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From civilian POW in Manila to Townsville in 1945 by George Heys

Page history last edited by Trisha Fielding 14 years, 6 months ago

 

Townsville was where our family first set foot on Australia on 6th April 1945,  brought ashore from the naval ship, the USS David C. Shanks.

 

We had been liberated by General MacArthur’s First Cavalry Division from the Santo Tomas Internment camp in Manila, in the Philippines, where we had been held prisoner for almost four years.  Our Japanese army guards had not been brutal, as we were civilians, not soldiers who had surrendered – the Japanese despised surrender.  We were, however, starved – thinking back, it would have been very difficult for our Japanese guards to gather enough food from around Manila, to feed thousands of prisoners, while all the time being shot at, by very hostile Filipino guerrillas.

 

The Americans took us by truck and barge to the island of Leyte, where they worked at fattening us up for a couple of  weeks.  They kept up that work on the ship, which sailed in a large American naval fleet, stopping a couple of days off Port Moresby, and finally arriving in Townsville.
 
My first memory of Townsville was the wharf, and Castle Hill was there, in the background.  The most amazing thing was a long table, the full length of the wharf and completely covered in food!  Townsville people had turned out in thousands to welcome the rescued prisoners.  I remember a beautiful lady offering me cake – I was only eight years old, and did not know what that was!
 
We climbed onto a train (from ground level, there was no platform) and started on our rail trip to our final destination: Sydney.  At every major city on the way:  Mackay, Rockhampton, Brisbane, the railway station platform was adorned with a similar long table loaded with food, and there were similar crowds of well-wishers.  The war was not over yet, not for another six months, and Australian soldiers had not yet come home.
 
I grew up in Sydney, went to university, became a science teacher, then worked as a scientist for some years before settling down to work as a university science lecturer in Northern Territory University, (now Charles Darwin University).  My position there was “disestablished” in the year 2000, and I returned to high school teaching.  I finished up getting work in the Burdekin Catholic College, in Ayr, so have come back to Townsville.

 

 

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