Michael Woodruff - World War II

World War II

At the outbreak of World War II, Woodruff joined the Australian Army Medical Corps. He stayed in Melbourne until he finished his Master of Surgery Degree in 1941. At that time, he was assigned to the Tenth Australian Army General Hospital in Malaya as a captain in the Medical Corps. According to Woodruff, his time in Malaya was quiet and relatively leisurely as the war in the Pacific was yet to began in earnest. However, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed the situation and he was posted to a casualty clearing station where he worked as an anaesthetist, before being transferred into the Singapore General Hospital. A Japanese offensive resulted in the fall of Singapore and Woodruff was taken prisoner along with thousands of other Australian and British personnel.

After being captured, Woodruff was imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. In the camp, Woodruff realized that his fellow prisoners were at great risk from vitamin deficiencies due to the poor quality of the rations they were issued by the Japanese. To help fight this threat, Woodruff asked for permission from the Japanese to allow him to take responsibility for the matter, which was granted. He devised a method for extracting important nutrients from grass, soya beans, rice polishings, and agricultural wastes using old machinery that he found at the camp. Woodruff later published an account of his methods through the Medical Research Council titled "Deficiency Diseases in Japanese Prison Camps". Woodruff remained a POW for three and a half years and later during this period he was sent to outlying POW camps to treat his comrades. As the prisoners were not allowed to be transferred, he had to improvise in his practise. During this time he also read Maingot's surgery textbook, as a copy was in the camp, and he later said that reading about the fact that skin allografts were rejected a fortnight after being initially accepted, had stoked his interest in doing research on the topic.

At the conclusion of World War II, Woodruff returned to Melbourne to continue his surgical training. During his studies, he served as the surgical associate to Albert Coates. This position was unpaid, so Woodruff accepted an appointment was a part-time pathology lecturer to support himself. In January 1946, Woodruff participated in an Australian Student Christian Movement meeting, where he met Hazel Ashby, a science graduate from Adelaide. She made a great impression on Woodruff, and he married her half a year later. The couple were research partners for the rest of their lives.