The Historical Account

In January 1946, the Australian military began the trial of over 90 Japanese officers and men, the largest Allied War Crimes trial conducted in the Pacific or Japan in the wake of WW2 on the small Indonesian island of Ambon. Situated 1,000 kilometers north of Australia, the Allied Prisoner of War camp at Ambon Tantoey was maintained by the 20th Japanese Naval Base Unit. The Japanese, now prisoners themselves in the custody of the Australian Occupation Force on Ambon following the actual Japanese surrender in mid September 1945, were charged under the Australian War Crimes Act 1945 with deliberate and concerted ill treatment of Australian and Allied POWs and under international law for crimes against the civilian population on Ambon. 

"Military History Section - General Staff LHQ AIF 1945"

                                    ©Estate of John M. Williams 1994

On the 4th of February 1942, 807 Australian soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese. 239 Dutch soldiers were captured soon after. Two additional Australians were captured in July. For the next three years these men were beaten, starved and tortured and when the camp was liberated in August of 1945, only 139 Allied POWs survived. Many of the men were in urgent need of medical attention with several dying shortly after their repatriation.

The real curtain of silence, however, was that maintained by the Japanese over the fate of nearly 300 Australian soldiers who were executed by the Japanese at Laha in early February 1942 just after the capture of Ambon.

That three year long wall of silence was finally breached in December 1945 by Prosecutor Captain John Williams who had the Japanese excavate the mass graves at Laha into which they now admitted interring the victims of the Laha executions. The Japanese finally revealed this upon being given direct orders from Vice Admiral Ichise, who had taken over the command of Ambon a few months before the surrender. There was also information from the Ambonese about the general location of the executions, which was used by Captain Williams to pressure the Japanese into their final  admission. This information from the Ambonese we used as a trigger for the opening scene - a 'licence' decision was made here as the dramatic unity of time and place we needed could not have had two different Vice Admirals with different levels of culpability in the opening trial scenes in the film. The adjoining photos show the actual excavation alongside that of the dramatisation from the film.
 

To his frustration, Captain Williams was unable to prosecute the Japanese officers who were responsible for ordering the executions as they were either dead or had been long re-assigned back to Japan where they were now part of the U.S. pacification and reconstruction strategy for post war Japan.

At the 1991 Tokyo opening of the film, former prosecutor John Williams was asked what was the most difficult aspect of the trials for him in his role as prosecutor to which he replied after a long pause for consideration: "The chain of command."

In his opening address on January 2 1946 to the four-man Australian War Crimes Tribunal, lead prosecutor Captain John M. Williams (shown at left) declared that of the 409 POWs who died, 

 "... 17 were executed, and 386 died it will be alleged as a result of systematic brutality, starvation and the denial of elementary medical attention and supplies."

©Estate of  John. M. Williams 1994

Over the next four months and four separate trials at three different locations, Captain Williams and his fellow prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence against the Japanese. Limited by both time and money, the prosecution found it almost impossible to connect specific evidence of war crimes with all of the defendants.

"Military History Section - General Staff  LHQ AIF 1945"

 ©Estate of John M. Williams 1994

Eleven of the accused were released early in the trial because there wasn't  sufficient evidence to charge them and another  forty-four were found not guilty.

     "Military History Section - General Staff  LHQ AIF  1945"

©Estate of John M. Williams 1994   

Just thirty-six of the original ninety-one were found guilty and only six were sentenced to death by firing squad in what is now known to be the Japanese POW camp with one of the highest mortality rates in the entire Pacific War. This is not only an extraordinary result, but it is also a tribute to the rigorous application of the presumption of innocence by Captain Williams and his colleagues. The Australian ethos of a 'fair go' could not have had a more paradoxical setting.

©2002 Blood Oath Prods., FFCA & Roadshow Entertainment