Albert Fernandez was born in Sydney on 4 August 1898 to Matilda (née Isaacs) and Ralph Fernandez. The family lived variously in Manly, Surry Hills and Seven Hills. Elder son Nathan, born in 1896, enlisted in the 1st AIF as Private John Fernandez in 1915 but by then, his father Ralph was in South Africa and had divorced Matilda. Nathan was Killed in Action with 45Bn at Passchendaele, Belgium, on 13 October 1917 (see separate entry). In 1928, Albert and his mother were dealing in second-hand clothing at Manly, when Albert was involved in a fight defending Matilda’s integrity. She died in November 1939, shortly after war was declared against Germany.

In April 1940, Albert enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps, attesting to age 31 (i.e. ten years younger than his actual age): NX19620 Private Albert Fernandez. He trained as a medic and was transferred to 2/10th Field Ambulance at Liverpool in August 1940. In March 1941, Albert embarked on HMT Katoomba with Signalman Issacher (Issy) Weingott, Privates Harry Bernstein and Leslie Pearlman of 2/22nd Battalion (see separate entries for the latter two). They were later joined by four more Jewish soldiers as part of the 1,485 troops of Lark Force, an Army formation established to serve in New Britain and New Ireland under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Scanlan. However, with no sea support, poor air cover and little artillery, the troops were ill-equipped to defend Rabaul against the threat of invasion by Japan.

Albert served as an Orderly at the 2/10th Army General Hospital where Private Harry Bernstein was admitted with malaria for a few weeks in December; its staff included six Australian Army nurses. On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, launching the Pacific War. Merchant ships (see separate entries of John and Henry Rosen) evacuated expatriate women and children from Rabaul, and in early January 1942 the Japanese commenced bombing New Britain. As the bombing increased in intensity, by 22 January 1942 Lark Force began to retreat from Rabaul, unable to hold the garrison and destroying its airstrips before the massive Japanese South Seas Force - comprising some 30 navy ships, aircraft, and nine troop transports - landed. Further south, Lance Sergeant Keith ‘Bluey’ Levy managed to escape with 150 RAAF and Army personnel in three seaplanes.

That night, the six Australian Army nurses and orderlies evacuated their 80 patients from 2/10 AGH to the Mission Station at Kokopo. The next day, the initial Japanese landing force of 5,000 men grew to 17,000 by midday, overwhelming the defenders. Colonel Scanlan gave the order: “every man for himself” and the Australians withdrew. Small parties of soldiers and civilians fanned out over New Britain to seek escape routes through the rugged terrain and dense jungle.

One of the Australian nurses, Sister Johnston, later recalled that, after they returned to the hospital at Kokopo on the morning of 23 January: “we found that our two Medical Officers and most of the Orderlies had gone. They just left us, all except two Orderlies who volunteered to stay behind and help." It seems that Private Albert Fernandez was one of those who remained and then surrendered there, as: “All of the Orderlies [who left] were executed by the Japanese. The men were wearing Red Cross armbands, but their captors ignored these. The Orderlies were massacred at Tol Plantation.” There, on 4 February 1942, the Japanese massacred 160 captive Australians, including Lance Corporal Leslie Pearlman (see his separate entry).

Having battled malaria, dysentery, tropical ulcers, leeches, exhaustion, malnutrition and crocodile-infested rivers, while also enduring heat, torrential rain and electrical storms, over the following few months more than 300 soldiers and civilians escaped on small boats. The first-hand accounts of Lieutenant David Selby and Signalman Issy Weingott are given in Mark Dapin’s Jewish Anzacs. Another 43 men died trying to escape New Britain during this period, including Captain Herbert Silverman, who was executed by the Japanese when they refused to believe he was a doctor (see separate entry).

Captured on 23 January, Private Albert Fernandez was amongst the first of the hundreds of the remaining soldiers who were interned in Rabaul as a Prisoner of War (POW), including Private Harry Bernstein. They laboured for five months in primitive conditions, starved of food and suffering brutalities, indignities, and even bombardment by the RAAF. Then, on 22 June 1942, the Japanese loaded 845 POWs and 208 civilians - half-starved and ill - onto the MV Montevideo Maru. She sailed for the island of Hainan unescorted and was not marked as a POW carrier. On 1 July, off the Philippines, the submarine USS Sturgeon pursued then attacked the Montevideo Maru, mistakenly believing her to be a Japanese troopship. Struck by two torpedoes, she sank in eleven minutes. 1,053 civilian internees and POWs, including Privates Fernandez and Bernstein, plus 88 Japanese crew died, while 18 crew survived.

