Caught the Debt of Honour exhibition at the Perth Museum today, it's all about the Australian V Japanese conflict in East Timor in WW2. It covered the pitched battles that Australia waged against the Japanese for months in the East Timor jungles. It showed how the East Timorese fought alongside our troops and helped them win many battles and it showed how we upped and abandoned them without a blink of an eye. 40,000 of them were slaughtered by the Japanese after the Aussies left.
The old soldiers who fought there were devastated at the way our government of the time simply left them to the mercy (or lack of) of the Japanese, nothing will ever repay the debt owed to those poor people, but many individuals have tried since to repay just a little bit. Somehow through all of that those surviving Timorese fighters still hold the Aussie vets close to their hearts, like sons and fathers was their bond.
A great exhibition which tells a great moving and tragic story, you have till June to catch it and it's free. Def sit through the 15 or minute film at the end too....
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