Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in, on the 40th - 28th May 1921 at 40 Patchley Street, Balmain. The place is still there and the Historical Society

have put a little plaque on it - “Tom was born here”. But as a matter of fact Patchley Street where I was born is just like it was - I’m talking about the external parts of the house, just like it was back in the time I was born. Except for - right opposite where - on the corner of Palmer and Patchley Street there’s a 3 storey flat unit. Apart from that the place is as it was back

80 odd years ago.

Externally. But internally it’s of course a different proposition.

Well, my mother came from a Scottish family, the Miller’s and the McCauts. And on the other hand my father came from the family, the Uren’s and the Wellard’s.

And my grandfather Uren came from Cornwall where the name Uren…but my grandmother was the daughter of a Jewess. So I’ve got Scottish, Cornish and Yiddish blood in my veins. And English by the way too. So I’m a bit of a mixture.

Yeah.

My dad was a person in his youth - because he was a jockey - he was tall for being a jockey - I think he was something like 5 foot 8 tall. Slim and remained that way all his life. Rode on the Northern Rivers more than anything else but during, particularly during the First World and

soon after. My mother was the youngest of the Miller sisters, and my mother worked with her second eldest sister Mary who was in the barmaid business. And my mother was a barmaid - that’s when my father met her. And the position was

that even - a lot of people don’t realise but the 1920’s as well as the 1930’s was very difficult from the basis of employment. And my mother would have to go to work as barmaid when my father was out of work. And the sad thing about it was

at the most difficult period in her life, when she was pregnant. Because a pregnant woman in those days couldn’t serve behind the bar. So that was the most difficult days, and I can always remember my mother telling me about how they had to pawn things to pay the rent. And the old landlord in Patchley Street would say, “Mrs Uren is there anything else you can pawn to pay the rent?” And that will always

remain with me. Also in those days if you wanted to get social welfare or any assistance from the community you had to go before, what I call the ‘nice’ people of the community, to see whether you were worthy of relief. And my mother, years later, used to say, “Tommy you shouldn’t talk about those things.” And I said, “Mum, you don’t realise the impact it had

on my life, my issues.” Particularly my mother because, you know, there was a great affection between myself and my mother.

Well, that she had to go before the nice people of the community, and had to pawn things to pay the rent. In fact my brothers get a bit embarrassed too because they’ve done so well. But our family was -

my mother and father were married in Newcastle. But they came to Sydney as we say, working in Balmain. When my eldest brother Jack was born, he’s 2 years older than me, my grandmother Uren was thought to be getting, or had cancer. Or they thought she had cancer. Had 6 months to live. And she asked, “Could Jack

remain with her?” And my mother - it nearly broke my mother’s heart but in fact she did. But she loved my mother-in-law, her mother-in-law. And I often wonder, the affection, the warmth and love that was given to me by my mother. But I suppose I’m the first born in a way because I lived with my mother - the whole thing. And the warmth and love that my mother gave me remained with me all my life. Cairns used to say to me,

many years later, when we were in Parliament together, that I was the most normal bloke he’d ever met. Because I always had that love and warmth and security that my mother had given me which Jimmy himself had never received. And so many other children don’t receive it in the same way. But, because love to a human being is very important in those early years. And that’s always remained with me.

Yes, my mother has really had an enormous influence on my life. Even the little simple things but be as it may, those values are always set there. She was a good Christian woman - she was basically Presbyterian although we were - an Anglican - my father was Anglican, and we were brought up as Church of England.

But the simple values of my mother, giving and sharing and loving, never left me.

Dad really, I always admired Dad’s ability, he was a person who was a very quiet man. He was unemployed a great deal during the Depression years. But he was always active,

he was always creating things, like building boats. Either model boats or real boats. In fact he built, in the back yard, he built a 30 foot boat with a 10 foot beam, in those days and that was a mighty effort. And he really worked at home and a boat building place in the ‘30’s as a casual worker on and off. But always as a labourer.

And of course he was only a smallish man - it was very hard work for him. But no, there was a certain admiration for his ability, my dad. I think the thing that always remains with me in my father, is the way my father died. He had a tumour on the brain but we didn’t know what it was because, he was

a painter later, in later years. A house painter. And anyway he was paralysed down one side, but it was the courage that he had in the way he met death. And because I’d seen so many people die in my life, some people die as a cur and some people die as heroes. But my father was a hero so that always remained with me.

So that’s a lovely feeling that remains with my dad. My younger brother Les is more like my dad. And Jack, my elder brother, and myself are more like the mother. We’re Millers.

Well love and compassion for people. A giving process, a sharing process. I think that was always

there.

Well I think it was a loving, sharing, giving process. Compassion. My mother always, of course, wanted me to be something, to better myself. And, I don’t know, it’s a kind

of a tenacity. One of the things in my life has been that I’ve been a tenacious person. I’ve kept on going. I think that probably, I think most mothers might give their children something.

Well, she didn’t push me to any specific profession just the education, like she

was upset when I left school when I was 13. I went back to school of course, night school, later. But no, just to better myself, I think that was the great - because we’d come from working class areas and we’d been battlers all our lives, the family. But I really wanted to better myself, that was more the process.

Well strangely I didn’t to any great extent. When we were 5 - I was 5 years old I moved from there, the whole family and we went down to Harbord. In those days it was called Freshwater. And it was a weekender - for the

city people, particularly a lot of Balmain people went there. It didn’t have a particularly good name by the way. I think it was a bit rough and ready. And a chap by the name of Nixon had a lot of weekenders and my father - we got one of the houses and my father would help to repair these places. And he worked for Nixon and then later he got a job in the Tooth Brewery. But it

it was an interesting process. And because Harbord, I was no more than 400 yards from the surf. And I was in the - I swam winter and summer. And it was an idealistic life and of course, all our families that, in Balmain, they would all come down on the weekends and stay, not at our place

but they had their weekenders down there as well. Balmain, a lot of Balmain people used Harbord as a weekender.

Well I don’t know. That’s just a part - if you look at many of the great people of Freshwater Surf Club they were former Balmainites. Particularly Barney Mullins, his father was a member of the Upper House

in New South Wales. Former waterside worker and he himself was a waterside worker then moved to Patrick’s. But oh no, it was quite an area, it was pretty. In the early days the tram didn’t go all the way down the beach. It would only go a certain way. But in the end

it went right down Moore Street past our place. And I’ll always remember the trams. So that you get an idea of where I lived, there’s the, on the corner of Charles and Moore Street there is the Harbord Beach Hotel. And about 100 yards up on the opposite side was where I lived. When I last went there there was a service station

there. But I lived there from when I was 5 until I was about 11 years of age. And then we moved into Manly. First of all in Pittwater Road and then later up on the heights at a place called Augusta Road. We always rented houses, our family never owned a house and they always paid rent. But I can’t say that I really

felt the Depression myself as a child. My father was out of work from I think 1934 to ’39. But during that period of time my mother worked as a barmaid at a hotel on the corner of Bridge and George Street which again, my Aunty Mary was the manageress of that hotel.

No it’s - I suppose my sport - you see I’m so engrossed in school and sport - I was never what you call a good student - a good scholar…

Yeah well I was - from the time I was 5 till, I was at primary school, I was 12, I was at Harbord

Primary School and I have happy memories of that. I have happy memories sometimes of my mother coming up, particularly in the winter time, coming up and having a hot lunch with me. She had a little container that used to be able to keep heat in and she’d come up and share it with me. So that’s a happy memory again. I - I’ve often felt

I should go back and just introduce myself to the headmaster there and teachers there at Harbord because I really feel, a gentle feeling about Harbord Public School. I might say, we used to walk up the street past the Catholic schools and we used to call them the ‘tykes’ in those days. Even when we’d get down in football. I was in the front row - I’ll never forget it, giving

the tyke opposite me an upper cut. And I’ll never forget the fellow, he said, “What’d you do that for?” And I felt so ashamed. But that was a part of my education, breaking down this question. Because my family - very Protestant family and, in those days you’ve got no idea…

Oh yes, it was enormous.

In the ‘30’s for instance, if a Catholic wanted to go and get a job in a private sector - had to put their religion down - if they put RC [Roman Catholic] they’d never get a job. That’s why the Catholics all went into the Commonwealth and State Public Service. And it’s taken - I mean even, I must say that even up to the split in the Labor Party

back in the ‘50s. The things get ingrained in you, it’s not done in a malicious sort of way. But when I started, the split in the Labor Party, in the ‘50s I certainly was anti Catholic. I wasn’t what you call, completely anti Catholic because there were elements of Catholics that in fact were my mates. But I had to go through that education process and it

was a growing process. And I could see that, you know, that wasn’t the problem. That there were other greater issues involved. But, so even, I was an adult and I still carried those ingrained sectarian attitudes. I know that my grandfather disowned one of my aunties that married a Catholic. So you know, in the end he married

a Catholic himself, his second marriage. But that’s by the way.

It’s a sad period. If I can just add something - I may not get an opportunity. The stupidity, if I can use that term, of the sectarianism that created between Protestants and Catholics in those days - even though I think there were faults on both sides by the way. I hope we don’t get the

same feeling towards the Muslims today. It’s something we - when we don’t know enough about another group of people, we start to build barriers up against them. And I think that’s where, I’m a person that fought most of my mature life against coloured, creed and race. I’ll talk about John Howard later, about that.

Well there were a few murders. Like too much drink and rape and things of that description. And the ‘Truth’ newspaper which was the big scandal sheet in those days, certainly played it up and that’s why they changed the name from Freshwater to Harbord. And

so it was a bit before my time, the murders and that. But it’s still Freshwater Surf Club but it’s Harbord, the community. And of course, the real estate values in Harbord today, are very high.

Well I

learnt to swim in Harbord pool when I was about 5 or 6. And I - because I went down and became a good, natural surfer and going in so much - as I got older. For instance, in the district schooling I was one of the best swimmers in the district, even as a school boy. I think,

in the last year at primary school, 12 year olds in the Manly-Warringah District, I won the championship. And then of course later I evolved as a young surfie and joined Freshwater Surf Club. Put my age up to get into the club. I was 15 and I said I was 16. And I was…my daughter… Recently, I just said I was junior surf champion

from 1936 to ’39, and she reminded me it was ’35, ’36 through to ’38, ’39. But, and I was also junior belt champion in the last year too. I became a member of the R and R [Rescue and Resuscitation] squad in Freshwater Surf Club. So I had a good relationship in that. At the same time, on cricket, I wasn’t the world’s greatest cricketer.

They used to put me behind the stumps as a wicket keeper because I was the worse catcher in the world. So they put me close. And in those days we only played church cricket and we used to play every Saturday. On the football side though, I did much better. I was a good front row forward and represented Manly-Warringah in those days. There were no first grade

sides for Manly-Warringah. North Sydney was the first grade side. And so I played front row forward for the President cup side which is, that’s the representative side for the district. In ’38, ’39, ’40. In 1940 I was called up, to try out for North Sydney. And they graded me into the second grade in the first few tryouts

and I didn’t want to go there and I got out of it because of my army service. Because at that time I was in the army. But many of the people I played with played first grade for Manly-Warringah following the war. But again, they were happy days but I always said, I think I got hurt more playing football than I did fighting. I joined the army when I was… I made application

to join the army in May of 1939 and I was called up in September. I’m not sure now. October, October ’39. Only a few weeks after the war broke out. And I was in the…it was when I was at North Head that I started to go to Jack Dunleavy’s in the city to learn boxing.

And that led me on…

Well I carried the name of old Tommy Uren. And Tommy Uren was the junior First World War through to 1930, and he fought for a long while. He was lightweight and then later welterweight, a middleweight champion of Australia. So I was carrying that name.

And I was really interested in the science of the game not so much the brutality of the game. And I went to Dunleavy and lived - I mean I can always remember it. I trained on Christmas Day, News Year’s Day, Easter Day, Easter, the whole lot. I just loved it. I’d go into the gymnasium every opportunity I could. Plus the fact that I would

work out and exercise a lot at North Head where I was stationed in the Royal Australian Artillery.

Well, there’s a science of how you - it’s the only profession I learnt in the scientific way. And it’s how you - when you punch you do it with the strength, the movement of your body. The movement of your body that gives you the power. And the strength if

you do it in a scientific way. And there was an art which, Dunleavy worked out this principle of how he used to fight a fight. And I certainly learnt that principle the way he taught boxing that way. Now he had some great fighters in his time. Barnes who was a former middleweight champion of Australia was one of his boys. But

it was a great joy sharing and working in the gymnasium. I’d see a lot of the American imports at that time. I’d go and see all the great fights that were held either by, Stadium Limited, Fred Hennibery and Richards were the two great fighters we had. But other people that came over were people like Aussie Stewart,

and people of that description. And Archie Moore. Great fighters. And I saw Jack Carroll fight Van, Bep Van Clapman [?] I think his name was, he was a Dutchman, at Sydney Sportsground. Saw some and Lucas by the way, Charlie Lucas promoted all those fights at the sportsground. But the Stadium Limited, which was in Rushcutters Bay -

were promoted by Stadium Limited. Now when I started to fight professionally Richards had retired as middleweight, light, heavyweight champion of Australia. And they had a tournament at Sports Arena which is, then later became, then it was a bicycle

Place, where they used to have bike riding. It’s just up in Redfern there, just beyond Railway Square. And anyway I went into the tournament thinking I was only going for the experience. But the first fight I had I stopped the chap in the first round. And then the next fight I fought the chap, I stopped him in the 5th. And the next thing I knew I was

boxing for the championship, the vacant championship, Buggo Britts, for the 15 rounds, 15, 3 minutes rounds. Well there was only one knock down. Before I say that, I got the flu before, a few days before the fight. But I thought, oh I’ll be alright.

But there was only one knock down in the fight with - I knocked down Billy Britt. But in the 7th round I just couldn’t lift, I couldn’t even lift my arms I was so, so exhausted. So they stopped the fight and that was the beginning of my professional career.

Well my father, I’ll never forget my father coming in

when I was just lying on the couch after that first fight with Britt. And my nickname was Tucker. And he said to me, “Tuck I’m proud of you.” So I was - I remember that. My mother didn’t like it of course. She didn’t even like me joining the army. But, but you know what mothers are.

Well, she thought that the army made me coarse. But she was opposed to, I think, violence generally. Although she wasn’t, she never expressed the view that she was a pacifist in any form.

Well, I didn’t give much attention to it. In fact people… afterwards old Jack Dunleavy… I got a chap by the name of George O’Reagan. Oh I’m jumping ahead of things. I didn’t really have a strong view, all I was concerned about,

I wanted fighting as a profession. And one of the things, why I went to the war, the Second World War. I transferred across from the RAAA [Royal Australian Artillery Association] to the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] - which wasn’t easy by the way - was that I wanted to be a returned soldier. ‘Cause I didn’t want to be… I’m quite a sensitive person and even then, and I couldn’t take the criticism that Darcy had taken

in his years, when they called him the ‘Slacker’. And I just wanted to make sure I got went to the war.

Well, any kid that was pro fighting had to know something about Darcy. And Darcy was pound for pound, probably the greatest fighter the world has seen. He

was a young fellow from Maitland, and my father had seen some of his early fights. And there was an old saying, that an American, a great American fighter by the name of Eddie McGorty said of him, he said, “If you really want to go the distance with Darcy, don’t hurt him.” And that was Darcy. Darcy was so good

that he would take - he didn’t - he just had to win. He didn’t go out to kill a person or hurt a person. But there was something about his greatness, and of course, any person that dies young, the general feeling amongst us Australians in those early days was, that the Americans poisoned him. Of course we know that’s rubbish now, but in those days

we thought it was fair dinkum. And so, you know, I really felt for Darcy.

Yeah, well there was no ifs or buts, they made a real propaganda machine against him. And

of course he snuck out of Australia. And the promoters and everybody else in Australia used it very much, and built it up as an enormous pressure against Darcy. Now I didn’t know of all these things at that time, because of only what I’ve read, I mean I’ve launched books on the life of Les Darcy. But oh, he was persecuted like you’ve got no idea, the

persecution, he was persecuted in the United States. Mainly because the connections of the money people or promoters from the Australia side.

Just one of them.

Well I just wanted

to be, you know… In those days, the great thing was, you know, RSL [Returned and Services League], was something of some merit from the First World War and I wanted to be part of that brigade. Totally stupid. I mean even the question of… I never forget, when we went to Darwin, there was a Brigadier General who got up there, and ferocity and propaganda poured

out about the Japanese. How vicious and violent and vile they were. War is - I know the truth is the first casualty but the propaganda is just enormous. You even see today on the Iraqi War or the war on Afghanistan it’s just… I mean most people think we’re doing

a great thing going over there. It’s utter stupidity. And anyway, I was a part of that. I might say that in regard to, getting a bit ahead of myself, when I was in Darwin, just before I went off to Timor, I got a letter from Charlie Lucas saying that

the authorities were giving permission to give me leave to come back to Sydney to fight a chap by the name of Cec Overall in a bout for charity. And I was more concerned about going to bloody war than I was about going back to meet, to have this fight with Cec Overall.

Well I must have, as a youngster, I must’ve liked my food. And everybody - I was nicknamed Tucker. And from the time, from the time I lived in Manly-Warringah district until the time I joined the army I was always known as Tucker. And I’ll never forget when I was in the Singapore - going through, up to the Burma-Thai

railway. We were on the outskirts of Changi jail, a place called Selarang. And you had to get from one area to another - you had to go through guards. Anyway a message was sent over, was Tucker Uren over there? And I said, well it must be somebody that knew me in the Harbord day or Freshie days, to call

me Tucker. And like, for instance, I can give you a funny instance - the first time I swam as a swimmer representing Freshwater Surf Club, we were at Bondi Surf Carnival and I ran 3rd, I think Newbiggan won it and Jimmy Jenkins was second and I was 3rd. And a chap by the name of Johnson who was, later became a policeman,

he was then a prominent swimmer. And he came up to me and he said, “Tuck, who’s that bloke T. Uren who ran 3rd for Freshie yesterday?”. I said, “You silly bugger that’s me.” But everybody just called me Tucker. And I was well known in the district as Tucker and not even Tucker Uren just Tucker.

Well,

I was, I was in a billiard room, kind of - wasn’t a saloon, but people’d play cards and gamble there. And I was gambling, and I was quite a gambler I might tell you. Because I can remember we got up to 32 shillings in a game of blind

poker. You know, just to enter the thing that’s how much I would do. Gamble. Anyway it was that night that I was sitting there around gambling and we heard that war had broken out. It never had - well it had an impact there’s no argument about that. And of course I had applied for… little did I

think that I’d get such an early call up. In those early days my mother wouldn’t even sign the documents for me to become apart of the AIF. And if you were under 21 you had to get your parents’ permission. And even though the first time I applied my mother wouldn’t allow it at all. The second time she let me go. And I was then 20 years of age

when I joined - transferred from the RAAA across to the AIF.

Well I, I think - when you’re in the teenagers and you kind of got the lust for - something to be in the services. And as I say, I applied in May, well before the war broke

out so I really wanted to go into the services. And I must say I think the services did something for me. I found it… I was on the 92 guns at North Heads. My deafness came out… ‘cause the left ear… came out of those guns on Middle Head, those 6 inch, mark 7 guns on Middle Head. The

Stupidity, if I can use the word, of the people who looked after soldiers in those days. You had no, on the artillery, you had no earphones or protection to the ears or anything. But no, I think it was just the lust for adventure.

Well, I was always a bit of a loner in many ways.

Even though I swam in the clubs and all that. For instance, from when I - I started work when I was 13 and I’d go and ride that Manly Ferry every day to and from the city. And I grew to love Sydney Harbour. And, in fact what I would do,

I was a great theatre goer. I was never a great reader in those early days but certainly I saw most films. I loved going to the films. I’ve fallen in love with a few movie stars in my time. I was telling a silly experience about Irene Dunn. Now I don’t know if you know Irene Dunn but she was quite a prominent actress and she… I always loved that

role in those early… ‘Roberta’, when she came down the stairs with those beautiful arctic fox - white artic fox - trimmings around her neck. And I found out that she was married to a dentist which disappointed me. But then the really…she was a Catholic. And I thought that was terrible.