This catastrophic event was the worst maritime disaster in Australian history and the greatest single loss of Australian lives in peace or war, the details of which were not fully revealed to the public until after the war. In 2003 an eyewitness, Montevideo Maru crewman Yosiaki Yamaji vividly recalled hearing the "death cries" of trapped Australians going down with the ship, and seeing other POWs: “holding pieces of wood and using bigger pieces as rafts. Some were singing, and some had their heads down, silent. I was particularly impressed when they began singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as a tribute to their dead colleagues. Watching that, I learnt that Australians have big hearts.”

Taken to Japan later in 1942, the six Army nurses along with 51 other officer POWs returned to Australia after the war. Similarly, the fate of the missing POWs from Lark Force remained unknown until October 1945, when their next of kin were advised: “For official purposes presumed dead on 1 July 1942.”

43-year-old Private Albert Fernandez’s name is on the Rabaul Memorial (Bita Paka) War Cemetery, New Britain PNG, and also on the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial at Ballarat, Victoria. Nathan and Albert Fernandez were one of three pairs of Jewish brothers who Died on Service in WWI and WWII, of a total of fifteen pairs of brothers named on the Roll of Honour at the Australian Jewish War Memorial, Canberra.

Of the total Lark Force of 1,483, tragically 1,093 men did not return to Australia alive, including four of its eight Jewish soldiers. Although January 1942 marked the first Japanese attack on Australian territory - one month before their bombing of Darwin - few Australians know about the fall of Rabaul, the terrible murders and sinking of the Montevideo Maru, or this critical time in our history.

Albert Fernandez was born in Sydney on 4 August 1898 to Matilda (née Isaacs) and Ralph Fernandez. Their elder son, Nathan, was born in 1896, and it appears that Ralph continued to have a few brushes with the law. The family moved between Manly, Surry Hills and Seven Hills, where the boys attended the Meadows Public School. Nathan enlisted in the 1st AIF as Private John Fernandez in 1915, by which time Ralph had moved to South Africa and divorced Matilda. After enduring a fire at her Manly residence in 1916, the following year brought more trouble, when Matilda lost an Appeal against her conviction of assault against another woman, and was fined. Then sadly, she got word that Nathan was Killed in Action with 45Bn at Passchendaele, Belgium, on 13 October 1917 (see separate entry for Private Nathan aka John Fernandez).

It seems that Matilda and young Albert went to Brisbane to be near her brother, Albert Isaacs, but by 1919 they had returned to Sydney, where she was involved in a messy dispute over Probate of a cousin who had committed suicide. Albert was a member of the Manly Athletic Club, and travelled to Rockhampton in 1927 as coach of Sydney’s youngest professional cyclist, Arthur Gray.

Albert and his mother dealt in second-hand clothing from premises in Whistler St, Manly, but their woes returned in 1928, when Albert was involved in a fight whilst defending an accusation that Matilda had mobilised local housewives to protest against the noise emanating at night from George Colvin’s neighbouring tyre re-treading factory. The Sydney Truth report, under the headline, “BANG! Scene of Stoush in 'The Village' MANLY MEN” was somewhat amusing: "There were only two blows, and each was a knock-down," Colvin told the magistrate, Mr. McMahon. "That ought to appeal to the audience at the [Sydney Fight] Stadium," remarked Mr. McMahon, and Colvin agreed that “it was good punching.” Fernandez declared: “It was Colvin who swung the first blow. I wasn't expecting it just at the moment, so stopped it with my right eye.” Mr. McMahon gave a decision worthy of Solomon: "The merits of the affair are suggested by the result. I think it was about even as far as punishment went, although Fernandez might have got a little the worse of it. But I think justice will be best served by dismissing both cases?"

Matilda died in November 1939, shortly after war against Germany was again declared, and Albert rose to Lance Corporal in the Citizens Militia. He was 41 years old, but gave his birth year as 1908, ten years deferred - perhaps for several reasons – when he attested a few months later in April 1940. He enlisted in the Australian Military Forces, the latter meaning he was eligible only to serve in Australia and its territories. With no immediate family remaining, he gave his uncle Albert Isaacs in Brisbane as Next of Kin. NX19620 Private Albert Fernandez commenced training as a medic with the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) on 3 June at the Sydney Showgrounds and was appointed Acting Corporal after five weeks. One month later, Albert was transferred to 2/10th Field Ambulance at Liverpool, then reverted to Private on 13 September. During November he had a large toe-nail removed at Dubbo District Hospital, possibly whilst training and working there as an orderly.

