharged and out. The two English girls were there, they were there for a goodly period subsequent.

They didn’t need me there anymore because there was hardly any work to do up there. But Lorraine injured her knee up there and she was under treatment by one of them in about the May of ’54; as I say everything was scaled down.

Well Mum was only fifty-three and really going to the doctor those days was an absolute adventure, not like these days you go at the drop of a hat. Because I have always been convinced that Mum could have lived longer if she had had better medical attention. She died of a massive CVA [Cerebrovascular Accident], a stroke. She didn’t last at all.

Lionel had sent up a message that Mum wasn’t well and the next thing I get a telegram that she has died. I thing I got a telephone call from the OC of the Australian section, he said, “Gordon will you come across and see me?” I thought oh Lord what has he found out about that I shouldn’t be doing? And it wasn’t that; it was to report mother’s

death by telegram and I must say I was devastated. Yes and as I said next day we were listening to Wydella win the Melbourne Cup and mother was in the ground by then, Tuesday the 3rd or 4th of November, the 1953 Cup winner.

Not really, they had no postings for physiotherapists in the Australian Army other than those that had been created overseas, they have got them now. But not then.

Really I had had six and a half plus years of army ser vice, I enjoyed every minute of it and it has been a salient part of my life. With Lorraine I am a member of the local RSL [Returned and Services League]. She is the secretary and I am one of the vice presidents, we are interested in KSEAFA which is the Korean South East Asian Association of Australia. And also I am a member of BCOF

Organization and we went to a picture night organised by them just recently so our connection with our service situation is quite paramount. And also as a civilian physiotherapist I was offered a job at Keswick in about 1958 to be the civilian physiotherapist attending at the RAP [Regimental Aid Post], I had that job for years, never

regretted that. I joined the mess as an honorary member. It was good working amongst army personnel. So I suppose I am a physiotherapist who has treated casualties from two wars, because there were enough casualties from the Vietnam War that I had the handling of when I was working at the RAP at Keswick.

The war itself I think was different.

I was twenty years older and used to civilian stuff. Actually I was made aware of the fact that they wanted a physiotherapist in Vietnam, you had to be prepared to serve twelve months

I got a leave pass to go for six. Most like Don Beard who I had served, he was in 3 Battalion at Kapyong, he got up there as a senior surgeon and all he was required to do was three months. He had maintained a connection with the army anyway because at one stage he was the director of medical services here in South Australia for the army.

Anyway a bloke who was handling it at Keswick said, “We need someone for twelve months.” I said, “I am not prepared to go for more than six.” Anyway good job I didn’t; a South Australian colleague by the name of Diane Fairhead, she married an Australian major and I saw her last year at the hundred year functions

for the nursing and medical corps because they are fairly concurrent, we had celebrations here last year. We had a government house reception, a parliament house reception; we had a big function on the Sunday night and a church service on the Sunday. Lorraine and I attended them all.

I was a dead quiet shy boy when I graduated into physiotherapy, as one of the girls told me, “You were such a nice shy boy.” One of my older physiotherapy colleagues, she was in third year when I was in about first year. I am glad I went

because all of my cousins were in the services and I wasn’t. Let’s put it this way, I could look them in the face. So I guess that was important, getting into uniform, I had been denied the situation during the war because you really didn’t have to see your patients very well because they were

quite close to you, you weren’t out shooting at the enemy or anything like that. One bloke recently said, “How did you get in the army with your eyes?” And I said, “I was working in quite close quarters with my patients and they were happy to document my eye deficiencies and they indicated I would never get any compensation or anything for crook eyes because it had all been documented how bad they were. I managed.”

