One night, soon after the battle of the
Coral Sea, the US transport ship
Shenandoah
steamed up the Brisbane River to the
wharves at Hamilton. She tied up just before eleven o’clock and at
midnight a fresh shift of wharfies began unloading her cavernous
holds. In the morning, as was customary when a large shipment
arrived from the United States, several American officers arrived
to check the ship’s manifests. One of the officers was Captain Dan
Rivers, anxious to find out how many P-40s aboard the
Shenandoah
were consigned to his unit
at Archerfield. For security reasons, a detail of armed American
soldiers was also present on the dock..
Most of the officers left as soon as they had
confirmed the type and quantities of equipment and materials aboard
the transport. Dan, having nothing better to do, decided to hang
around the wharf a little longer, in the hope of seeing the first
of his unit’s P-40s unloaded. By midday the only officers present
were Dan and a lieutenant commanding the security detail. By now
the wharf was piled high with cargo and heavy transports were
beginning to haul it away.
At one o’clock a loud whistle sounded
signaling the end of the shift which had started at midnight and
the start of new shift. The stevedores made the change-over quickly
and efficiently, almost without the methodical unloading of the
vessel missing a beat. It was just minutes after the new shift
started that gantries began to lower the first of the crates
containing P-40s onto the dock. It was then that Dan and the
lieutenant became aware of a disturbance at the wharf’s main gate.
When they hurried over to the guard’s shed beside the gate to
investigate, they found the dock manager accompanied by a police
sergeant, refusing to allow the stevedores off the wharf unless
they submitted to being searched.
‘You’ll not get off this wharf until we’ve
inspected every man and every lunch box, package and every
container of any kind,’ the wharf manager shouted from outside the
gate. ‘I don’t care if it takes a week.’
A howl of indignation went up from the crowd
of angry wharfies and they rushed the gate in an attempt to push it
down. The sturdy barbed-wire topped gate held and the wharfies
backed off to regroup and mount another charge. As they began to
surge forward again, the police sergeant signaled to a bus parked
nearby. The vehicle rolled forward quickly, pulled up at the gate
and when the door flew open dozens of uniformed policemen poured
out drawing their batons..
‘You men will do exactly as you’re told,’ the
police sergeant shouted out above the clamor. ‘The large scale
theft of materials from ships at this and other wharves will no
longer be tolerated. Now proceed through the gate in single file,
and have all containers in your possession open and ready for
inspection.’
The gate was opened just wide enough to allow
the men to pass through in single file. But none of the wharfies
moved an inch.
The wharf manager’s jaw tightened. ‘As I
said, I don’t care if it takes a week.’
‘I’m Dick Sharkey, I’ll handle this.’
The voice belonged to a short stocky man with
a thick shock of prematurely white hair. Dan and the lieutenant
looked on from inside the guard’s shed as the crowd of wharfies
parted to allow Sharkey through.
‘I’m the Waterside Workers Union
representative on this wharf,’ Sharkey said defiantly when he
reached the gate. He stood with his nose against the wire. ‘And I
don’t care if it takes a month before this vessel gets unloaded,
Sergeant. Because that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t
allow these men to go home immediately, without being treated like
common thieves. I’ll give you exactly two minutes, then I’m
shutting down this wharf until further notice.’
Suddenly reluctant to press the matter, the
police sergeant turned to the dock manager looking for a solution
to the impasse. Grim-faced, the dock manager shook his head. The
policemen, batons at the ready closed ranks defensively.
The lieutenant grabbed the telephone in the
guard shed. After a few moments he was connected with his
commanding officer. He reported the situation on the wharf and
asked for instructions.
‘The brass is mad as hell.’ The lieutenant
said when he put the phone down. ‘They’re sending GIs down to
unload the ship. They said the most senior American officer down
here is to take charge and do whatever is necessary to get every
bit of gear off that ship.’ The lieutenant shrugged. ‘So I guess
that means you, Captain.’