On 12 March 1941, Albert embarked from Sydney with a detachment of his unit aboard HMT Katoomba, the same ship as three other Jewish soldiers of the 2/22nd Infantry Battalion: Signaller Issacher (Issy) Weingott, Private Harry Bernstein, who would meet a similar fate to Albert, and Private Leslie Pearlman, who suffered an even worse fate (see separate entries of the latter two). They disembarked on 28 March at the town of Rabaul, located at the northern tip of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. At that time it was capital of the Australian-administered Territory of New Guinea, having been captured from the Germans in 1914. Eventually a total of 1485 Australian troops made up Lark Force, an Army formation established under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Scanlan to defend against the threat of invasion by Japan, that eastern part of the Territory with more than 1600 km of coastline. The formation comprised the 2/22nd Infantry Battalion, 1st Independent Company, nurses, smaller anti-aircraft and ambulance units, plus members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. The reality was that Lark Force was ill-equipped to repel an invasion. It had no sea support, poor air cover and little artillery, while the infantry units were lightly armed and possessed few mortars or machine guns. The view of the Australian Chiefs of Staff was that, at best, this force could do no more than briefly delay a Japanese advance.

On 25 April 1941 - Anzac Day - part of the 2/10th Army General Hospital (2/10 AGH) arrived at Rabaul, including six nurses, with the ‘L’ Heavy Battery Rabaul and Rabaul Fortress Signals. The latter two units had at least one Jew in each: Captain Herbert Silverman (a doctor) and Lance Sergeant Keith ‘Bluey’ Joseph Levy. Shortly afterward, Albert was in the hospital sick, and admitted again in June. Perhaps later, while working there as an Orderly, Albert may have met Pte Harry Bernstein, who was admitted with malaria for ten days and Captain Silverman, who was admitted the following January.

In August, ‘L’ Anti-Aircraft Battery, a militia unit, arrived in Rabaul, where they were to complete their training as artillerymen. It was led by Lieutenant David Selby, and included another Jew, Gunner David Bloomfield. Selby later wrote: "’A.A. Bty., Rabaul’ was the flattering title of the two officers and fifty-two other ranks with their two 3-inch guns and obsolete ring-sight telescope, but officially it had been known earlier by the quaint name ‘A.A. & A/M.L.C. Defence Force, Rabaul.’ … A/M.L.C. stood for Anti-Military Landing Craft, and it was this aspect of the title which led to or rather dictated the choice of this unpromising gun position [on Frisbee Ridge], silhouetted as it was against both northern and southern skylines. For Rabaul ... lay in what was virtually a gigantic crater; only from this ridge could the guns command anything like the requisite 360 degrees angle of traverse.”

In December 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and Malaya, launching the Pacific War. Guam was captured two days later by the Japanese South Seas Detachment, under Major General Tomitaro Horii. It was then tasked with capturing Kavieng and Rabaul, as part of ‘Operation R.’ Meanwhile, the MVs Neptuna and Macdhui (see separate entries of John and Henry Rosen) evacuated most of the ex-patriate women and children from Rabaul, including German and Japanese sympathisers - some of whom were supplying information to the Japanese - but not all of them. As part of their subsequent thrust targeting the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies, the Japanese launched air raids from 4 January 1942, culminating on 20 January when over 100 of their aircraft attacked Rabaul in multiple waves. Consequently, ‘L’ Anti-Aircraft Battery, led by Lt David Selby, fired the first shots from Australian territory at an invading enemy and also, by an Australian militia unit. As the bombing increased in intensity, by 22 January 1942 Lark Force began to retreat from Rabaul. The RAAF’s No. 24 Squadron was virtually destroyed, and its three remaining aircraft were withdrawn. Colonel John Scanlan subsequently decided that the Lark Force garrison could no longer fulfil its responsibilities and ordered the cratering of the airfields, destruction of all military facilities and withdrawal from the township of Rabaul.

