Service dress trousers : Leading Aircraftman F A M Lees, 77 Squadron RAAF, British Commonwealth Occupation Force

RAAF blue other rank's pattern winter service dress trousers with four button concealed fly with metal slide closure at the waist, a high back, slash pockets in each side seam, a welt pocket over the right rear hip and a small welt change pocket set into the proper right waist. The fit can be adjusted by means of a self fabric tab and metal slide on each side of the waist. Six black plastic buttons are sewn around the inside of the waist for the attachment of braces. The waist and fly are lined with brown linen and dark blue cotton; the pocket bags are of heavy cream cotton twill. All buttons are marked 'WARDROP PTY. LTD. MELBOURNE'. A brown and white woven maker's label sewn inside the back waist reads, 'WARDROP's of MELBOURNE COLLINGWOOD, GEELONG APPROVED MILITARY TAILORS', and is marked in black ink, '9802 24-10-44 A.C.1. LEES'.

Frank Alfred Moorman Lees was born in North Fitzroy, Melbourne on 16 November 1925. He enlisted for service in the RAAF on 6 January 1944. Assigned the service number 146347, Lees trained as an aircraft electrician before being posted to 77 Squadron.

Leading Aircraftman Lees joined his unit on Morotai in April 1945 where he helped maintain the squadron's P-40 Kittyhawk aircraft. He moved with the squadron to Labuan, and then Brunei, before the end of the Second World War in August 1945.

77 Squadron converted to P-51D Mustang fighters before arriving in Japan in March 1946 as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. The squadron was based at Iwakuni, the former Imperial Japanese Naval Air Station north of Hiroshima.

For the next fifteen months Lees was billeted near the small Japanese village of Hofu. He came to love the countryside, and the Japanese families who befriended him, and developed a lifelong interest in Japanese culture. Lees was discharged from the RAAF on 19 June 1947. He returned to Japan a number of times after his service there, created Japanese garden at his Melbourne home, and later learnt to write Haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry.