ABSTRACT
In late 1946, 11 Australians who had been prisoners of the Japanese in the Second World War travelled to Tokyo to give evidence at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). 1 There was extensive media coverage given to the Tokyo trial in Australia, given that imprisonment by the Japanese was one of the war’s most unsettling and painful experiences for many Australian families. Japanese forces had taken 22,000 Australian service personnel as prisoners, one-third of whom did not survive their captivity. The mistreatment, neglect and semi-starvation of the POWs was well-known, as was the Australian government’s insistence that the Japanese responsible for conditions in the camps be tried for war crimes. 2 Some returned POWs, especially those who had been doctors and nurses, developed a significant public presence. Albert Coates, W.E. ‘Ted’ Fisher and E.E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop, all of whom had been responsible for the medical care of POWs on the Burma-Thailand railway, were well-known figures in the late 1940s and 1950s. Coates, who had attended both the Tokyo trials and the peace treaty negotiations in San Francisco, was a well-known supporter of reconciliation with the former enemy. Fisher and Dunlop’s profiles, by contrast, were more closely tied to seeking entitlements and compensation for former prisoners.