But anyway that’s just one of those things. But people like Norma Shearer, she touched me very deeply. There were some beautiful women that I was very attracted to in the films. But I was always a very strong Clark Gable admirer. I think he was one of my pinups on the films. But I was a great film goer. And I would go on

my own, right through those years. Occasionally I might go with my mother but on the whole I would go on my own. And even when I was in the early years of the army I’d train on my own. And go back to the barracks and that. So in some way, and I think in a way I’m still like that. Even though I’m a collectivist, and even

though I’m a part of the collective’s broad struggle, I always like to retreat back into my own self. And in life, as I’ve grown and been a critic, Uren has always got to please Uren. I never tried to be baloney or false with myself. And I think I’ve been a bit like that in my life. Even the

earlier part of my life. So, you know, I made great mates don’t get me wrong but, I was a bit of a loner.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was never, I often say

that I was never, you know, young blokes get involved in sex. Well sex never really worried me really. I mean I was very attracted to a woman in the early - just before I joined the army. I was certainly attracted to her but I never had sex with her. But certainly attracted to her.

Oh yeah, I would’ve loved to have had sex with her but she didn’t

allow me. And in those days, you kind of respected a person if she didn’t want to have it. But sex wasn’t an issue greatly with me. I was so engrossed in sport and in my own way of life.

Well, only one girl and the girl that I was attracted to was a mannequin for Barber furs. And I’d worked for a firm called

Allalengen [?] and Company which are furs and skins merchants. And that’s how I knew her. And, she was a tall, handsome brunette. And I was fairly sweet on her, I can tell you.

Well my first job and only job before I joined the army

was to work with this firm Allalengen and Company. They’re Armenians and they were fur and skins merchants. And the person in charge of it - was the general manager was a chap by the name of Chalgian, Kevog Chalgian. And he was a wonderful character-building human being. We had a senior Australian there working too but

he passed his, he’d blame everybody else but himself. But I never found Chalgian ever to blame anybody else. The buck stopped with him and he would deal with that and that stayed with me, his strength of character. So I’ve always admired Chalgian. In fact, in discussion with me he would explain the Armenians and one of the problems about the Armenians, and the only difference,

you could tell the difference between an Armenian and a Turk. Because you know, in the early 1900’s the Turks persecuted the Armenians very greatly. And the Armenians are Christians. And the way you could tell the difference - you couldn’t tell the difference between them - was that one was circumcised and the others were not. And

there was so many lost their lolly if they found out they were in fact Armenians. It was very brutal, very brutal the Turks were, to the Armenians.

Well, I was just like his offsider. We’d deliver furs, we’d stand and help grade the furs with him. I got to know all the

different qualities of fur, the minks and sables and Kalinskys, and you know, what have you, musquash, you know, I knew all those things. And even in those days, I don’t think we went every week, but when he went around the wool sheds in those days - they used to have rabbits and water rats, and all those different Australian furs. I’d go with him. But I

was - it was 5 years I was there. From when I was 13 to when I was 18, and then I left there to go to the army.

A water rat is just, it’s like - it’s a beautiful thing. You call - I think - it’s very similar to a musquash. And they had beautiful, lovely… underneath was kind of a golden tinge of fur.

But,

Well, they’re a fairly big rat and they used to call them water rats. And they were, I think they virtually killed them out they were so popular. I think they were the most… things like Australian foxes have a pretty poor type of quality compared to other northern

hemisphere foxes. But the water rats had a special quality about them.. I think they’ve killed them off so much they might be even - they’re extinct. But I never hear about them these days.

As a matter of a fact being part of the fur game is a bit of an embarrassment. My wife wouldn’t wear a fur, she just wouldn’t.

No, I’m saying now.

I’m talking about my wife now. As you’re aware, my first wife died in ’81 but my present wife, certainly would not wear a fur.

Yeah, yeah.

Well the thing that I always remember, ‘cause

I went to enlist at Victoria Barracks when I was called up. And as a child I had sugar in the blood and I was on diets most of my life up ‘til that time. Even though you tell kids that they shouldn’t have sugar but they would sneak away and have them. But I was always on a diet because of my sugar. The sugar content, what they call sugar in the blood.

And the thing that always stuck in my mind was when you had the urinal test, they see whether or not you’re worthy. And I was wondering whether or not I would be rejected with the sugar. But I wasn’t, it was clear and I’ve been clear ever since. I’ve been tested so many times, but it hasn’t worried me. What I am, if I have

too much sugar or that these days, and when I say sugar I might have a sesame bar or something like that, I get a headache, it gives me a headache. Two things give me a headache these days. Sugar and dairy products. So I stay away from sugary products and all dairy products.

Yeah well, I’m in a fortunate position that ever since the Whitlam Government,

back in 1974, decided that POW’s [Prisoner of War] should be given what they call a Gold Card now, but it was the first breakthrough to give free medical, free hospitalisation, free dental and free optical treatment. So since ’74 I’ve had that card. So I haven’t had to worry about those costs.

No that’s the one that stays with me. As I was saying I was sent to North Head. I can always remember the person who really fascinated me and who was my first aspiration of what I wanted to be in life. There was an old chap by the name

of Jack Hume. He was the regimental sergeant major. And I always admired the way he commanded those men on the parade ground. And I wanted to be a Jack Hume in my life, wanted to be a regimental sergeant major.

Oh the bearing, the command, the discipline. It really did impress me.

In fact I became a - what do you call it - a bombardier and I used to have to train squads, particularly when the conscripts started to come through, when we used to train them at North Head.

Well I can always recall - I can remember

it just like yesterday. We had a sergeant by the name of Eddie Finuken [?]. He played rugby league football for South Sydney and he was a short bouncy fellow. And he was giving us instructions on the gunneries at Middle Head. And he’d tell you things and he’d said, “Now

everybody clear on that?” And I wasn’t quite sure and I’d always say, “Could you explain such and such.” And I was never backwards. If I wasn’t clear on something I’d get it explained and I always do that. But it’s that particular moment that stays with me. But I was never frightened to say, “I don’t understand, would you just explain those things.” Because so many people don’t understand and are not prepared to speak out about it. But

I was never that one.

Well, I was up at North Head Barracks on the guns, and then later I was transferred to the Quarter Master’s Store at North Head. So instead of going up on the guns. I can remember… I’ve just giving you

reminiscences of the guns. Billy Wentworth for instance, was a captain in those days, and he certainly came through, the former parliamentarian. And then Wilson, Captain Wilson was our CO [Commanding Officer] and he later became General in Command of Australian Forces after the war, and then he was also made - we made him Agent General in

New York. So those little memories come back. But no, I was in the Quarter Master’s Store and you get callous because… The fellows that were going to Darwin, the conscripts and that, you get the outfit and you wouldn’t have exactly their size. And

if it was too big you say, “It’ll shrink.” If it was a bit small you’d say, “It’ll stretch.” But the idea was to reeve them through. And I’ll never forget, I’ll never forget as long as I live - when Darwin, when I got to Darwin I ran into some of them and they said, “You so and so.” But yeah, it was great.

Well they would’ve

changed them by then. But it was a matter of getting them through. Because it was a matter of supply with us. We had problems there too.

Well there were 9.2 guns on North Head, and then on

South Head they had 6 inch, Mark 11’s. And then on Middle Head they had 6 inch, Mark 7’s. And when I lost my deafness on that left ear, well broke the eardrum. You had to… there was a person on the elevation, and I was just witnessing that he was getting in the right projection or

right aspects to fire the gun. And there were 2 guns and the one on the North would come across and when it would go off, they’d both go off. And when they’d go off, it was just like somebody kicking me in the ear. And just really, virtually kicking me in the ear. It was something… You cannot realise how stupid the people

responsible for young men, looking after young men…can do to soldiers by not doing the right thing. Anyway that always stays with me. But of course Middle Head has become a part of my struggle to make sure that it became - remained in public ownership. And I’m now a patron of the defenders of Sydney Harbour Foreshore. And whether it’s at North Head or Dobroyd Point or Middle Head or South Head,

I’m certainly going to make sure that it does stay in the public sector, for the people, to preserve it. If you ever want to really see a beautiful sight - one of the most beautiful spots, and that is when you come by car, don’t go right down the Middle Head road. You turn off at Taronga Park Zoo Road. And you come to a street called Cross Street and that brings you up to

Rawson Park. And you walk across from the park there, and you look out and you see the panoramic view of the whole of Sydney Harbour from the South, right to the headlands and right through coming round to Sydney itself. And it is a magnificent spot. And where I was cranky as hell on the early days of the Howard Government wanting to sell off some of that,

we were able to stop them. Because what they did, they’d given 96 million dollars to rehabilitate certain areas -40 million for Cockatoo Island, 6 million for Garden Island to upgrade that and 50 million to, really, buy back from the Defence Department. But they then said that any further development or rehabilitation would come from commercial

activities. Now that meant two things. Either selling of land or long term leases. Because there’s about 400 buildings on those sites. Well, believe it or not they made decisions and even though it’s hard for me to commend and congratulate a Government, what Howard has done, and his government, have done magnificent work. It’s mainly responsible for… they chose a wise person, a Liberal who would

be the Chairman of that Trust. He loves Sydney Harbour, and then they selected an Executive Director to run that. And he advises - I might say that he’s got the people that work with me, the architect of this house for instance, is one of the major advisors. So I’m very proud and very happy now. We are a very very lucky people. Look, I got on Manly Ferry the other day,

because when I get depressed sometimes I used to go over for a ride on the Manly Ferry. In this case I just went over to see a friend of mine in Manly. But coming back, I got on the Manly Ferry and I looked, I sat on the western side of the ferry. And as I went out through - you just think about it, Dobroyd Point, then Middle Head.

then right through, going - except for a little bit of housing, there was Garden Island. The rest of it, right through to Bradley’s Head. Then you turn again and right to the zoo, all open public land. It’s so wonderful. It just makes you feel so proud you’re a part of it. It’s just wonderful.

And you know that you were a grain of sand in that struggle to keep that in that way. It feels wonderful.

Sorry, I had to make that speech.

Well they decided to make a unit of heavy batteries. And to draw from heavy batteries, and to transfer from there to the AIF. Because we were trained people within - doing a defence job - they wouldn’t have released us to the AIF. But in this case they were sending this

group of people to Timor, Kupang Timor, to defend that island because there was two guns there, placed, 6 inch Mark 11’s, they were off the Sydney from the First World War. And we’d had civilians that had put them in - you know, put them in place, their foundations and everything. And so there was about, a little bit over a hundred odd men from

every State in Australia. From Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, even across to Western Australia. So many from each were transferred to this 2/ 1st Heavy Battery. And that’s when my mother agreed to let me go on that occasion. And so I was able to get out of the RAA - the Royal Australian Artillery - across to the AIF. That was, I’d say about the middle of

’41. I spent the last 3 weeks of my life in Sydney at the Quarantine Station, which I’m fighting the New South Wales Government over now, to retain that in the public sector.

Oh well, I suppose I wanted to see action. I mean, from North Head

I saw the troop ships go out and that’s kind of - if you are in the army you want to be a part of it. I saw the Queen Mary go out, the Queen Elizabeth, the Aquitania. All those troops going out. Saw the 6th Division move out. No, it was so I wanted to go, I wanted to see

action. As I say I had an opportunity to come back and fight Cec Overall. But to hell with that. I’d been indoctrinated.

Yes. As a matter of fact I’d never travelled further north than Newcastle, where my family came from, my grandparents lived.

I’d been as far south as Port Kembla. And I’d been up to Katoomba for holidays. But that was the extent of my travel prior to my joining up. A truck or a train at Alexandria goods yard. And we travelled west through to Broken Hill and then down south to Terowie and then we went up north,

on what they call the Ghan. In those days you could get out and walk as fast as the train went, up to Alice Springs. When I got to Alice Springs it was late July, it was July sometime. And I’ll never forget it, it was so cold in the night, but I had to leave my bunk and go out and sleep next to a log fire that was being burned on the outside. But

from Alice Springs to Birdum, which was then a rail head - there was a railway of about 600 miles running from Darwin down to Birdum. So between Alice Springs it was only a dirt road. And we’d do 200 miles a day in the back of a truck on this dirt road. And the dust would be about a quarter inch

thick. And of course, when we’d get out, we’d have showers under the bore water, coming from… and your hair would stand on end, it was so harsh. But I’ll never forget the sunsets of those days. And even in the distance, even on the tablehead mountains Aboriginals would be lighting fires and the smoke would go up. But the

sunsets were something magnificent. And that remains with me still today. I’ve been back to try and capture it but I haven’t been to capture it in the same way as I did on that occasion. So we, we did it - each camp in 3 days we did that. And then eventually we got to Birdum and they put us back into cattle trucks and then from Birdum up to Darwin. And it was at

Larrakeyah Barracks where we were stationed. But I would run into these other soldiers that I’d outfitted earlier. But, in those early months in Darwin of course, I had two major fights. One was with a chap by the name of Jimmy Gray. And I’m thinking I should know it.

All these names. And that was the ring as a matter of fact. I’ve got a photograph of that if you’re interested.

It was. It was - and for seats they had beer cases. But anyway … Jimmy Gray was a

waterside worker - he worked on the waterside. But he was a person of some note. He was supposed to be a good fighter. Anyway in the fight game you can really sum your opponent up, fairly skilfully after a round or so, if you step around and do the right thing. Nothing stupid like I have been sometimes. But

anyway, by about the 6th round I’d had him on the floor a couple of times. And then he walks out and clobbers the referee.

Hit the referee. Because it had become a ‘no fight’ because of the fact that were so much money on the fight, particularly the waterside workers. And that was the reason

they stopped it so anyway.

Yeah, well this chap by the name of Bennett, he had two sons, one’s called George, another called Ken. They were organising fights, professional fights in Darwin. And that was one - well I won the fight, no argument about that.

And then the second fight that I won - a 10 round fight. And I won that on points. They were the two professional fights that I had but at the same time I went out and gave an exhibition at the 21 mile camp. South of Darwin at the 21st

Battalion. And they were the crowd that went to Ambon. And the fellow that… so they were keen to have me and I was keen to join them. They’re infantry. And probably if we’d lasted longer in Darwin I probably would’ve been transferred because the CO and everybody wanted to have me transferred there. They were the ones that went to Ambon. And there’s three areas

there’s three areas that really suffered greater than anyone else, as a prisoner of war. The first is Sindakan or Sandakan, whatever you want to call it, where only 6 people survived out of nearly 2,000 people there. The other one was Ambon which the casualties were vicious and cruel and they murdered people. And

of course the Burma Thai Railway, where I was, was the last one. But they’re the three worst areas as prisoner of war. Now it could’ve been if I’d got across to the 21st I may not have survived, because many of those fellows didn’t survive. So fate again was looking after me.

Well, it was a boring place really. It was a boring place. But exciting on the other hand, you know, being a part of the army was good. But I was there - I arrived in August, early August and we left

on the 8th, the night of the 8th of December so I wasn’t there that long. But I can always remember, I didn’t drink alcohol in those days. But we were a fair way out, you know, you had to walk it. But we’d walk into a place, which was next to the big hotel where you would get

lime drinks that were crushed ice. Well I tell you, you’ve never - you were so thirsty you’ve never had anything like it in your life before. It’s just so wonderful. I can remember we went to a restaurant - I had a mate called Babe Daniels and there’s a photograph of Babe and I. We went to have a, what you call

a steak, barramundi and eggs all on the one plate. And of course, when you call it steak, it was buffalo steak. I was still a steak eater in those days, pardon my sins. But no, it was, that was interesting. If you went to the films, they had a kind

of an open - the back part was covered but the open front part was open air. And the Aboriginals had to sit down in the front and the whites would sit in the back. So you know, racism was prevalent in those days, which we didn’t… again, we just took as natural. We didn’t buck it in any way. I’ve come a long way, I’ve had to learn a lot of things.

Oh boy, oh boy it was the talk of the town, there’s no doubt about that. Yeah, of course it was.

Well as a matter of fact it coincided with - can I stop a second … my throat…

Well all the wharfies were there to support Jimmy Gray particularly. But because, army fellows as well. And as I say, for ringside seats they had Four Ex boxes and all that down there. And of course,

I didn’t tell you earlier, on this night, because - when Jimmy Gray clocked this referee, everybody got in the ring and the ring collapsed. And, of course at that same time there were riots within - it wasn’t caused by this but there were riots in Darwin on that night, that same night.

I don’t know - I’m not really sure what the riots were created by but there was a lot of discontent about the conditions in Darwin at that time. I mean, they were very primitive, conditions were very primitive. As I say, with a dirt road in the middle - but flies, I have never seen flies like it in my life. I mean a person’s back would be covered, just a mass, covered with flies. This Ken Austin

was working with - and George Austin, were working at building the new Darwin Hospital at that time. I can remember that. And even… if you went into a army cook house it had to be…like all netting right around to keep the flies away. But it was just so - flies have always been - like for instance, I live now, here, in

a house which has not got any fly nets at all. It’s just wide open. But I don’t seem to have to worry about flies these days. But flies in those days were a real worry to me. Just like they were in the prisoner of war camp later.

Oh, we didn’t give much thought about that. We really were more concerned about - we didn’t even think we’d be attacked by the way. We were at Larrakeyah Barracks,

which is the coastal barracks, and as I said, the other infantry battalion I was associated with, the 21st Battalion down at the other 21st mile camp down south. No we had no inkling that Australia or Darwin was under threat. At our level. I mean, I’m not saying that there may have been senior thinkers above, that

may have been aware of it. But I certainly wasn’t.

Well, the excitement never occurred until we…what occurred in Hawaii. And it was the night - see it was the 7th in America but

with us… and that night we went, we were straight onto the Westralia. And that was the exciting part about it. It was a real excitement about going to conflict. I think we landed about the 12th of December in Kupang Bay. The first thing I ever saw though, was… I’d never

seen a shark in Darwin waters, but the first thing I saw when we looked overboard was this enormous sized shark in Kupang Bay. That sticks in my memory. I don’t even - I mean disembarkment and all that, doesn’t come with me at all.

Well, that night, the news immediately came through that as soon as the attack was made, we were alerted immediately and had to get ready for embarking. And so we went on the Westralia, it must’ve been waiting for us, to take us over.

And, as I say, we landed on the 12th. What we did with our - we proofed and calibrated our guns, when we got to the place. I’ll never forget, I was really upset because I was still a Quarter Master in the Quarter Master’s store. And when action came I was not a part

of the gun - I couldn’t get involved and I was very upset about that. But then, of course, what we did get…there was air raids from about, somewhere around about Australia Day of 1942.

Right through until when they invaded on the 20th. They strafed us with Zero fighters or bombers and the area was completely all coral, and it was kind of, you had to be

careful about the flying coral, would just be as dangerous as anything else, as the bombs themselves. But I can remember very clearly - talking about fear - the Zeros were coming in and I ran about 100 yards to get to the bottom of the hill that I was trying to seek to get. In other words, to get off the

flat portion of the area where we were. And I’ll never forget, it’s the longest 100 yards I ever ran in my life. And it’s the only time in my life that I ever panicked in service. But I should’ve hit the deck immediately, particularly if anything had been flying. If you were running they’d cut you to pieces. Anyway I learnt that lesson from that, and I never ever

lost my control of myself in any raid from thereon, for the rest of my life, when I was under fire.

