Chick, Allan Clifford (Corporal, b.1920)

Personal papers of TX3350 Private (later Corporal) Allan Clifford Chick, 2/40 Battalion, prisoner of war (POW) Java and Japan, and British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF). The bulk of the papers are letters (c120) written by Private Chick to his family, especially his mother, between June 1940 and October 1952. They discuss his training (including at bases in the Northern Territory); the importance to him of mail and parcels; daily routines; weather conditions; the work of BCOF; and his marriage to a Japanese nurse in 1952. The sequence of letters is abruptly halted with Private Chick's capture on Timor in February 1942 and substituted with six POW cards until his release from the Fukuoka POW Camp, Nagasaki, Japan, after the atomic bomb in August 1945. Also from this period are a number of official and personal letters and telegrams (20) written to his mother notifying her of details of Private Chick's location as a POW, including the text of a radio message sent by him via the Japanese authorities. Other components of the collection include letters to Chick from his family, service documents, printed newsletters giving POW information and background newspaper cuttings and extracts from books relating to his POW experience in Japan. There is also a 1949 civilian driver's permit autographed by Gladys Moncrieff and her pianist.