RECOGNITION of his brother’s death on board a Japanese prisoner of war ship took nearly seven decades, but Ray Dalton is thankful some form of acknowledgment has finally come.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Warrnambool man was only three-years-old when his brother George was killed in Australia’s worst maritime disaster — the Montevideo Maru incident on July 1, 1942.
Veteran Affairs Minister Alan Griffin expressed “sincere sorrow” on behalf of the federal government over the sinking of the Japanese auxiliary ship which claimed the lives of 1053 Australian servicemen.
The incident has not been officially recognised by the federal government since 1942 as the ship was sunk as part of the Allied war effort by an American submarine in the Philippines.
Aboriginal military historian Peter Bakker said double the number of servicemen were killed during the Montevideo Maru incident than during Australia’s 10-year involvement in the Vietnam War.
Mr Dalton was only informed of the federal government’s statement after Mr Bakker showed him footage of the minister’s speech this week.
“It hasn’t been covered up since the end of the war but it’s never been formally acknowledged by the federal government that 1053 Australians died, until now,” Mr Bakker said.
“My personal theory is that the government of the day didn’t want to have it promoted because it would have damaged Australian morale which was already low by 1942.
“It was seven months into the Pacific War between ourselves and the Japanese and their forces had moved so quickly along the Asian continent that they posed the real risk of invading the Australian mainland.
“The Americans torpedoed it and they were a critical ally at that time so that also would have been a factor.”
George Dalton was a private in Australia’s 2/22nd Battalion stationed at Rabaul off the coast Papua New Guinea.
His ill-equipped battalion was later forced into surrendering to the Japanese forces in early 1942.
The Japanese forces had planned to transport the soldiers to a prisoner of war camp on an island off the coast of China before the Montevideo Maru was sunk.
Mr Bakker said Mr Dalton’s father and brother both survived the war.
He said he discovered during his research that two other soldiers from Warrnambool were also involved in the Australian surrender at Rabaul.
Coincidently, the two soldiers also had the surname Dalton; Bombardier Francis Patrick Dalton and his brother Private Bernard Joseph Dalton.
