Ray Parkin - World War II

World War II

Parkin's first attempt at writing was during his war service. He started a romantic novel, which was lost when Perth was sunk by Japanese action in the Sunda Straits in the early hours of 1 March 1942. He spent about 11 hours in the water, and reckoned it was during that time he realized the romantic novel had a fatal flaw – life is not romantic.

Parkin was among ten men who washed up on a small island. They found a steel lifeboat and rigged a sail to try to get back to Australia. For 16 days they slipped past enemy shipping and tropical storms before reaching Japanese occupied Tjilatjap where they were captured.

In June 1942, Parkin was imprisoned in Bandoeng camp. He met Laurens van der Post there and they immediately became friends. Several prisoners there liked to draw, including for instance Dutch artist Keis von Willigen, and they would scrounge up paper from wherever they could. Van der Post managed to get Parkin a set of watercolour paints from a Chinese contact. Portraits of fellow inmates were a favourite.

In November 1942, Parkin was among the "Dunlop 1,000" under elected commander and surgeon Lieutenant Colonel "Weary" Dunlop who were sent to the building of the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway. In that misery, Parkin focused on the beauty that could be found: plants, butterflies, nature generally. Others, like English-born artist Jack Chalker, recorded the horrors of the camps.

In March 1944, Parkin was to be shipped to Japan. He couldn't keep his collection of drawings and diary notes concealed on that trip, so Dunlop offered to look after them for him. Dunlop had a false bottom in his operating table, where he could hide things like Chalker's medical drawings and Parkin's papers.

Parkin ended up working an underground coal mine near the Japanese village of Ohama and remained there until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Although his war experiences were harrowing, they didn't leave him with hatred of the Japanese, as he believed hate caused war.