Shared Experience: Art and War

Japanese dead from suicide raid, Labuan

Donald Friend
Japanese dead from suicide raid, Labuan
oil, pen and ink on canvas
76.4 x 101.8cm
ART22857

These Japanese soldiers died in a suicide raid on the Australian base on Labuan Island. In Friend’s notes about the incident he describes in detail the Japanese arriving in canoes from Borneo. The locals, ordered by the Japanese to prepare food for them, betrayed their presence to the Australians, who “surprised them at their meal and obliterated them”.