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AB Francis Joseph McGovern OAM
In 1939 when, aged nineteen, he and a group of mates decided to enlist in the Naval Reservists, describing his service experience simply as “quite good prior to the war”. Initially deployed with the HMAS Westralia for eighteen months, Frank later joined his older brother Vincent, who worked in the engine rooms on the HMAS Perth. The ships were regularly tasked with convoy and patrol duties in the Pacific. In February 1942, Perth joined the Allied Fleet defending the Dutch East Indies, (now Indonesia) and saw action in the Battle of the Java Sea on 27th February 1942. HMAS Perth and USS Houston, having survived that battle, were ordered south. Sailing in company, Perth and Houston encountered a large Japanese invasion fleet in the Sunda Strait on the night of 28th February.
Despite an initial engagement, HMAS Perth, vastly outnumbered and with no ammunition remaining, desperately attempted to retreat at full speed. The decision, however, came too late. The first Japanese torpedo to strike Perth tore through the forward engine room. By the third torpedo, the order came to abandon ship. Despite gallant efforts, both Perth and Houston succumbed to superior forces and were sunk shortly after midnight on 1 March. 357 Perth sailors ultimately perished, among them Frank’s brother Vince. 696 men on board the Houston were killed. Frank survived the sinking: I went down aft onto the quarterdeck with some other fellow. Helped put some of the rafts overboard, and the Carley float - large float. The fellow next to me standing by the guardrail, he said, “Well, aren’t you going over?” I said, “Yeah, as soon as I kick these shoes off.” I wish I had’ve kept them on, because the following day on a hot steel deck of a Jap destroyer, it would’ve been handy to have them on. But anyway, I went over the side and into the water. That was it. Floating around, and saw our ship go down. The Houston also went down just shortly after. All survivors were captured by the Japs over the next few days. Where we ended up that night, in a lifeboat, off one of the Jap transporters I saw the name on there when we bailed it out. It was something Maru. So we got into that. We thought, ‘Well, this is pretty good. We’ll start rowing for the shore.’ But the current there was about a five-knot current and we were exhausted after two days of action stations. A Jap destroyer on the other side of the strait doing patrol work headed towards us mid-morning. As it leered, the skipper, who spoke in English, ordered us to stop. We said, “Er, what are we going to do? Oh, bugger it. We’ll keep going.” We weren’t making that much headway towards Java. The Jap destroyer moved in closer. Again, it ordered us to stop. This time, they trained the for’ard gun on us. Five-inch gun. So, looking down the barrel of a five-inch gun from a few hundred yards away didn’t have much promise or much future, so we stopped. Then, the next order was, “Follow us out,” which we did. They took us on board. We had to discard all our oil-soaked clothing, from the fuel oil. Stinking stuff, it was. We were issued with a piece of cloth about a yard long, foot wide, with a string at the top. Tied that around our waist and put the cloth through our legs and lapped it over. Your lap-lap - that’s what it was. That was our wardrobe for the next six weeks or so. Frank was now a prisoner of war and on his way to Singapore and internment in Changi Prison Camp.
Shortly thereafter he was selected to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway, where he was starved, beaten, demoralised. In the camps and on the railway, diseases ravaged the prisoners and death remained ever-present. Following completion of the railway, Frank was taken to Saigon await transportation to the coal mines and factories of Japan. The US Navy had blockaded the Mekong Delta, so Frank was taken back to Changi from where he boarded the Japanese freighter, Rakuyō Maru, in September 1944, one of two ships carrying about 2,200 British and Australian POWs destined for Japan. For five days, he endured stifling heat, deprived of clean air, with barely enough room to sit, and was given a mere half a cup of water each day. Dysentery soon spread among the cramped prisoners. In the early morning hours of September 12, 1944, Rakuyō Maru, along with the other prisoner transport ship, were struck by American torpedoes. “We were torpedoed going up to Japan by an American submarine. It was an unmarked ship so the submariners didn’t know there were POWs on board.” In one of Australia’s worst maritime disasters, 1,559 POWs perished, of which 543 were Australian. Yet in another extraordinary twist of fate, Frank McGovern managed to survive the attack and locate a lifeboat left behind by the Japanese. For three days he and thirty other predominantly Australian soldiers survived in this lifeboat. “We were in an open boat so we decided to head towards China which was a couple of hundred miles away; we had no food in the boat, very little water.” While some survivors were rescued days later by American submarines, others were reportedly massacred by Japanese machine guns. By the third day, Frank and his crew were ordered at gunpoint to board a Japanese ship. For the second time, Frank McGovern had survived a torpedo attack only to become a prisoner of war. Aboard the frigate, the recovered prisoners were permitted a handful of rice, “which was difficult to eat because we were so dehydrated from being in the open boat.” They endured a nightmarish voyage, with further submarine attacks before they finally reached Japan. Frank remembers vividly the local people who watched as the prisoners were unloaded in Moji, “some of the fellas were sick with malaria and dysentery, we were in full view of the local people and it wasn’t very good. Half of us were half dressed; bits of clothing…some had a small old blanket around us.” That night the prisoners were herded onto a train, “all the shutters down, we weren’t allowed to look out. We headed there on a thirty-hour trip by train up to Yokohama near Tokyo. It was a cold, wet, miserable day.” At Kawasaki camp in Tokyo, the men endured months of arduous work in the factories until, on the night of March 9, 1945, the United States commenced the deadliest