Sister Lorna ‘Whytie’ Johnston, one of the six Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) nurses at the 2/10 AG Hospital, later recalled that, on that night before the Japanese invasion: "We'd been on duty about 28 hours by the time John May our padre came up to see us. There were a lot of casualties and we were very busy. John told us that somebody had sent a signal to the military in Australia that said: ‘We who are about to die, salute you.’ Apparently, this huge Japanese convoy had been sighted just off the coast of New Britain. We evacuated [the hospital] about 9 o'clock that night out to the Mission Station at Kokopo, joining with the Sisters and the Fathers and the Brothers. We had 80 patients and took them in two or three ambulances and some private cars. We were the last to actually leave Rabaul and the troops had already blown up quite a few roads, so we had to go around the back way. We finally arrived at Kokopo about 2 o'clock in the morning. And straight away we set to work digging slit trenches." It seems that Private Albert Fernandez was one of several Orderlies who were involved in the rapid relocation of the patients.

Having been ordered to leave Rabaul for the village of Toma on 21 January, Lance Sergeant Keith Levy and half of the Fortress Signals were amongst some 150 RAAF and Army personnel, fortunate to be evacuated over the next two days by RAAF seaplanes further south, from the coastal villages of Sum Sum and Tol. Unable to be accommodated on the last, overloaded aircraft, his CO Captain Denny gamely set off from Tol in a commandeered boat for the Trobriand Islands. From there, after several adventurous voyages, the small party reached Queensland on 9 March – but that was not the last time that Tol would be heard of.

At midnight on 22-23 January, the Japanese South Seas Force approached Rabaul: a massive fleet of twelve destroyers, eight cruisers, nine submarines, two aircraft carriers with 171 fighter and bomber aircraft and nine troop transports. The transport ships launched landing barges, each holding between 50 and 100 men, at six points around Simpson Harbour. The force of around 5,000 Japanese troops, mainly from the 144th Infantry Regiment, was commanded by Colonel Masao Kusunose. At 1:00 am landing craft could be seen heading towards Matupit Island. “The fighting was effectively over within a few hours,” said Australian historian, Emeritus Professor Hank Nelson. “Probably less than 100 Japanese and Australians died in battle. The Australians were too few to oppose most landings, they were quickly divided, communications between companies and headquarters were lost early. Those Australians who fought stubbornly were bypassed and naval and air-power directed against them.”

It was daylight before the trenches at Kokopo were completed, and the nurses looked down at the harbour. "We couldn't believe our eyes," remarked Sister Johnston at the size of the Japanese force: “Our troops had no chance, there was nothing they could do. There were only 1400 of them.” By 8:00 am the main body of the invasion force was mopping-up and Rabaul township was occupied. Soon after 9:00 am, Lark Force headquarters received reports that the Japanese were coming “in their thousands” and could not be held. At about 11:00 am, Scanlan gave the order: “every man for himself.” No further defence was feasible. Australian forces withdrew and broke into small parties. Concurrently, a Japanese float plane dropped leaflets, with General Horii’s proclamation:
‘To the Officers and Soldiers of this Island!
SURRENDER AT ONCE!
And we will guarantee your life, treating you as war prisoners. Those who RESIST US WILL BE KILLED ONE AND ALL. Consider seriously, you can find neither food nor way of escape in this island and you will only die of hunger unless you surrender.
January 23rd, 1942.
Japanese Commander-in-Chief.’

Meanwhile, the small group of nurses was busy at the native hospital, Kokopo (see map in Image 4), where they had taken their patients. Sister Johnston continued: “When we returned to the hospital [from breakfast at the Mission Station], we found that our two Medical Officers and most of the Orderlies had gone. They just left us, all excepting two Orderlies who volunteered to stay behind and help." It seems that Private Albert Fernandez was one of those Orderlies that remained, because: “All of the Orderlies [who left] were executed by the Japanese. The men were wearing Red Cross armbands, but their captors ignored these. The Orderlies were [amongst those later] massacred at Tol Plantation.” Surrender was inevitable. There was nothing that could be done to resist the overwhelming power of the Japanese. The six army nurses had now been joined in the Catholic mission compound by seven civilian nurses from Namanula Hospital plus two Methodist mission nurses. There was one elderly civilian doctor with them and the two Orderlies. The Padre, John May, stayed behind with the nurses. "He was absolutely marvellous," Lorna recalled, "He was given the option to be evacuated in December but said he'd stay behind." He and Matron Kay Parker were the two Australians who met the Japanese on the beach to surrender, and thence Pte Albert Fernandez was one of the first Lark Force soldiers captured: at Kokopo, on the morning of 23 January 1942. At 11:30am the Japanese naval force moved up the harbour in line. By noon, the Gazelle Peninsula was in the hands of the invading force, that had grown to some 17,000. Naval combat troops captured Vunakanau airfield at 1:10 pm and the invasion of Rabaul was complete.

