To honour those who served their country

“In this their finest hour”

600 Gunners Party

Compiled from the ‘Java Index’, ‘What Price Bushido’,

Kill the Prisoners’ and the Commonwealth War Graves

When compiling the Java Index it was noted that many of the British prisoners captured in Java, died at Rabaul and Ballali Island. Alf ‘Blackie’ Baker’s book ‘What Price Bushido’ and Don Wall’s ‘Kill the Prisoners’ confirmed this. Using these valuable sources of information these pages were formed with the help of the Commonwealth War Graves.

The 600 Gunners Party left Changi on the 18th October 1942, under the command of Lt-Col. J. Bassett, R.A., 35 L.A.A. aboard the Kenkon Maru, at the time the destination was believed to be New Guinea. The Bureau of Records and Enquiry at Changi later were led to believe the ship was torpedoed and all on board lost.

These pages are not meant to upset families but are written as a tribute to those of the 600 Gunners Party who gave their lives for their country.

Further information can be found at Gunner Alfred William Burgess who gave his life at Ballali Island on the 5th March 1943.

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Discrepancies

My database contains 589 names, two of which could not be found in the Commonwealth War Graves database.

 If the two unknown names are not counted, this leaves 587, that means 13 names are missing.

There could be a number of reasons for this, Alf does write however, 517 went to Ballali Island. With no information surviving Ballali as the Japanese destroyed all documentation, none of the prisoners survived and all the reclaimed bodies were missing their ‘Dog Tags’ (service information always warn). The answer to the missing 13 is unfortunately unknown.

Acknowledgements

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission

‘What Price Bushido’ by Alf ‘Blackie’ Baker

‘Kill the Prisoners’ by Don Wall

‘The Knights of Bushido’ by Lord Russell of Liverpool

Britain at War

Original design by John Weedon
Maintained by Ron Taylor.

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Ron.Taylor@fepow-community.org.uk