You Never Met My Father Read Free

was posted to Nagasaki, where he was caught stealing blankets from a US Army depot with the intention of distributing them amongst orphans wandering the ruined streets? Did he add that American MPs with no respect for his charitable work beat him up or, rather, threw him down a flight of stairs, doing permanent damage to the unique matter inside his head?
    I heard such a story from my mother or father when I was young. But the Commonwealth Forces were never in Nagasaki. They were in the western prefectures, which included Hiroshima and Kure.
    Decades later I discovered a different version. I was surfing the net one day when, to my astonishment, I found a number of newspaper articles on my father in the National Library’s digital archive that dealt with some of his misdemeanours from the late forties and early fifties. At one of his reported trials, his mental health was raised by the defence counsel, who stated he had been beaten over the head with a plank of wood by a Korean soldier in Japan. It was information given under oath but I had my doubts. I had never heard of Koreans being part of the Occupational Forces and a search for evidence of it in books and online revealed nothing.
    When, long after his death, I got hold of his military and medical records, I was able to piece together a more plausible account.
    Like his two brothers my father left school at the age of twelve. He began a five-year carpenter’s apprenticeship for the purpose I believe of joining his father’s construction team. But when he completed it in 1945, he defied his family’s wishes and enlisted in the army. He cheated on an eye test, memorizing the chart to conceal the corneal opacity in his right eye, and passed an entrance medical examination. No check was undertaken on the mental fitness of the eighteen year-old.
    His conduct in the first few months after his recruitment must have been exemplary for he was promoted to corporal. But then he went AWOL for fifteen days during some training in New South Wales, for which he was penalised a month’s pay, fined £5 and demoted to private. A few months later he was incarcerated for 14 days and fined another £5 for ‘offering violence to his superior officer’, somehow avoiding a dishonourable discharge.
    When the Second World War ended he volunteered to serve in occupied Japan. Assigned to the 66th Battalion of the Australian Infantry Forces, he arrived at the military port of Kure, which was a smouldering ruin, on the 26th of April, 1946. The barracks where he was billeted were twenty kilometres out of town at a place called Kaitaichi on the road to Hiroshima. In the weeks that followed he went on patrol around the port and perhaps even into Hiroshima. No doubt he witnessed some terrible sights but he made no complaint and his superiors considered him diligent and reliable. He showed no signs of anxiety or shock. There was no warning of what was to follow.
    On July 4th, American Independence Day, he went berserk in his barracks, attacking other infantrymen, smashing furniture, overturning bunks and lockers. It took ten men to subdue him. He was put in a straight jacket and removed to the 92 Independent General Hospital in Kure.
    As his Field Medical Card reveals, [he] suddenly became violent this evening about 20.00. Stated he was suffocating from the scent of a frangipani. Has not had a drink of any alcohol. Usually a quiet lad. He is a good worker. Th is is the first time he has shown any signs of unstable mind.
    He was treated with morphine.
    On admission he was quite rational though he stated the Japs had been trying to suffocate him by bringing flowers into his room, which used up all the air. He was in a state of fear and believed in the reality of his recent experiences. He said he had had suspicions of the Japs for the past three days but had only become certain of their intentions this evening.
    He woke the next morning much calmer but still defended his