The next day the Japanese, believing they had silenced all of the Australian batteries, performed a victory parade of heavy bombers, dive bombers and fighters. Lt. Selby and his men opened fire with their two anti-aircraft guns, shooting down a Japanese bomber, but having comprehensively given away their new position, there was no question of remaining there. They destroyed their guns to save them from falling into enemy hands and, refusing to surrender to the Japanese, headed for the jungle. Together with others of Lark Force, many men tried to escape to the north and south coasts of New Britain, struggling through unknown country without maps, medicines and stores. Some were also driven by rumours that the RAAF would return to Wide Bay and rescue them too. With no provision for the withdrawal, the Australian soldiers and civilians fanned out looking for escape routes through the most rugged terrain imaginable. Some endured an epic trek through dense jungle – battling malaria, dysentery, tropical ulcers, leeches, exhaustion, malnutrition and crocodile-infested rivers, while enduring heat, torrential rain and electrical storms – to eventually reach coastal areas where they awaited rescue.

On 4 February, 160 Australians were massacred by the Japanese south of the town at Tol, including Lance Corporal Leslie Pearlman (see his separate entry). Six men survived the Tol massacre and with the help of local natives were able to make contact with the 150 others from Rabaul, who had evaded the Japanese and gathered around Palmalmal Plantation. On 12 April 1942, this group was evacuated from there on HMAS Laurabada. Meanwhile Darwin and other northern Australian towns had been bombed by the Japanese. More than 300 people eventually escaped from New Britain by boat to Australia over these months, including Gunner David Bloomfield, Lieutenant David Selby and Signaller Issacher Weingott. The first-hand accounts of the latter two are powerfully retold in Mark Dapin’s Jewish Anzacs. Another 43 men died trying to escape New Britain during this period, including Captain Silverman (see his separate entry), a doctor who was executed by the Japanese.

Amongst the remainder that became POWs (Prisoners of War) were Private Albert Fernandez and Private Harry Bernstein (see his separate entry), who had been captured at Toma on 27 January. After the invasion, most civilians gathered around Rabaul where the Japanese forces set up a camp for the POWs and civilian internees, except for the nurses, who were allowed to stay at the German-led mission at Kokopo. Hundreds of men remaining on New Britain and New Ireland were taken into captivity over the ensuing months. They gave themselves up in small batches or eventually wended their way back to Rabaul, to be interned as POWs. Those soldiers who disregarded General Horii’s decree and were captured after fighting rather than immediately surrendering, were simply murdered. In March, during an air raid on Port Moresby, the Japanese dropped a bundle of hand-written messages from some of the military prisoners of war and civilian internees. They were allowed only a few words, so most letters were pitifully short: “Dearest this is just a line to let you know that I am a prisoner of war in the Japanese [censored] at Rabaul. I am well and uninjured and am very well treated. Love to my little one.” It was enough to give families, friends and comrades hope that the men and women at Rabaul were safe. But nothing more would be heard of their fate until after the war.

The POWs and civilians endured five months of imprisonment under primitive conditions, labouring for food to stay alive and being subjected to brutalities and indignities. They also came under regular bombardment by the RAAF while at forced labour in the Blanche Bay area and in the unmarked compound. At the end of May, the Japanese Army handed the POW camp over to the Navy, in preparation for drill thought to be for the Japanese invasion of mainland New Guinea. In June and July the naval authorities made two attempts to transfer the prisoners to Japan.