Well, I was running in panic to try and get to the hills. When I should’ve hit the deck there and then. Running, when you’re under attack was the worse thing in the world and all I could do was, this fear

that I would be, that I’d be - if I didn’t get to that destiny, I’d have trouble. Well that wasn’t the correct thing to do. Now what happened was that we used to find that the Zeros would come along the coast and then zoom in over our battery, artillery battery. And sometimes they’d open with machine gun fire, otherwise they’d go to other

destinations. But then the big bombers would come over. And they’d come over in formations of 9. 3, 3 and 3. 3 in the front and 3 on each side. And of course they had complete control of… It wasn’t only until the last couple of days, a week before action broke out, there was a British Artillery unit arrived,

ack ack [anti aircraft] unit arrived. Otherwise we had no air defence. What we used to have to do, was to concentrate fire with machine guns onto a certain point, hoping that the plane would fly through that and therefore be struck down that way. When the action really broke and the bombings started to come very heavily. For instance…

and I had to be, as I say, medical orderly kind of, stretcher bearer. The CO was a Major Wilson, was the CO of our camp. He was in an air raid shelter and he was hit right at the end of it. And he got badly damaged. Well we had to pick him up and put him on a stretcher,

and there were two fellows in front, I don’t know, I can’t recall their names. And I was at the back on my own. And we were carrying this Major Wilson towards the medical orderly’s hut. And while we were doing it we had to, several times, hit the

the ground because of the raids that were coming over. The fellow in front, piece of shrapnel went right through his, from the back of his arm right through. So he couldn’t carry it any longer, so I was just at the back and the other bloke was at the front. And you know, I was trying to talk to the old Major, whilst he was doing it but he’d had his upper part of his stomach, and chest, was a hell of a mess. He was the first

casualty. I don’t think he, I mean I read where in fact he died before he got to the medical base. But I don’t think he even, I think he died before he left us. But that was the day where it started. But then we found out that the Japanese had landed on the other side of the island, that was the rumour. So

they decided - that was the command decision - they decided that we should no longer stay in, on our battery, protect our battery, but dismantle them and we were made back up for infantry. The first place they sent us to was …

As far as I know, yes I think he was the first one, yes.

Well, I kind of strange as it may seem, it didn’t really - it was a part of war, in a way. And I just took it in my stride that we’re just trying to help

the old bloke to… In fact I used to - I knew he was a ladies man. I just, you know I used to talk to him about - you’ll be alright, everything’ll be alright. And that’s while I’m carrying him now, talking in that way. But no what I found was the hopelessness of the lack of leadership at that time. It really, in the early part, it really disturbed me.

What happened was, the instructions were - I have to explain the outfit of Kupang and Champlong Champlong’s in the mountains and we were - our base - a lot of our people were based people. But most of them, they dropped parachutes at a place called Babau and it’s about 20, I’ll do it in miles not in kilometres. It was about 28

miles from Kupang Bay to Champlong in the mountains. And Babau was about half way between the two. And they dropped, varying, they say 500. I hear other stories about 1,000 - Japanese paratroops at Babau. So what they did with us, because our troops had gone over, our infantry had gone

over the other side of the island to combat the Japanese main company’s force, supposed to have been landing on that island. They found it was only a 5th column. The information - in other words they’d misled them. We had to go there and act as infantry at a place called Babau. So they sent myself and two others. I was a bombardier. They said, “You go out and

do that, on that flank there.” So we go up, go up the hill on the flank. And I’d never, I didn’t know they were using mortars. Like, one man mortars they put on their knee. And they’d go off and then you’d hear the rebound. And what I thought it was, when they’d go, I’d say, that’s them and then you’d hear them, that’s us. That’s how much

I knew about infantry warfare. I didn’t know the first thing about it. Anyway, we were up there, must’ve been up there, could have been, I don’t know, must’ve been best part of two hours. So in the end I said, oh gees I’d better go and see what’s happening downstairs. So I told the two fellows that were with me. One was Babe Daniels and I just can’t remember the name of the other

person there. We had to get over several fences to get down to the main centre of Babau. When I get down there I see the Japanese coming up the road and our fellows retreating and I yell out to Babe, “Our crowd’s pulling out.” Well Babe moved so fast. But I was a long way in front. The both of

of them beat me down to where we got the last truck out of Babau. And so again, it’s just fate again that I survived. Because if I’d remained there they took no prisoners, they just mutilated all the prisoners that were kept, that were captured by the Japanese paratroopers. So anyway,

we withdraw and then they started to organise our forces and we started to fight back to try and wipe out the Japanese paratroops. I was in charge of about 20 or 30 blokes in the rear. And I’ll never forget, the officer would come on and say,

“Get your men up on their feet. Bobber down.” I’d get them up on their feet and you know about 15 minutes later nothing happened so they’d get down again. And, then the officer’d come back and say, “Get your men up on their feet.” And bobber there so I’d get the men up on their feet again. And it must’ve been about the third time I said, “Well Captain,” I said, “A man once said to me, never stand up when you can sit down and never sit down when you can lie down.”

And he said, “I don’t care what…” and he nearly went berserk. I’ll never forget that for as long as I live. So anyway, we were all there in the rear and a Bren gun carrier, our armour is 2 Bren gun carriers. That’s all the 2/ 40th Battalion Infantry Battalion had, which we were supporting, you see. The infantry battalion was there to protect the battery, the

artillery battery. They were a Tasmanian unit on the whole, a few Victorians, but on the whole they were mostly Tasmanians. Well they came up, this Bren gun carrier, and said, “We want to volunteer to load Lewis guns.” Because even though it was a Bren gun carrier they had Vickers guns in the front which were, Second World War, First World War

Veterans. They also had these Lewis guns on the top and, of course, they were a vintage gun as well. So what I’d generally find there, we’ve got the cams there but we got no, bolt or socket to go up in the socket to make sure - and I had to get my thumb into and my fingers into to kind of rotate the Lewis guns to put the, cartridges or

bullets into them. And there was a fellow by the name of West, and I’ve never checked up whether he’s still living or what. But he’d get, he was trigger happy. (UNCLEAR) and he’d shoot them off. We, as I say, I was not what you called proud of the Australian heroism of the soldiers. I saw no leadership at all.

And we were on this road going up to what they call Usua Ridge. And on this ridge there was - the Japanese were camped in with machine guns. Right along the ridge. And our fellows were just walking up the hill steady as you can make it. On the

road itself was the CO, his name was Bill Leggatt. He was the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the 2/ 40th Battalion and he was giving instructions and leadership. And I could feel the bullets hitting the side of - I mean Bren gun carriers had no top on them and you just had to get right down low hoping they wouldn’t hit you - and I could hear them hitting the side of the carrier. And

here’s old Leggatt, just walking up and down giving his men instructions, what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. And that changed my mind. And then I saw them just walk up the hill and bayonet the Japanese and go right through. The 2/ 40th Battalion, they were a wonderful fighting battalion. And my, that experience, that one experience watching the courage of those fellows

and the leadership of Leggatt restored my love of - and heritage of the Anzac spirit. And I was very proud of them.

Well every bloody time - every time the Japs came over, we knew we were at war, have no doubt.

Well I reckon on the 26th January, 1941, ’42. I mean we were strafed and bombed every day from the 26th January right through to the 20th February

when they landed. And of course, they bombed Darwin on the 19th of February. Yeah, you come under fire from the Japanese. For instance, you would be working on - I’m going ahead of myself -

Well it’s just the roar of the engines that are going over you without even hearing the bullets flying down or the bombs dropping. But

it’s the fear of war. As I say, I only lost my lolly, if I can use the expression, once, but from thereon I was cool as a cucumber and I knew what I wanted to do and where I’d do it. For instance I didn’t - the time I was carrying old Major Wilson I was not fearful of my life at all even though the bloke in front gets a piece

right through him. Right through his left shoulder. No, I wasn’t fearful after that. I think you either take control of yourself or you don’t, in war. I’m not saying that you’re not concerned, you are. But I never felt it at all nor did I during my prison camp life.

I can’t say I did. No I wouldn’t … I don’t know if I examined them. I certainly saw, as a prisoner I saw people panic and things like that, in fear. But in battle no, I can’t say I did.

I was critical of the leadership of the officers we had. And of the leadership they showed. And I just thought we were a rabble until I got into this Bren gun carrier. That restored my faith

in the Australian veterans and the courage of the - I mean they were - those Tasmanian groups were a magnificent body of men. And they fought remarkably well. They annihilated the whole of the Japanese paratroops, so much so that the incoming forces, when we were taken prisoner, the way that the forces,

they were front line forces, were looking after us in Kupang. They respected us because of the way we fought against them. And it was because of the 2/ 40th Battalion that did it. I’ll never forget, after we were taken prisoner, I was up on insubordination for one of the officers. His name was Primrose. And we had to go before Leggatt and Leggatt recognised me right away.

That I was on Usua Ridge with them. So he just said, “Oh look, we’ve got difficult days ahead.” He said, “You’ve got to remember that.” Where Primrose wanted to really put me on the real spot. He just discharged it just by talking about cooperation. But he recognised

me as being one of his boys on Usua Ridge. That’s the thing that pleased me.

Well, it was the coolness, lack of fear, direction of his men under fire. I mean it was the experience of… Why I was critical about our people is, anywhere we had to go

the men had to go forward and they’d come behind. The officers would come behind. Now I didn’t think that was the right thing. I thought leaders led. I’m not saying whether I was right or wrong but that’s the way I thought. And here we have Leggatt in one of the most - positions - he was there on the road, bullets were hitting the side of my…and he was a cool as a cucumber giving instructions to his men to take over a certain area.

Well that was what remained with me. And of course, we know that many other battles and as a matter of fact, there’s quite a remarkable book called ‘The Doomed Battalion’ of the 2/ 40th Battalion which shows a lot of the great courage of that battalion. And I’m very proud of them all.

No it didn’t make any impression at all. No. I just - I thought he was - I didn’t think he’d make it but that

wasn’t, that didn’t really frighten me or make any impact on… I didn’t really - I suppose I shouldn’t say this - but I didn’t really respect him a great deal. In fact I didn’t respect many of the officers much on the 2/ 3rd Heavy Battery. That’s not to say I didn’t respect officers later but I didn’t respect those officers

which were commanding us, very much.

No, I’m talking for myself. I think there was similar cynicism with other people but, they’d have to speak for themselves.

Well,

Timor - they only had the one road. It was running through, from Kupang, through to - the place that I mentioned in …

Well Timor was that - a single road from Kupang into Bampong in the mountains.

In many places if you went off that road you went into bogs and marshes or you - it was fairly corally type country. Fairly primitive. For instance, what happened was, after we’d taken Usua Ridge we moved on beyond Usua and we stopped there that night, without going on

to Bampong , thinking there would be Japanese between us and them. Now the country that was just beyond Bampong, beyond Usua. Eventually when we were given the opportunity whether we wanted to surrender or not we were all - all our trucks were all - we had about 150 dead, we had, I forget the enormous

percentage - I think it was - the infantry was something like 50% of casualties. But they’re all on the trucks and we’re all, stretched out along this long, one single road. The first thing we heard, the rumour was that the Yanks are coming but really it was the tanks. The Japanese had landed their tanks and they’d

come up onto our rear. And they’d given our people either orders to surrender or be annihilated. And anyway, our officers and men decided that they were in an impossible position and they surrendered. Then what occurred was, the Japanese soldiers marched in amongst us, along past us

and all we thought, they were was just funny little people. Then the next thing we know, is that the Japanese bombers come over and they bombed us, the whole convoy with the Japanese amongst them. And in fact, it’s been said that one of the Japanese trucks behind us, one of

the bombs landed in amongst them. But certainly what saved us was, the area where we surrendered was mud on either side, was muddy buffalo country and everything, on either side of the road. So we were flat down and therefore the bombs - if it had been coral areas like most of Timor was,

we would have been cut to pieces. The other thing that predominated in the landscape of West Timor was - it was covered with lantana. And lantana of course, as you well know, has got those little thorns on the side and they scratch you, and of course we were only in shorts and no long sleeves and our arms and legs were all fairly

scratched to pieces with this lantana for the 4 days of battle. Anyway that’s the position, and then what happened was, when we did surrender we had to walk back, all those miles back to the Usapa-Beser which was the prison camp where they put us in the Bay of Kupang. And it

was a long walk back. And the - I always remember that when we went into this Usapa-Beser, that - because of the scratches that you had on your legs and arms and that - that was 4 days of battle. And they were even - mine were starting to show, pus was starting to accumulate in the scratches. And all I did was

to go out into the shallow water - you could walk for quite some way - sit down and get the sand and put it into my arms and legs and got rid of all the pus out of my arms - scratches, arms and legs. Now they all dried up and healed beautifully. I had good healing blood.

Other poor buggers that started with the scratches, the ulcers started to form. And that was, you know, you’ve got no idea the problems that occurred with those ulcers. And not only that but even, remember the day we surrendered and I told you I was lucky. But one of my mates a fellow by the name of Bill Halliday - I was never really close to him prior to

our surrender. He was hit in the leg with one of them. And that turned, you know, fairly septic with ulcers and everything else. And in the sick bay when he was back in the camp, I would go over to see him. And in the early days when I’d go over to see him and take him something, if I could scrounge something to take to him,

he was never very grateful, there was no mateship. He was always kind of whingeing. But again, as the time went on, his hope grew in him and he used to look forward to seeing me and I used to look forward to seeing him. And I’ll never forget he was so skinny that you could see his backbone through his

stomach, lying on that bed. And he had this awful leg. And the stench of the ulcer wards - it’s like death itself. It’s such a smell you could never ever forget, it really does stick in your lung with the stench. It’s just like - I’ve only smelt it once as bad as that and that was - I saw a woman dying of cancer that was

being eaten away by cancer. But it’s like, it’s - anyway…

Well, first of all they might start off like a little finger - a scratch starting off. But by the time they finish up some of them would be as big as the palm of your hand. And they get so bad sometimes, they have to amputate or otherwise sometimes they would put maggots in there to try

and eat the pus and that away from them. The Dutch had a way of using a spoon to kind of scrap the pus out of it and tie them down doing it. But oh, those ulcers were something terrible. But the thing about, if I can say this about Bill Halliday, was that even though he was a whinger and a whiner in those early days,

in the end, you know, he used to look forward to seeing me and I would look - but his eyes they shone - beautiful eyes. I could just see them. They shone like beacons in the night. Just, it was so beautiful - you couldn’t help but love the guy for it.

Well he wasn’t a whinger in the end. Because,

he had a great sense of humour in the end. And he was a great wit in the end. And I, we went to Java together. But when I, at Tanjung Priok which I’ll deal with it later. But when I left there, that’s when we parted. I went onto to Singapore and Burma Thai Railway and he stayed in Java. But of course, he did get back. And he lived

until the late ‘60’s. Yeah, anyway.

Well …

No, it was mateship really. I had nothing to do with it really. Just he was a mate and I never gave up on him. In the end he was the bloke that made his own decision he was going to live.

No, go on.

Well, I was glad the war - glad it was over. You know - spontaneous that we’d live for another day. Not knowing what was going to confront us - we didn’t know what was going to confront us in the future but we were glad it was over.

Well,

I had nothing to do with it. I was just a foot soldier. I just did what I was told. I wasn’t any special hero. There were some great - there was a fellow by the name of Dummie Armstrong who went on, and he stayed out in the bush and he fought especially, but generally I was not a trained soldier. I was in the Quarter Master’s store.

I was just, just helping.

Well again, I would have accepted if Leggatt said that they surrendered - I told you what my views were of Leggatt. That I would respect his views. I’ve never lost respect for Leggatt even though I might tell you for the record, Leggatt

became a Liberal member of Parliament. And he became the - he was the Attorney General in the Victoria State Government and he also became the Agent General for Victoria. So, and he was a conservative. So I’ve written about this and I’d had his son write to me and thank me for what I’ve said about him.

What happened? Well as I say, the first thing that really occurred - when we were put in this coconut grove called a Usapa-Beser, right on the foreshore of the bay at Kupang.

And first thing I did was to go out into the salt water and clean out all the pus out of my sores. Which - because luckily for me my blood’s good healing blood. And as I explained to you, so many other people haven’t. I’ve got little photographs of what ulcers are. And it really does frighten me.

No, no duties. Actually the people that - or soldiers, Japanese soldiers respected us because we fought so well against them. Inflicted so many lives against the enemy. There was one Japanese there that took a shine to me because

he knew I was a good swimmer and, what have you. But generally there was no direct cruelty - there was strict discipline, no harsh cruelty from the Japanese in those early months although, we never got much food apart from rice. And we had to unload ships for the Japanese.

And that’s when I - several times I was with work parties - both on the beach at Kupang when I saw bombs being dropped. When you look at a bomber coming over and dropping bombs you think there’s streamers coming down, it’s the bombs coming down. And they’re in kind of a streamer effect. And, I’ve always kept my cool on that. And

there were other times when we were on the actual wharf unloading the ships when they’ve dropped bombs around us. So plenty of experience living under our own people.

Well I wasn’t vicious to them, not at that time. Although we knew they weren’t angels.

But anybody that escaped there was certainly – oh, we didn’t know they’d been executed but we had a fair idea. They were because we never saw them again. So I kept my powder dry on them although, this was something about me, at that age that you get

a bit spunky, we’re as good as them, kind of. There was one occasion there when a group of Japanese marines were there and somebody must’ve told them that I could fight. And he wanted to do ju jitzu and I would do boxing. But he was slow moving and I stepped around with a left hand and was just a bit too fast for him, too good. So that kind of built my reputation with the Japs

as well. But on the whole it was very hard laborious work. We got very few nutritious foods. Because, when we arrived at - in Java - we were in a very bad state of

lack of vitamin B1 or B2, I forget which it was. But the scrotums of males all start to weep. And the interesting thing was, you talk about women talking about their complaints. Well the males are just as bad. And all we could do was to have a little kind of - couldn’t put trousers on

because it was too painful. So what they would do, each time you’d come up, the first discussion would be, before inspection (UNCLEAR) bring the scrotum to show them what’s happening. And we tried all the different tonics to try and solve the problem but it really was an internal thing, you had to get the right type of food. It was only when we got to Singapore

that we got Marmite and things like that, that healed it all up completely in a very short period of time. But no, it was a strange period, was Timor. Not brutal because the front line troops they still respected to some degree.

Oh yes, yes. I just stepped around. It didn’t go on for too long because it seemed a hopeless case. He didn’t have a chance but…

Yeah, well just a Japanese challenge against an Australian, that’s all.

But I didn’t - I made sure I didn’t hit him, with my closed fist. I always hit him with an open hand. I mean I didn’t want to hurt him by hitting him.

No, no you don’t punch them because if you did that you’d be in bloody trouble.

But we never really saw brutality

until we got to Java. But let me just go back to when we left Kupang. Instead of going west, instead we went east, going along the coast of Timor from Kupang up to Dili.

As soon as we landed, dropped anchor in Dili, the Lockheed Hudson’s came over and started bombing us. Well we were below deck but we certainly - it’s not a good experience listening to ack ack guns. At the same time we were quite proud that our blokes were still putting up the fight against the Japs. It was only when I read a book called, ‘Timor in 1942’,

did I realise that it was the independent company that in fact was sending information data back to Darwin about the ship, and identifying that it was on its way to Dili. So it was our own blokes in the independent company telling the people back in Darwin that the ships were travelling along the coast and were going to anchor at Dili. So anyway, off we went and

we were attacked by subs, or this convoy was attacked by subs near the Sunda Straits. No not Sunda. Anyway near Flores. We were lucky we didn’t get hit. Then we landed in Surabaya. And there would have been 80 or 90 ships scuttled in the harbour.

It really was quite an impressive - to see so many ships scuttled. Anyway they put us on trains and we went along the whole north coast of Java. And, you know, we could realise what a paradise Java was. And then they took us down to what was then Batavia, now called Jakarta. And of course the railway people were all in immaculate white

coats like the Dutch tradition still going on there. And then they shipped us down to Tanjung Priok which is the dock areas of Batavia or Jakarta. And they put us into this place which was previously a horse stable and, where the Timor ponies and that used to be - for the taxi

cab type things they had. I’ve never seen bugs in all my life. They were real bugs that would come down the timber and get into you. Well bugs are terrible things and anyway that was the first experience I had with them. We didn’t seem to get them in Timor but we certainly got them in Java. We also came into

contact with the Koreans. And they were quite brutal. They were - if you didn’t salute them when you were passing they would pull you up and stand you to attention and start bashing you. But I more or less got the view that it’s just like, if you keep a dog on a leash and you let him off, well he’ll go round

biting everybody. For a long period of time. It was the same with the Koreans. The Koreans had been under the Japanese for so long.

Oh yes, I’ve been bashed by the Koreans.

Oh no, they just put you to attention just to clout at you. I’ve been hit with everything from open hands

to wooden clogs to iron bars. But they’re in the future, the iron bars. But oh no, they bashed everybody. They were just brutal people. And we were there for about 3 months. And while we were there we worked on the wharves unloading, and what they call ‘go dangs’

big sheds. And in one of them they had a big shed of sugar bags. It was high as anything. And what we found was, we’d go out where they had tucker and our dixies. And then when we finished we’d kind of fill them up with sugar. We had a piece of bamboo about 4 to 5 inches long.

