The Hospital ships were a taste of heaven for POWs in Japan. Boarding these ships provided the most memorable moments of the war, well at least the best moments! These young men talked of wonderful nurses and their gentle treatment.
The luxurious feeling of being clean. Memories of excessive amounts of food and simply feeling like a human being have been repeated over and over again.
The former POWs had spent 3 1/2 years incarcerated – their spirits and bodies well spent. Most had been taken from working on the Burma-Thai Railway – there were few illnesses they had not endured. The very thought of another Japanese winter for these young starved, underweight and usually weak, overworked POWs was overwhelming.
Could they contemplate another Japanese winter?
Walking more often than not, long distances, in the wind, sleet and cold weather conditions to and from work every day usually in the dark. Often in bare feet without warm clothing for another day in the mines.
The Japanese population who treated them with contempt, was starving. POWs received less rations and food. How would they survive another winter? How much longer could they endure Japanese brutality?
Proceeding via Okinawa, Sanctuary arrived off Wakayama in Task Group 56.5 on 11 September; then waited as minecraft cleared the channels. On the afternoon of the 13th, she commenced taking on sick, injured, and ambulatory cases. By 03:00 on the 14th, she had exceeded her rated bed capacity of 786.
By three hours into the mid watch (0300) on the 14th, she had exceeded her rated bed capacity of 786. A call went out to the fleet requesting cots. The request was answered, and, seven hours later, she sailed for Okinawa with 1,139 liberated POWs, primarily British, Australian, and Javanese, embarked for the first leg of their journey home.
At that time, USS Consolation was one of six new hospital ships of the US Navy, all commissioned in the previous six months before the war ended. These six ships were all of the similar design and similarily equipped and staffed. They each had a displacement of 18,000 tons, an overall length of 520 feet and a beam of 71 feet and 6″. The speed is 17 1/2 knots and a cruising radius of 12,000 miles.
In addition to the ship’s crew were 19 Doctors, 3 Dental Officers, 30 Nurses, 5 Hospital Corps OffIcers, 2 American Red Cross Workers and 254 Hospital corpsmen.
The hospital staff realised the nervous numbness of the POWs led to their indifference and lack of emotional response. Their adjustment to everyday life would take some time.
The men were already hearing the world news, but there was so much more they had missed and not known about. And what about the new wonder drug called penicillen!
It was a two day journey to Manila. The former POWs disembarked and were taken by truck to a recovery camp just outside Manila where they were allowed to send a telegram. They met many other Australians they had no idea whether alive or dead for sometimes years.
It was first to a kit store to be given Australian clothes to replace the American uniforms they received days earlier. Then further medical examination, weighed, measured, vaccinated, innoculated for cholera and typhus and given worm pills. The men were given a pay book each with a credit of 6 Pounds and five shillings in it and one Pound in Canteen Coupons.
They were waiting for British aircraft carriers to take them to Australia which had been delayed by four days with bad weather.
The men went to the open air picture theatre at at night, sitting in the rain refusing to miss a minutes of ‘The Battle of Britain’, ‘Battle of the Western Desert’, ‘The Eastern Blitz’ and ‘Stalingrad’.
Above: U.S. Navy hospital ship USS Sanctuary (AH-17) at Wakayama, Japan, in September 1945
Below: Ex-POWs on board Sanctuary.
