Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip opens with an actor reading the poem ‘Guns of peace’ by David Griffin, followed by footage of emaciated former prisoners of war (POWs) being helped up a gangway and onto a Red Cross ship for transport back to Australia. This historical footage is accompanied by the voice-over of one of the soldiers, Jim Connor, as he recalls his experience of a nurse who supported him as he climbed up the gangway to the ship. The clip includes a soundtrack featuring mournful oboe music.

Educational value points

• The poem by former POW Sir David Griffin (1915–2004), read in the first half of the clip, uses the language of war to symbolise the ordeal that peace represents to the former prisoners. It is a new yet unfamiliar ‘battle’ for them to ‘brave’. Their reluctance to leave the familiar territory and routine of imprisonment is captured towards the end in ‘Must we emerge?’ Having survived the ordeals of war, they find that the ‘guns of peace’ threaten.

• Changi was liberated on 5 September 1945 and within a week imprisoned troops, including 2,500 Australians, were being transported out in hospital ships such as the Oranje. Planning for their rescue had begun in 1942 and by 1945 a special organisation had been created to repatriate and take care of the POWs. Many were shipped to repatriation camps in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to recover before being declared fit enough to return to Australia.

• The poem refers to the apprehension many POWs felt at the end of their imprisonment. Like Jim Connor, many were fearful of going home. In his three years and nine months as a prisoner he had received 14 words from his wife, possibly due to censorship, and did not know how she would receive him on his return. POWs knew that captivity had changed them, both physically and mentally. Many were embarrassed by their fate although it had not been of their choosing.

• The emaciation and weakness of former prisoners shown embarking in the clip is testimony to the hardship they had endured in captivity. Changi prisoners were used on heavy labouring jobs around Singapore. Prisoners in all camps suffered from malnutrition and diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria. Among those who worked on the Burma–Thailand Railway there was a death rate of 27 per cent and survivors were returned to Changi in October 1943.

• The evacuation process shown in the clip was conducted by hospital ships and ships of the Royal Australian Navy. Oranje, the hospital ship that took Jim Connor from Singapore, was a former ocean liner given to the Australian and NZ governments in 1941 by the Dutch government in exile and converted to a hospital ship at their expense. Before boarding the ships POWs were ‘processed’ – washed, deloused, reclothed and given medical attention.

• The clip tells the story of an Australian POW at the end of the Pacific War, one of more than 22,000 Australians who were held captive by the Japanese in South-East Asia. The majority, 14,972, were, like Jim Connor, captured in Singapore but many others were captured in Java, Timor, Ambon and New Britain. More than 8,000 died while in captivity.