Japanese civil internment camp at Jurong, Singapore

Ernest Buckmaster was born in Hawthorn, Melbourne on July 3 1897. After being rejected for military service due to his physical frailty Buckmaster attended the National Gallery Art School from 1918-24. Ernest Buckmaster was first offered a position as an official war artist on January 20 1945, following the recommendation of the previous Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, James Stuart Macdonald, though he did not accepted his appointment until August 24 1945, following the completion of a commission in New Zealand. Due to his age of 48 and poor health Buckmaster was not enlisted in the army and was accredited as a war correspondent. Despite being commissioned to paint the Japanese surrender, after a lengthy process preparing to be transported to Singapore, Buckmaster, along with a group of correspondents and photographers arrived two days after the surrender ceremony.

This painting shows a general view of the camp into which the Japanese interned the European population of Singapore. A Japanese officer is seen in the left foreground; he is supervising a party of his troops who are being made to clean the place up. In his diary Buckmaster described this painting as one of the most interesting of his war pictures because "it included figures in shadow in dramatic contrast to others in white shirts out in the blazing sun. In the foreground an old green-coloured bus and a grey car subtle in tone in the shade of the tropical trees which made an interesting decorative pattern of foliage masses. The sentry with his rifle grounded and the bayonet pointing to the sky, dominated a small central group of camp followers all standing out clear against the sunlit middle distance where tents and other intersecting paraphernalia merged into the scrub." Buckmaster took great care in the arrangement of the composition, interviening by strategically placing the Japanese soldier in white on an overturned oil drum.