eral Sir Thomas Blamey and the Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) the operation was bungled from the start owing to ineptitude, incompetence, petty jealousies and lack of decision making. The egosticistical US General Douglas MacArthur (not very popular in Australia) nevertheless gave it his unqualified support, but history has wrongly blamed MacArthur who became the scapegoat for Kingfisher's failure. Blamey stated that aircraft and ships were not available for the rescue operation, that MacArthur needed them for 'other purposes' (no doubt, the proposed invasion of Japan). After thirty years the Kingfisher files were released for public access. They show that the RAAF had a pool of around 40 Dakota DC-3s and B24 Liberators in hand and that only 30 were needed for the paratroop assault on Sandakan for which 800 paratroops had trained in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. (although they were never told for what purpose) After months of planning, the rescue operation never took place and so, 2,428 Australian and British P.O.W.s died.
When the war ended, 14,526 Australian P.O.W.s were liberated from Japanese prison camps. The Allied occupation of Japan formally ended on September 8, 1951.
THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH (April 1942)
On April 9, 1942, US Major General Edward P. King, commander of the Bataan Garrison on Luzon, formally surrendered his troops to the Japanese invaders commanded by General Homma. After four hard months of combat, the troops were now exhausted, low on ammunition, low on food (most of their meat ration coming from horses, mules, caribou and water buffalo) and many suffering from malaria, dysentery and other diseases. The American and Filipino defenders of Bataan were now in no condition to continue the struggle. It was near the town of Mariveles in the southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula that the infamous Bataan Death March began on April 10, 1942. Each morning, in groups of several hundred, the prisoners were herded on to the main road that led north to Camp O'Donnell their first prison camp, about ten days and sixty miles away. Hungry and thirsty, sick and tired, it was every man for himself, few helped one another. If anyone fell behind he was shot, bayoneted or beheaded and their bodies left in full view of the following column. Between Mariveles and Cabcaben the column of prisoners was shelled by their own guns on Corregidor. A few days and 100 kilometres further on, the first column arrived at San Fernando where they were forced into railroad boxcars. Packed like sardines, suffocating in the summer heat, and those suffering from dysentery defecating on each other, many died 'standing up'. Four hours later they detrained at Capas and were forced to march the remaining ten kilometres to Camp O'Donnell.
Around 9,300 Americans survived the Death March, between 600 and 650 died or were killed on the way. The Filipino prisoners, numbering around 45,000, arrived at the camp after completing the March, about five thousand had lost their lives during the March. The first forty days at Camp O'Donnell saw the deaths of around 1,500 more Americans and by the end of July at least another 20,000 Filipinos had died. On June 6, 1942, the surviving Filipino prisoners were granted complete amnesty and released. The extremely high death rate, the highest of any P.O.W. camp anywhere, compelled the Japanese to move most of the prisoners to another camp at Cabanatuan, north of O'Donnell. It was at Cabanatuan that the Death March survivors met up with their fellow countrymen captured on Corregidor and who fortunately did not participate in the March but had suffered the humiliation of being marched through the main streets of Manila in front of thousands of Filipinos who had been ordered out to watch the procession. After the fighting on Corregidor, some American P.O.W.s were forced to do a most distasteful duty. Divided into work parties they were ordered to cut the right hand off every Japanese soldier found dead. Some bodies had been lying in the hot sun for days. The dead bodies were then burned and the hands