And cut off at the shaft and it was hollow right through. And you’d push it into the bag, thump the bag and it’d just run out into your dixie. Well, in the period we were there the stack started going down like this and I think it mystified the Japs a fair bit. Luckily they didn’t catch any of our blokes because if they did, stealing of course was a very severe punishment. But, as far as I know, none of our people were caught.

But certainly we enjoyed the sugar in those days.

Well from there we were shipped into another steamer - I forget the name of it. I should know the name of it but, it was a…

Little did we know that the Dunlop group... We were in camp at Tanjung Priok and they were at a camp called Sikog Camp.

Yes, yes.

Well, it was just normal Asian type

structures. They were - as I say the timbers weren’t the best. And the bugs must’ve been in the ceiling but they used to get down and get into us. But no, it was just like a normal stables actually, just long stables. And we lived there for

the best part of three months. But it was the brutality of the… It was the beginning of what was things to come, by meeting this brutality from the Koreans. Anyway when we were taken - put onto the ship - little did we know

that in the other… you know, they have kind of open bays - in fact I’ll tell you about that later. But when we got to Singapore we still didn’t link up with the Dunlop group. We had our own group. As I said, we camped outside of Selarang. And that’s where,

on that occasion, I told you about this fellow asking, “Does anybody know Tucker Uren?” And there was something about Singapore because they used to get Red Cross parcels and there was, the Red Cross was functioning to some degree in Singapore. And certainly our fellows, the question of the scrotums and all that

problem solved up pretty fast. There was an - oh look the theatre was fantastic there. They had kind of a theatre company and somebody’d probably tell you more descriptive than I could. But the bloke that really, used to always break me up was a fellow by the name of Happy Harry. I found out later

his name was Harry Smith. I knew who he was because as a kid I was a great film goer. And he was the commissionaire at the Plaza Theatre and I identified him immediately. But he come out on stilts and he’d say, “We’ll never get off the island.” And you couldn’t imagine, it just makes you split your sides laughing. It was the way he said, “We’ll never get off the island.” And it

was this humour but they - well you know the blokes playing the part of women and men. It was quite…the theatre was quite impressive in Changi.

I’d say the morale was pretty good at that stage, yeah. I don’t know that the morale was ever low.

Even at the end we used to always live from 3 months to 3 months. Oh, we’ll be out in 3 months, we’ll look forward to that. But, there was a young mate of mine, he was called Whimpy. He was, I think he was a lightweight fighter. And they wanted to have an exhibition and, I didn’t want to box because I didn’t feel

terribly fit and strong. ‘Cause I was on pretty poor rations for a long, long while. Nearly a year now. Anyway Vern was keen to go. He said, “Tom what about you?” I said, “Alright.” In the end I submitted because Vern wanted to do it so much you see. So I said to the bloke, I said, “It’s only a spar, it’s an exhibition. So don’t let’s get in there

hurting one another.” So, this pommie must’ve thought he was going to make his reputation overnight, you know, knocking out this bloody Australian. And it was a 3 round bout. 3 round exhibition. Well he hit me with everything. There was illegal - he would hit me in the kidneys, we would go into a clinch. He’d do everything which was so unfair. So

I just cruised for the first 2 rounds but the 3rd round I was just vicious. I, with the glove, I hit on the inside, I’d up his face. I’d do everything (UNCLEAR). Anyway at the end of the fight I was really vicious, really aggressive. I was talking about 2 sides of my nature. On the one side I’m gentle and kind and on the other side there’s a tough side. And that tough side certainly came out in that bout.

At the end the fellow who was the referee. I was saying all the time, “Can’t you see the blood?!” You know, swearing adjectives. “He was bloody well fouling me. Can’t you do something about it?” Anyway when the bout’s all over, this - the referee who’s the minister - what do you call it - chaplain - he said, “Uren, Uren, well where do you come from?” I said, “Australia of course.”

He said, “Uren…?” I said, “I’m an Australian.” He said, “No where did your parents come from?” I said, “My parents came from Cornwall.” He said, “I thought so, a fellow Cornishman.” So the good thing about it was, that he took myself and some of my mates and really gave us some terrific tucker, and we forgave him for all those sins for allowing that silly king hit

man to try to foul me and do the wrong thing. But that was an interesting experience in Singapore. But we didn’t - we only remained there for a couple of weeks.

Then of course, I mean, memories are a strange thing. You remember some things as

finite and as definite as one thing and can’t on others. Now there was a very fine person, a very fine soldier. He was Sergeant Dennis Scanlon. And at some time, and I think he said in Singapore that he wanted to - that he had a box with me. It’s in the book and I can’t remember it. But I’m not saying it didn’t occur. I certainly sparred with Jimmy

Star when I was in Singapore but that was a spar. ‘Cause Jimmy was a really old professional fighter and he knew what the art was, just the same as I did. And we both respected one another. But I found it interesting that we were only there a couple of weeks and then they shipped us in these sub-human trucks

called Malaysian goods trucks. They’re about a couple of metres tall with a kind of iron ceiling. But the sides and ends are a quarter inch thick steel. And in the tropical sun if you touched them in the day time they’d burn you. But in

the night if you touched them they’d also freeze you. So it was two extremes. We were in these trucks for the best part of a week. We had big, I think bags of rice on the floor and we couldn’t sleep straight out. You couldn’t have that many people in each truck. And there was no toilets. Sometimes they’d stop and you could go out and do it. But otherwise you’d just have to

do your - pee over the side of the thing. The first morning, I’ll always remember it. We stopped in KL [Kuala Lumpur] Railway Station. And I was so impressed with it, it still lingers with me. The old Victorian Railway Station and it was magnificent, you know, this

broad dome. And I thought to myself, I’ll have to come back there one day. I’ve never been back. What I have in turn, I hope to do one day, is to fly to Singapore then go up by train and probably stay in KL, and then, have a little stay there for a little while, and then go on up to Bangkok and then get a car and

and take me up to the Burma Thailand Railway, because when I went with John Howard the last time, when the museum was opened, Howard invited Senator Cowrey or Sir John Cowrey. And Sir Reginald Schwartz and myself as his special guests. And it was a wonderful experience. But there were so many people around us that you couldn’t, it’s something

you want to meditate in your own quiet way. And I wasn’t able to do that, about the museum. And even though I had been there prior to that in ’87, when I was with Weary Dunlop, and I’ve got photographs of that, when Weary left the path on Hellfire Pass.

I really want to get back. First of all I never ever thought I’d want to go back. Because when I went down there in ’87 I went into the cutting and I lost control of my muscular - control over the whole of my body for a couple of minutes. And I’ve never ever been about to work it out - what caused that problem. And

in my own way I didn’t want to go back again. But then when John Howard invited, that was a great experience. Actually Howard made a beautiful speech at the commemoration that day. And normally you don’t clap when people make - during commemoration services. But because I just led the… I just clapped and a thousand

other people could clap too. No, he’s a strange man Howard. But he has got a heart, I think, for former prisoners of war and servicemen. Anyway, so I hope one day to go back before I kick the bucket.

Well, each human being reacts in a different way. And nothing they did to me ever intimidated me. It kind of made me that much more determined. The only thing I ever feared in ever getting out of prison camp,

the only thing was the germ called Cholera. That’s the only thing that frightened me and put a negativeness of whether I would make it or not. Nobody else was going to add any chance of diminishing my belief and strength in myself that I was going to make it.

Well, I suppose again, fate again comes into one’s life. Because the Timor group were split and one group went in one way on the Railway line, and the other was given

to Weary Dunlop’s group. And I marched into Konyu which was the 26th January 1943 and Weary was there in charge of that camp. We were building the huts, there was nothing, it was just open, a couple of football fields in size, in the jungle. And we were creating our own truck, our own huts.

With atap, bamboo and atap on the top. And that’s where I first came into experience with Weary. And I served with Weary then for the next year and a half. Wherever he went I was with him. Maybe, it might’ve been change - a week or two - but we went from Konyu to Hintok road camp which he calls Hintok Mountain Camp in his

diaries. From there we went to Hintok River Camp then to Kinsayok and then finally back to Tamuang. We spent most of the time at Hintok Mountain Camp or Road Camp. We were about 800 strong at that time. There was the remnants of Weary’s group from the Middle East. There was some of the

Perth people that had been sunk in Sunda Strait. And of course, the Timor group of ours. Weary’s leadership wasn’t pronounced or boasted about or loud mouthed in any way. He was a very kind, quietly spoken human being. He led by example. And

I didn’t realise until after I read his diaries how tough it was for him to get the officers to contribute their money into the central fund. But under a sham, under the Geneva Convention, the Japanese paid our officers a medical allowance and Weary was able to convince them to put the majority of that into a central fund.

The men that went out to work were paid a small wage and they did likewise. They put the bulk of their money into a central fund. And Weary would use that money in a central fund to send people out and trade on the black market, dealing with Chinese and Thai traders. And also I learnt

later on the … I also learnt later that he got IOU’s [I Owe You] with one of the Chinese traders. And he was using this, what he could get for, the drugs and the food to look after the sick and the needy. And our camp was under Weary, the strong

was looking after the weak. The young was looking after the old. The fit were looking after the sick. And there was this collective philosophy. Just before the wet season set in, about 400. Weary’s diary would probably say it was slightly less but I made this in my maiden speech. And I didn’t know the exact figures but I’ve always used the word, about 400 came in.

And for temporary arrangements they had tents. The officers took the best tents. Senior NCO’s [Non Commissioned Officer] took the next best and the men got the dregs. There was this British tradition. Within about 6 weeks, only about 50 of those men marched out. They’d either died of dysentery or cholera. They got caught

in the wet season. Just got there, just before the wet season and then the wet season set in. They did very little work but they suffered greatly. And only a little stream, a little small stream divided both of us. On one side, the law of the jungle prevailed and on the other side was this collective spirit under Weary. And I made this example in my maiden speech.

And in the building of the history of, the Labor Party’s official history - oh not official, but it’s the one that they’ve done that’s nearest to official. The Party in fact did it. McMullen, he’s the fellow who wrote and said that Uren had espoused a primitive type of socialism that he experienced from this prison camp. Well,

I’ve travelled a long way. And moved in a very broad spectrum but basically I’m still back on that moral position of life, in life itself. The strong should look after the weak, and young should look after the old. And if a person gets sick it’s a national responsibility, it isn’t any individual position. We should be amongst a more collective body. I’ve always asked people, why is it

when at the time of crisis, we need each other? Why can’t we need each other and love each other in normal times. Instead of competing and saying, “I did it.” “I’m a Packer. I can do it but you should be able to do it too.” It’s just rubbish. So that’s how I feel. And that,

and Weary was a very conservative man, you’ve got to recognise that. He wasn’t - he was morally strong and strong in principle. But he came from a conservative way. His associates and everything else. And you are to a great extent a product of your environment. A funny experience with my first wife

Patricia, and I. And as soon as I was elected in November ’58. In January ’59 I made my first visit to Melbourne. And of course, I rang Weary, and Weary and we met for a cup of tea, an afternoon tea. And he was going crook about the Labor Party or something. I said, “(UNCLEAR) You’ve deteriorated due to your

environment,” just facetiously, of course. Because we’ve met so often since. And he’s just like - the great thing about it is - I attended recently a centenary - you know, when those medals were given out on the, and Tanya Plibersek [Federal Labor member for the seat of Sydney] had a lot of distinguished

people from her electorate. So anyway one of the doctors was there, a great mate of Weary’s. Older than Weary by the way. But he said that Weary was very proud of me. And of course, Weary would always say, “Tom Uren’s one of my boys,” and I was. He was, he was 35 and

I was 21 when we met.

Very special.

A collective spirit.

Well, at first I thought the officers backed Weary. But Weary had to really battle hard to get them to contribute but they ultimately did. But the people that I admired,

officers that I admired under Weary’s leadership, come out in his diaries. People like Arthur Moon and Ewan Corlette. Arthur Smedley. Doc Clarke, who was the dentist. I mean they were powers of strength to Weary and of course, you could see it. But that’s - I don’t know, it’s just wonderful about - anyway

Again, I said it’s fate like that, that guided him that way. The Australians were always, Australians on the whole were always the much more collective body, than the British and other races. None of them, would not, like that… 800

odd people in the mountain camp. And if you want to look at the statistical data down to survival. Under Weary’s and Corlette and Moon’s leadership. And you’ve got to remember a leader is only as good as the people he’s got around him. And he had those two other magnificent doctors of Corlette and Moon. That’s what got the great strength, the great victories and great achievements.

We’ll have to change tapes…

Well, they played an important role. My mother was very Christian and she left me with certain moral things. And I was a practising Anglican Christian.

But I was, particularly in Timor, I would get down and kneel every night and say my prayers. I wouldn’t worry about anybody around me. ‘Til one day it dawned on me that I was really praying for myself. And I don’t think that’s what prayer is all about. You should be praying for

others. So I stopped praying. And never prayed, I don’t think, again, in that whole time. Although I remain a strong philosophical Christian. In fact I remained one until I was 45 years of age. And that seven years after I was a member of Parliament. And if you look at some of the histories or Hansards, those first years of my life in Parliament they thought I was a Com

and branded me virtually as such. With Cairns and that. But …

No I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to be hypocritical about praying and I never prayed, but I lived

by that same principle.

They might have prayed but I never saw them. And I’m not a demonstrative person but I just got down quietly and prayed. I always thought - I always tried to be - even before Weary, meeting Weary, I always tried to do

the similar things of helping people. And, in some ways - even later, even after Weary - some people would say I was aggressive in my leadership and even, nobody elects anybody leader. Leaders do come through whether you like it or not in prison camps.

Well we went from Kupang, as I say and then went across to Dili. And from Dili we went to Surabaya. And from

Surabaya we went by train across the north coast of Java to Jakarta, or then Batavia. And from Batavia we went down to Tanjung Priok. Then Tanjung Priok, after leaving there we went on the ship which linked up with Weary’s crowd, although we didn’t realise that at the time. Then went to Singh for a couple of weeks. And then went from there up to a place called Bampong.

Not Bangkok but Bampong. And from there went up by trucks to Tarsau and then from Tarsau we went onto Konyu, which was the first camp, which was where I met Weary. And from there I went - we spent most of the time on the railway. From Konyu we went to Hintok Mountain Camp, which was where I spent the

most of my time on the railway line there. From there we went down to Hintok River Camp then from River Camp we went up to Kinsayok. That’s the farthest I ever went up on the railway line. And then, the railway was completed. We saw the people coming back. Airforce and all those coming back by train. And then eventually we went down to Tamuang

which was a rest camp. From Tamuang we went back down to - that was about the middle of 1944 - we went back down by those heartless goods trucks again, down to Singapore. And then from Singapore we went on a ship called the Rokyo Maru, which means the sick ship. And we went, first across

to Borneo Coast and then up through the Philippines, we were in the Bay of the Philippines, Bay of Manila for 28 days. And from there we went up, even through hurricanes and other things - then on to Taiwan, and from Taiwan to Okinawa, and then Okinawa across to Moji, in Japan. And from Moji I was sent to a place called Saganoseki

which is on the most easterly tip of the island of Kyushu. And from there we went, after the copper and everything had run out completely, they moved us back to a place called Omuta, about 8 kilometres as the crow flies from Nagasaki. And that’s when I was liberated. Or really we liberated ourselves

because of the message that MacArthur had put over the air. And from there I went down to a place called Kagoshima which is a volcano right out on the end of the island of Kyushu. And I got onto a freight - the Yanks were flying in freight and going back empty. So we got onto a - into a B17

and they flew us from there to Okinawa. Stayed in Okinawa overnight and then back down to Manila. Then ultimately, after 30 days staying in Manila. I was 10 stone when I was released and I was 14 stone before I left Manila. Mostly on Hershey chocolate bars. And from there we came back on the HMAS Formidable and we entered Sydney Heads at 8

a.m. on the 13th October 1945. And berthed at Circular Quay, which is the main Circular Quay thing there, and that was my journey. And I never felt free I might say, until I was in a double decker bus going - driving up Parramatta Road. Little did I think that, I was going out to Ingleburn actually - going out the western suburbs - little did I ever think that one day

I would represent the western suburbs of Sydney for 31 years.

Well, I used to call it the Cook’s tour because Cooks in those days were the only travel firm that I ever observed. So I said, “Well I’ve had the Cook’s tour.”

No, no.

As soon as we hit Hintok Mountain Road Camp which would have been, I would think, January - February, I’d say sometime in March of ’43. And we had to work, we had to

walk from our camp - we had to walk 6 kilometres - at least 6 kilometres. And it was over a mountain and down onto the railway, to and from that place every day. And of course, even if you were fit, we had no shoes on or anything up there by this time. We strapped peat rags and all that around our feet, but in the wet season you would slip and you would just - your feet would go completely underneath you,

and you’d just jar your body down completely. But I was one of the lucky ones because I was on the hammer and tap crew. And they were the fit people. The people who were not so fit were the ones that had to clear the rubble away, and carry it up. And some of those would work - working to and from 20 hours a day.

The time they would take to get to and from work and then the work themselves. It was just - just slavery. And one of the great things about, again, somebody put their hand on my head, was a fellow by the name of Harry Baker, who’d been a cane cutter - lost a couple of his fingers cutting cane. He was on the hammer and tap crew and he showed me,

I’d never done any hard, laborious work in my life. And he showed me how to use the 8 pound plum hammer. And you’d raise it and let the hammer do the work. And I would swing the hammer most of the day and Harry would use the skill of getting it through the rock. Because sometimes a rock would crumble, a hole would crumble and you would lose that hole. So Harry had a

certain skill about getting it through. And he would also say, “Tom don’t bust yourself, take your time, play it easy. We’ll get the darg.” Because in the early days the ‘darg’ was about a metre - and from one metre - we started off 80 cents actually. And then one metre to two, one twenty, and then up to a metre and a half, two and then three, and then they made us work all day.

Darg is a contract that you had to do. It’s a contract - it’s a mining term. And you - it’s the contract you had to do and then you could go back. Now Harry would always argue, “Don’t bust your guts. Take your time.” And he was the one that brought me through with his whole philosophy. And

there were people that were show offs. To see how smart they could do it, and the Japanese would come - walk around say, “Sign here. Ichiban!”. Number one, you see. That was just show offs. But in the end, I’ll talk about that later. When the going was tough they fell by the wayside.

Well it was to drill a hole about one inch in diameter. The steel would be a little over a metre long and you would drill that hole into the sandstone. And when you got - of course they would ultimately put dynamite in there so that the cuttings, like Hell Fire Pass and others at Konyu, cuttings were all created

because of this. And we would - as we say - we were the fit ones who could do that. There were times when nobody was on the hammer and tap and we’d have to work on the bridges. And we would go into the forests, teaks forests and they’d cut down trees and we’d have to drag them out. It was that time that I lost my affection for elephants

because the elephants had the best trade union in the world. They worked 2 hours and rested the rest of the day. But we old Aussies had to work all day. But again the old sense of humour of the Aussies. We’d no sooner put these bridges up, and of course, even though some of them had to be painted with creosote, the bushman would go out,

and Tassie bushmen would go out and get the white ants out of the bushes and come back and put it into the trestle of the bridges. So there - the spirit wasn’t lost - it was there.

Yeah, to make it collapse.

I don’t know. Because I left. My brother-in-law

who - I married the sister of a mate of mine, a mate I was prisoner of war with. He remained there the whole time. But I went to Japan for the last 12 months of the war so, we’d no sooner completed them, the railway, than we were siphoned off to go to Japan.

Well some of us remained healthy. Those who busted their guts… as a matter of fact it’s a dream I have, it’s not a dream, it’s something that comes back into my mind, hasn’t come back into my mind for some time but used to come back in my mind in the early hours of the morning.

