Adventure Travelling : Searching for World war II Wrecks (Part 1)Prepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
Ned Johnson did it as a lark. He wasn't serious, only drunk. He went into the New Guinea Club in Rabaul late one night and, with a few too many beers under his belt, he left the club and staggered towards his Land Rover. With each step he became more and more annoyed that he had to park so far way, for the whole parking lot was jam-packed with war surplus jeeps and semi-trucks, road scrapers, a couple of bulldozers and other assortments of wheeled generators and machinery intended for the front lines.
But there weren't any more front lines. Japan had just surrendered and the war was over. For two weeks Ned Johnson had been shouting at the authorities to clear up the mess. The US military dumped their cargo in Rabaul until a decision was made about its disposal.
So in his stubborn, drunken mood, Ned Johnson decided to play a joke on the authorities. From his Land Rover he took a can of white paint and a brush and proceeded to go around the lot defacing the government property. In big bold letter he wrote SOLD on most vehicles and then, really being brave, he stuck his own name on some equipment. Feeling satisfied with his prank, he climbed into his Land Rover and drove two-hours back to his plantation on New Britain.
Ned awoke with a big headache the next morning and couldn't remember much that happened the night before, nor did he really care. The long war had played havoc with his plantation and he had much work to do to put it back in order.
A week later a government vehicle with two police officers arrived at Ned's plantation. One was the Superintendent of Police, the other a black native corporal.
The senior officer was obviously annoyed that he had to make the long drive.
"You're in a bit of trouble," he began. "All that equipment at the New Guinea Club. I'm afraid we're going to have to fine you unless––"
Ned suddenly remembered. What a stupid thing to do, to put his own name on that junk heap. But he wasn't going to give in. "Unless what?" he snapped back.
The officer was blunt. "Unless you get it the hell out of there as soon as possible. You bought it, now you move it!"
And so Ned Johnson got into the construction business and became a millionaire overnight. He could attribute it to a can of paint and the follies of war.
Ned Johnson was but one of several thousands of post war profiteers and adventurers who made a fortune from war surplus material. But the irony is that it's not over yet; fortunes are still there waiting to be picked up.
I had spent several years sailing my schooner Third Sea around the South Pacific, touching upon many islands that were battle sites during World War II. We came upon airstrips with bombers and fighters still on the runways, harbours with hundreds of wrecked ships and vessels, some in water so shallow you could see them below the surface; caves filled with rusting arms, helmets and mess gear; heavy brass cannons hidden in lonely mountain outposts; and still other islands where the military simply walked off when it was all over and left everything behind.
It is possible for those who are interested to visit many of these World War II sites. Some have become very popular tourist destinations for both the ex-GIs from the Allied Forces as well as for the Japanese. Every country across the Pacific and in Asia has them. In Thailand it’s the Death Railway at Kanchanaburi on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Let’s visit the Death Railway before moving on.
For those who want to visit Kanchanaburi and the Death Railway they can join a Royal Orchid Holidays tour, the Kanchanaburi River Kwai Extension (ROHE1). For those who really want to delve deeper, they can rent a vehicle in Kanchanaburi and make the drive to Three Pagodas Pass with a stopover at Hell Fire Pass.
At Kanchanaburi visitors can perform the ritual of marching across the Bridge over the River Kwai, while whistling Colonel Bogey’s March, make a quick tour of the war cemetery, where 7000 prisoners of war who died working on the Death Railway are buried, and pay a short visit to the JEATH Museum.
Before I had gone to see the Death Railway for the first time, I thought the rail line from the River Kwai Bridge continued westward into Burma directly from Kanchanaburi. I was soon to learn that the 230 kms of track that the Allied prisoners laid ran northward to Three Pagodas Pass. The impressive mountain range, through which the Imperial Japanese army attempted to build the railway, covers more than half of the province and today serves as home to several national parks, forestry and wildlife sanctuaries as well as the headwaters of the Kwai Noi (small Kwai) and the Kwai Yai (large Kwai) rivers.
One site that history buffs don’t want to miss is Hell Fire Pass. The story of the construction of the Death Railway linking Thailand with Myanmar comes into focus here, the location of a last desperate rush by the Japanese to complete their line on schedule. More than 100,000 prisoners of war worked day and night cutting through solid rock. Some 400 died in the completion of the 600-meter Hell Fire section alone and by mid-August 1943 there were only 100 survivors. The allied prisoners of war were those captured after the fall of Singapore and Malaysia (then Malaya) and force-marched to Kanchanaburi. The Memorial at Hell Fire was dedicated on 26 April 1987.
In memory of
Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop
AC CMG OBE KSTJ MS FRCS FRACS DSC
1907 - 1993
Patron of the Association and Surgeon of the Jungle
Whose ashes were scattered in this area
On 25th April 1994
When I drove away from Hell Fire Pass, the message Dunlop left on his memorial kept running through my mind: "When you go home, tell them of us and say, ‘We gave our tomorrow, for your today." How right he was. The drive north to Three Pagodas today is all beauty, a far cry from the hell that it was 65 years ago.
Singapore has its share of war memorials. The Battle of Singapore was fought when Japan invaded and the fighting lasted from February 7, 1942 to February 15, 1942. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. About 70,000 Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war, joining 50,000 taken by the Japanese in the Malayan campaign.
