One of the last remaining survivors of the infamous Thai-Burma Railway has
passed away on the Gold Coast.
Gordon Jamieson, who lived at the Carinity Cedarbrook aged care community
at Mudgeeraba, died at the age of 102.
Gordon was a prisoner of war who laboured on the infamous Thai-Burma
Railway during World War II.
After fighting in the Malayan campaign with the Australian Army, Gordon was
captured by Japanese troops in 1942. He then spent almost four years as a
prisoner of war.
Held in Changi prison, he and other prisoners were forced to work up to 18
hours a day on construction of the Thai-Burma Railway, building
embankments, bridging creeks and digging cuttings with picks and shovels.
“On the completion of a strenuous day at work our boys would commence the
walk back to camp, several kilometres in pouring rain with little or no
footwear,” Gordon wrote.
“Then someone would start to sing a tune… and others would follow, and the
heads would be lifted proudly.
“The workforce had been reduced to one-third strength due to illness and
death, mostly caused from diseases and tropical ulcers resulting in limb
amputations.”
Around 16,000 prisoners of war, of which about 2,800 were Australian, died on
what was dubbed the ‘Death Railway’. Only five of Gordon’s small platoon of
16 soldiers survived the war.
Upon his return to Queensland following the war Gordon operated a café,
worked in a chicken abattoir, owned welding and tractor businesses, and
raised three children with his wife, Shirley.
Gordon also lobbied Australian and Japanese Governments for reparations for
prisoners of war and visited the set of the 2013 film The Railway Man, based
on the Thai-Burma Railway.
“My wartime experiences convinced me of the futility of war. The memories of
my war are not those of victorious battles or ignominious defeat, but of the
human spirit of our Australian soldiers,” Gordon wrote.