After we’d completed our section of this bridge at Hintok Road Camp, we had to carry back all the equipment back to the mountain camp. And there was a fellow there, which I never quoted the name in my book, but his name was Tiny O’Neil who was one of the enormous men - a big man you know,

bit hard like a chicken. He was one of those people that would show off and go home early. But when the going got tough, he fell by the wayside and he died on the railway. Just one example, but others were similar to it. So we all didn’t survive. But what happened was, in the case of this happening, we were,

I had to take this equipment back. And the Japanese had only given Tiny something light or something, to carry back. And I said, “You big bastard,” I said, “carry your share, your lot and carry some of this heavy load.” So- anyway the Jap officer, the Jap NCO came along

and saw this. And saw it was me that had done this. So he stood me down and he was standing on a bank about 18 inches above me. And he had a piece of bamboo about 2 inches in diameter, green. And he swung and hit me, and first time, of course, I floated and I went down and I said to the fellows, “It’s alright fellows.” I said, “I rode my punch.” But the second

time he did, he caught me and I went down like a pack of cards. And got up off the ground. So luckily for me, the Nip in charge came in slapping my face like this, you know. It was just like a powder puff, hitting me. So anyway he gave me two, 18 pound hammers - 18 not 8 pound, 18 pound hammers to carry home.

But, what had occurred - what made him dislike me. Again it was youth and, you know, why bend your knee to these - and by the way the time I was - while I was doing it I was calling him a yellow bastard and everything like this. But I’ve written about it and I apologised for the term - the racist and all that. But anyway,

what happened was, a few days before it or sometime before it, he said to this Jap, “Churchill persento.” And I said, “Oh, pretty soon. Churchill take back.” And then I put on the ground, after the war, Australia, we go back to Australia. Japan, big question mark.

What a silly bloody thing to do as a young fellow. But that’s what I - I stirred them up you see. Arrogance - it doesn’t pay.

Oh no that was the thing in his mind for that - the latter punishment.

Was the thing, was always fresh in his mind to get at me.

Oh yes I got… as I said in this thing about

Charlie, for instance, Charlie an old comrade. When we were up there in ’87 with Weary, we had to unveil a plaque at Hintok or at Hell Fire Pass. Charlie, who had had cancer of the throat, he said, “Oh, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, “only for Tommy Uren.”

He said, “They were going to throw me off the bridge and he came in between us.” Anyway, this was in this television program that was put out. And actually it was Tony Stevens said to me, questioned me on it. And I just said, “Tony I don’t remember it.” But I’ve got involved in so many

skirmishes that have come in between our blokes and Japs that it was just the norm with me. So that’s - you know…

Well the camps - what they used to do - first of all the Hintok one. We went in there, it was like

virtually a bare area, about twice the size of a normal rugby football ground. And we had to go out into the jungle, pull the bamboo out, knock strips off it. And we - there was some part of it that we made ties, and then the atap roof. And we made them. And of course about 3 feet from the ground

you would then have the beds. Again you’d cut up bamboo and they would have slats to live on. I might say that the bugs were frightful and very cruel in that area as well. But what we used to be able to do with that, was that in our day off, which we rarely got but when we did get it, we’d light fires. We’d take the lattice strips off and we’d get one bloke

on one end and you’d run these bamboos over the heat, fire, and the bugs would jump out of there by thousands. And you’d really, with joy and delight, that you could pay back such a cruel vicious person as a bug. But anyway, so these were long huts. And the same principle remained right throughout most of the camps. They were mostly that way.

Some fellows, I see where a bloke from the… Ray Parkin who’s a remarkable bloke by the way. He’s well, must be pushing 90 now. He was a Petty Officer on the Perth. And they lived in tents, the Perth group. And I wasn’t aware of that. But they did it in Hintok, I’m talking

about, Hintok road or mountain camp. We certainly lived in huts. In fact what would - it was so bad in the wet season… For instance I never had a solid motion for well over a year. I used to keep a kerosene tin of water at the bottom of my bed. And in the wet season you’d only get out,

oh maybe 10, 15 feet before you’d go down to your knees in mud, and of course it’d all come away. And you’d have to come back and wash yourself down again before you went back to the bunk again. I didn’t realise at the time but I had amoebic dysentery. And I only realised that when I went to have a test to go to England, to go to

Japan. But, no they were - they were cruel moments.

Well, it was for the hammer and tap crews and the fit ones, it was never manageable for the normal people who weren’t well. Because they had to work so many long, long hours,

both on earth and on rock clearance. So I’d say that, you know, again, I was one of the more fortunate ones there.

Oh well, as I said, they went from just under a metre up to 3 metres a day and even then that wasn’t sufficient so they worked us all day. But we coped with that. Well, at least I did and so

did Harry because of the skill that he’d given me.

Well, I think they did have a few - later on of course the bombers destroyed it but the principle was to - they were concerned about the vulnerability of Japanese shipping from submarines in the Indian Ocean. Going around Malaysia and up there to supply

Burma. So the concept was to have this railway going through Thailand, through to Burma where they could supply their Burman troops that way.

Well, I’m not really sure - I’m still debating whether I was in Hell Fire Pass or it was Konyu Pass. It’s one of the things I want to work out when I go back. But there wasn’t much difference in the

size of the two. But that was where I spent most of my hammer and tap life, apart from the fact that sometimes we’d have to work on the timber work. But mostly my work was always on hammer and tap in those areas. The only thing is, why I think it might be Konyu instead of Hell Fire Pass, is because the last trip they made they said that they used jack hammers, you know, powered hydraulic

drills, power driven. Well there was certainly none of that in the cutting that I did.

Yes. So I’ve got a feeling it was - I’ve got a feeling that it must have been Konyu Pass which is, by the way, nearly as deep as Hell Fire Pass.

Well yes,

you see it’s because your feet are wet all the time, and particularly in the wet season, in the mud and that, your feet shrivel up and your toes shrivel up and that’s the same as the trench rot of our troops in the First World War. And I’ll never forget

one experience I had, my feet were in a bad way and I just marched or walked up from the top of a valley, and I was up on the top where the blacksmiths used to have their forge. And they had cut down 44 gallon drums, cut in half and where they’d put the, where they’d temper

those drills, the water was lovely and warm and hot. And can always remember my feet were in such a bad way that I got up and I sat on the edge there and I put my feet in this trough. But as I did I looked out over the winding river going through this magnificent teak forests

of Thailand. And you know, I must’ve had a fairly sensitive environmental mind in those days. I said, “You know that’s beautiful.” I said, “A man should come back when he’s free.” And when I went back in ’88, ’87, you know, there wasn’t one teak forest left. They’d all been raped and all they had was bamboo, was left. And they’d not only raped it there, they went into

other countries. They’re going into Cambodia, they’re going to Burma and other places, rape out this precious teak timber which is one of the most beautiful timbers in the world. Tragedy, nothing left. What the wildlife - ‘cause there were animals - what happens to the wildlife of Thailand, I don’t know.

Well, it’s all post war, yeah. The greed of the Thai traders.

Well, their brutality was so bad, that in the first two and a half years, if you’d asked me what I thought of them, I would have exterminated them from the planet. That was their sadistic brutality. That wasn’t - I know a lot of people blame it on the Korean guards for this brutality, but in our

camp and under our leadership it was the Japanese engineers that were the brutal ones. And that was my feeling and it remained with me until I went to Japan for the last 12 months of the war. And there I worked alongside old Japanese tradesmen, or Japanese workers, and also Koreans by the way. But the Japanese - more elderly but lovely people. They were starving

the same as we were. We worked in this Saganoseki, Nippon Steel Company, and Nippon Steel owned the factory I found out later. But we had three shifts and when we’d end each shift we’d go in and have communal baths, and the Japanese and the Koreans, and we’d all come in. We couldn’t speak their language nor

they ours. But the old body language came out in the whole heart, eyes and hands. And you know, I found in that year, well the first 9 months of that year, that it wasn’t the Japanese I hated but militarism and fascism. And in fact, I only got one Red Cross parcel during that time. I found myself sharing it with the old

fellow that was in charge of our shift. In fact one of the things that I kind of feel guilty about - in 1960 I went back to the 6th World Conference against the A and H [Atomic and Hydrogen] Bombs. Against the Atomic and Hydrogen bombs in Tokyo.

I went to Nagasaki. I went to Hiroshima, didn’t go to Nagasaki that time, Hiroshima. But I made enquiries who was the former manger of this Saganoseki, who he was and where he was. They arranged for me to see him. And I saw him and he’d been purged because

everyone was working or in charge of Japanese. MacArthur purged the whole lot of them. And when I came back I started to make some overtures to try to readjust the injustice because he was a very good man, he was a very human man. But I didn’t proceed, I didn’t have enough guts to go and do the thing. I felt a bit guilty about that.

1960. Yes, he was a good human being.

No, no they’d stand back but the brutality was that, they demanded people to come out even when you were sick. For instance, there was one time when I

had a very bad back. And the old doc, Corlette had to send me out, didn’t want to send me out. And I never thought I could ever get there and get back because from time to time I’ve had bad backs. And anyway, another occasion I had something in my eyes

and he wouldn’t let me go out. He reckoned they were more serious, the damage of the eyes than the back. He was more worried about the eyes than he was the back.

Yeah. Same doctors. But look, Corlette and Moon and Weary had to supply a certain number. And in fact, you know, sometimes they got bashed too.

I mean, the sad thing about that British crowd, when we would go out to work, sometimes their bodies were lying there naked in the mud and we’d have to walk over them to go to work, you know.

As I say, they’d died of either dysentery or cholera.

Well, as I say, the only thing I really felt that I wouldn’t make it - the only time I ever feared it, was the time of cholera. And cholera sometimes, particularly - there’s different types of cholera - my mate Bill Belford for instance, I saw him pick up a 4 gallon tin of kerosene, of saline water and drink it .. best part of it down the mouth.

But the bad cases, Weary had to strap them down and put the drip into… what they would do - they’d excrete and spew and pee every saline fluids in their body. They’d dehydrate and their eyes would go back in their heads. And their temples’d sink. They’d go a greyish green colour.

They’d age 40 to 50 years in a day. You’d go out to work and no … So when I hear the word cholera…. In Iraq it just worries me. Because you see, excuse me bringing this up, but when the Senior, Bush Senior said

that he didn’t really attack the people of Bagdad, he only attacked Saddam Hussein. But Paul McGeogh [Fairfax correspondent] who was there the first night of the bombing, said the following morning there was no running water, no sewerage, no electricity. In other words where did the sewerage go? It could only go in one place. Go into the Tigress River.

And not attacking the people. I said, “Pretty soon there’ll be cholera.” And it’s terrible - it’s a water based death anyway.

Yes, well there is a certain faith in myself too and - I don’t say this in a bravado sort of way. But when I came out of prison camp I was fairly proud that I’d confronted - you know, I was fairly proud of myself that I’d achieved what I had achieved. It wasn’t ego or anything, it was just

a pride in one self.

Yep. I was worried about the cholera period. You can’t fight against a small piece of germ. And as I said, so often, I never smoked. And I think, it’s putting your hand near your mouth. I’m still a bit of a fad

with clean hands. That if you - you don’t know what you’re going to do when you put them near your mouth.

Yes, I had my first bout of malaria just before December of 1941. I was in Kupang and that was the first time I had the bout. But the last 6 months of the war

in particular, I got it every 10 days, 4 days on and 6 days off. And you’d get a rigor the first day and not bad the second day, and rigor the third day and okay the fourth. I reckon, I lost count - well in excess of 100 bouts of malaria in my years. Even after I came back I was being treated by a wonderful doctor by the name of Alan McGuiness,

and he looked after me for a long while. But it was a debilitating complaint.

Well you were - it’s something you can’t fight. You’d be in - for instance most of the time you would,

when the rigors are on, you shiver. I mean really - you could put all the blankets in the world on but you’ll still shiver until that breaks. Then of course, you feel extremely weak after that. Then the next day you’re thawing out and then the third day it comes back again. But, I reckon I had the best part of 400 days on

my back. Because you couldn’t get up with malaria, you just had to lie down.

No, no I’d say most of them were during the war.

Well, I don’t know that I can recall - it doesn’t really come back to me that - in the Hintok Mountain Camp days where most of my work was done on

the railway, I can’t recall that I had the malaria a lot there. I think I had some - a fair amount in Java. But my memory goes back probably to Japan more than anything else - a hell of a lot of malaria then. And probably it was the cold water. I just don’t know, but certainly that last 12 months in Japan was pretty grim for me with malaria.

Oh well, if you had malaria you didn’t go to work. That’s all there was about it.

Well they wouldn’t - it’s the doctors, it wasn’t them - the doctors would give them a quota and sometimes if it wasn’t enough, they’d try to want

to drag other people out. But that never occurred with me. All I’m saying is, I’d been crook with a bad back and the doc sent me out to work knowing that if I didn’t go out somebody worse than me would have to go out in my place.

Oh, with a bad back?

Yeah always, yeah. They didn’t,

nobody took any notice about a bad back. You’d be crippled over but you’d still go out and do - with a bad back. But as I was saying to you earlier, I had sore eyes, bad eyes on one occasion, he wouldn’t let me go out. He kind of treated the seriousness of your eye sight much more than it. Anyway - but malaria you just

couldn’t go out to work with malaria.

Well, I didn’t really…I mean as I said, that period when I didn’t have a dry motion I just thought I had diarrhoea or something. But it was when they tested you to go to Japan in June of

’44 that the amoebic dysentery came up positive with them, but they sent me off to Japan anyway. That didn’t hit me hard until I was on the Rokyo Maru. I went on that boat - I would’ve been around about 14 stone and I really dropped down in weight several stone, maybe 3 stone in that period, because we were on the boat for 70 days. And

it was so bad that you would be… we had no latrines, we had boxes on - strapped on the side of the boat. And you would get up and you would go into them and on one moment it’d gush out of you but then the pain’s still there and you’re fighting to get it out. Now there’s a little, just mucus comes out and a little streak of blood in it.

That’s the amoebic dysentery. Dick Parker who was a doctor with us in Saganoseki, got 10 needles of emetine and I had to go to work… that I was having it. But he’s the one that really, and generally some people had you know, I think it was 20

22, 24 was the full dose but he only got me 10, and I reckon that cured me or at least I never had it again, until after I got out. But when I was on the boat, gees when you’d, particularly with the rough seas and that, it’d wash back up, come back up all over you. And I’ll never forget my young mate Babe Daniels, he’s still alive by the way.

Washing me down on the decks, you know, so that I could get back to my bunk again. But that’s when it hit me, worse on the ship going to Japan.

Well, it’s a cruel complaint. Particularly the agonising pain, and you try to pass something and there’s just this little bit of mucus comes out then other times it just gushes out of you.

But …

That’s right. Look, Dick Parker, very conservative man but a lovely human being, he was our doctor. I cut my - kurambi bricks - just a block of old slag and copper. And we used to

put them to keep heat - keep at night - to keep warm around them when we were doing 3 shift works. And I went to pick up one in the morning and it just swung around and the jagged end of it cut my tendons there. And I had to watch old Dick, get down to my hand and pull a tendon back to tie them up. And I just sat there and watched him do it.

And I did it with no problem at all, even though there was certainly pain but no - but anyway. Three days later they took it off, they’re looking for dressing. And it had a bit of inflammation and pus in it. I was light headed just like that.

I went light headed just - you know, you kind of half faint when you see something

just because of a bit of pus there.

Yeah, just watching him do it.

No, no we must have been - I can’t recall but I can remember him digging right down into the hand to get the bloody tendon back up to tie them up together. And the reason he did that was because he knew I was going to be a fighter. And he said my hand wouldn’t have been any good without bringing them together. So I just added that to old Dick.

Yeah. Tell you - can I switch off - to tell you a thing about doctors. No, it’s alright leave it on. It’s about doctors. I’m a co-director of - on a board for the Patrons, the Governor of New South Wales and we had

Phillips who was the head of the RSL [Returned and Services League] and myself and a few others, directors on this Hot Mia - it’s a body which looks after Jap - I’m sorry, Vietnamese students - medical students and there’s the hospital in Hanoi and the university together with Sydney University and North Shore Hospital. Anyway they asked me would I

give a presentation one night. And there’s these doctors and medical people. So anyway I - he said, the chairman said, “Look Tom your time’s short.” So I said, “Oh okay.” He said, “We’ve all got a timetable to get rid of it.” I said, “Okay, that’s okay.” So I just said a few words about what the Americans did to Vietnam, dropping more bombs on Vietnam than dropping on Europe in the Second World War.

And then - but I said, “I want to talk about doctors.” And I said, “I’ve never, in a prison of war while I was there, I never saw a bad doctor in my life.” And I talked about the giving process and the sharing process. And I started talking about the doctors and all that. And I just forget the bloody name of the doctor but I mentioned one of the doctors, said he had been a wonderful bloke. And his

daughter – and of course, what had happened there was a prize there in his name and I just said I wondered whether it’s the same doctor. And of course his daughter was in the audience. And you’ve got no idea the warmth from those medicos. Some of them say they were in tears you know, because I was talking nicely about what these doctors had done, their life and the contribution they’d made. And how proud I was and all my life, in political life I’d never made a criticism

of the AMA [Australian Medical Association]. Even though from time to time I suppose I should have.

But just because - these - they were so wonderful. And you couldn’t - and you’ve got to talk about them. The two great heroes if I can say - the two great modern heroes of the day, of this era is two doctors. Weary Dunlop and - the bloke,

eye specialist.

Fred Hollows. They’re the two - they’re the great heroes. And we should sing out to the world about it. Again it’s - both those people were servers, they’re givers. And we’ve got to support the servers and givers of the world more instead of the monetary wealth of people. Sorry getting off…

Yeah.

Well, if you read that last paragraph of my book, I talk about the service I’ve had and the long service I’d had and relationship with people. I said, “Giving and serving to the human family is one of the greatest rewards you can do. When you walk down the street it’s the warmth of people’s eyes and faces that greet you.” Packer couldn’t buy it with all his millions.

And that’s what life’s about. He’s a poor miserable man but - anyway I’m not …

Yes I think, I think I might’ve been wrong with that. I think it might have been at Konyu. But, be as it may, it’s one of the great moments of my life.

We had a concert. There would’ve been about 800 people present. And all you could do, was the log fire was there and burning. And there was a Queensland major by the name of Major Woods. And he spoke about the - he recited ‘The Man From Snowy River’. You know, you talk about warmth and nationalism.

He was so powerful. And I’ve never ever heard that same piece of poetry ever recited anywhere near as good. I’ve got Fred Hollows’ rendition of it and got many other people’s. But nothing like Doctor Woods. And he again was one of the great staunch supporters and bastions that Weary Dunlop relied on. But just imagine,

that - you know, the silence, the beauty. And not only that, he was a slim bloke. You know a jaw as tough as hell. His (UNCLEAR) on the side of his face and the slouch hat on the top of his head. By God, he was so powerful. It’s just so wonderful to think about it.

Yeah.

Well, Blue’s a remarkable bloke. He joined Weary in Greece. And started off as his driver. And from Greece they went through to Crete. They got out of - they just got out of Greece and the Germans were right on their tail. And they went into Crete and from Crete - they even went up to Tobruk together.

And then of course eventually they came and landed at Batavia. Bluey’s proper place working with Weary, was his batman. But really he was his mate, his companion. His critic at times. And his admirer at other times. But he - I had an interview with Weary - with Bluey

one day and I listened to him. He’s got the most retentive memory of what occurred in different issues. I mean he knew people - what’s that great South African - Vanderpost?

Yeah, Laurens Vanderpost and Weary were in the same camp in Java together. In Bicycle Camp. Only Weary went on and Vanderpost stayed there. So remember Mr Laurens.

‘Merry Christmas, Mr Laurens’.

Well that was done in an atmosphere that Weary was a part of. And Bluey was there and Bluey speaks very highly of Vanderpost because you know, there’s a lot of criticism come out about Vanderpost. But Bluey could only speak highly of him. In fact, Sue Ebury, who was the author of Weary’s biography,

she said that Vanderpost put forward to Weary the proposal that he carried out in Thailand. And Weary saw this as a bit too communistic he says. This is what she says in the book and all I’m saying is what Weary did. So Vanderpost must, in his own quiet way, had a bit of an influence on Weary. So it all inter-relates doesn’t it?

Well, if you look on the map you’ve got to go from Hintok Road Camp up to

Kinsayok, that was the part that I was involved in. Some very tough areas through there and you know, bridges and also, cuttings and what have you. But I wouldn’t like to - you can work it out, there’s a scale there. I can even give you a copy of the whole railway.

