My mother’s silence, my nation’s shame

Memoir

My mother’s silence, my nation’s shame

Colonial violence in Australia and New Guinea

Jane Gleeson-White

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Published 20220428
ISBN: 978-1-922212-71-9
Extent: 264pp
Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

ON 4 FEBRUARY 1942, stripped of all identification, hands wired behind his back, my grandfather and some 160 other Australians were marched by Japanese soldiers into the jungle on the coast of New Britain in the former Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea and, one by one, shot or bayoneted from behind. Some were burnt alive.

There’s a photograph of their bleached and scattered bones in the Australian War Memorial, taken by one of the Australian soldiers who found them in 1945:

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