Family History

Funny how a little bit of research can turn up the most interesting stories.

My grandfather, Jack White, died in the late 50s, many years before I was born. I had always been told that this was from the degradation his body had suffered while he was a prisoner-of-war in Changi. That's all anyone ever really knew. According to Dad, he never spoke about the war and neither did Uncle Len, Jack's brother who served in the same unit.

Last week Uncle Len (who's still kicking) sent Dad a clipping from his local newspaper at Port Pirie, where a journalist had published a picture of Jack & Len's unit when they were liberated after the war, not only on Japanese soil, but in Hiroshima! The accompanying story filled in some important details.

Their unit was initially assigned to transport duties, driving ammo trucks between Alice Springs and Darwin. Soon however, they were posted to Singapore, and three weeks later were captured in the Japanese onslaught. They spent about 18 months in the notorious Changi prison, before being posted to Burma to build the railway along the infamous 'Hellfire Pass'. Towards the end of 1944, having survived all that, they were sent to Japan itself, where they were used as slave labour in a coal mine just outside Hiroshima. Here they stayed until the end of the war.

I can only theorise that being inside the coal mine was what saved them from the atomic blast, but I suppose we'll never know for sure. Uncle Len's pushing 90 now (not bad for someone who survived an atomic blast) while my grandfather died just over a decade after returning home.