Well we went up to Kinsayok and after going to Kinsayok,

by that time, as I said, F Force and many of those other people that really did it tougher than any of us. Even the comfort - I mean I saw some of the comfort women coming back down through the railway - when we were at Kinsayok as well. Anyway we then came back down towards Tamuang, I don’t know exactly where we got off. It wasn’t exactly - and then we went to Tamuang. Now Tamuang was, I think, an old

monastery of such. It was a kind of a paradise to stay there. And to rest. And I’ll never forget we used to get ducks - duck eggs but we used to call it fish eggs because they were - when you had a duck egg you could taste the fish in the thing, and that was one of the great things we could

buy on the black market. And also bananas, we could get bananas, peanuts and things like that. So we really did start to get some good food into us down at Tamuang. Not by the Japanese issue but what we could scrounge. Because after, where we left Weary, we didn’t make our contribution - collective contribution any more. Once we - see we weren’t under Weary at Tamuang. We were independent.

But they were - that was good territory.

I don’t think they would really know what to do with us

when we went to Tamuang. Because from Tamuang we were then - a lot of us was trans-shipped from there to Japan. Now, some of them were kept of course, and went back up onto the railway to do maintenance.

Yeah, well it was a small wage. When you worked

that was the only - you didn’t get a pay wage unless you worked. And of course, during the railway we worked and also, of course, in Japan we worked. But they paid us in Japanese money. The strange thing about it was that, when we were in Japan, particularly at Saganoseki, the Koreans got paid in company money.

Well, haven’t you ever heard of the

- you can only spend your money in the company store. You know, the time of the Americans, when the revolution of the North and South. You had the slaves in the South right but in the North they’d brought over slaves from Central Europe to work in their factories. But when they worked they got paid company money. You could only spend that money in the company store. Liquor and what have you. It’s the same thing that

- Clunies-Ross was doing it up to the 1970’s, on the Cocos Islands. Well the same situation in war time with the Koreans. If the Koreans have got a real grudge against Japan - I mean at present the Koreans are the villains but Japan was pretty tough on the Koreans for many generations. So what I mean by it, they got paid company money, you can only spend the money in a company store, not outside.

They wouldn’t recognise frailness. They were fanatical about keeping up to their goals - they had certain goals these engineers, and they were fanatical about it.

So much so, these people are still - they go to the shrine each year in Japan. They think that they’ve achieved a great achievement. They don’t look at the sins and crimes that they committed in building the railway line. And keeping in mind that even though the Australian, Dutch and British suffered greatly in there, compared with that what the Asians suffered was enormous.

The crimes - that really is a crime against humanity generally, those engineers. And they’re proud of that achievement.

Well - it’s not a matter of doing - they just forced the position that they would keep to schedule. And keeping to schedule - if you marched sick people out that could hardly, you know, are very weak and frail and make

them walk 6 kilometres out to a job and, as I said, in wet weather slipping down, sliding down. Then having to work all day and then having to come home at night, no wonder so many of them died. If you’ve ever been to Kanchanaburi Cemetery, walk through that cemetery and you’ll notice the age of the people that died. And they were mostly young and also, the period of which they died. They died in the second half

of 1943 and that was the cause of it. It was kind of a slave position.

Of course. I mean Japanese discipline was instant military, they had instantaneous discipline within their own system and they inflicted that onto prisoners also,

at an accelerated rate.

Oh bash you. I gave you an example about standing up to attention and being hit over the head with a 4 foot pole of solid bamboo of 2 inches thick. But there was a kind of a viciousness about what they carried out, their intent. But it was

the kind of - I think the driving of people to such a degree and working under such conditions, that was a great crime against it.

Oh, of course, of course. As a matter of fact that’s why I said, if you look at our survival rate under Weary, who kept fairly - not called reasonable, but fairly

strong medical conditions of collective spirit. And protecting our weaker. If you look at other camps - in fact some of them - it wasn’t their own fault. For instance H Force - not H Force, F Force - F Force left Singapore, it was about 7,000 strong. I mean, about, you know, a third of them died on the railway. But a lot of them - they didn’t accomplish anywhere near the work we did because they got hit

they marched up from Bampong right through - they had to march through our camp and what they did. They were, before they got to their destination they were hit with the wet season. And you can just imagine being hit with the wet season marching up onto the railway line like that. Oh no, it’s very hard. I mean people say to me, would you explain

the cruelty that they do and I just say, “Look it’s indescribable.” But can I put it to you this way. We represented 4% of all Australians that saw active service in the Second World War. But we represented 30% of those that died on active service in the Second World War. Because of the cruel and

harsh and barbaric conditions under which we worked, when we came back to our shores - between 1945 and ’59, our people died at 4 times the rate of other veterans. Or if you want to put it - 400% higher rate than other veterans. Between 1959 and now, our people died at 20% higher rate. Of the 22,000

that were taken prisoner of war only - or less than 2,000 survive today. It’s - and like I’m one of the lucky ones. I really am very very fortunate. I’ve looked after my health. I’m not a health crank but I’m guided by Pritiken (UNCLEAR) I think you are what you eat. I look after - I do my exercises

every morning. For instance my back - so I do floor exercises and yoga every morning. And I must say at night, I was telling Rebecca - I have my meal at night. I wait an hour and then I get on my indoor bike for an hour, exercise because that helps me sleep well and I’m also getting a bit of my tummy down. But it’s very important to - but you’ve got to

realise the - look I’ve got it all regimented. I mean like, give you one example. Beri beri - it’s registered - 83% of our people had beri beri, 1% of the others. You go through what they did, these wonderful group of doctors back at Concord Hospital.

They were only published because of the AMA - they weren’t published by Veteran’s Affairs. Veteran’s Affairs doesn’t want to look at a group of people. They want to judge everybody on its merits. Look, of those 2,000 that are now living only one third get the TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] pension. Now the reason for that is, the Hawke Government which was a heartless Government

in relationship to veterans, they decided that if a person turned 65 or left their place of employment they could - unless they were self employed with one exception - they could not get the TPI pension after that age. And no matter what you do, it’s many of these people - never really worried about getting the TPI. I mean look, Doctor Ian Duncan,

quite a remarkable great man, he’s now passed away. But at the end of his service in prison camp he said he thought it was his duty to examine the POW’s in his camp, what their problems were, what sicknesses they had. And he said, “What sort of sickness have you had?” And they said, “Oh not much doc, not much at all.” “Did you have malaria?” “Oh yeah,

had malaria.” “Did you have beri beri?” “Oh yeah I had beri beri.” “Did you have dysentery?” “Oh yeah I had dysentery.” “Did you have pellagra?” “Oh yes, I had pellagra.” And so on. And he said the truth was, that everybody had it, that was the norm, so therefore they should have - but they weren’t - our blokes were not whingers. And I’m an opponent of the Veteran’s Affairs

Department on not looking at our people on just cause. The first breakthrough was the Gold card in 1974, when the Whitlam Government gave them, as I explained, free health, medical, I’m sorry, free medical, hospital, dental and optical service. But I didn’t realise that. But the Veteran’s Affairs Department they only used that as an example to bring everybody up, who

was on 100% pension, onto the same thing. That was done by Fraser. Well that’s good but there’s no reason why they couldn’t go further onto POW’s. Then, of course, to his credit Howard has done all the people in the Second World War that saw active service on the Gold card. Now that’s good - I’m all in favour of that. But there is - they will not - the only other Government - the only other person that

was really good for POW’s was Keating. Keating gave all spouses of former prisoners of war, a war widow’s pension whether their partners died of war caused injuries or not. The other thing he did for me was, and he did in the last budget of ’89,

was that Japanese prisoners of war - only Japanese - they can spend the last days of their life in a nursing home free of charge. They’re the only Veterans. There was a time when many other Veterans could but that expenditure review committee of the Hawke Government cut it to pieces. So I’m not a lover of the Hawke Government’s treatment but Keating was a different kettle of fish. And the reason being, you realise that Keating’s

father’s eldest brother died at Sandarkan or Sandakan. But he would always be compassionate to me, but he was the only one in the Hawke Government would be compassionate when I went before them. They argued that if they gave any considerations to a special group they would be breaking something that had stood for 80 years, that

every case should be judged on its merit and no group should be looked at as a whole. Now I say this on the public record to the Veteran’s Affairs Department. The truth is that they were never told those figures that I’ve just given you, about what occurred, of our deaths compared to others and the suffering of us - only but for the wonderful doctors at the Concord Hospital

that spelt out these figures and put them in the Australian Medical Journal - the last lot was in April 1989. Now 1989’s a long time after, and the Veteran’s Affairs Department… In fact when I started, when I stepped down as a minister and I’d go to funerals of my mates. And they’d say, “Tom your government’s pretty tough on us.”

So I then got the parliamentary library to look at the things that the Hawke Government had stolen from the Veterans. And I started a crusade and in doing that I was able to change the position and get a lot of the conditions back. For instance, dental. We could only spend $300 on dental care. Because of our unique position we now,

there’s not a limit on our dental care. So there’s many other things.

But listen I hope the Veteran’s Affairs Department listen to this. And stop this baloney about what they’re on about.

Yes, well at first we started to bury the people with cholera and then we realised we were making errors about that. And we buried also with them, the utensils they had. But then we found out very soon that that was the wrong thing to do, and we got - there were some great bushmen from Tasmania. And they would create a big log fire and we’d burn our men. And the utensils we’d

sterilise them and be able to use them again. But it was the great log fires that we’d burn the bodies.

No burial - nobody would see them go. But there was a special group who would take them out and put them on the big log fires and burn them and incinerate them. That’s what they did and there was a group of people that did that.

No. As far as I know, no. There may have been but I don’t know.

Well I think the question was that with cholera, which was the great problem, it leaves, it’s in the earth and it’s better to burn it and get rid of it than to leave it in the earth,

and water then transferred it. Of course, what you would do - even though we were on the river, camp was really based on a spring and we’d all, our camps would be built around that spring. But surrounding, right around the camp the Tamils and Indo-Chinese and other people would come in and sit around that. Particularly the Tamils they would do their excreta wherever they felt and would,

you know, wash with one hand and eat with the other. But that really, that was quite - just terrible. I mean, oh you know, I had an experience on the other hand about …

Yeah, well three of us, myself and two Poms were selected to - I’m not sure - anyway there were 3 of us and I’m not sure what the others were. We were selected to go up

Kinsayok and to bring back some cattle. There was 90 odd head of cattle. And as it was the wet season, we would go along, in many cases, we’d be up to our knees in mud the whole time. And the cruelty - I mean I didn’t think I’d be so cruel ever in my life. And keep the cattle moving and keep them going along. But

along the way was where the Tamils and Asians and others had dropped by the wayside. And their skulls were there, maggots coming out of the eyes and out of the nostrils and, you know, the whole lot. Testicles, you know, men’s testicles blown up - scrotum blown up to - all maggots just coming out. It was the mentality and the stupidity of, and the

school boyish or half insane Japanese that had these long poles, used to keep on pushing off their heads and watching them run down the hill. Anyway it was a sickening position. Anyway we drove this cattle down and we came to a little creek and we crossed over and, on the other side was an Asian with a typical Asian thing

- ground sheet over him. And he’s sitting passively there and just watching us go past. And I’m not sure whether he was smoking, I think he was, a pipe, but anyway, possibly not, he’d settled there. Anyway eventually we got these cattle down. And about, oh several months later in

the dry season, we went back up to repair that road. And you know, there was the same ground sheet with the same hat and just a lot of bones there. This Asian had just sat there passively for the rest of his days. Of course, a European couldn’t do that - he couldn’t - he’d met his - that’s how he wanted to finish up

and he’d made up his mind. I just couldn’t help but - make that impression on me that there’s something about the Asian soul - they can face things so passively like that. Maybe he was on opium - I don’t know. But he just took it in that way. I might say out of that drive of bringing the cattle down, I’ll tell a story about our cook, his name

was Jack Prescott, he was a Melbourne butcher. And he slaughtered this bullock and out of it Jack got the best cut and he took it up to Weary and said, “Colonel you’ll eat well tonight. I’ve got you fillet steaks.” And Weary just said to Jack, “Jack you go back and put it in the stew the same as the rest of the men.” And Jack

Prescott told that story about himself, against himself in favour of Weary. So that, well that’s a part again, just these little things that Weary was so sensitive about. Personal things about ordinary people.

Yeah, well you can

always see where the store-room was because from the storeroom to the cook house was this trail of maggots, particularly in the wet season. No, not in the dry season but in the wet season because all these steaks had been laid out in the sun to sun dry, and of course, they were blown accordingly. But the maggots, all you did was knock the maggots off, cut the steak up and throw it into the stew. That was the part of it. Yeah.

Well that’s why I’m just - they must’ve been on the early period

of the British being there, because we weren’t - we were an Australian camp. There was no British at all. That’s why I’m not really sure in my own mind whether they were British or who they were. I’m sorry to have to correct my own self on that. It was just two other people and they were fairly timid compared to me, I might say. But, you know, the relationship always between…

I’ve never had a resentment towards British or anything else. As I pointed out in my earlier talk, was that the British officers, NCO’s - never had the same respect for their ordinary rank and file people like our own collective spirit, amongst most Australians. A kind of a comradeship, cobberism, whatever you want to call it. I’ve given Weary’s crowd a

collective spirit. I don’t know if that was the same everywhere but it was still the kind of, the cobberish kind of comrade position amongst Australians.

Well, as I say, the last place I was at was Kinsayok then I went to Tamuang and was there, I’d say, for several weeks before I was taken to Japan.

Yes I could. First of all we had to go back in those heartless trucks back down to - I think we stayed in what they call the Great World, it’s one of the places in Singapore. And we were there I think, about maybe 10 days, maybe a fortnight. And then we were put on the ship called the Ryoko Maru.

And we went - it was a strange type of journey. We went from Singapore across to the coast of Borneo and followed up that. And then up through the Philippines and we were going up - before we got to Manila we went through a cyclone or a hurricane, and how the ship was - it’s actually spelt out in Ray Parkin’s book in much more detail.

About how the ship survived, but it did survive because it was, the ship was steered from the rear. There was no bridge that had been blown away - there was two big girders along either side holding it together from breaking its back. Even the front, in the front hold it was loose and that’s where the fellows used to have their salt water showers.

For ballast we had - full of rubber. But anyway when we got to Manila we were there for 28 days in Manila Bay. And we had a fly plague and it’s the only thing I have ever seen Japanese do constructive. But in fact everybody had to supply ten fully grown flies every day

for inspection, to kill them. And that’s the only way we got rid of the fly plagues. Even the rust was so bad you’d lift the rust, and of course, underneath the rust was full of insects and it’s pretty grim.

At least you could squash them with your thumbs but when we got to

Japan we had lice. And with lice you had to get it between your thumbs like that. And lice grow by drawing the blood from your body and it’s just like a tick to some degree. Your body grows according to the… but I’ll talk about that when we get to Japan.

No,

there were ships that were torpedoed. I saw a front of a ship disappear and I never thought - I just thought that torpedos drilled a hole in it but that wasn’t the case, in this case. But the latter half was afloat but the forward part had disappeared. But

our ship, we were lucky. One of our blokes wrote in his, in one of his articles, “I don’t think that the Yanks thought that our ship was - that a torpedo would be wasted on our ship.” And yet you know, there were over a thousand people on our ship. And yet she was a 7,000 ton trans steamer,

and when you compare it to the number of troops that used to go away on the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, on troop ships, it just showed the comparison of how much we were packed onto our ship.

Well, first of all Babe Daniels - one of the sad things about my life is that, Babe and I aren’t close these days. But he was just a remarkable young man. He was so generous and so giving that, as I say, when I was sick,

particularly when I had amoebic dysentery, he would wash me down and look after me. There were other people like Tassie Knight who became quite an important person in the education system in Tasmania. There are other comrades that I shared

wonderful moments with. Really, on the whole we came through that trip pretty well. We played a lot of bridge and I’ve never played bridge before but there was a kind of - I can’t even tell you the - it was a bastard mixture of concepts that I played.

But it’s strange that - a bloke like Tassie Knight who was such an intellectual sort of fellow, had no brains at all in so far as playing cards is concerned. And the less educated people that knew how to get along, could do things in a much better way. Oh no, it’s a happy memory back then. One of the sad things things about

that, soon after we got on the ship, and I talked about this in my book. I think I was coming down stairs and, I’m not sure whether I was coming down or going… I think I was coming down and he was going up - and a Dutchman tried to push me aside. And I just stiffened myself and he bounced off me.

Then he declared me on. And I tried to talk him out of it until it got to a position where it looked like I was being a coward, I was so not wanting to fight him. But there was something about the Dutch that we were - they were very arrogant. And they called themselves Hollanders,

not Dutch. The Indonesians, 1% Dutch blood, they called themselves Dutch. And if there was any group of people that I got to dislike in prison camp it was the Dutch. But I’ll talk about that in a second. Anyway I just, as I was saying earlier, in the fight game whenever to shape up to a bloke

if you know the game and you know how to use yourself, you can sum a bloke up pretty quickly. And I only hit him once and he went down and cut his hand and tetanus set in and, oh I don’t know if it was tetanus but, I don’t think it was tetanus, but it was some germ that set in and he got a very bad rash on his arm. And I felt sorry about that.

But in talking about the Dutch I really did become very, very sectarian against them. But then one of the great men of my life is President Franklin Roosevelt and he’s a descendent of the Dutch. So again, I looked more broadly at the implications

of people. And I foresaw that you can’t convince anything - but the Hollanders who were in the Dutch East Indies were a fairly arrogant Arian lot, which is very sad really. Holland is a very beautiful place and I think the people generally are a beautiful people. But the one reason - the one that drew me back on track was

Roosevelt, ‘cause he’s the one that led me into politics. And you know, his new deal policy in the ‘30’s was quite inspiring to me.

Yes we were split up again in Japan. Some of us went to Saganoseki and other people went in other areas. For instance Ray Parkins from the group that was on the Perth, they went into another camp and we went across to Saganoseki. It was

that first nine months of the year I was in Japan, was on the whole, pretty humane and pretty decent. Food was hopeless - we couldn’t get much food. We had to live primitively. We had no running water in our camp, we just had a trough outside. All our hair was shaved off of course, and we’d come out and just have

a solution over, because where we would have our showers and baths, not showers but baths would be after the factory, after each shift. The toilets were kind of self, you know, they were just a pit and you had long bamboo poles and - you’d pick up the excrement and urine - and you’d put it into a box and one bloke’d get on one end and the other would get on the other and you’d take it out and put it on the garden

outside. It’s the first time I saw snow, was in Japan at that prison camp. The people who worked in the factory were really good people. The actual

guards weren’t bad, they weren’t good but they weren’t bad. They were just - Japanese discipline. They weren’t brutal for instance. On a Christmas Eve, on one occasion I was a bit, again I suppose you’d call me cocky

with a Japanese guard and he struck me. I didn’t do any more than that. But then he went and reported me because he was worried that I might have reported him because I don’t think there was any… So the officer had me brought out

to him, that’s the officer in charge of the camp. And Ron Williams was a lieutenant from Canberra, from Richmond in Tasmania, that’s the person, senior officer in charge of us. Anyway the Japanese officer kept on yabbering to me, “What do you want, Japanese punishment or European punishment?” And European punishment was a cell four by four by four.

With no air conditioning. And of course, it was freezing in winter time over Christmas. So I said, “I’ve done nothing wrong to have any punishment.” So anyway he just said, told me to stand to attention. And the next thing I know he hit me across the shoulders of the back. And all I said was, “Jesus Christ.” And I said to Ron Williams,

we were walking away, “What was that?” And he said, “It was a piece of steel bar that he hit you with.” It was a pipe about one inch in diameter, about four inches long and was steel. And if it’d had been a bit lower he would’ve broken my spine. Anyway next day was Christmas Day and we had

our Christmas meal and then we - some theatre was on later and there was a boxing exhibition by a chap named Alan … sorry. I’ll remember Alan’s name in a minute. He’s as tall as me. He was the navigator and we gave a boxing exhibition. And

so, and the Japanese officer and the Japanese’d watch the skills and you know. Well, you know, from there on that officer couldn’t do anything but, you know, he’d send me this and send me that. Because, you know, he’d watched me as a boxer give certain skills. He even gave me a special duty to dig out an

air raid shelter on the side of the hill. But it was a very interesting process. Funny thing, you know, the Japanese. Anyway, I mean I’m not being proud about it, I’m just telling you a fact, that from there on I was the white haired boy of the camp. I mean I couldn’t do anything wrong at all, even if the guards and all that must’ve got the message now because they were all

respectful to me too. But, so it’s a part of life.