Dan stepped out of the shed and approached
the group of men at the gate. ‘Whatever dispute you men have, it’s
none of the Army’s business,’ he said. ‘Our business is to get on
with this war and we can’t do that without our supplies. So the
Army’s sending troops to unload this ship, all right?’
‘I hope they’re sending heaps,’ Sharkey said
quickly. ‘Because blood will flow, Yank, if they try and do our
work. I’ve got two shifts of wharfies here and they’ve all had lots
of experience in dealing with scabs.’
‘Like I said, Mr Sharkey, there’s a war on,
and you or any of your longshoremen had better not lay a hand on
the soldiers or try and stop them unloading this ship.’ Dan nodded
toward the lieutenant’s detail. ‘I’ve got armed soldiers here. So
don’t push your luck.’
There was a loud murmur of protest from the
wharfies.
Sharkey eyed Dan with contempt. He nodded
toward the unionists.
‘See these men, Yank? Before the Japs came
along they had another war all of their own. It lasted almost ten
years. During the Depression, when there was no work around, the
government and their mates in big business broke the back of our
union and scabs took our jobs when we were too weak to fight back.
These poor bastards and their families were reduced to beggars and
had to pay the government for a license to work. Only there wasn’t
hardly any work. With their rights stripped away and sometimes so
weak from hunger they were ready to drop, these men were forced to
stand here on this dock with those bloody licenses hanging around
their necks like dog collars, while the foreman picked maybe twenty
poor buggers out of four hundred to work a ship. And when things
got a little better and there was a bit more work around, these
blokes risked losing their livelihoods again by refusing to load
pig iron bound for Japan. It was the same pig iron the Japs used to
make the bombs they dropped on our boys in Rabaul, Malaya, Timor,
Darwin and Broome, as well as on you blokes in the Philippines. So
don’t tell me there’s a bloody war on, Yank, because I know that.
And I know perhaps one or two things have been swiped off the ships
by a few wharfies. But that’s no excuse to treat every waterside
worker like a bloody criminal. So I’m telling you, work on that
ship stops now, and your troops will have to shoot us all down
before you can board her.’
Dick Sharkey turned and strode off
across the wharf towards the
Shenandoah
followed by a crowd of cheering
wharfies
.
‘Mr Sharkey,’ Dan shouted out after him. ‘We
can settle this before the troops get here. If you leave the shift
on the job, I’ll see to it that no one harasses your men and they
can walk out of here right now.’
Sharkey walked back to the gate. ‘I’d be
happy to do that, Captain. But you don’t have the authority to let
my men out without being searched. Only the dock manager or the
police can do that.’ Sharkey looked at the men outside the gate.
‘Well?’
Again the police sergeant turned to the wharf
manager for direction.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got my orders, Captain,’
the wharf manager said stiffly. ‘These men have to be
searched.’
‘And I’ve got my orders too, mister,’ Dan
said firmly. ‘And while we’re standing here talking about it, the
Japs are just getting that much closer and the weapons aboard that
ship remain out of the hands of Allied forces.’ He turned to the
officer in charge of the security detail. ‘Lieutenant.’
‘Yes, sir,’
‘Have your men escort these longshoremen off
the docks. Give them any protection they may require. If any one
tries to stand in their way, arrest them.’ Dan looked the police
sergeant directly in the eye. ‘And I mean anyone at all,
Lieutenant. Is that absolutely clear?’
*
It was several weeks before Faith got to
Queensland. The Army took her and the Croker Island children to
Roper Bar where they spent two weeks while the Methodist mission
there made arrangements for the girls to be accepted by an Adelaide
convent and organized transportation across the continent.
Faith accompanied the girls to Adelaide,
travelling the hundred miles from Roper Bar to Mataranka in a
mission truck, then by goods train to Larrimah where the rail line
south from Darwin ended, then by American Army truck to Alice
Springs, and finally by train again across South Australia to
Adelaide.
