Linocut used by the Australian Mobile Printing Unit in Bougainville to print leaflets announcing the Japanese surrender

Laminated wooden board with an irregularly shaped piece of red-brown linoleum attached to it by small steel nails. The linoleum has been carved to form a linocut. There are four large Japanese characters running up the centre with a row of smaller characters on each side. Translated they read 'Japan has surrendered. Peace has come. The war is over'. The linoleum and the wooden backing board bear black ink stains from the printing process.

When news of the impending surrender of Japan reached Torokina, Bougainville on 9 August 1945, the major concern of Australian commanders was to ensure that the Japanese forces were immediately notified of the impending peace, to avoid any unnecessary casualties on either side. The most obvious solution was a leaflet drop, but to save lives, the entire design and production job would have to be done immediately. The task was given to WX3033 Sergeant Henry Walker, head of production in Bougainville of the Far Eastern Liaison Office (FELO). With only two hand-operated and one electric Gestetner duplicators at his disposal, Walker had a huge job ahead of him. 'To be effective, the Japanese leaflet had to be bold - and Mobile Print had no Japanese type faces.' Walker had to think quickly. 'At 10:00 pm I took some paper, Indian ink and a brush to the POW compound at Torokina.' Here he woke up his regular Japanese leaflet writer, an unidentified economics student from Tokyo University who had surrendered early in 1944, been sent to Brisbane for 're-education' and returned to Bougainville 'on parole' to assist FELO staff. 'I made him brush the necessary characters on the paper,' relates Walker, who chose a simple message 'Japan has surrendered. Peace has come. The war is over'. Now he had to make a printing block. 'I armed myself with a jack knife and crept into the tent of Captain Waters (a member of the British Solomon Island Protectorate Forces) and carved a piece out of the nice American linoleum he had recently procured from Guadalcanal.' Captain Waters remained blissfully asleep during this operation. 'Transferring the Japanese characters in reverse to the lino through carbon paper, I then carved them out with the jack knife, working under a hurricane lamp, between 1 am and 7:30 am. At 8 o’clock, I had it mounted on a board and, with the paper ready at Mobile Print, (we) worked without stopping until Major Atlee gave his memorable broadcast on the 15th.' In five days, Walker and the Mobile Print staff had churned out 900,000 leaflets. They were packed in bundles of about 300 and loaded aboard any aircraft that could fly – Beaufreighters and Boomerangs, C-47s and Wirraways – and dropped over Japanese lines over the ensuing five days. 'It was gratifying to learn later,' says Walker, 'that from 10:30 am on (10 August) not one Japanese shot was fired on the Island despite the fact that their General, Kanda, did not contact any of his troops until 7:30 am on 16 August.' The linocut is in much the same condition as when it was removed from the flat bed press in 1945, still mounted on its wooden backing board and bearing extensive ink stains from the marathon printing effort.