At about 4:30 am on 22 June 1942, Japanese marines and guards roused the first group of male soldiers and civilians, and organised them into parties of 50. Some 60 Australian officers and a dozen or so civilian women were retained in the camp. It was learnt from one of the guards that the first transfer was planned to the Japanese-occupied island of Hainan, off the coast of China. Half-starved and ill, Albert Fernandez, Harry Bernstein and hundreds of other men marched from the compound at 9:00 am, “with a smile and a cheery farewell for those remaining; the stronger supporting the weaker, arm in arm as they boarded the ship.” Historically thought to include 853 POWs and 200 civilian internees left that day on the MV Montevideo Maru, a requisitioned cargo and passenger vessel of 7,270 Tons. Constructed in Nagasaki in 1926, she was used during WWII by the Imperial Japanese Navy as an auxiliary vessel transporting troops and provisions throughout South East Asia. As a part of the Kure Naval District, the vessel had participated in landings at Makassar in the Netherlands East Indies. After operating in the Japanese islands, the Montevideo Maru returned to Java before sailing for New Britain. But when she departed there, she was not marked as a POW carrier and sailed for Hainan Island unescorted, keeping to the east of the Philippines in an effort to avoid Allied submarines.

After completing three patrols from December 1941 to May 1942, the USA submarine USS Sturgeon was refitted at Fremantle, W.A., and then returned to sea on 5 June to patrol an area north of Manila, Philippines. She sighted the Montevideo Maru off the Philippine island of Luzon on 30 June, eight days into the freighter’s voyage. Believing it to be a Japanese troopship, LT CMDR Wright pursued her, but was unable to fire as the target was travelling too fast. However, the Montevideo Maru slowed towards midnight - according to crewman Yosiaki Yamaji, it was to rendezvous with an escort of two destroyers. So then, in the South China Sea off Luzon, the Sturgeon again spotted the Montevideo Maru. For approximately four hours the submarine manoeuvred into a position to fire its four stern torpedoes. The Sturgeon’s log of 1 July 1942 records an impact at 2:29 am, approximately 100 feet (30 metres) aft of the funnel. Minutes later, Jack Atkinson was one of several Sturgeon crew members invited to inspect the damage through the submarine's periscope. ''Captain let us come up and see this one that we hit. I had a look … and we thought it was a troop ship … We saw people jumping over the sides,'' he recalled around 70 years later at age 93, fighting back tears. ''I'm so sorry that it happened. But we didn't know about it. So I can't say anything else. It was just a terrible thing.''

Survivors from the Montevideo Maru’s Japanese crew reported two torpedoes striking the vessel followed by an explosion in the oil tank in the aft hold and that she sank by the stern in as little as eleven minutes from the impact. Although the Japanese crew were ordered to abandon ship, it does not appear they made any attempt to assist their captives to do likewise, resulting in the deaths of all prisoners and internees on board. The ship’s lifeboats were launched but all capsized and one suffered severe damage. It is believed that 1140 (including 88 Japanese crew) were killed while 18 crew survived. Some of the Japanese, including the ship's captain made it to the Philippines but most of them, including the captain, were killed by local guerrillas. Private Albert Fernandez, aged 43, and Private Harry Bernstein (see separate entry) died in this terrible mistake, the worst maritime disaster in Australian history and also the greatest single loss of Australian lives in peace or war.

Yosiaki Yamaji’s eyewitness account is the only one to ever emerge: by October 2003, he was the sole remaining survivor from the Montevideo Maru’s crew. Even after 61 years, he vividly recalled how he heard the "death cries" of trapped Australians going down with the ship and described the spectacle: ''We went back to the place where the ship sank to pick up Japanese crew members. There were more POWs in the water than crew members. The POWs were holding pieces of wood and using bigger pieces as rafts. They were in groups of 20 to 30 people, probably 100 people in all. Some were singing, and some had their heads down, silent. I was particularly impressed when they began singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as a tribute to their dead colleagues. Watching that, I learnt that Australians have big hearts.”

In July, a second group of about 60 Australian officers, including Colonel Scanlan, and 18 women were shipped from Rabaul to Japan on the Naruto Maru. The Japanese made Rabaul a South Pacific fortress from which they launched the Kokoda and Buna campaigns among many others, and the naval air Battles of Midway and Coral Sea. Up to 300,000 Japanese were garrisoned there from 1942 to 1945 and five airfields hosted 300 bombers and fighters. In November 1944, the Australian military returned to New Britain, relieving USA forces that had landed eleven months earlier, and then contained the main Japanese forces around Rabaul until the surrender in August 1945. There were still some 69,000 Japanese troops there, and it took another two years to repatriate them all.

