The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (QX10090) Gunner William Muir, 2/10th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Charis May, the story for this day was on (QX10090) Gunner William Muir, 2/10th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, Second World War.

QX10090 Gunner William Muir, 2/10th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery
DOD 1 May 1945
Photograph: P06537.001

Story delivered 16 November 2014

Today we remember and pay tribute to Gunner William Muir.

Born in Edinburgh on 8 September 1912, William Muir – known as Jimmie – was the son of William and Janet Muir. By the 1920s, having migrated to Australia, the family settled in Toowoomba, Queensland.

Before the war, Muir worked as a station hand and did a variety of work on rural properties. In 1939 both parents passed away within just a few months of each other.

Muir enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 17 June 1940. Posted to the 8th Division’s 2/10th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery, Muir embarked for Singapore in February 1941 aboard the famous ocean-liner-turned-troop-transport Queen Mary.

Following Japan’s entry into the war the 2/10th Field Regiment fought to defend the Malayan peninsula. However, after weeks of fierce fighting, Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and Muir became one of 45,000 Australian and British troops captured in the surrender.

Muir spent his first year as a prisoner of war at Selarang Barracks in the large camp at Changi. In early 1943 Muir was drafted into “D Force”, which left Changi for Thailand in March and joined a large workforce of slave labourers constructing the Burma–Thailand Railway.

Following the railway’s completion, the remnants of D Force returned to Singapore at the end of June 1944. The next month Muir embarked for Japan with over 1,000 other prisoners aboard the transport ship Rashin Maru.

Travel by sea was the most dangerous period in the lives of prisoners of war. Sickness, disease, over-crowding, and the menace of submarines were among the risks faced, and the conditions on board Japanese cargo ships were so awful that prisoners referred to them as “hellships”.

So dilapidated and rusted up was the Rashin Maru that the prisoners dubbed it the “Byoki Maru” – literally, the “sick ship”. Miraculously, after a 70-day voyage in which the ship survived not only a typhoon but also submarine attacks on the convoy in which it travelled, the Rashin Maru arrived in Japan in September.

It was lucky; approximately 19,000 Allied prisoners of war were killed during ocean voyages.

Once in Japan the prisoners worked in a variety of industries, factories, foundries, dockyards, and mines across the country. It was a cold winter and there was little food. Muir was posted to Fukuoka No. 2 Branch Camp, and worked at the Kawanami Shipyard. On 1 May he was hospitalised with croupous pneumonia, and he died shortly afterward.

About 190 Australian prisoners of war died in Japan. Most died of disease – many were seriously ill as a result of working on the railway and the hazardous ocean voyage – but others were killed in industrial accidents, which were common.

Those who died were buried in the British and Commonwealth War Cemetery at Yokohama.

Muir’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with the names of some 40,000 Australians killed in the Second World War. His photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of honour, courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Gunner William Muir, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in service of our nation.

Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section