air raid in history. It is a night that Frank remembers vividly. Over the course of 48 hours, 2,000 tonnes of incendiary bombs were dropped over just 16 square miles of Tokyo. Frank McGovern again miraculously managed to survive, despite their camp being reduced to ashes. The prisoners were transferred to another camp. Mere weeks later as Frank sat beside his close friend Keith Mills, a bomb was dropped directly onto the camp. “There was a bombing raid a few weeks before the war ended, killed thirty of our fellas, including my mate Keith. He was blown up, I was blown up but I got out of it with a fractured spine...” Frank spent the duration of the night unable to move, surrounded by the dead as the screams of the wounded slowly faded into the night. Finally rescued the following day, he was transported to Shebora hospital, where he remained for days without treatment. He soon noticed that other former prisoners, initially healing from shrapnel wounds to their legs, were suddenly declared dead in the operating theatres. An American working in the hospital warned Frank that Japanese doctors draining the blood of those incapable of walking for the sake of transfusions. With this warning, McGovern, despite his fractured spine, managed to muster the strength to stand and walk at quick pace during an inspection by Japanese guards. This action would again narrowly spare Frank’s life as he was ordered to return to camp. While in the internment camp Frank and his fellow POW’s saw a bright flash in the skies from the direction of Hiroshima which turned out to be one of the two atomic bombs dropped by the Americans that resulted in the unconditional surrender of Japan. Upon hearing of the Japanese surrender and the disappearance of the guards, the POW’s painted PW on the roof of their building. The Americans dropped food and leaflets advising the prisoners to remain where they were until rescued. Over seven decades after liberation, Frank still precisely recalls the date when the war ended in the Pacific: August 15, 1945. Despite the lack of information provided, the mood had noticeably shifted in the camp. Food parcels began to be dropped to the emaciated prisoners. Shortly after buses arrived to transport them to the hospital ship, the USS Benevolence, where the men were examined and treated for approximately two weeks. They were subsequently transferred to Manila where they were debriefed, before boarding a plane to Darwin and another to Sydney. It was a terrific feeling for Frank to return home and be reunited with his parents once more. He visited Keith Mills’ parents to inform them about their son and provide some form of comfort. In return he was gifted a photo of the friend that had endured so much by his side. In the aftermath of the war, it took many years for Frank to adjust to being home, confronted with the many painful memories of his wartime experiences. “I found it difficult at home, as most of our blokes did, because my older brother was on the same ship the Perth and he did not survive it…so that was difficult to come home to.” In the aftermath of his war and POW experiences Frank found it difficult to assimilate with people who had not shared his experiences, so he formed the HMAS Perth and Naval POW’s Association. Members of his Association met on a monthly basis to provide ongoing companionship and support to each other until their numbers had dwindled to so few that Frank amalgamated his Association with the HMAS Perth National Association in 1998. In three and half years, from February 1942 to September 1945, Frank endured two horrendous naval battles, the sinking of two ships, the horrors of being a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma railway, and forced labour in Japan. His experiences and fortitude were unique. However, his lasting legacy is the support that he gave to his fellow former prisoners of war in an era when there was little support for veterans, let alone former prisoners of war. Prisoners of war in the community was a new phenomenon in Australia in the aftermath of World War II. Many of their experiences were not understood by the public and government. Their repatriation was not properly informed or resourced either by previous experience or detailed analysis. There was also at the time, a reluctance by many POWs to discuss their ordeals, residual effects and potential needs with those that hadn’t had a similar experience.
It was left to men, like Frank, who although only in his late 20s, perceived the need for companionship and support among his fellow POW’s. It is testament to Frank’s foresight, compassion and endeavour that his HMAS Perth and Naval POW’s Association continued to provide a unique support network to former POWs, that had not been available elsewhere, for more than 50 years. The HMAS Perth National Association was more than willing to take over the mantle from Frank’s organisation in 1998, while Frank remained an active and valuable contributor to the Association’s support for its World War II veterans, especially the former POWs, Vietnam veterans and those of more recent conflicts. In 2019 he was awarded the Order of Australia for services to veterans and their families. The award recognising Frank’s extensive service with the HMAS Perth Association, the HMAS Perth Prisoner of War Association as well as the Coogee Randwick Clovelly RSL sub-branch.
Sydney Morning Herald - 25 May 2023 The true remarkable element of Frank McGovern’s wartime
experience lies not only in the extraordinary level of
endurance he exhibited in his six and a half years of
service, three and a half of which were spent in Japanese
POW camps, but the number of times in which he narrowly
evaded death. Prime Minister Anthony
Albanese pays tribute to last survivor of HMAS Perth Sources:
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Frank McGovern was born
on 01 October 1919 in Paddington, Sydney, NSW.
He grew up playing cricket and hockey in the back lanes,
attending the Christian Brothers’ School in Edgecliff then
the Marist Brothers High School at Darlinghurst. He
began looking for his first job just after the Great
Depression and started at Winns department store in Oxford
Street. He then worked for the board of water supply
from 1936 until he enlisted just prior to the outbreak of
the Second World War.
