The Forgotten Pearl

by Belinda Murrell

  Who walked with them hand in hand;

  And we swear by the dead who bore us,

  By the heroes who blazed the trail,

  No foe shall gather our harvest,

  Or sit on our stockyard rail.

  Townsville

  September 13, 1942

  Dear Mum and Poppy,

  It is with great sadness that I am writing to let you know that my American friend Henry Worth was killed up in New Guinea recently. One of his friends wrote to tell me.

  Henry and I had hoped to be married after the war.

  Love,

  Phoebe

  Bathurst

  December 15, 1942

  Dear Poppy,

  Hurray! Training is finished at last and we are coming back to Sydney. Our unit will march through the streets on Tuesday next week. Then we get a couple of weeks’ leave to spend Christmas with our folks.

  Would you like to come along to see the march? I am really looking forward to seeing you all before we head off overseas in January. I wonder where we’ll go?

  Best wishes,

  Jack

  Adelaide River,

  Northern Territory

  June 21, 1943

  My Darling Cecilia and Poppy,

  The Japanese air raids on the Northern Territory continue with monotonous regularity, but fortunately they seem to have less and less impact. The troops seem to be inflicting more damage on the raiders than we are receiving. We have calculated that there have now been nearly sixty air raids on Darwin and its surrounding airfields.

  I am due for some leave soon. I only wish it was long enough to come and see you, but Sydney is such a long way away. I miss you all terribly and long to see you.

  On a sad note, I recognised one of the wounded boys who came in last week. It was Harry Shanahan. Unfortunately, we were unable to save him. The Shanahans will be devastated; by now they will have received the dreaded telegram. When you see them, could you please pass on my condolences? It is so sad to see such a tragic waste of a young life. I feel so helpless not being able to do more to save them.

  Much love as always

  Mark

  Addison Road, Manly

  August 30, 1943

  Dear Jack,

  Are you all right? You haven’t replied to my last three letters. Maude says she hasn’t heard from you either.

  I hope everything is okay. I saw your parents the other day, so at least I know you are alive. Perhaps you are just too busy? Everything continues here, same as ever – schoolwork, chores, study, tennis, war work . . . We don’t do archery at school anymore – all the arrow heads have been donated to the war effort. Mrs Tibbets has even donated the beautiful wrought iron from the verandahs, so the poor old house looks quite forlorn.

  You may have heard that Prime Minister Curtin survived the election with a landslide victory, which is a great relief, after all the kerfuffle over whether there was ever a plan to abandon all of Australia north of Brisbane to the Japanese. The very first women representatives were also elected to the Australian Parliament, which is an astonishing first.

  Please write soon.

  Kind Regards,

  Poppy

  IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY

  Date 15-1-44

  I am interned in Thailand

  Your mails (and love) are received with thanks.

  My health is (good, usual, poor)

  I am ill in hospital.

  I am working for pay (I am paid monthly salary)

  I am not working.

  My best regards to everyone much love Edward

  September 20, 1944

  Townsville

  Dear Mum and Poppy,

  I am off to New Guinea! The nurses were asked for volunteers to go up and work in the hospital near Port Moresby. We have been assured there is absolutely no danger from the Japanese there now. Most of the patients we’ll treat are not battle casualties but men suffering from tropical diseases, like malaria and dengue fever.

  We will be flown up in a couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to it. Sorry I won’t have time to come down and see you before I go. Anyway, you probably wouldn’t recognise me – I am now a glamorous shade of yellow, thanks to the atabrine tablets we take for malaria. At least it tastes better than the quinine.

  Keep up that study, Poppy! Good luck in your Leaving Certificate exams – I know you’ll do us proud!

  Much love, as always,

  Phoebe

  August 16, 1945

  Dear Edward,

  Can you believe it? What joy! The war is over. I wonder if you know yet? The news that the Japanese had surrendered was announced on the radio in the morning, then the whole of Sydney took to the streets to celebrate.

  Maude and I caught the ferry into the city. George Street to Town Hall was jammed with thousands of people. You should have seen it. There was dancing in the streets. Complete strangers hugging and kissing each other. Music playing. People crying.

  It is a day I will never forget. We took in bags of confetti we cut up ourselves, which everyone was tossing in the air. Martin Place was nearly knee-deep in shredded paper. It looked just like snow.

  We all linked arms, swaying, and sang song after song after song – all the war favourites – ‘We’ll Meet Again’, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, ‘As Time Goes By’. We didn’t want the night to end.

  The only sad note is that Prime Minster Curtin didn’t live to see this joyful day that he has worked so hard for. He died six weeks ago, worn out by care and worry, and has been greatly mourned.

  I hope you have been receiving our letters. Mum had a batch returned, which worries her greatly.

  We hope and pray that you are all right - and that you will be coming home to us soon.

  All my love,

  Poppy

  Addison Road

  Manly

  September 19, 1945

  Dear Phoebe,

  It’s come. We received notification this week that Edward is alive and coming home! It’s the first news we’ve received in nearly two years – a month since the war ended! – and the best eighteenth birthday present ever. Oh, the celebrations in our house – it was better than V-J Day. Maude and I were dancing and singing in the kitchen, while Mum just sat down, pulled her apron over her face and cried as though her heart would break. I swear she had four years’ worth of tears to shed.