Although the sinking of the POW transport ship was acknowledged in a letter from the Japanese Navy, dated 6 September 1943, as a result of enquiries by the Australian Government, the deaths of the men on the Montevideo Maru were not fully revealed to the public until after the end of the war. Most of the second group of POWs who were transported to Japan, including the six army nurses, survived the cruelty, cold and deprivations of their captivity and returned to Australia after the war. Small pieces of information had come from wartime sources such as New Guineans who had reached safety and from captured Japanese personnel and, after hostilities had ended, Japanese and surviving civilians in Rabaul, and also the POW officers who had returned from Japan. In September 1945, the Australian authorities sent Australian Army officer Major Harold S. Williams, a pre-war resident of Japan, to Tokyo as a liaison officer with No. 1 Australian Prisoners of War Contact and Enquiry Unit to investigate this and other POW matters. Williams received access to Japanese files which showed that the Montevideo Maru had been carrying Australian prisoners when it was sunk, and included a mimeographed 48-page nominal list in Katakana (Japanese phonetic script) of personnel on board. Nevertheless, the Australian Government chose not to hold a post-war enquiry.

After three and a half years of hearing nothing regarding the missing POWs of Lark Force, and two months after war’s end, their Next of Kin were eventually advised of their fate in October 1945. In the same month, Private Harry Bernstein’s and Private Albert Fernandez’s service records were imprinted: “For official purposes presumed dead on 1 July 1942 (on Montevideo Maru).” Of the total Lark Force of 1485, it was revealed that 1093 men did not return to Australia alive. Neither did four of the eight Jewish Australian soldiers, known to be on Rabaul, return: Captain Herbert Silverman of ‘L’ Heavy Battery, Private Harry Bernstein and Lance Corporal Leslie Pearlman of 2/22nd Battalion, and Private Albert Fernandez of 2/10th Field Ambulance. The 2/22nd was never re-raised.

As he has no known grave, Private Albert Fernandez’s name is engraved on Panel 31 of the Rabaul Memorial in Bita Paka War Cemetery, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The memorial commemorates more than 1,229 members of the Australian Army (including personnel of the New Guinea and Papuan local forces and constabulary) and RAAF who lost their lives in the area or the sinking of the Montevideo Maru in 1942, and from November 1944 to August 1945, and who have no known grave. The memorial was unveiled in October 1953 by Field Marshal Sir William Slim, Governor-General of Australia. Albert’s name is also inscribed on the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial at Ballarat, Victoria.

Nathan and Albert Fernandez are one of three pairs of Jewish brothers who Died on Service in WWI and WWII - of a total of fifteen pairs of brothers. Now, incredibly, on the Roll of Honour at the Australian Jewish War Memorial, Canberra, two of those pairs of siblings are together: Nathan Fernandez is inscribed adjacent to Gordon Fink in WWI Army - and their younger brothers, Albert and Thorold, are also inscribed adjacent to each other in WWII Army.

POSTSCRIPT

In a curious twist, it seems that George E. Colvin, whom Albert Fernandez had physically fought in 1928, was likely the same George Edward Colvin (1903-1975), company manager, community worker and army officer, who rose to Lieutenant Colonel and command of the 2/13th Battalion at El Alamein, PNG and then Brunei, earning a DSO and Bar.

In her book, A Very Long War, Margaret Reeson quotes an Australian officer who escaped from Rabaul as saying “the abandonment of the European males and the Chinese population was scandalous.” But events had moved too quickly, and the Australian Government and the Rabaul Administration simply ran out of time. Only four of the hundreds of European civilians who remained in Rabaul were alive at the end of the war. In addition more than 150 civilians were liberated from a camp at Ramale in the Kokopo area: nearly all were members of the Sacred Heart Mission including many nuns. Nobody appears to have been aware that the six Army nurses had been taken to Japan. They were found by accident, when General MacArthur's troops were on their march into Tokyo following the surrender in August 1945, and returned safely to Australia.

The USS Sturgeon, in her eleventh and final active patrol, on 29 June 1944 south of Japan, fired four torpedoes at the 7,089-ton troopship Toyama Maru, sending her up in flames and to the bottom with 5,400 Japanese soldiers and sailors. That sinking - one of the worst maritime disasters in history - had a sizeable influence on the battle for Okinawa, as the ship was carrying 6,000 troops of the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade that were on their way to the Island.

The Japanese attack on Rabaul of 23 January 1942 is regarded as their only entirely successful operation in the South Pacific, and the fall of the town, capital of an Australian Territory, was arguably the beginning of our country’s bleakest year of the war. "The battle for Australia has commenced," the Acting Prime Minister and Minister for the Army, Frank Forde, told the nation during an emergency national broadcast the day after the invasion of Rabaul. There have been national commemorations for the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin. But the fall of Rabaul has been marked only by a few quiet ceremonies, attended mostly by families. Part of the reason this national disaster has never been part of the nation's story seems to be that there were relatively few survivors, and many of them remained so traumatised by what happened that they could hardly talk about it.