Lots. I had a far more interesting career than the girls I graduated with. Half of them went off within a couple of years went off to marriage and motherhood and were lost to the profession. So that was the advantage of being a male, you stuck with it for life and

I had an interesting time. I went from the personal point of view subsequent to army service I went to the Commonwealth Games in 1962; I got the job as a masseur’s advisor. I tried to get a job as a physiotherapist, but I reckon we had a far better time getting into games venues and so on for nothing where the

physios were stuck back at the hospital working. All masseurs sneak out and go to various venues and subsequently I got a job here at Adelaide Oval looking after the visiting team as a physiotherapist and that involved about half a dozen years and it was most interesting because I am mad on cricket. I am hoping to get to England next year to watch a

couple of tests God willing. Phillip said to me years ago, the oldest one, “Dad why don’t you go to the West Indies? You owe it to yourself.” But I didn’t get there. Hopefully, I was with Roger, my young brother who is thirteen years younger than me, he said, “The test cricket in England next year, perhaps we ought to go.” And after a while I said, “That

suggestion it is not as silly as it sounds.” So hopefully we might be on schedule to go to England next year and watch a couple of tests and see a bit of England. I went to England about six years ago but really didn’t see enough.

My service in Korea that stands out like a beacon. My general service to the ailing community., I didn’t believe in patients if I wasn’t doing any good and if I didn’t think I was succeeding I would tell them, “Save your money go back to the doctor

and see if he can suggest something else.” That’s didn’t happen very often because my success rate as a privately operating physio was probably in the eighties.

With satisfaction by the patients. I don’t suppose we fixed everybody but we tried. We always did our best. And the pay was all right, the conditions were good, we didn’t expect any extra medals for our service or anything like that.

And sometimes they dished out medals; the army has the facility to dish out medals sometimes to the wrong people. My friend Jack Webb, I think he was up for a Coronation Medal anyway he got passed over, he was in Korea at the time of the Coronation, as I say that was the day I travelled. But Webby didn’t get anything like that and somebody else did that possibly didn’t deserve it nearly as much as he did.

He was backwards and forwards to Korea lots of times doing refractions and that sort of thing. Next question.

Well I think you have covered all of the service situations as necessary. The fact that I virtually pulled strings to get my way to Korea because I knew my way around. Had I not got to Korea I wouldn’t be entitled to a service pension, wouldn’t be entitled to a gold card because I had service in a non-operational area.

That’s quite unfair of the government not to give all of those people who were on Japan in support of the Korean War, a) a service pension if they need it or, b) a gold card to tide them over their declining years. I am lucky I have one but if I hadn’t got to Korea I wouldn’t have one.

I don’t know whether that’s a proper message or not.

Well not enough; I mean to say when we were still there people were talking about it as the forgotten war. I suppose people in Australia had had enough of the Second World War and it was only

five to eight years later we got a comfort parcel one time that said, “No we haven’t forgotten you!” But I am still not convinced from the point of view of benefits. People who served in BCOF can’t get a service pension, can’t get a Gold card, are you aware of the Clarke Report that was issued recently with the government enquiry into anomalies in the

veterans entitlement act. There are plenty of anomalies all right but the government has knocked some of them back. The fact that they did suggest that BCOF people be cited, until June of 1947 as having had hazardous service in Japan, under some circumstances it was quite hazardous because they were busy de-lousing mines and taking down the Japanese war machine

and there were casualties. A few on a sea mine up at Yokohama. I could put two submissions to the Clarke report about the issue of gold cards to personnel who were on service in Japan and couldn’t get to Korea for various reasons, they should have been offered more than they have been given.

Especially as now most of them are towards the end of their lives; it was a long time ago. Twenty year olds then and now over seventy. A few of the BCOF people I associate with, it is not that they are not happy with the Clarke Report, they are unhappy with the government’s attitude to it.

I am glad I have got that bit in.

I enjoyed my service in Japan. One of our Rotarians, he is an Englishman, said that he

was a serviceman during the war and he said, “I got out of the army with a raincoat and a wife.” I didn’t get a raincoat, I got a wife. So for that, now that we’re putting up fifty years in October we have had a good life together and we often look back on those days in Japan when I got

the blue duck as written in the blue duck story and I said, “It is a good job for you lads that I persisted.” That’s about it.