From Changi to Vietnam and the Battle for Australia, Australia's remembered military history is full of myths.
Military historian Joan Beaumont says the kind of work done on the railway was heavily dependent on a prisoner's rank.
She says often the Australian command contradicted the mateship ideal entirely, with inter-prisoner relations devolving into chaos and cruelty — as was the case in prisons on Hainan and Ambon. On Ambon, which eventually fell under the control of a sadistic Japanese camp commander, the death rate was at least 75 per cent.
Dr Dapin believes that the mateship myth, constructed soon after the war, came from prisoners desperate to create meaning from their horrific POW experience.
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