One example of how the Allies rewarded natives who supported them.
A fair go for the hugely oppressed Timorese for supporting Australian troops in WWII?
Yeah. Right!
Many Timorese including liurai paid with their lives either for standing neutral or for alleged support of Australian guerrillas. Many other Portuguese and Timorese were executed by the Japanese without court martial. One Portuguese writer who has studied this question, Vieira da Rocha, lists the names of 75 Portuguese and assimilados who died as a result of the Japanese occupation. At least ten died in combat against the Japanese, 37 were murdered while eight died in detention. Many were deportado, most were officials. The number of Timorese who died during the war is impossible to calculate with precision but is of the order of 40-70,000 out of a total prewar population of around 450,000. The disruption to native agriculture and the breakdown of prewar society stemming from the harsh system of food collection and corvees imposed by the Japanese inevitably led to famine and other hardships, including debilitating disease.
It is clear that the Australian War Crimes investigators were only interested in investigating crimes against the Australian commandos, not against civilian Timorese or Chinese victims who suffered most from Japanese regime of terror. While Australian investigators collated a mass of oral testimony as to atrocities committed against Portuguese, Chinese, and Timorese, no action was taken in these cases. While Japanese crimes against the Portuguese were actually commemorated in stone in a splendid and surviving monument in Aileu it also has to be said that ordinary Timorese were prime victims of Japanese excesses and recriminations. Equally, it was ordinary Timorese who suffered most from draconian labour details not to mention the economy of scarcity imposed by wartime conditions.
It also cannot pass without mention that alone among the peoples and countries occupied by Japan during the Pacific War, Portugal’s oceanic colony was not a beneficiary of war reparations as set down at the 1951 San Francisco Conference as Portugal was not, technically, a belligerent in this war. As a visiting private Japanese consortium learnt at first hand in Timor in the 1970s, neither had Japan seen fit to redeem military script issued during the war, the basis upon which the Japanese army financed its occupation of the country. The issues of Japanese wartime compensation including the claims of so-called “comfort women” or sexual slavery in Timor first became public in 1997 but only in the Macau media where it was taken up by Jose Ramos-Horta speaking on behalf of the Timorese people.
My bold http://members.pcug.org.au/~wildwood/early500.htm
Our current government recognises the the sacrifices of the Timorese for Australia’s benefit but ignores the reality of how Australia treated the Timorese.
Hardship, courage, resilience, sticking together—they are also watchwords of Australia and Timor’s history of WWII.
In 1942 the 2/2nd and 2/4th Independent Company waged war here in East Timor on the Japanese invaders.
In July 1942, there were around 700 Australians in Timor fighting a force of as many as 20,000.
And losing 40 Australians, Sparrow force caused 1500 Japanese casualties.
And today’s service has particular poignancy, because it is very close to here that eleven of those 40 men lost their lives.
According to records, on or about the 19th of February, sixteen Australian soldiers members of the 2/2nd Independent Company (later Commandos) were returning to Dili from the mountains, unaware that the Japanese has just landed and were heading west up the main road towards them.
After a brief struggle the party was captured at the Comoro river.
Eleven of the soldiers were never seen again.
The official war record relates a number of statements from 1945, including that the soldiers:
“were tied together and moved towards Dili. Later reports from a Dutchman were that this Party had been executed at Dili Aerodrome”. (now known as the heliport)
The official findings of 1946 were that they had “died whilst POW, executed by Japs 20 Feb 1942.’
And today - we remember them…and their comrades.
We also remember the East Timorese, without whom so many more Australians would have been lost.
Because what Sparrow force achieved could never have been done alone…and the Timorese help came at a terrible cost to themselves.
Horrendous casualties were suffered by the East Timorese who it is estimated lost 40,000 as the Japanese wiped out whole villages suspected of offering aid to the Australians. (Kenneth Davidson, the Age 14/11/1991).
The members of Sparrow force were befriended, harbored, guided, protected and fed by loyal Timorese comrades in their common quest to rid the island of the Japanese invasion force.
Individual Australians had the assistance of Timorese offsiders, known as “Creados”,
As one Australian soldier said of these indomitable and courageous people ; “they were so good, the creados, they risked their lives all the time for us, it shamed you really.”
http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/SnowdonSpeechtpl.cfm?CurrentId=7645
So, how did Australia as a nation repay that debt?
East Timor - betrayal, hypocrisy and genocide
Martin Lehmann - 26 September 1999
Australian governments since 1975 must share a huge responsibility for the tragic events in East Timor.
It all started with self-styled “elder statesman”, Gough Whitlam. This so-called champion of the downtrodden, without reference to the parliament, gave the nod in 1975 to the murderous Indonesian regime that it was OK as far as Australia was concerned, to invade East Timor. With Whitlam’s acquiescence, the Indonesians invaded the tiny province of East Timor on Australia’s doorstep, just two hours flight from Darwin.
In a series of purges and massacres since 1975 the brutal regime has murdered at least a third of the population of East Timor, a genocide that ranks with that of Pol Pot in Cambodia.
And what were our governments doing all this time? They were pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars into supplying Indonesia with military weapons and training. In 1993, Prime Minister Paul Keating gave the regime $114 million in military aid while at the same entering into dubious personal business deals with Indonesian officials.
Australia is the only country in the world to officially endorse Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor.
http://www.australian-news.com.au/EastTimor.htm
But the Australian men who fought there did not forget the Timorese.
But for the Timorese many Australian diggers, like retired wharfie Paddy Kenneally, would have died at the hands of the Japanese during WW2. Now it’s time to return the favour…
“Australia dragged East Timor into the war, and close to 60,000 of them died for us,” said John “Paddy” Kenneally.
Paddy was one of the speakers at Remember East Timor Rally in Sydney held in conjunction with ANZAC day, on April 26. He spoke from experience.
Paddy was working on the Pyrmont wharves when his foreman told him that the Japanese Air Force had just bombed Pearl Harbour. It was December 7, 1941.
“I got up, dropped my tool belt and started to leave,” said Paddy. “The foreman asked where I was going and I said I was going to join the army.”
Six weeks later, on January 21, 1942, Paddy landed in East Timor (then Portuguese Timor) with the 2nd Independent Company, known as the 2/2 Commandos. He now realises, they should never have gone there.
“East Timor was a neutral country,” said Paddy. “It wasn’t at war. Us being there was an act of aggression. Even the Portuguese didn’t want Australian troops there.”
The Japanese army arrived in East Timor a month after the 2/2 Commandos. By that time, 80 per cent of the 300 diggers were already sick with malaria.
The Australian troops headed for the mountains for cover, and Paddy recalled how the Timorese took care of them right from the beginning of hostilities in East Timor.
“The very first day the Japanese arrived, the Timorese saved the first Australian,” he said.
The 2/2 Commandos stayed in East Timor for another 10 months and fought a guerrilla campaign - something they could not have done without the support of the Timorese people. “That’s the key of a guerrilla war,” said Paddy.
During the 11 months of warfare, the 2/2 Commandos lost less than 40 soldiers, while the Timorese lost an estimated 2500 lives. For the whole war (1942-1945), the number of East Timorese who died because of their involvement with Australia was 60,000.
They were either killed in battle, tortured or died of disease caused by malnutrition.
After the war, RAAF planes flew over East Timor dropping flyers saying “Your friends will not forget you.” However, aside from the oil in the Timor Sea, the Australian Government did forget.
http://workers.labor.net.au/14/d_review_paddy.html