I’m sorry about that I can’t - as a matter of fact it’s terrible isn’t it how names slip from you. Because Alan, when he died several years ago, he’s up

just New South Wales, but near the Gold Coast. I had to make the tribute to him at the church. And so he was a very fine person and quite a character in his own right. Anyway, just another one of my mates that have passed away.

No. I got one letter from my mother in the whole three and a half years I was a prisoner of war. One. And that’s the only thing. I got one Red Cross parcel. As I say, that occurred in Japan. There wasn’t much, I’m no exception I think it was much the same with everybody.

Except in the last camp we were in, once they told the war was over they started bringing out the Red Cross parcels then, but that was too late. That wasn’t a nice camp either. It was a vicious camp. They didn’t get vicious with me but, while I talked so warmly about the Japanese and how it helped change my whole attitude, I grew as a person in that first 9 months too. And I felt secure. And I felt,

because of working alongside the warmth of these Japanese, working with them - I felt it wasn’t the Japanese hated me but fascism and militarism. So I have a certain, that growth period, that first 9 months was quite remarkable. And that, in a way, I felt guilty that I didn’t do more for that manager that was the head of that company

or manager of that place at that time. Because he’d been purged by MacArthur because of his association with prisoners of war. He was a man of goodwill who suffered.

Oh, I reacted quite remarkably and I still have that letter today. And

she used to call me, tall dark and handsome, so she’d TDH and I’d call her, my silver headed sweetheart. And she said, you know keep - look for the silver lining. It was a very loving letter. She’s quite a character my mum.

My time in the first 9 months. But the last year - the last 3 months of that year, we came into a camp where there was about 1,700 people there. They were all the British, Australians,

Americans - a large group of Americans and Dutch. A lot of them Indonesian but they called them Dutch. It was in that 3 months that - by the way, in that period of Saganoseki we used to see the B29’s go over every morning - it was like a taxi service with a vapour trail behind it. No, no you couldn’t oppose them. And I might say that in Saganoseki, when we first went there we used to,

there was a copper smelting work - we used to have ornaments and that, that’d come from Japan, come from China and we’d throw them into the furnace with other scrap left over and that’s what we’d do. In the end all we could do was to get the soot that came out of the furnace, onto the floor and sweep it up and put that back into the furnace. They were on their knees, Japan was on its knees industrially.

So I’m firm on that. Now, coming back to Omuta, I worked for a while in a lead smelting works. That wasn’t the…and in that same camp some of the fellows were working in coal mines. And

they were pretty primitive mines. A mate of mine who later - I’d met on the Burma Thailand Railway, Shorty, but his name was George Cowie. I’d met him at Kinsayok. He was in the Gordon Highlanders. And he was working in the mines and that was pretty primitive. By the way, coming over he was one on a ship that had been torpedoed.

And he survived. But oh, I’ll never forget the attitude of the Americans. There was a chap by the name of Lieutenant or Lieutenant, goodness me … anyway

he was court martialled later. I’m not sure what for, because he was a permanent person from the Academy, not a part timer. And he was put up - he was in charge of this camp. But the Americans cringing, I mean I’ve seen them cringe to the Japanese. It really did disturb me greatly.

I’ve never seen a jungle of men, the survival of the fittest, amongst those Americans. They were really survivalists. I’m sure they would sell each other out to survive. It was quite degrading. In this camp there was one experience of a young Aboriginal boy, or young man that had been - who had no legs. And he’d had to -

and I didn’t see this, I only saw him - but the experience was that he had, for punishment he had to kneel on bamboo for a certain period of time and what happened was, gangrene set in and that’s why he lost his legs. But the whole atmosphere was quite depressing. It was a period,

you know, nearing the end of the war. One night for instant, the American incendiary bombing bombed the city of Omuta. And on one end there was the industrial complex, there was the city and then all houses, and it would’ve been a city of around about a third of a million. And on the other end

there was our prison camp. And they burnt - that city was burnt down in one night - just incendiary bombs. And in our camp all the incendiaries were dropping all around us and we had to be put into air raid shelters. We were there for 9 hours. Half our camp was burnt down, so much so that we had to…for instance the hut that I was in must’ve been

burnt because I can’t recall exactly…all I know is I didn’t finish up there, I had to finish up sleeping in the dining room, because there was a large dining room that would, on three shifts, would feed the whole 1,700. So we had to - in the last month or so, or few weeks of our prison life we were in this - sleeping on the tables of the dining room. And

I’ll never forget my young mate, Babe Daniels. You would watch, by the way, the big tall Texans walking around with, hand in hand with young Indonesians who have really got a lovely skin and, you know, lovely looking fellows. And people used to say, they used to have associations and what have you. But you could really, in this thing at night,

you could hear the squealing, and Babe said, “Did you hear that, did you hear that?!” I said, “Break it down, let them enjoy themselves.” Anyway…

I met one on the railway line at Tamuang, that was the only one I ever met, that was openly gay. By his actions he was gay. But anyway

this, this thing - but in the end, when the war ended, you know, when we achieved victory there were, because of my contacts with a civilian American that was in there, who was an old fight manager. And he knew me. He must’ve had influence of someone senior because he said to me,

“Tom would you select three of your mates and yourself, there’s got to be four from each nation, and you got to be the town marshals.” So I selected Babe and I forget the other two that we selected. And so we took over the town, and ran the town, and of course we went down to look at the brothels, made sure that was, and you got receipts, they used to get receipts

and everything - anybody that had sex and that. And luckily there wasn’t much VD [Venereal Disease] at all. In fact arising out of that is the reports, either received reports back later from indirect ways. But the same - when we went into this brothel, the same tall Texans were in there with the Japanese women. They were just bi-sexual that’s all. They just enjoyed sex. So the little

Indonesians were forsaken at that time. The other interesting thing, which I forgot to mention to you earlier on, remember I said there were a hundred British people that were in anti-aircraft group at East Timor at Kupang? And they shot down about 17 planes, by the way. They came out from Britain via the Cape.

And came up to Batavia or Tanjung Priok and they spent only a couple of nights there before coming onto us. When we were taken prisoner we went to sick bay. 25% were in sick bay with VD. So that’s how strong and powerful the VD was in Indonesia.

Anyway that’s a ‘bi’ say. My time’s up is it?

Well, they poured the copper into…and it was kind of a circular, there was a kind of a circular place where the ingots were there.

And you had kind of trucks or trolleys that would go in and go under the ingots and then you’d pull them out. As the water came down, and of course the fumes were coming up. And those sulphur fumes would get right into your lungs and tear the guts right out of you. It really was cruel. But that was what we do, well the more fitter ones. I

certainly used to have to do it. And I’d bring them out, pull them back and they’d stack them and cool them down. Ultimately they’d make, of course, ammunition, the cartridges for bullets and also for artilleries.

At the copper smelting works, 9 months. Yes.

Omuta, the last 3 months of the war. And it was a period when I at first, as I say, I worked in the copper smelting works and then this chap who was of some influence in the Americans, got me a job inside the camps so I didn’t have to go out.

In fact, that’s how I actually saw the discolouration in the sky, when the, 9th of August, was made on Nagasaki. And you know, it was the whole crimson colour of the sky, you could just, so pronounced, you could never ever realise what a crimson colour it was. I didn’t see any mushroom,

just the whole crimson. And at first, the Japanese would come in and say, when the war was over, “Big bomb, war over.” That’s all they could tell us. We didn’t know anything more than that. We were all happy about the war was over. In fact, my position at that time was that if I went to sleep on that side of the face, that my face would be out like that from beri beri, or my legs

were up like - have you ever seen dropsie? Legs like that and you push your thumb in and they used to stay in there. So I had beri beri pretty badly at that time. And we were all glad the war was over. I know I was glad they’d dropped the bomb, I didn’t realise. But of course, as I’ve grown and understood both the problems of nuclear war and nuclear weapons, I’m convinced it was a crime against humanity.

And …

Yes well, I think that, I think it was a crime against humanity. I don’t think any human should use atomic weapons or nuclear weapons against any other humans. And the sadness about it is that so many people think that they should have a right

to do it. The more I myself understand the implications of nuclear war and nuclear sickness, I’ve been very firmly against it. But I’m against the nuclear industry as a whole because, I don’t know if you know much about the Fox Inquiry into uranium mining in the Northern

Territory, particularly in Kakadu National Park. And their third recommendation was, the nuclear industry, used the word “unintentionally” to soften it. Increase the risk of nuclear war - this is the most serious aspect of the industry. And of course, that’s proven so true but….you know, when you think about, I saw, I was at 80

kilometres when I saw the nuclear weapons exploded over Nagasaki. The bombs that would, that they could explode today would incinerate, 80 kilometres away. So you just see the power that’s involved. The sad thing about it is we don’t know what to do with all the nuclear waste. I mean we don’t know how to decommission even nuclear power stations.

I mean these are so… oh we’ll find a solution but we’ve lived too many years to find solutions. For instance, when I came back from the war you know, I thought about it but particularly after 60 I was more convinced ever than before that they should have never used the nuclear weapons.

1960 yes.

1960 I

went to Japan against the 6th World Conference Against Nuclear - Atomic and Nuclear Weapons. And I saw there at Hiroshima - first of all I saw the model, explaining how so many people drowned because they were burnt at the time and they dived in. I’ve seen the scars on women’s bodies, I’ve seen the imprint

printed onto the backs of women. I’ve seen the genetic effects and biological effects. I’ve seen the atomic sickness and, so far as I’m concerned I think it’s just madness there ever be such a war. And of course, there were people in the United States, the more you read about the struggle that went on amongst the scientists - why they never should have dropped the bomb. But

in some cases I don’t think they had the confidence with themselves that if they put an experimental program there, they’re frightened that may have not been successful. That might have been one issue. But generally, I think it was the… Burn who was the Secretary of State to Truman that was very, mainly responsible

for convincing Truman that it should occur. I just don’t know what the outcome’s going to be in the longer term, because there are elements in the United States now that I think would use nuclear weapons against some people. Particularly if you’re not white.

Well, they allowed - first of all the food came down through parachutes. Then of course, I told you I was created ground marshall for a week, and I couldn’t stay any longer after that because we found out that, they were shipping

and freight into Kogashima and taking out - would be prepared to take out people in the bomb racks. And so I thought, I was about to go and then I got malaria and that delayed several days. But Babe Daniels and Jock Cowie and most of my mates they went ahead - I convinced them of that. But I went with a group of Americans. And we got down as far as the bridge that goes over to

- couldn’t go any further on the train.

Oh look, I’m not sure where, but there was a bridge short of Kogashima and we couldn’t go any further on the train so we got out there and then got in - commandeered a truck - drove - the war was over and as a matter of fact we’d become giants overnight. They just did whatever we told them.

Yeah. Oh, just obeyed completely.

And, the first time I spotted an American I thought they were men from Mars. First of all, had a different type of helmet on, you know, not the tommy helmet, had different type of helmet on. They were all yellow because of this Atebrin - the drug. And I just, you know, I really thought they were from another planet. So anyway,

we get down there and we… they started looking after us and giving us food and - generous they were. And there’s no doubt about it, the Americans are a very generous - when they’ve got it they’re very generous with it. If you’d come from where I’d been, with people, on the whole, with Americans that’d cringe and sell their own mate to make a bit of progress.

So that was a relief and we had this argument the first night we were there. About…they kept on saying,“Our navy did this, our navy did that, the greatest navy in the world.” And I just said, “God, you and everybody knows what the greatest navy is in the world - it’s the British Navy.” And I suppose I had to eat my own words as time went on because there’s no doubt about it,

the navy. So anyway, we got out and I got out of Kogashima - I was in the bomb rack of a B17. And when we first flew over, Okinawa it was really a city of lights we thought, but it wasn’t - it was all ships. The following

morning when we left we saw what they’d done. They’d stripped the airstrips, they’d made - look you couldn’t help but bloody marvel at the ingenuity of them in such a short period of time. And you could see the whole fleet, the mass of lights that were all - they were ships in the bay.

Yes, yes, they’re all ready to go - of course they were ready to go to Japan.

I must say, one of the interesting things was they had a, what do you call it, Red Cross Hut. And you could go in there and you could take anything you wanted. Like any type of food there, it was all laid out. So I got a pair of Yankee overalls and put these on. And tied a piece of rope around my waist, and I didn’t

want the cigarettes or cigars or anything else. All I did was fill it up with Hershey chocolate bars. So then we headed from there. As I say, when we went over, flew over in the morning and saw what they’d done to Naga - you couldn’t help but take your hat off to the ingenuity of the Americans.

No, no no.

No, I did not go to Nagasaki. In fact we would’ve been kept out of Nagasaki, that’s why they couldn’t take us because we had to wait until they decontaminated, or waited for a while. I think it was 3, 2 weeks to 3 weeks before we could have gone out of there. See I didn’t - I hitch hiked out of Japan through Kogashima and then got to Okinawa and then to… Okinawa and then they flew out of Okinawa down to Clark Field in

the Philippines. And I was there for 3 months, for 30 days. And by the time I left, I was about 10 stone when I got released, and by the time I left Clark Field I was over 14 stone. And we went out via the HMS Formidable. It was a stripped down aircraft carrier that was specially

for us, treated for us. And it was, it was quite a treat. While we were in Manila they issued us with so many cigarettes, so many cigars and so many of this and that, every day. And of course, by this time, I’d got the grape vine that things like that were short at home or were hard to get, so I started to take my

ration of cigarettes and cigars and what have you, to bring them home. So no, that Clark Field - I only went into Manila once in the 30 days I was there. But she was pretty well shot up and I didn’t, I wasn’t attracted to it so I hopped home again.

No. No Atebrin at all.

No, no it wasn’t available. We were on quinine.

Well, that was - not a deterrent - you’d only get it when you got malaria.

No, no.

That next year I was treated for a lot of recurring malaria, matter of fact my doctor said, “Why don’t you knock off doing any sport or anything for a year.” So I stopped doing anything for a year, just to recuperate.

Yeah, it was because I wanted to get -

And of course, when I started to - I had some fights by the way, a couple of times. So I decided to go to England - that’s when I decided to go to England.

No.

No, it was just wonderful and of course, Babe’s family was there - Babe Daniel’s family was there and also mine, my mother,

father and everyone was there. So that was a great homecoming. The Daniels lived at Lidcombe and I went home to stay with my Aunty Mary who lived in Five Dock. And there was a reception there of the Uren-Miller clan welcoming me back to the fold and that was lovely and gentle and I felt

Everybody… I met my brother Jack and my mother and father, and what have you. The only person I hadn’t met was Les, my younger brother. And he was up in Mount Morgan. So I got a special dispensation - they flew me by aircraft from Sydney, in a DC 4.

No lining or anything. You froze in the DC 4 except for blankets, and what have you. And I went to Brisbane, and from Brisbane I then went by train up to Mount Morgan. And the, because I was travelling on the train, at every stop the welcoming committee would welcome me as though I’m returning home. So they,

it was just so spontaneous, the people, that love and the warmth and affection they had for the returning veterans.

Yeah, it was good for me too, although I was fairly - I don’t know the words - fairly deep, you know. And I’m not an island but I

felt - I was a bit of an island at that time.

Well, I wanted to be near the family and yet I wanted to be alone. And I suppose in a way, I had greater affection for my young brother Les and that’s why I went on this long journey up to see him. And then when I came back

and of course, time was getting on. And I lived the first few months with the Daniel family. My mother and family lived in Port Kembla, Wollongong, and I didn’t want to go down there. I would visit them there but I didn’t want to live there. So I stayed with the Daniels in Charles Street, Lidcombe. And then

the clan the whole group, there was a group of our people like, Billy Dirks, Babe Daniels, Sid Iron and Bill Palmer of course, they were all down at a place called - a holiday home, the Palmer family down at Illawarra South. And I’d been in, I had to go back to hospital

in Merrylands - there was a naval hospital - it was formerly an American Naval Hospital and the Australian Army took it over in a park, they called it Granville Park but it’s at Merrylands. And that’s where I spent the first Christmas, coming back in with another attack of malaria.

Well I suppose I had to readjust myself to life

and I don’t know, I just wanted to…As I say I’m not a person who… I like my own privacy but I’m not a… I’ve only met one human being either that’s an island to himself and that’s Cairns. Cairns can live without anybody. I couldn’t, I need

warmth and companionship.

Yes, well what happened was that Billy Palmer had shown me a photograph of his sister. And she struck a note with me right away and… So when,

so I was just saying to you, after this Christmas I was in hospital and I’d just come out. And they sent me a telegram, “Look we’re all down at Lake Illawarra South, come down.” And so, I’m not sure whether I sent a telegram back or rang or something - I think a telegram back about was - no I must’ve spoke

on the phone - is Patty Palmer - is anybody, you know, keeping company with Patty Palmer? And so it was, “Come on come down.” So anyway I went down and I found out they were all sweet on her.

Yeah I said, I just said, “Is anybody keeping company with Patty Palmer?” And they just said, ignored that and said, “Come down.” You see so, when I got down there I found that they were all sweet on her. And I didn’t think I was making much progress either. But we had a Christmas,

a New Year’s Eve dance and I’ve never been a good dancer. And there was a bit of a waltz. And anyway, I’m as tense as hell, dancing with Patty so, I hold her - I’m holding her. When she finishes the dance she says, “Do you think I can have my wrist back now.” Because I more or less was so tense I’d just kind of stolen her circulation. So I said well -

then it was of course, the New Year’s Eve when everybody kisses one another, you see. And I kissed her and there wasn’t much response there so I thought, “Oh Uren you’ve got no chance with Patty.” So on New Year’s Day she had to go back to work and so did her aunt Macy, and we caught this train up from Wollongong

up to Sydney. In those days it could take about 2 hours to do it. And it was the fastest 2 hours I ever had in my life. And I just talked my head off with Patty. And she spoke with me and so, we seemed to be getting on well together. So I asked her, you know, “Could I call and visit her?” And she said, “Yes.” It was arranged that I come out for a meal a couple of nights after that.

So I went out and when I went out I bought her 4 yards of nice, lovely blue material for a woman to make a dress, because I had plenty of coupons and I didn’t give it to Patty, I gave it to the mother. So that was - so I was looking after my mother-in-law first of all. But from there on we never stopped seeing each other. And we became engaged on the 8th

February, 1946. And then we never married until - we had a long - one of the requests of the father was, that it still be a long - a fairly long engagement. It was March of 1947 we were married. And she was, ‘cause she grew - she was quite a remarkable human being.

Well, in so many ways - she kind of - as she grew older - that inner beauty continued to grow and she was a very handsome woman too. And we were very close. When I couldn’t produce a child, I went through all the process of finding out whether or not I - what was wrong with me. And I went back to my old POW doctors again,

first of all. Arthur Ewan Corlette then, he sent me to Moon and then Moon sent me to Professor Telfer. Neither, any 3 of them wouldn’t take any money from me. Telfer got drugs for me. And - I’m always mixing Christina and Patricia up. And I would say to Christine

“Patricia.” And she’d, “No I’m Christine.” Well anyway my beautiful Patricia, she would put the hormones jab in, “Which one? Where will it go this time?” And we used to laugh about that. But with all the modern hormonal treatment I never, I couldn’t produce - I had further tests. So we decided to set about adopting. And it was 5 years for the boy and 7 years for

the girl, we waited. And we got the boy in 1959 and our daughter came along in ’61. And they’ve been good kids. I think I was a good father until the time I became a Shadow Minister and probably didn’t spend as much time

from then on. But even then, even before that I was still a fairly national politician. Of course, I was in the anti-war movement and peace movement and all that.

My first anti-war rally was Melbourne conference of 1959. And I’ve been a

collective part of that anti-war movement ever since.

