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Civilian internees |
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Over 22,000 Australians were taken prisoner when the Japanese conquered south-east Asia in 1942. They included a few hundred Australian civilians. They were among the over 130,000 European civilians who were interned by the Japanese. Most were Dutch, but about 500 Australian men, women and children who had lived and worked in south-east Asia were included. Civilians were held in camps in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, the Philippines, Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. They endured similar conditions to military prisoners, except that they were not usually compelled to work outside the camps. Over one in three died. Captive children were subject to the strict discipline and brutality of prison life, and deprived of the normal freedoms of childhood. They were particularly vulnerable to disease and malnutrition and lost many years of proper schooling. Many were profoundly affected by the experience. Women endured humiliation and sometimes sexual assault, notably those who were compelled to become prostitutes for the Japanese military. The most familiar case is that of Jan Ruff O'Herne, who has told her story in her memoir Fifty years of silence. In March 1942 Jan O'Herne, a 19-year-old Dutch woman, was interned with her family in Japanese-occupied Java. Two years later she and nine other young women were forced into a Japanese army brothel. For four months these women were repeatedly raped by Japanese army officers. O'Herne always resisted violently and was often beaten. She survived the brutal assaults but, traumatised, could not speak about her experience. She married, had children, and with her family migrated to Australia, always living with the memory of her terrible ordeal. In 1992 in Tokyo, together with other former "comfort women", O'Herne courageously spoke out about Japanese wartime atrocities. She describes how the Japanese military used tens of thousands of women, mainly from Korea and Japan's Asian territories, as sex-slaves. There may well have been other cases among other civilians, though all Australian Army nurses have testified uniformly that they deterred the only attempt to coerce them into prostitution. |
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