  Mum is making plans for us all to be reunited in Darwin for Christmas. She hopes you will be back from overseas and that Bryony can get leave. Please, please write and say you can come. It would mean the world to her. It will be nearly four and a half years since we were all together as a family.

  I just can’t believe the war is over and we can finally go home. We will stay in Sydney for the next few weeks while we pack up and I resign from my mindless, horrible job. I’ll be so happy if I never see the inside of a munitions factory again. Then we will travel by ship back to Darwin. It will be strange to leave Maude and Mrs Tibbets after all this time - Maude is like a sister to me now. Of course I adore you and Bryony, but I haven’t seen you for such a long, long time. Please write at once and say you’ll come!! I can’t wait to see you both. Can you imagine how wonderful it will be to have Christmas all together in our very own home?

  Much love to you,

  Poppy

  Singapore

  September 20, 1945

  Dear Mum, Dad, Phoebe, Bryony and Poppy,

  Thank you all so much for your letters and cards over the last four years. I truly believe that it was those letters that kept me going when things got really bad. That and the mateship of all the Aussie POWs looking out for each other.

  This is the first real letter I have written since Singapo
re fell in February 1942 (not counting those phoney cards the Japanese forced us to write). And here I am again, back in Singapore after all this time. We caught the train to Bangkok, then were flown by DC3s to Singapore yesterday. The Red Cross has been wonderful.

  They are urging us all to be patient. It could take weeks to repatriate all the POWs. Many of us will need to stay here in Singapore until we are fit enough to travel home by ship. The very worst cases are being flown back by plane. We are all terribly thin – don’t be too shocked when you see me. We have been advised to eat only small meals for some time because our digestion cannot cope with too much after three and a half years of nothing but a tiny serve of rice and boiled-up weeds.

  I need to warn you of something more serious: I had my left leg amputated in the camp a couple of weeks ago. Tropical ulcers were a major problem. I had five ulcers and, unfortunately, our medical officer decreed that the leg would need to come off at the knee. Dad, you would have been proud to see our operating theatre created from nothing more than what we could scrounge in the jungle – an operating table built from bamboo, a saw from the work parties, sterilised in half a fuel drum of boiling water over an open fire. Unfortunately, no anaesthetic – and I’ve been pretty sick – but now we’re getting proper medication and good food. I’m sure I’ll be on the mend soon.

  You wouldn’t believe the ingenuity of the doctors in the camps. They made vitamin brews from boiled grass, weevils, snails and weeds, used broken glass for scalpels, and treated dysentery with burnt rice scrapings and charcoal. Their greatest medicine was humour, making prisoners laugh under the most dire conditions. Still, despite their very best efforts, so many of us won’t be coming back.

  Good news – I’ve just been informed that I’ll be sailing home in a few days on the Highland Chieftain, which should call into Darwin by the end of the month, then Sydney by about the tenth or eleventh of October. I can hardly believe that I’ll be seeing you all again so soon.

  All my love to you all,

  Edward

  October 11, 1945

  Internment Camp 4

  Tatura, Victoria

  Dear Dr and Mrs Trehearne,

  I hope that you and your family have been blessed to survive this terrible war.

  My name is Asami Murata. I hope you remember me. I worked for you until four years ago in Darwin, when my family was interned and taken to Tatura Camp, near Rushworth, in Victoria. Your daughter Poppy saved the life of my granddaughter Shinju at Kahlin Bay.

  I am writing to ask you a large favour. We have been told that the Japanese internees are to be repatriated to Japan now that the war is over. Yet none of my surviving family has ever been to Japan – we were all born in Australia. My father came to Broome sixty-five years ago and died here in the camp three years ago. My husband also died last year from pneumonia. While life has been very hard in the camp, we do not wish to be taken to Japan.

  One of the officers, a kind man, suggested that I ask you to write a reference for my family so that we might be allowed to stay together in Australia. He has warned us that it will be a long, slow process.

  While we have experienced the sadness of losing my father and husband, we have also had the joy of three more grandchildren born here in the camp. Shinju now has a baby brother called Jiro and a sister called Hoshi. My second son, Takazo, has also married and has a newborn son.

  Shinju has grown into a beautiful nine-year-old girl. She barely remembers life outside the barbed wire fence that surrounds this camp. She goes to the school here and is a good student who works hard. She also helps her mother and me at the sewing factory and looks after the younger children. We have a family hut and are lucky to all be together.

  I hope that you do not find my request too presumptuous. We would be very grateful for any help you may be able to give us in presenting our case. I have also written to the minister of the local church, who has promised to help me find work as a housemaid if we are allowed to stay.

  Enclosed is also a letter for Miss Poppy from Shinju. We would have written earlier; however, we were not allowed to have any contact with people outside the camp.

  Please give my warmest regards to your family, especially to Miss Poppy, who is always remembered in our prayers.