Well Cairns asked me to involve myself in it. And I was always anti-war but not a part of the collective war movement.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, you know, I had my process of trying to become one of the great fighters of the world, professionally. I did that and that was ’48 and I got back in, nearly ’49. I really went in ’47 but it was… Anyway

when I got back it was just before the great coal strike of ’49. And ultimately I’d been working on - sorry I’m getting ahead of myself. I worked for a year as a rubber millman, at Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company. But all the time I was applying for jobs. And so it was ’47 and ’48 I was in England.

And when I was at… Anyway I kept applying for these jobs and eventually I got a start with Woolworths as a trainee. And it was just before the great coal strike because I was cleaning windows. You had to go all the processes and one of my mates said, “Jesus Tom, things aren’t that bloody bad are they?” And I said, “Oh mate only a trainee here.” So anyway, I did very well with Woolworths

and they were very good to me too. And I was only there with them, about 21 months when they made me a manager of Lithgow. And of course, Lithgow was a great turning point in my life because I had never joined the Labor Party. I arrived in April and Chifley died in the middle of the year and I went to his funeral and it was at his funeral I met one of my former prisoners of war,

Viv Gordon who’d been a coal miner. And I had never had a car. I think we went up by bus and we were on the same bus and that’s how I joined the Labor Party through Viv. And of course, where I got great joy out of being in Woolworths and I was a Woolworths manager in Lithgow for 4 years. But in the split of the party

I wanted to come back to Sydney, and of course I did. And remained a manager of Woolworths, opened Merrylands store. But ultimately what I was doing to get my political freedom, I’d brought a block of land and I was building two shops. One a general store and the other one a butcher shop, to get political independence because - on one interview

with the General Manager of New South Wales branch, Bill Nash. He said, “Do you know Tom,” he said, “you’ve got a great future in Woolworths. But for one thing.” And I said, “Yes, politics.” And so I said, “Well Mr Nash, I don’t - I’m no Jesus Christ.

“But if I believe in something, I’m going to get up and I’m going to say what I believe in. I’m going to do what I believe in.” And you know, the old fellow said, “Well Tom”, he said, “we’ve got plenty of Libs working for the company. We can have a good Labor man.” So he wanted to keep me. But anyway, eventually I,

actually it was the last - that was one of the last meetings because he had heart turns after that and I never saw him again. But ultimately I knew what I wanted to do. Wanted to get out of the company and start afresh now. That period from - I think it was around about 1956 - it was the year that I had the store - a lot of pre-selections were on.

Until I’d won the pre-selection they were very tough years. Very difficult for small business people to succeed, and I learnt all the difficulties of that - small business. But ultimately there were about 6 people opposed to the split at that time and I’m the only one that broke through - I bet Charlie Morgan who’d been a member for 15 years.

No before - which created the DLP.

Yes. And so I won the pre-selection. And then of course in the ’58 elections Morgan ran against me as a Independent and I was successful in defeating him and

I got in on preferences. I won by 13,000.

No, just my own personal experience. For instance, when I ran for the general election in 1958

they were questioning me about - wanting me to sign certain documents on behalf of the peace movement. And I said, “No I’m not going to sign any document.” But I committed myself to do certain things and I stood fast on that. Anyway I won the - I was successful,l and as I say

then when I went into the caucus, Cairns and I had become close. What happened with Cairns which drew me to Cairns - I saw an article by Alan Read in which it said, “The young doc had challenged the old doc.” It was over immigration policy. The Labor party brought forward a policy where there was to be 60% Europeans

and 40% non European. I’m sorry, 60% British and 40% Europeans. Now this is before - still White Australia Policy. And so Cairns argued that, the Southern Europeans, you know, you didn’t want Catholics, the Southern Europeans. And consequently Cairns arguing and saying

that the Southern Europeans were economically Labor supporters. And that logic was sound with me. And that was the bridge that started between Cairns and myself. But from the first day we became very, very close, very close. And there were times when things were tough and we’d say, thank Christ

we’ve got each other.

For a short while I was a member of the RSL but only a very short while. I really resented the sectarian position of the RSL.

Oh yes. Sectarian in that they - they were very pro war - and

well, I suppose sectional really, I suppose, more than sectarian.

Oh no. You can be sectarian but - on a political basis - it’s not only on a religious basis.

Well everything was pro communist or you know, that if you weren’t - if you just sneezed the wrong way - even old Bill Yeo who was one of the better elements - generally they weren’t as bad - Bill Yeo wasn’t as bad as what’s his - Ruxton.

Oh, wouldn’t be any more than a year at the most.

No, I just withdrew from them because - I actually was a part of Legacy for nearly - over 4 years. The whole time I was at Lithgow I was a part of Legacy but I wasn’t even a part of the RSL, even in those days.

Well they took - can I say they took an ultra conservative position in my view and I just didn’t want to be a part of that.

Well, it was exactly the fact that, you know, if you were too left

or if you were…it was a kind of - pro-armaments…the thing that worried me…this was before, of course…I wasn’t terribly happy about our involvement in sending our forces to Korea in the first place. But wherever, if you look at the position of Australia, we either got involved in Malaysia or, your know, in those days

today they want to build bridges with some of the fascist elements of Indonesia. But in the early days they wanted to - they wanted to condemn Indonesia, in fact get Australia involved in fighting with the British Forces in Malaysia.

Well, they were very pro that way.

They have been - I mean in my view - the only person that’s ever held a position of prominence in the RSL in my post war years, that I respect, is Philips, Major General Philips. I think he’s a very fine man and I think he’s taken a lot of courage to move the RSL into a much broader position. I think that,

even though I think that most Veterans are fairly good, you know, down to earth type of blokes, but the RSL as such, has been a kind of inbuilt conservative grain ever since I’ve known them.

No I’ve never marched on Anzac Day. When I say I’ve never marched, I’ve

always been to Dawn Services in my own electorate. And always did, right through that 31 years, but I never went into major marches on Anzac Day. Occasionally I would represent Calwell or one of the leaders on laying a wreath on the Cenotaph. But I stayed away from activities in the RSL.

No, the only thing I always do is I always look at - I always look at the marchers on Anzac Day and when our blokes have gone past

I give it away. But I always look and view our fellows, the 8th Division as a whole.

In fact, I wish I could give an education to some of the announcers because they don’t really understand what the 8th Division was and suffered in World War II.

No, I don’t dream - early on I did.

Early on I certainly had events but the one that I - the one thing that used to come back to me in the early hours of the morning was that story I told you about - about that bloke bashing me up with a bamboo pole and what have you.

Yes, well really I

- my position when I came back from the war was I was against the war generally. And as I started to learn more and more I became opposed to the dropping of the bomb. But I then also, was then pro nuclear energy, saying the propaganda that it has peaceful uses. But it wasn’t until really the ‘70’s that I started to read comments on the nuclear industry as a whole. And then

I became of course, particularly in ’76 against the nuclear fall out - the nuclear mining or uranium mining in the Northern Territory. And I became a prominent leader in that. And of course, I’ve already quoted what the Fox report said in its third recommendation. And I understand what the implications are and all we’ve done. We’ve taken a very conservative

position in saying that until all the unresolved problems associated with the nuclear industry are solved, we believe that, you know, there shouldn’t be such a thing. Now I’ve been consistent on that all the way through, and even though people would call us, you know eco-nuts and

other, saying we were backward people and that. I’ve maintained that position and I think that… First of all I think that there’s been an enormous amount of selfishness, for instance Maralinga. I tried to raise these questions which later were found in ’76. I had a bright young bloke working with me. I was Deputy

Leader at the time. And I put questions to the Department of Health and all that, and the lies that were told, which eventually, we know now. I mean we don’t know how many Aboriginal people have died from atomic fall out or the testing of those atmospheres because of the shoddiness of the whole system of Maralinga.

Well, people were coming to me, for representation, about their husbands or other such people, were in fact involved or had certain sicknesses arising out of the testing of certain atmosphere. But Rolf Garretson, who I think he’s now at ANU [Australian National University], he certainly followed it through on the scientific view. And certainly he was the driving force which,

or he was creating the information for me to shoot at the Government and to make speeches on. And I certainly did over a long period of time. Now, to some extent I think through Garretson’s influence on some, indirectly, that ultimately Jim McClelland was appointed as Commissioner on that. McClelland in many cases brought up a lot of information which we had given and put forward

long before, years before. And there was a book published by the one of the scientists of Maralinga that more or less deals with the position that we took in the 1976, ’77 position. But I’ve remained firmly of the belief that the world is really, will suffer in the long term and

the sadness about it - not many people except the Americans - the Americans have never really had another nuclear power industry since Harrisburg.

Well, the nuclear waste position, is like - it’s a threat not to us now but to future

human kind. It lasts a quarter of a million years and it’s going to be - and the more we create - I mean there’s so much of it in America, they don’t know what to do with it. The wealthiest nation in the world hasn’t got the slightest idea what to do with their nuclear waste, let alone countries like ours. And look more and more - look at what’s occurring, is now coming to be known about, what’s occurred in the Soviet Union.

Now these are, these are places - they’re not - if I can back onto two pieces of principles that Comino sent out. Dealing with the environment, he said, the first principle is, that everything’s connected to everything else. And the second principle is everything’s got to go somewhere. And there’s this interconnection. No place is an island, you are so interconnected

in this world, this planet we live in. And that’s all I’m saying about it. Now, the facts are that the - America since Harrisburg have never ever entered into a new contract for a nuclear power industry in the United States but they export it to many other countries of the world, because there’s profit in it for them and that’s, I think, an act of stupidity. And one of the sad things about it is, that one of the export industries

that the Soviet Union, or now called Russia, have got, is that they’re still exporting their nuclear failures to other countries. And those other countries, because in my view, more than wanting nuclear energy they want nuclear bombs. I mean, you know, who are the countries that have got it, since we’ve had a nuclear forecast. We know that at least three countries have got it

by stealth. Israel, Pakistan and India, they’ve all got it by stealth. Now, we know that they now say that Iran’s moving towards it. They say that Iraq would have been close to getting it. Some people argue that, you know, Brazil wants to go that way. There are so many countries want to move into that position and all I’m saying is it’s dangerous. Not only that, but even at the other end

they haven’t got a solution yet of… Look in Britain which was one of the early countries in the nuclear power industry which was then subsidised, both Britain and France were both subsidised by the Defence Department in their early - they don’t know what to do - how to decontaminate their industry.

Well, I got involved first of all in 1962, when we sent our advisors to Vietnam. And my

argument’s always been consistent, that we should not be involved in any internal affairs of other countries. And I’ve been consistent on that right through my political life. If you looked back at the early sixties, both Uren, or Cairns and Uren - I was the first one to raise the question, but Cairns was the really ideological theoretician on the thing. And we fought

both ’62, ’63 and ’64 when the Labor Party were fairly cool if not neutral on it. And some would be anti - they would be pro the Americans. And in fact up to about March of 1965 there was a motion passed in the caucus whereby we supported the Americans and their bombing of North Vietnam and Haiphong. It was

not until Menzies, without consultation with Calwell, sent a battalion of troops, committed a battalion of troops to Vietnam in April of 1965. And then Calwell in his speech of May 4th 1965 then came out in opposition to sending the troops there. But there was never ever a policy, it was a long struggle about reversing the decision,

bringing them back. And that was one of the major long struggles that took a long time within the Labor Party before we would get unity on that position.

Well ’66, we certainly suffered greatly because of the hysteria that was built up. In fact, where do you draw the line?

The great threat and after war. For generations there’s always been the great fear of the yellow hordes coming down to take over Australia. And it was plain to some degree on that philosophy. But the Liberals, you know, had big red arrows coming down - where do you draw the line? It went so far as, there was one brochure put out and that was withdrawn. And that was, they had an Aussie digger with a slouch hat on

drawing a rickshaw with a blonde Australian woman in, with an Asian soldier with an arm around her. That was just too red hot even for the Liberals and they withdrew it. No, it was very very - what I’d called - a political sectarian position, even racist. But playing on the fear of the yellow hordes coming down, because after all it wasn’t, it was China they were threatened

- arrows come from China not from Vietnam. And Vietnam was being a barrier against the downward thrust of China for about a thousand years. So that, we certainly were - and people would virtually spit on you in the 1966 elections. In my own electorate they would put up over ‘Vote 1 Uren’, they would put a big red rat on it, on my stickers, I’ve got photographs to show you if you want to see them. And

on the rump is the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. So, no it’s - anyway it took a long time. But the ’69 election - in fact it was the move back towards us because of our position in Vietnam, we became united on that and I think that Whitlam’s campaign in 1969

was his greatest contribution in politics, that’s my own personal view. And it was from that campaigning that really inspired me to run for the front bench of the Labor Party. Until then I had never run for a position of leadership in the Labor Party. In fact I used to say to some of my mates that the big bastard’ll probably give me Veteran’s Affairs. Instead he gave something that was closer to him.

That was Regional Affairs. And I must say Whitlam is a big man in so many ways. He knows that I, when I dealt with him I dealt straight, face to face, nothing under the - straight up. And that’s what, he respected me for it. We worked well together as a minister and Prime Minister. He never wanted me to be - Deputy Leader. Actually after

’75 I told him I would be Deputy Leader. He said, “Oh no you won’t be Deputy Leader.” I said, “Yes I will Gough.” But he then only needed me when he was in trouble. But every time he was in trouble I went to his support. The position though, as the years have rolled on, Whitlam and I have come much closer and closer - I would think there’s a deep affection from him to me

and from myself to him. In fact the ‘piece de resistance’ at the last big dinner for the 30th anniversary of the party, at the Hyatt Hotel at Canberra, he said that the Department of Urban and Regional Development was a dynamic department and his minister was one of his greatest ministers. I was the only one that he mentioned all bloody night. And I just cackled

like hell about it and I said, “Look that’ll go over like a lead balloon with these egos around this table tonight.”

So, it’s a strange position. We got a very, very good position because you know, my relationship - I believe in the ‘60’s that Cairns should have been the leader and anyway, it didn’t work out that way. In fact, I think Whitlam - another thing I think - I don’t like - I didn’t like the Hawke Government but one of the

things they did good in my view, there were several things - but they appointed Whitlam as the UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation] ambassador and that allows him to continue to grow internationally. And I think Gough has been quite a remarkable man in his time. In fact, in my book, where I was critical of him in my life, in my book, I was also very praiseworthy of him. I think he’s a great man.

Yeah, well the first conflict was - in the second moratorium which was September of 1970, a young policeman had manhandled me so I went down there to relay this information.

it’s the only time that I saw conflict occur between the police and the anti-Vietnam moratorium demonstrators. And I relay this information. Consequently the police lied their head off. Ultimately the magistrate had to dismiss the case. Then the police pressed for costs. The magistrate who was compromised said, “Well look, I won’t charge you 3 days cost. I’ll

only charge you 2 days cost. That’s $80 costs or 40 days hard labour.” I immediately saw the significance in this, stood up and said, “I’ll do the hard labour.” And Jimmy Staples who was later to become a judge, said, “Oh Tom you’re - it’ll get in the press.” I said, “What in the hell. I’ve been standing here for 3 days, they’ve been lying their bloody heads off.” I said, “And nobody knows about it.” So it certainly got news alright.

So anyway - after the 3 months was up, the old magistrate couldn’t get out of it so he said, “Three months to pay,” and out he went. So after 3 months was up I turned up for them to do their duty. They didn’t want me. So anyway just before Easter of 1971, on Easter

Saturday they decided to issue the fine. They had a cabinet meeting on the Tuesday before Easter, said Uren can’t make a mug out of us, so we’ve got to take him on. So they took me on and consequently put me in jail for 40 days. And some stooge paid the fine on Monday. But those first 3 days, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and the morning of Easter Monday were very interesting.

Interesting - you should read my book of that.

Well, it was, it was a very - you see the anti-war movement, the peace movement has always been a broad coalition of forces. But one of the things that predominantly…. leaders, and I’ve always been one of them

in Sydney, on that aspect. And that is that I’m very strongly anti violence. No violence. We’re struggling against war and violence so why do we want to have violent conflicts - there’s that. But there’s always exhibitionists, there’s always those fringe elements that want to, you know, create their special thing and the television cameras go on them and forget about they real cause we’re on about. But no, it was a great achievement and

as I said, that Cairns more than any other living human being, was the citadel of the whole thing. He was the great guru, the leader.

Yes.

Well, my position for a long time has been that, we should - first of all I really feel the Australian people always want to feel secure. So I’ve not really been anti-defence. But what I did say is that if we are going to involve ourselves in conflicts it should be within our realm -

sphere of influence. I’ve been critical of Australia’s involvement in past wars from the Boer War right through to the last century. And in my view in the last century, the only time when Australia fought a just war in our cause, not the British Empire’s or the American Empire’s privilege or wealth, is the Second World War. I think

that the war against Japanese fascism and narcism is something that we fought for freedom and justice, and I support that completely. I support, in these more recent visits, I support what we’ve done in East Timor and I commend the Howard Government for it. Even though I think they were responding from the great public opinion of the Australian people for that action. But be as it may,

they made that decision. I believe that for too long we were wrong the way we associated with the elite of the fascist or neo fascist Soeharto regime in Indonesia as a whole, not only in East Timor but in Indonesia as a whole. And I think KOPASSUS [Indonesian Special Forces Command] is a fascist

organisation. And I don’t think we should have any security agreements with them and I’ve said that, and I’m in print on that. Having said that the other thing I wanted to mention - which I think’s important to all Australians - is that the Korean crisis is a very, very serious one. I don’t think we should have been involved in Iraq, I don’t think we should have been involved in Afghanistan. And

Iraq, in both wars. But in regards to North Korea, it’s not what the influence that we have, that they would have on us, or whether they would send missiles at us. What’s been worrying me from the time that they started to test their missiles going into the - even before they said that they were nuclear - they were testing their missiles in to the

Sea of Japan, and of course one even flew over Japan - is what it will have on public opinion within Japan itself. There are elements within Japan - particularly that believe - and support the principals of what Japan was before World War Two. There’s some evidence -

they will not allow even the youth of today to tell of the crimes and of the mistakes they made in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They don’t know anything about the war. They know that the Americans dropped the bomb and that they shouldn’t have dropped the bomb, that’s about all. But they don’t talk about the crimes that they committed in either China or South East Asia. Now this, Clause 9 of their constitution before

these crisis appeared. 74% of the people were opposed to any changes. Then Koizumi, the new Prime Minister really wanted to take on Clause 9 as soon as he become Prime Minister - found that public opinion was against it and consequently backed off. Mori who was the former Prime Minister, in fact he made a speech

to the secret caucus of over 230 members of Parliament - of what - in fact we should return to the days when in fact, the god like position - the King or the Emperor of Japan be, because they were god like people. Now that’s how - have no doubt I’ve got all the evidence and records. There’s a great

professor in the ANU called Gavin McCormack and he’s written a very informative book and identifies the whole issue. Now, frankly if Japan abolishes its pacifist constitution I’ve got great concerns for it in the long term. To give you some understanding, which the Australian people don’t realise, in the last 5 years Japan has

been spending 50 billion dollars US every year on peaceful, pacifist propositions. Now if they abolished their self defence and became a real military government what could they do? They have the know how to - for nuclear missile delivery systems. They’ve got enough plutonium now to make dozens and dozens of

nuclear weapons. They would go nuclear, there is no doubt in my mind. Now that worries me because of that mentality that still stands back in Japan. Because on the one hand I don’t believe there’s any progress in hate and I’m not advocating any hate for the Japanese people at all but there is the split personality. There’s the samurai elements which in fact are war like in themselves and want to be arrogant and rulers of the world.

There’s the other, that have got - that have built beautiful places like the Gardens and Cathedrals of Kyoto and so many other places, which in fact makes you melt at the beauty that they create. And I only wish the - that Japan explored that aspect of their life. Anyway that’s how I feel about - the worry about Korea. I think it’s a great worry for me. And

unfortunately there are some stupid, and I use the word stupid people in political leadership both in Australia and America that want Japan to be a real leader of the world again, including military, including Bob Hawke who’s already identified his position on that. And I think they don’t know the problems they’re dealing with by doing that. And I only hope, where I don’t want to

interfere in the internal affairs of Japan, I only hope the people of Japan will still reject the demilitarisation, although might I say, bit by bit by deceit, Japan is becoming a military power.

No, I’m happy.

Well, I hope it comes out a good interview. One of my problems is when I read what I’ve said, my articulation - gees my grammar’s frightful there.