With Hope and Resilience; Marking Time as a Prisoner of War
Tuesday 10 September 2024 from 2pm to 4pm
During the War in the Pacific thousands of Australians became prisoners of the Japanese. More than 8,000 of them tragically died in captivity of disease, wilful neglect and cruelty. But how did those who survive 'mark time' and how do we honour and remember them today?
The Anzac Memorial is home to a remarkable collection of artefacts that belonged to Major John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny who was captured on Java in March 1942 and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war (POW). The collection includes the covert pencil scribbled diaries he kept, a set of colourful hand drawn camp posters and even a camp magazine which was produced by and for the prisoners and which they called Mark Time. That these delicate paper artefacts were created in the first instance, survived the squalid jungle camps of South East Asia and were later brought back to Australia is quite simply astonishing.
This History Week, join our Senior Historian and Curator Brad Manera for a presentation on life as a POW. Why did conditions go from relatively benign in the early months of the Pacific War to the later horrors of forced labour camps in Burma, Japan and elsewhere?
Our Education team will perform a lively reading of de Crespigny’s prisoner of war diary. This extraordinary record chronicles his time as a prisoner of the Japanese, from his capitulation in Java in March 1942 to working on the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway in appalling conditions. A short presentation by the Curatorial team on the camp posters and magazines will follow.
From making art and staging plays, to Christmas Day in a prisoner of war camp, these extraordinary artefacts and vignettes capture what prisoners of war did to survive the toughest of circumstances, and how they 'marked time' with hope and resilience under the watchful eye of their often brutal captors.
The presentation will begin at 2.00pm in the Memorial's Auditorium on Lower Ground level. Entry is via Liverpool Street.
Places are limited.