Kranji War Memorial near the Causeway off Woodlands Road is a grim reminder of war. The Memorial includes the graves of thousands of Allied troops who died in the region. The walls are inscribed with the names of 24,346 men and women who lost their lives.
To get a better perspective of the war, a visit to Sentosa will help. Royal Orchid Holidays’ Optional Tours Singapore (SINOP1) offers a tour of the island with a visit to ‘Images of Singapore’ in which you can take a tour through Singapore's history and re-live the war. In a “you-are-there” situation you can witness the war trials that resulted after World War II and the Japanese surrender, recreated (using lifelike wax dummies), film footage and dramatic light and sound effects.
When the British fortified Singapore, the consensus was an attack would come form the sea, and Sentosa became the stronghold with large-calibre coastal guns—which included one battery of three 15-inch (381 mm) guns and one with two 15-inch (381 mm) guns—all pointing out to sea. The guns were supplied mostly with armour-piercing shells and few high explosive shells. AP shells were designed to penetrate the hulls of heavily armoured warships.
But Japan did not invade form the south. They struck from Malaya to the north. The Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army invaded Malaya and southern Thailand by amphibious assault on December 8, 1941, simultaneously with their attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese forces used bicycle infantry and light tanks allowing swift movement through the jungle. The British had set up road barriers such as pillboxes along the road to Mersing but the Japanese merely bypassed them. Those pillboxes are still visible today.
Singapore fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942. Those who were taken prisoner were either confined to Changi Prison or force-marched to work on the Death Railway in Thailand.
Up until mid-2000 Changi Prison had a small war museum and chapel on the prison grounds but they have been relocated to Upper Changi Road in a modern building with an expanded exhibition. Inside the museum you can see photos taken by George Aspinall, a young allied prisoner who covertly took and developed the pictures during his internment, and dry-humoured drawings by another internee, WRM Haxworth.
The bottom of the seas of Southeast Asia is strewn with wrecks of ships sunk during the war. Ambitious scuba divers can visit many of these sites. I had the wonderful experience of exploring one of these wrecks. It was the HMS Repulse.
The battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse and four destroyers reached Singapore just before the Japanese began their air assaults. This force was thought to be an "unsinkable" deterrent to the Japanese. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, and anticipating an invasion by the Japanese along the Malay coast, the British high command immediately sent the warships to patrol the coast. Within hours after leaving Singapore, both Prince of Wales and Repulse were at the bottom of the sea, sunk by Japanese aircraft, leaving the east coast of Malaya exposed and allowing the Japanese to continue their amphibious landings.
For years I had wanted to try to locate these warships somewhere 40 miles off the Malaysia coast. Finally, when I had my own 71' schooner did my dream become reality. After locating HMS Repulse and marking its location, I returned with a half a dozen experienced divers, all commercial divers working on oilrigs in Southeast Asia.
Once at the site, we prepared to make our dives. We were attached to the hull 180 feet below by a one-inch nylon line, which also served as support line for divers. It was an eerie, foreboding feeling, knowing that below was a war grave with the bodies of perhaps 500 sailors entombed within the hull. I couldn’t help looking up at the sky, searching through the puffs of clouds, listening for the distant sounds of engines, for it was at this very same spot that the ships went down. I wrote in detail about the experience in my book Return to Adventure Southeast Asia but here I will mention briefly that first view of Repulse lying on the bottom of the ocean.
We dropped below the surface two at a time, with an allotted bottom time of 17 minutes. That first view of Repulse was overpowering, even frightening. At 20 feet the faint outline unfolds. At 60 feet she begins to take shape and form. You can make out details. But now as you drop deeper, the hull begins to take over, to dominate the ocean floor. It’s impossible to see the ship in its entirety. You begin to concentrate upon one feature, maybe a torpedo hole. Everything you heard or read about Repulse may not have seemed real, until now. All that horror of how that mighty ship sank into this dreadful grave suddenly registers. You can almost hear a pounding from inside the hull, from the sailors trapped there, until you realize it’s your own pulse beat gone wild.
Repulse remains in remarkably good condition with little deterioration. Sections of the teak deck still remain intact, despite her long years at the bottom of the sea. Two of our divers located the heavy brass nameplate and brought it to the surface. It is now in the naval Museum in London.
Next week I will continue with the search for World War II sites, beginning with the Death March in the Philippines. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERSQ. Dear Harold Stephens, Great piece of information for furniture lovers in your story in Teak Street that appeared a while back. I can't wait to get there! By the way, have any idea if the shops there are open during the weekend? Many many thanks for your help. Gayathri, India
A. Dear Gayathi, The shops are open weekends too. It's an incredibly long street and one can never see all the stuff. I usually go once a week. I am building a small traditional Thai house in my backyard and most of the things, including all the wood, come from there. Glad you like the story.
Q. Great! I'm going to hit the street tomorrow to check out the stuff before we go on our Chiang Mai tour next week. I want to take some glorious furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl along with the carved ones when we go back to India. We just bought a Bali style poster bed from which gave me thoughts of looking for better deals and we may go to in Mae Sot that you wrote about in another article. I have copied the link to a couple of my friends living around. Once again, thank you for sharing the information. The idea of a traditional Thai house in the backyard sounds amazing, good luck with it! Thanks again! cheers, Gayathri
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