  Yours sincerely,

  Asami Murata

  Dear Miss Poppy,

  I hope you are well. I go to school here but there are only Japanese children at the camp, not like in Darwin. I remember your kindness to me the day the soldiers came to Darwin school to take us away.

  We do lots of activities and work to keep busy: craft, gardening, sport and music. I like to draw pictures of dragons and Naga maidens swimming in their palaces deep under the sea. I thought you might like one of my pictures.

  I have a new brother and a new sister. We all live together in an iron hut. It is freezing in winter and sometimes the babies get sick. In summer it is very hot. The guards are kind to us but we can’t ever leave the camp. One day I hope to swim in the sea again. My grandmother says when we are free she will teach me to swim like a Naga maiden.

  Yours sincerely,

  Shinju Murata

  October 18, 1945

  Internment Camp 4

  Tatura, Victoria

  Dear Mrs Trehearne and Miss Poppy,

  Thank you so much for your letter and your kind reference. We pray it will make a difference and the authorities will let us stay. I’m told it may be many months before we know. They say that the Australian people are very angry with the Japanese and that life will be hard for us here. But Australia is our home. I hope Shinju and the other children will be able to grow up here in a land of peace.

  I’m glad that Miss Poppy enjoyed the letter and drawing from Shinju. Thank you so much for sending the parcel of books and art supplies for her, along with the toys and clothes for all the children. Shinju was so excited when the huge parcel arrived. They were the first real presents she has received since we came here four years ago.

  I will let you know as soon as we have any news about whether we will be allowed to stay.

  Yours sincerely,

  Asami Murata

  22

  Homecoming

  It was late November 1945 when their ship chugged into Darwin Harbour. Poppy and Bryony stood by the rails, straining to catch a glimpse of their hometown – their first for nearly four years. Honey was lying on the deck, one fluffy ear cocked while she slept, her muzzle now grey about the whiskers.

  The early summer heat was still and oppressive, building up to the wet season. Poppy couldn’t believe how lethargic it made her feel and how much she had teased Maude when her friend complained constantly about the heat.

  ‘Look,’ she cried, ‘there’s Government House and the jetty.’

  ‘At last – we’re nearly there,’ Bryony added. ‘I can’t wait to get home.’

  Bryony and Poppy flung their arms around each other, performing a little jig of excitement. Honey woke up with all the noise and woofed with pleasure. Cecilia, Mark and Edward came over from the bench where they had been sitting to get a better view.

  ‘The Japs sure did a thorough job on those ships, didn’t they?’ Edward pointed to the rusty wrecks still littering the harbour.

  It seemed to take forever for the ship to dock and the passengers to be allowed to disembark at the new jetty. Edward had had a prosthetic leg fitted in Sydney, and he was still a little wobbly on the moving gangway. They gathered all their baggage and hailed a taxi to drive them the short distance home.

  The family approached Myilly Point with mounting apprehension. Darwin still looked like a war zone. They saw skeletons of bombed-out houses, mounds of debris and rubble overgrown with brown grass. On the side of the road was the scorched wreckage of a crashed fighter plane.

  The taxi pulled
up outside the Trehearnes’ home on Myilly Point.

  ‘Good luck – and welcome home.’ The driver took his coins and reversed away, leaving them surrounded by a pile of luggage.

  The house looked like it had been abandoned for decades. The corrugated roof was riddled with machine-gun bullets. The main water tank was empty and turned over on its side. The garden was overgrown with long, dry grass and littered with empty petrol drums. The back door had been kicked in, and was now hanging from one broken hinge.

  ‘Oh,’ croaked Cecilia, her hand held to her throat.

  They climbed the steps to the verandah slowly and peered inside. Everything was gone. Every room was empty. The furniture, books, pictures, curtains, rugs, clothes, saucepans, refrigerator, shelving – everything had been taken.

  Cecilia collapsed to the floor. Poppy and Bryony huddled beside her, shocked and distressed.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ Cecilia cried, her bitter tears welling up and overflowing. ‘Everything we owned.’

  Mark rubbed Cecilia’s shoulders soothingly. ‘We heard there was looting,’ he admitted, his voice hoarse. ‘First the shipwrecked sailors made camps, using what they could find, then the army took over and requisitioned what it needed. Then we heard that some of those left behind just helped themselves to what they wanted and sent it back to Adelaide and Melbourne by truck. There was no one here to stop them.’

  Edward stood by the window, gazing out at the view. ‘I fought and gave up years of my life in a stinking hellhole so they could do this to us?’ His voice was low and angry.

  ‘What will we do?’ asked Bryony. ‘We’ve come all this way for nothing.’

  Cecilia looked up at her family gathered around her. She wiped the tears from her face and stood up, squaring her shoulders. ‘We start again,’ she announced. ‘We work and we clean our house and we fix what’s been broken. I am having Christmas with my beautiful family – in my home – and nothing is going to stop me.’

  Poppy laughed through her tears. ‘That’s the spirit, Mum. We didn’t let the war beat us, so we’re not going to give up now.’

  Mark gave Cecilia a hug. ‘Okay, boss,’ he joked. ‘Where do we start?’