The number of Australians who subsequently died as a result of the fall of Rabaul and Kavieng in January 1942 is more than four times the number of victims in the first bombing raid of Darwin, which occurred nearly one month later, and double those who died in Vietnam. Yet, most Australians know nothing about the first Japanese attack on Australian territory, the terrible murders, the tragedy of the Montevideo Maru or this critical time in our history.

Only seven men of the Rabaul ‘L’ Anti-aircraft Battery returned to their homeland. After the war, David Selby rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and in 1956, wrote Hell and High Fever. In 2001 David Bloomfield published Rabaul Diary: escaping captivity in 1942 and was interviewed in 2004 by UNSW Canberra for the Australians at War Film Archive.

At the unveiling of a plaque at Subic Bay on 1 July 2009 to honour the men of the Montevideo Maru, Andrea Williams, grand-daughter of a Rabaul civilian who perished, proclaimed: “Imagine the shock when, as war ended and the months still passed with no news, the grim realisation of the terrible tragedy unfolded. Whilst other families celebrated, hope turned into horror and, eventually, overwhelming sadness. Telegrams confirmed that over 1000 troops and civilians from Rabaul had disappeared with the Montevideo Maru. Questions were asked but not satisfactorily answered.”

In July 2010, after decades of lobbying by relatives and others of the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Society, the Australian Government officially recognised:
- gratitude of the Australian nation to the military personnel and civilians in Rabaul and the New Guinea Islands for their services in the defence of Australia during World War II;
- regret and sorrow for the sacrifices that were made in the defence of Rabaul and the New Guinea Islands after the invasion of 23 January 1942 and in the subsequent sinking of the Montevideo Maru on 1 July 1942;
- condolences to the relatives of the people who died in this conflict;
- thanks to the relatives for their forbearance and efforts in ensuring that the nation remembers the sacrifices made.

On 1 July 2012, the Governor-General Ms Quentin Bryce, unveiled the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru memorial in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra (Image 12). At the time, the Japanese handed thousands of POW documents, including the ship’s manifest, to the Australian government and Gillian Nikakis, whose father was on the ill-fated “hell-ship”, proclaimed:
“These young men gave their lives to fight for their country and protect their families. Grandchildren still feel the sadness of their parents’ and grandparents’ loss. I question why anyone would want to go to war if they know that sacrificing their life for their country will not matter to anyone but their family.
If men are sent to fight an unwinnable battle with obsolete weapons and we abandon them and not even mention them in our history books, what sort of message does this give Australians?
Knowing soldiers are valued and honoured from previous battles must also help tremendously with troop morale, knowing that at least their own sacrifice will be honoured if they die.”

Another commentator concluded: “Some solace to the relatives and friends of the Montevideo Maru victims may be gained from their fate, for if they had survived the sinking, they would have endured 3½ years of sheer misery on Hainan Island. Indeed, they would have suffered unbelievable treatment as did those 263 POWs of Gull Force who had been transported from Ambon, Indonesia, and had suffered torture, beatings, near-starvation, disease (including beri-beri) while always slaving. Only 191 (72%) of the 263 prisoners from Ambon were still barely alive when the war ended, some even dying in a Morotai hospital on the way home.”
AFTERWORD

Australian War Crimes Trials

Alleged Japanese war criminals faced three levels of trials after the end of WWII:
A Class trials (conspiracy to wage and start war).
B Class trials (violations of the laws and customs of war).
C Class trials (crimes against humanity).

Australian B and C Class trials were conducted by military courts under the Australian War Crimes Act 1945 at Morotai, Wewak, Labuan, Rabaul, Darwin, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manus Island: “In all, Australia conducted nearly three hundred trials, in which 924 Japanese servicemen were accused of war crimes. Of these, 644 were convicted and 148 were sentenced to death, although 11 had their sentences commuted.” See: https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au

Thus, 137 Japanese war criminals were executed by military firing squads or by hanging.

Australia maintained a prison for Japanese prisoners on Manus Island, north of New Guinea, pending returning them to Japan to complete their sentences in the early 1950s.