Rev. James Benson’s Experiences

as Prisoner of Japs in Rabaul

PRAISE the efficient work of ANGAU patrols in their prolonged ventures Dehind the Japanese lines, when they had been the “eyes and ears of the Australian Army,” and admiration for the courage and kindness of the Roman Catholic missionaries near Rabaul, were expressed by Rev. James Benson, of the Gona Anglican Mission Station, who miraculously escaped death at the hands of the Japs in Papua early ip 1942.

Mr. Benson returned to Australia by the “Marella” in October, after two years with Roman Catholic missionaries in a captive camp near Rabaul, and eight months spent in a Rabaul prison ceil— the only white man with Japanese criminals.

He was separated from two mission sisters soon after the Japanese moved into Gona in 1942, and he did not know, until liberated by the Jap surrender in 1945, that both had been cruelly mur dered.

Angau’S Achievements

IN a long article_in the Cairns “Post,”

Mr. Benson discussed many aspects of his terrible experiences. Especially, he praised the fine work of ANGAU patrols. The patrols, he said, were always in the charge of some white man who had lived in the country, as a Govern ment officer, a trader or miner, and through whose knowledge of the natives and the natives’ trust in him, was made possible his existence in the jungle for months, sometimes years, behind enemy lines.

Since his release, on September 13, when the Australians marched into the Ramale Valley near Rabaul, Benson had met many of these men of the Aus tralian New Guinea Administrative Unit who commanded patrols Major Ted Jennings, who had been operating behind the Japanese at Lae and Salamaua, Cap tain Jim Lahey at Wau, Majors Roberts and Bates in New Britain.

Major Roberts, he had been amazed to learn, had with eight native boys been to within two miles of RsCmale a year before the prisoners’ delivery, and had signalled Japanese movements to the Australian Intelligence. They, he said, were “the ears and eyes of the Australian Army.”

It was from a patrol officer, Major Fairfax-Ross, that Mr. Benson learned of the fate of the mission sisters who had been with him at Gona. They had been captured after betrayal by Dobudura natives and, with the white personnel of Isivita Mission, taken to Buna. Miss Hay man and Miss Parkinson had been bayoneted to death and the others be headed. He, alone, remained of the staffs of Sangara, Isivita and Gona missions.

Grim Experiences

WHEN the Japanese invaded Gona about July 10, 1942, Mr. Benson with his two assisants, Miss Hayman

and Miss Parkinson, and the native teaching staff of the mission, took to the jungle and lived on the Kumusi River until they succeeded in crossing the Japanese lines in August—the first step in their plan to cross the Owen Stanleys east of Port Moresby, which they thought at that time, had been captured.

However, their plan was defeated when they were betrayed by natives and fired on by a Japanese patrol and the party scattered.

For more than a week Mr. Benson vsas lost in the jungle. Then, by accident, he stumbled on a main highway leading 10 Japanese headquarters at Buna. There he gave himself up.and lived until Novem ber in a Japanese military police (Kempe) camp.

On November 18, he was taken by a cruiser to Rabaul, where he was thrown into a 14 ft. square cell, with a concrete floor for a bed and Japanese criminals his only companions. At times there were 16 Japanese there with him.

He remained there for eight months, when the only white men he saw were two American pilots. He does not know what became of them. His appeals for civilian treatment were discounted and his requests to be allowed to notify Miss Hayman’s and Miss Parkinson’s people of their disappearance, through the Red Cross, were refused.

Eventually he was told he was to go back to New Guinea, and left Rabaul by transport on April 2, 1943, with reinforce ments for the Japanese Army in Lae and Salamaua. When off the southern tip of New Britain, the transports an i destroyers in the convoy were attacked by bombers, and early next morning he witnessed the evacuation of the last Japanese troops from Gona and Buna.

“They were miserable, emaciated creatures then,” he added.

When he was taken off the transport and embarked on a cruiser for Rabaul once more, a Japanese told him that no slower ship than a cruiser could attempt the trip. Back in Rabaul prison, a ruth less commandant held him responsible for the Japanese reverses.

Paradise After Hell

IN July, 1943, when the Mr. Benson’s petitions to'the Japanese High Com mand that, as he was a civilian, he should be allowed different living condi tions from Japanese criminals, were again heeded, he was removed to the Mission of the Fathers, Brothers and Sisters of the Sacred Heart at Kokopo, 20 miles from Rabaul.

He said: “After all Hell, that was Para dise. I went to them a miserable wreck.

String tied my trousers and singlet to gether, and I’d not had a bath for four months, but they treated me as one of themselves, and gave me of their best, although much of their stores had been stolen by the Japanese.”

At the mission, he said, there were 17 different nationalities. He told stories of the wonderful fortitude of the elderly nuns. One, Sister Borgia, who was 78 years old, had more than once jeopar dised her life to protect the younger nuns from the bombers from Allied air bases.

No Resistance In Rabaul

ALLIED bombing near Rabaul, said Mr. Benson, reduced every bit of the harbour front to rubble and scrap.

Every building was destroyed. All the inmates at the mission at Kokopo, 2C

miles from Rabaul, slept underground, in slit trenches and tunnels.

“If troops had landed in Rabaul in Feb ruary, 1944, there would have been no resistance,” he said, “for the Japanese in that time were in hiding in the moun tains inland. For three weeks we lived on the fat of the land, when we raided Japanese stores, even finding amongst them beer and wine. We expected a landing.”

He continued, “When the Japanese re turned and the bombing persisted they allowed us to move out to the Ramale Valley, six miles from the old mission site. There we built better tunnel defences, and for about six months lived in trenches and tunnels.

“When time passed and no bombs fell, we knew then that our own people had learned, through native messengers carry ing the news to Australian patrols operat ing behind Japanese lines, that we were in the Valley.”

Records Destroyed

rE anthropological records which Mr.

Benson had kept for years at Gona had been destroyed with all the mis sion records. He had with him a small prayer book when the mission evacuated to Siai on the Kumusi River, and had made notes in it of events up to his imprisonment at Rabaul, when he got an old exercise book and used it as a diary, in which he entered guarded comments of all that happened.

Mr. Benson is wearing a beard in obser vance of a tradition of native villagers of Gona who regard it as a token of sorrow.

When on the Kumusi a boy had brought him a razor, he said he would not shave until there was peace again, and he had come back to his villagers. Both he and Mr. Gordon Thomas, former editor of

“The Rabaul Times,” had found the beards a little protection against the Japanese, who have some regard for age.