After she had left her charges in the City of
Churches, Faith spent another two weeks struggling to get to
Brisbane via Melbourne and Sydney, on trains crammed with Allied
soldiers and nurses. She was down to her last two pounds when her
taxi from the railway station pulled up late one evening outside
her aunt and uncle’s home in New Farm in the Queensland
capital.
With the street blacked out because of
air-raid regulations, Faith wasn’t certain she was at the right
house. Any doubts she had were dispelled when, candle in hand, Dick
Sharkey answered her knock on the door.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you recognize me, Uncle Richard?’
Faith said smiling. ‘I’m your niece Faith, from Darwin.’
Sharkey took her hands in his. ‘Oh, my word.
I’d never have recognized you, Faith.’
A door opened and Helen Sharkey, Faith’s
father’s sister came out of the lounge room to greet her. She was a
slim woman wearing an apron with her hair pinned in a tight bun.
Except for her hair, which was now streaked with grey, Faith
thought her aunt looked exactly the same as she had all those years
ago before the family had moved to Darwin. Aunt Helen was followed
by a teenager who Faith took to be her cousin, Mike.
Aunt Helen embraced Faith tightly. ‘Actually
we were half expecting you, dear,’ she said when they drew apart.
‘We got a letter from Joe the other day. He said you and he were
separated up north somewhere and he hoped you had come here.’
Faith was overjoyed. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful
news. Where is he?’
‘We don’t really know that, Faith,’
Aunt Helen replied. ‘All we know is that he’s in the Army and for
some reason they’ll only allow him to say he’s
somewhere in Australia.’
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Koko’s travel arrangements from the Top End
to southern Australia were given a much higher priority than
Faith’s. As soon as his wounds began to heal and he was deemed well
enough to travel, he was taken under close guard to Katherine,
where he was interrogated for twelve hours by high-ranking Army
officers. Then he was flown by an RAAF Hudson transport to a
detention centre in Melbourne where he was questioned almost
continuously for two weeks by Military Intelligence.
Because of the circumstances of Koko’s
capture, the military authorities in Katherine and Melbourne, were
convinced his version of events leading up to his capture was just
a smoke screen to hide his real purpose of spying on Aboriginal
Control Camps in the Top End and reporting his findings to the
enemy. In their thirst for intelligence information, his
interrogators were desperate to find out what part Koko had played
in Japanese plans to coerce Aborigines to fight with their invasion
forces. They also pressed him relentlessly for information about
any proposed Japanese landings.
When Koko protested his innocence and
demanded his rights as an Australian-born, British subject, he was
told he had none. He was told the Army was well aware of long-term
espionage planning by Asiatics and that it was common practice for
Japanese nationals to be born in foreign countries in order to
camouflage their illegitimate activities later on in life. His
inquisitors were quick to point out that a Japanese, unlike a
Caucasian, could live anywhere for a hundred years and appear to
assimilate into a foreign culture, but he would always look and
think like a Japanese, and would always stand ready to answer his
country’s call when the need arose.
Even when Koko told them about Aki, his
captors showed no trace of empathy. When he tried to explain his
involvement with Faith and the children, they told him it was
normal procedure for infiltrators to go to great lengths to gain
the confidence and trust of local people while surreptitiously
gaining intelligence for the enemy. After his interrogation
sessions ended, Koko was told that he was to be sent to an
internment camp. And he was told he should be grateful he was not
being executed, which was the normal and lawful fate of enemy
aliens and traitors.
From Melbourne, Koko was taken by rail and
road to the Hay interment camp in outback New South Wales.
After the weeks of endless
interrogation and confinement in cramped quarters, he found some
solace in the space and amiable company the internment camp
afforded. There were several hundred Japanese in the camp ranging
from small children to very old people. They included pearling
lugger captains and their traditional indentured laborers from
Japan who worked Australia’s northern waters, small shopkeepers and
fishermen from all over the Top End, businessmen resident in
Sydney, Melbourne and other major centers, and a number of Japanese
visitors to Australia who had been unlucky enough to have been in
the country at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.