Award To Young Officer

Of W.P.H.C.

THE award of the King’s Commenda tion to Mr. H. C. R. F. Williams, Cadet Officer of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, was announced in November.

Mr. Williams was administration officer at Butaritari in 1941, and was caught when the Japanese occupied the island immediately after Pearl Harbour. He was taken prisoner and was later trans ferred to a camp in Japan, With a number of other prisoners he was ordered to broadcast and was told that if he did not do so he would be executed. In spite of this threat, he refused to obey the Japanese orders and was placed in solitary confinement. Later, he was forced to serve in various work camps, in one of which he organised systematic raids on Jap stores and man aged to set up, in a remote part of a quarry, a bakery from which he supplied his fellow prisoners with a substantial daily ration of bread to supplement the food supplied by the Japanese.

Mr. Williams returned to duty in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony several months ago. —From Fiji Public Relations Office.