ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
YOKOHAMA WAR CEMETERY AT HODOGAYA SATURDAY, 27
MAY 1995.
We are here to mourni the loss of the 280 Australians buried here and to give
thanks.
We mourn because they died young and far from home and did not have a
chance to live out their lives in the country they loved, among the people they
loved. We mourn because they were Australians like ourselves and they suffered
cruelly. We mourn because they remind us of the 17,000 other Australians who died
in the war against Japan, almost half of them as prisoners; and of the
millions of others who died in that war.
And we give thanks because it was by the courage and sacrifice of people
like these that our country was saved.
It is because they loved freedom that we enjoy freedom.
It is because they loved and believed in Australia that we have an Australia to
love and believe in today.
We give thanks because they set us an example by which to live. Their
graves remind us of our duty to Australia.
These Australians endured forced labour and imprisonment.
They died of inhuman treatment and neglect.
We know that what they went through others went through in prison camps in
other parts of Asia in Burma and Thailand, Borneo and Ambon.
We will never forget the evil that was done to our fellow Aus tralians.
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And we believe that Japan should not allow these events to be forgotten.
We believe that our friendship will be stronger if the truth about these events
is known to the Japanese people and we are pleased that the Japanese
government has taken steps to make it known.
As Australia remembers the end of the war this year we honour all those who
fought and died. And we remember all the innocent lives that were lost.
We pledge ourselves to see that these things do not happen again.
For that reason we also pay tribute to those who have had the vision and
faith to build a partnership between our two countries.
They saw that their duty to the dead was a duty to the living.
We could pay no greater tribute to the Australians buried here than to
dedicate ourselves to another fifty years of peace and friendship between
Australia and Japan.
Among these graves we remember the terrible suffering and destruction that
the war inflicted on a generation.
And we are reminded that our greatest gifts are peace and freedom and our
greatest duty to preserve them.
For that we give thanks to these Australians.
They died so far from home, but we know they are here and we will never
forget them.
ENDS