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SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING MP,
LAUNCH OF THE BURMA THAILAND RAILWAY. CANBERRA
FRIDAY 23 APRIL 1993
Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you very much for inviting me here today, to say a
few words about this fascinating and unique book.
Last year, of course, it was the fiftieth anniversary of
many of the battles fought in defence of Australia, and
it was my privilege on several occasions to pay tribute
to those Australian servicemen and women to whom we owe
so much.
I visited some of the battlegrounds most notably, I
suppose, Kokoda: and I have not had a more moving
experience in all of my public life.
For a nation which has been so involved in wars this
century, we have also been a long way removed from war:
and I think that may be why these places like Kokoda,
or the war cem~ eteries at Boma outside Port Moresby, or at
Lae have such a disturbing effect when we first
encounter them.
My generation was profoundly lucky: we all knew, I think,
that our parents and our grandparents generations had
gone through experiences of a kind that we were never
likely to confront.
For instance, I knew about Singapore, and about Borneo
about Sandakan because my father's brother had been
there, arnd died there. But I was not taught about it at
school, and there was very little to read about it.
We knew the wars through legend and ritual.
And we knew World War I better than we knew World War 11.
But we really didn't know what it had been like.
And, in any case, the generations who fought in the two
World Wars tended to keep their memories to themselves.
We grew up aware of the wars but remarkably innocent of
the experience of war.
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And that, I think, is why we are shocked when we see the
gravestones which remind us of how many died, and their
ages, and what they must have gone through, arnd the
people they left behind.
This is the 75th anniversary of the end of World War I.
Later this year I hope there may be an opportunity to
visit those battlefields in Northern Francs where so many
Australians lost their lives. I sincerely hope it is
possible to go, because these places are truly sacred to
Australia. But the battlefields of the Asian and Pacific war are
also sacred. In the next few years I hope the
battlefields of New Guinea, Borneo, Singapore and Malaya
and Burma and Thailand will become as important to
our historical understanding as the battlefields of the
middle East and Europe were to earlier generations of
Australians. Everyone should know about these battles.
Above all, they should know about the subject of this
book the prisoners of war who worked on the Burma-
Thailand Railway.
No Australian soldiers suffered more than these. Few had
more reason to feel betrayed or neglected before,
during and after their capture. None had to call on
such reserves of faith and spirit as they did: faith in
themselves;, faith in each other; faith I like to think
in Australia, what they had created there arnd what they
hoped to create.
Whatever they may have thought, in historical terms they
were doing more than Just surviving.
As Gavan McCormack and Hank Nelson point out these were
the first Australians to go en masse into South East
Asia. They saw it and dealt with its peoples as no other
Australians ever had.
They also saw the British empire as few Australians had
ever seen it and it led a lot of them to conclude that
we Australians had evolved into a different race. it
raised their sense of an independent identity.
So, it may be that in time the 8th Division will be seen
as something more than soldiers or prisoners of war but
as the first pioneers of Australia in Asia. The
frontiersmen. Somehow I think it would be the highest tribute we could
pay them both those who died and those who managed to
survive.
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Such a tribute would depend on our succeeding in Asia, of
course. It will mean that we will have to succeed
economically as an entirely independent nation, aware
of necessity and confident of both our identity and our
capabilities. And that will depend on our developing greater mutual
understanding between the countries of Asia and
ourselves, greater mutual respect.
The men and women discussed in this book very often did
just that -they developed a deep respect for the Chinese
and the Malays, the people of Borneo and Ambon and
Sumatra who very often risked their lives to help them.
They found in all sorts of circumstances that they shared
common human ground with people they had, for cultural
and historical reasons, been inclined to patronise or
despise. There's surely a lesson in it we can come to terms with
the countries of Asia and in doing so, far from
sacrificing our identity or our principles, strengthen
them.
There's surely also a lesson in the accounts this book
contains: that so much of the unconscionable treatment of
prisoners came from what the Japanese had been taught.
My old friend, Tom Uren, might say it is lesson in the
nature of fascism and he's right. But it's also a
lesson in ignorance, and parochialism. It's a lesson in
culture and education.
That Is why we should teach the story of the war.
Because the men and women who fought In those battles and
suffered and died in those camps should be remembered and
honoured. And because there is great deal for us to
learn, both about ourselves and about Asia, in reading
about these experiences.
Which gets me back to the most important question to
confront us every Anzac Day: we are left to wonder what
they died for.
We say they died for Australia: the question is, what
sort of Australia? What sort of Australia is it
incumbent on us to create?
Tom Uren and Weary Dunlop would have very different
political views on this I'm sure.
Yet they would agree on some basic things: they would
agree that Australia will succeed best if it incorporates
into its daily life and the conduct of its affairs the
principles of fellowship and cooperation and care for
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each other. Mateship Is as good a word as any other to
describe it.
It has been around for a long time, that word and those
principles. But I'm inclined to think that it is only in
the last decade or so that we have begun to realise just
what a powerful force they can be in the economic life of
a country and in seeing a country through great changes
and hard times.
Mateship was never tested so much as on the Burma Railway
and, for all the tragedy, nowhere was the triumph of
mateship so emphatic. Mateship and the human spirit.
if we imbue all our endeavours in the next decade with
those principles I am sure we will succeed and if we
succeed, we will have paid the prisoners on the Burma
Thailand Railway the greatest possible tribute.
we will have created a prosperous Australian democracy,
built on those values and one in which they are secure.
Hank Nelson and Gavan McCormack have done us all a great
service with this book. So have all the other
contributors -Australian, Japanese and Korean.
I congratulate them all and with great pleasure declare
The Burma-Thailand Railway the book officially
launched.