1 W.A.G.S Prisoner Of War

The 1 W.A.G.S. Memorial pays tribute to those RAAF trainees who served in all Theatres of War during WW2 and became Prisoners of War.

To date 150 1 W.A.G. personnel were held in captivity with 31 dying as P.O.W.s. These airmen were held in German, Italian and Japanese camps. Twenty-two P.O.W.s died at the hands of the Japanese. The rest were whilst prisoners of Italian/German captors.

The following information has been included in this report and the Sources acknowledged.

The ones who were most likely to fall into German hands were those serving in Bomber Command, flying raids over Germany and German-occupied Europe. Fatal casualties in the RAAF over the duration of the war in Europe were 5397, of whom the lions share - 3486- had served in Bomber Command , compared to 191 in Fighter Command, 408 in Coastal Command and 1312 in training and other units. Middle Eastern operations, too, claimed a high price in RAAF fatalities, reaching 1135. Australian airmen also supported campaigns against German and Italian forces in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Far East. By the end of the war there were some 16,000 RAAF personnel in locations as varied as the UK, Western Europe, Gibraltar, Iceland and Middle East. The activities of Australian airmen extended across the greatest part of the war's duration. If they did not manage to escape, these men captured in the first year of hostilities spent close to five long years behind bars. At the other extreme, the last of the Australians to become POW's were also airmen, shot down over the Reich as it drew its final breaths.

Excerpts from the book  P.O.W.  Australian prisoners of war in Hitler's Reic by Peter Monteath.

During the Pacific war, the Japanese captured 22,000 Australians: soldiers, sailors, airmen and members of the army nursing service, as well as some civilians. They were imprisoned in camps throughout Japanese-Occupied Territories in Borneo, Korea, Manchuria, Hainan, Rabaul, Ambon, Singapore, Timor, Java, Thailand, Burma and Vietnam and also Japan itself. At the end of the war only 13,872 of the POWs were recovered: one-third of the prisoners had died.  POW in the services were as follows: Army (about 21,000); RAN (354); and RAAF (373).

Source - Department of Veteran Affairs 'Anzac Portal' and the Australian War Memorial

According to a directive ratified on 5 August 1937 by The Japanese emperor Hirohito, the constraints of the Hague Conventions were explicitly removed from prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Philippines held by the Japanese armed forces and these POWs were subject to murder, beatings, summary punishment, brutal treatment, forced labour, medical experimentation, starvation rations and poor medical treatment. The most notorious use of forced labour was in the construction of the Burma–Thailand 'Death Railway'.

According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1%,seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.

After the war, it became clear that there existed a high command order – issued from the War Ministry in Tokyo – to kill all remaining POWs.

Source - Forces War Records  Prisoners of War of the Japanese 1939-1945

1W.A.G.S Prisoner Of War

The 1 W.A.G.S. Research Team acknowledges with thanks the Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial Ballarat website and the WW2 Nominal Roll which was used to verify the following names: