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Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
00:00:06:01 - 00:00:33:01
Speaker 1
Hey, it's Matthew Cudmore and welcome to Story Behind the Stone. Today we're joined by Anoma Pieris and Arthur Tsakonas at the University of Melbourne to talk about the Yokohama War Cemetery and their exhibition Eucalypts of Hodogaya. The exhibition is on display until August 2026 at the landmark Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia. Stick around for this one where we explore how architecture, commemoration and diplomacy came together on the peaceful crowds at Yokohama. Anoma and Arthur
00:00:33:06 - 00:00:36:10
Speaker 1
Thanks for joining the show and to our listeners, thanks for tuning in.
00:00:41:23 - 00:01:01:17
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Story by Behind the Star on the show where we talk service, sacrifice and story. We're joined today all the way from Australia, Arthur and Anoma It's wonderful to chat with you today about your inspiring exhibition at the National Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, and we'd love to learn more about what's going on down there.
00:01:01:19 - 00:01:31:19
Speaker 2
Just to explain what this is about, it's the exhibition that opened on August 15th, the 80th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War or war in the Pacific. And this was really important for Australia because much of our fighting was in this theater in the Southern Pacific. And the focus on Yokohama was important because it was Australian designers who created the cemeteries in these places after the war.
00:01:31:21 - 00:01:42:14
Speaker 2
And this is important for move from the amendment School of Design, because some of the architects who design these cemeteries were from, architects. In fact, I think.
00:01:42:14 - 00:01:57:17
Speaker 1
It's fascinating to think about the links all the way back to the end of the war. We're sitting in 2025. Can you set the stage for us a little bit? The war is ending. What is going on in Australia, what is going on in Japan and what are the different stakeholders at play?
00:01:57:19 - 00:02:21:12
Speaker 3
The War Graves Commission was looking towards the end of the war, about a year out of, before it, and had started to make plans that what would happen when the war does finally end and the the requirement for the number of cemeteries that would be needed throughout the region, and it was quite stretched by that stage because he had a lot of attention to do with Europe and also Southeast Asia.
00:02:21:12 - 00:02:56:23
Speaker 3
So it approached the Australian War Graves Service, which operates under the same command and control structure that the British had approached its commander, Ethel Brown, to set up, an Australian agency, based out of Melbourne, similar to what they had set up previously in Canada and South Africa, to take the responsibility to design and build all these war cemeteries in this Pacific area, which includes New Guinea, includes Borneo and also included, Yokohama in Japan.
00:02:57:01 - 00:03:14:05
Speaker 3
So and that that's to do with the fact that Australia had, had a very strong organization of war Graves Service units that had been prepared and were stationed across Australia and started following the battles as they ended across the Pacific as the island hopping was continuing.
00:03:14:05 - 00:03:25:03
Speaker 1
It's fascinating to think about what was going on in 1945. We're sitting here in 2025, 80 years ago. The War in the Pacific is ending. Who are the players involved and what are they dealing with?
00:03:25:05 - 00:04:09:11
Speaker 2
A year prior to 1945, the War Graves Commission in London had started preparing for the need for all these war cemeteries to be created in the region. Once the fighting had ended, and because they were quite stretched with the commitments they had in Europe and also Southeast Asia, they turned to the Australian War Graves Services and their commander, Brigadier Ethel Brown, to establish an Australian agency that could design and build the cemeteries in our region over here, which includes New Guinea, which includes the South West Pacific, Borneo and also Japan and it was essentially modeled after the same structure that the Canada had.
00:04:09:13 - 00:04:35:21
Speaker 2
South Africa had as these independent agencies, but under the purview of the Imperial War Graves Commission, as it was called then. 1945 rolls. By. The war ends, Australia dispatches a unit of its War Graves service to Japan alongside the American teams that were on the ground to begin the process of recovering, or firstly identifying who had died in the camps, identifying where the remains were.
00:04:35:21 - 00:05:13:22
Speaker 2
A lot of which were cremated and were found being held under the care in temples across Japan, and to collect them and build a whole series of temporary war cemeteries from the north all the way to the south to consolidate the remains. Before any decision was made as to what would be the permanent burial sites. And I guess in a way, this was the time when America made the decision that all its remains would have to be repatriated back home, with the choice of either reimbursing them in Manila or Hawaii, or back to the mainland.
00:05:14:00 - 00:05:34:20
Speaker 2
And Australia had to, as it was responsible for all the Commonwealth war dead. It was under instructions that they must create a permanent site in Japan, and from there they settled on hot air just a few kilometers to the west of of the Yokohama port, and began designing in June 1946.
00:05:34:22 - 00:05:49:02
Speaker 1
We do have a large American audience that listens to this, and there's pretty significant ties between the Americans and Australians leading up to this and how they fought the war. Did you want to just maybe give a little bit of history to that, too, for our American audience?
00:05:49:05 - 00:06:12:00
Speaker 2
Hopefully many of your listeners would know MacArthur was based in in Australia. There was a sizable contingent of troops of U.S. troops that were based out of Melbourne before being moved up to the northern parts of Australia. MacArthur's office ended up in Brisbane, where he conducted a lot of the war that was involved with the island hopping across the archipelago.
00:06:12:01 - 00:06:39:02
Speaker 2
Australian troops effectively would come under the command of the US forces decisions in where they would conduct their war, because they were also fighting alongside in places like New Guinea and some of the islands. And I think this carried on soon after the war ended, because the Australian War Graves Services would have to work with a lot of their American counterparts, not only in those islands but also in mainland Japan.
00:06:39:04 - 00:07:03:12
Speaker 2
And I think in a way, it sort of concludes that early stage of Australia's shift towards an American alliance or an American dependance, where once upon a time it was more focused towards a UK support. And I guess that comes about from the fall of Singapore, where we really felt on our own here, this far away from, from the rest of the world.
00:07:03:14 - 00:07:07:17
Speaker 2
And it was America that was, our immediate allies that was going to support us.
00:07:07:17 - 00:07:19:06
Speaker 1
Thanks for creating that that picture there. Now you're working with the Shrine of Remembrance, and you have an exhibit there. Why don't you explain a little bit about your exhibit?
00:07:19:07 - 00:07:51:11
Speaker 3
When we pitched the idea of the exhibit to the shrine, we wanted to focus on reconciliation. And this was because we felt that 80 years on, to have an anniversary with a, message of victory in the Pacific or defeat of the Japanese was really unnecessary. We needed to focus on reconciliation because the current environment globally called for a real shift in our understanding, away from war and towards peacemaking.
00:07:51:13 - 00:08:32:21
Speaker 3
And in order to do this, we worked with Japanese partners and friends in Japan to gather information, and they were very generous in providing it to us and also working with us in bringing together two sides of the story from Japan and from Australia. And what made it possible, additionally, was the fact that the Anzac Agency, this architectural unit that was based in Melbourne, worked with Japanese architects and contractors and suppliers in creating this cemetery, and because they worked with them, the cemetery is quite unique.
00:08:32:23 - 00:09:11:02
Speaker 3
If you imagine your typical British lawn cemetery, it integrates several nationalities into one large, spectacular sweep of British lawn with headstones. In Hotel Gaia, the Lawn Cemetery is split into different sections, which are for different nationalities and it's embedded in the Japanese hide and reveal garden. And what that means is that you discover the different sections incrementally as you move through a wooded landscape.
00:09:11:02 - 00:09:37:23
Speaker 3
Now, this was possible because they selected a mature parkland with large trees, and they kept everything in place, unlike in many other cemeteries where they flattened the topography in order to create space for cemeteries. These architects kept the undulating hills and worked with the site, and this is what is unique about. Have you had.
00:09:37:23 - 00:09:39:10
Speaker 2
The chance to visit the site?
00:09:39:11 - 00:10:06:06
Speaker 3
Well, yes, we've been several times and we also went to Japan in 2023 to scope our idea of an exhibition, and we also hoping to take the exhibition to Japan in April next year and, hold it in Yokohama at the Yokohama Archives of History Museum. And we worked with this, with people in Japan with this idea, even before we pitched it to the shrine.
00:10:06:06 - 00:10:15:02
Speaker 1
What is the most interesting thing that you've learned about the cemetery or part of the cemetery that is just a really special thing for you.
00:10:15:08 - 00:10:48:06
Speaker 3
When we first went to scope this project, we had already looked at the archival records that were in London and also in Australia, and we had seen the maps and plans that were drawn by the Anzac Agency architects, and we noticed that there were features in it that we had not noticed in the cemetery before. And when we went there, we began to search for these features, and among them was a curved bridge, a suribachi bridge, which is your typical I mean, if you think about Japanese, gardens, you think about those curved arched bridges.
00:10:48:12 - 00:11:13:00
Speaker 3
And there was a pool in the drawings, and these had been introduced by the Australian architects. When we went to search for them, we walked through the cemetery and we went with the groundskeepers, through the undergrowth and through the thicket, and discovered that they had been buried and kind of lost. And this was because they had thought it was a residual feature of the previous park.
00:11:13:03 - 00:12:05:23
Speaker 3
So here you have an interesting contradiction, because the Australians had been influenced by Japanese design and began to integrate Japanese features into the cemetery, and these features included the introduction of different types of stone. Now, typically in cemeteries, there is either 1 or 2 types of stone for the memorial and the headstones, but in the cemetery there are almost nine types of different stones, and the stones are used for particular purposes that are meaningful in Japanese culture, and this is really another element that the Australians work with the Japanese architects to introduce into the cemetery a game that, details like the transom above the records building is part of the funereal architecture you find
00:12:05:23 - 00:12:43:00
Speaker 3
in Japan. And as we began to see these features and then also recognize the Japanese trees and plants that were in the cemetery, as well as the introduction of trees from these other nations as representative features. We noticed the towering eucalypts. So if you think about the eucalyptus tree, it's a kind of unruly tree. It grows very tall and then it sort of goes off in all directions and because of that distinctiveness, everywhere in the cemetery, you see these trees kind of hovering over the cemetery and telling you about the Australian involvement.
00:12:43:00 - 00:12:49:15
Speaker 1
When you're thinking of your exhibit and what you've created with it, what what is your hope? The impact is on the public.
00:12:49:16 - 00:13:19:05
Speaker 3
We hope that in the first place, Yokohama, I would say, is less known to the Australian public because it's not part of the colonial journey. Is that the deed between Australia and the UK, whereas say, Sri Lanka or Singapore are very familiar. Australians would have traveled to these places and those places would have had a level of English that allowed them to navigate the geography and get to the cemeteries.
00:13:19:07 - 00:13:56:22
Speaker 3
Japan was a little more difficult for Australians, and so it was a place that was relatively unknown. The hostilities took some time during the war crimes trials, especially the Tokyo trials. These hostilities continued to simmer in the Australian public, and so there was a reluctance, perhaps, to go to Japan in the same way. And because of this, introducing the cemetery to Australians, familiarizing it, but also familiarizing it to the Japanese audience is important because for them, they see it just as a recreational park, which is a cemetery for foreigners.
00:13:56:22 - 00:14:10:20
Speaker 3
But we want to tell them that Japanese were involved in its creation, and they were advancing this process of reconciliation at a time when the diplomatic relations had not resumed. This is really important for us.
00:14:10:21 - 00:14:14:21
Speaker 1
Over the decades. How have public perspectives changed on the site.
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:46:03
Speaker 3
In terms of how it is used? At the moment, it's usually for anniversaries and kind of diplomatic posturing, really, if you think about it, how are these cemeteries used? And what happens is in many countries and from Sri Lanka. So I can speak to this in Sri Lanka we call it the English cemetery. And really we don't visited, we don't see it as part of our history or our culture, because it's part of a colonial legacy that we view with some animosity.
00:14:46:03 - 00:15:16:05
Speaker 3
I would sing and also we feel it wasn't part of our war. It was part of, you know, something that Britain kind of advanced. And this is the sentiment in many places, the differences I found in some parts of the world, for instance, in northeastern India or the Philippines, is because they have a predominantly Christian or Catholic population who can relate to the symbolism of the cemetery.
00:15:16:11 - 00:15:51:12
Speaker 3
There's a slightly different sentiment, but you can imagine that in a Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu nation, these cemeteries don't have the same resonance. Now, in terms of Yokohama maintaining the cemetery was part of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and so it was something they were compelled to create and maintain because of that. There is an added emphasis on the cemetery in Yokohama, but little kids see it really as a park, a place that you go to, which has a sad history, but it's a history that doesn't affect them.
00:15:51:12 - 00:16:13:16
Speaker 1
I'm trying to picture the relationships that are developing different countries, different individuals, different backgrounds coming together to really make this cemetery happen. From a timeline perspective, it was post 1945. If I recall, is about a five year period. Was it all togetherness? Was it all happy collaboration? Were there any.
00:16:13:16 - 00:16:39:00
Speaker 2
Points of contention? No, I don't think there was any real contention in that sense. I believe the collaboration actually worked quite smoothly, and this has a lot to do with the professionalism of the Japanese architects and contractors. And in a way it's important to actually highlight them, because that'll give you a sense of how professional and how dedicated they were to this project.
00:16:39:00 - 00:17:07:15
Speaker 2
The two Japanese architects, the original Japanese architect was Yoji Kesa Jima, who had studied at one of the prestigious universities in Tokyo, Nihon University and was familiar with the Frank Lloyd Wright use of stone because he actually taught for a while. After graduating at a Frank Lloyd Wright, designed school building, and I believe he found common cause with the Australian architects who similarly were of the same age.
00:17:07:17 - 00:17:34:00
Speaker 2
They all had served in the forces. And, they found some common, connection through architecture, especially modern architecture. The same applies to the Japanese American architect Michael Iwan Naga, who has the most, interesting story raised in, in Washington state. He graduates from the University of Washington, top of his class. He was a contemporary classmate, was, a Quincy Jones.
00:17:34:00 - 00:18:16:18
Speaker 2
The famous Californian architect Iwan Nago is awarded a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects for his, level of design excellence as a student, but is unable to find work in those late 1930s in the US. And I guess part of the discrimination that was happening at the same time. So he like a lot of others, I believe, went to Japan to look for work and began a career there and found himself stuck in Japan when war breaks out and is forcibly conscripted, and he's one of the fortunate ones to have survived the fighting because he was in, I believe, the 18th division that served through Manchuria into the Malaya campaign, and
00:18:16:18 - 00:18:51:04
Speaker 2
then on to Burma, where they were when the surrender came through. Similarly, Michael is introduced to the Australian team through the office of General Douglas MacArthur's Allies Supreme Command. In fact, he's introduced by this very important American missionary, Paul Rush, who was working for MacArthur at the time. And again, Michael collaborates with the Australians, and he gives them insight into a lot of the funereal and cultural and social practices that Japan had when dealing with with the dead.
00:18:51:06 - 00:19:19:19
Speaker 2
And the Australians took this on board and began to create this work very sensitively. The contractor, Bashi Marble, was the preeminent stone contractor in Japan who was appointed to build the cemetery, and few people know this story. The Bashi marble have a lineage through their family that goes back to the seventh century, with one of the original emperors of the Japan state.
00:19:19:21 - 00:19:50:16
Speaker 2
They were the interior stone contractors for Japan's national building, which is their parliament. Before the war broke out. And they came on board and they sensitively built all the structures. And more importantly for us, the descendant who now runs you, Bashi marble, was able to come and help us identify a lot of the stone a few years back and provide us some of the material and a lot of the information to build this story.
00:19:50:18 - 00:20:07:13
Speaker 2
And I believe that from the very beginning we've had, a lot of, wonderful collaboration with our Japanese colleagues and partners over there. And I believe the same, happened with the Australian team back in the 19, the late 1940s, early 1950s as they were building it.
00:20:07:15 - 00:20:36:19
Speaker 3
So one important innovation in this exhibition is there is a bilingual component. So we have the labels, all with QR codes that allows you to read them in Japanese. And the main text is also translated into Japanese. And that's an important aspect of this exhibition as well as once we take it to Japan, we expect the Japanese audience then to have a more Japanese language representation with some English to corroborate it.
00:20:36:20 - 00:20:41:12
Speaker 1
What are the messages of reconciliation you hope people take away from your exhibit?
00:20:41:12 - 00:21:06:17
Speaker 3
So I think, it might escalar I mean, at the larger scale, we really want the public sentiment to turn away from war and towards reconciliation. And that's because we are, you know, disturbed by what is happening today in the world. And then at a more transnational level, it's really because I myself in Sri Lanka, I grew up in Colombo, walking distance from one of these cemeteries.
00:21:06:17 - 00:21:57:14
Speaker 3
And I want to think about the future of these spaces. There are beautiful green oases in rapidly built up cities, and in order for them to continue, they need to become meaningful to local populations. And local populations need to have a stake in what is going on through a shared history of what happened during that period. And I think that shared history has been missing from the way these stories have been represented, and it's only beginning to be talked about, on the one hand, by this work, by beginning to include the African and Indian stories of the war, you must remember 2.5 million Indians served in the Second World War and on the Australian
00:21:57:14 - 00:22:36:23
Speaker 3
side to include indigenous service. So now we are beginning to recognize and identify who among the Australians. But Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service people and also in the Pacific, who would the Pacific Islander service people who were buried in these cemeteries? This is a very important change in our understanding of these cemeteries, and this is where exhibitions play an important part, especially if you can have the exhibitions in both places in Australia and Japan, or in Australia and New Guinea, which is what I'm hoping to do next.
00:22:36:23 - 00:22:58:03
Speaker 1
I'm really glad you spoke to that, because the focus of the work recently on non commemoration is been a very important project in the spirit of not in commemoration or sharing those stories, is there any story that you've come across that it has really touched either of you in the work, that that might be poignant?
00:22:58:03 - 00:23:46:08
Speaker 3
So one of the stories that I've been looking at is also of indigenous service. For example, there are a number of Aboriginal servicemen who are buried at Kranji in Singapore. And one of the stories that we both pursued was of a particular individual whom we traced back to his mission in regional New South Wales, and we went with his grandson, Leslie Knox, to Tracey's story through, you know, why he enlisted his journey to enlist at a time when he was not even regarded as a citizen in Australia and then being sent to Singapore, captured, imprisoned in the infamous Changi prisoner of war camp, and then finally dying there and then his family, not really knowing
00:23:46:08 - 00:24:14:04
Speaker 3
where he is or not being able to visit his grave and the tensions that causes in indigenous communities because it can't bring the remains back to country for the sole release. And it's not my story to tell or to speak to, but these are the kinds of stories that I think, the underlying layer that we still need to explore and understand.
00:24:14:06 - 00:24:41:10
Speaker 3
Because unlike the Americans, because you can't repatriate these remains or at the time that was not the policy it creates in particular cultures, in the family is a real, lasting kind of trauma. And it's sort of something that hasn't really been talked about or written about, and we need to bring it to the surface to understand what we need to do for reparation.
00:24:41:10 - 00:25:03:04
Speaker 1
I appreciate you. Yeah, sharing that. You can imagine from a family's perspective the trauma of losing a loved one, but then having that extra layer of it around those cultural needs too. And I think sharing those stories and like you said, running exhibits and talking about it, that story and sharing, just witnessing is important. And that listening is important.
00:25:03:04 - 00:25:17:09
Speaker 1
This is why I appreciate the work that you're doing and bringing these exhibits to the public. I just I'll turn to you, Arthur, for a second. Did you have, a story or anything in particular that really resonated with you as well?
00:25:17:11 - 00:25:45:07
Speaker 2
One of the stories that jumped out at me when we were looking at Yokohama was the story of the sole female that's buried at Yokohama in the Australian section, Lorraine Gleason, who happened to be a stewardess on the SS Nankin that was captured in the Indian Ocean and brought to Japan, where she was interred. And we found that from that association, they were quite a few people buried at the cemetery from the same ship.
00:25:45:09 - 00:26:23:15
Speaker 2
And it sort of points to the fact that not only were there combatants that are buried in, in Japan, but also civilians. And one notable civilian is a gentleman called Lynn Harrop, who had served in the Second World War. In fact, he had served in the battalions that had followed on through the Normandy campaign in Northeast Europe, and he became a war graves officer who was tasked with recovering the Commonwealth dead on the Thai Burma Railway, before taking up a position as the second supervisor for Yokohama War Cemetery.
00:26:23:15 - 00:26:53:22
Speaker 2
Lynn Harrop had, made Japan his home. He lived there for 50 years and was involved with bringing a lot of notable, dignitaries around the cemetery, but also maintaining it personally, introducing more Japanese plants amongst the plants and trees that were there and keeping an eye on it very carefully over that, that period. So much so that when he passed away in the UK, his remains were brought back to Japan, and he's buried in the postwar section at Yokohama.
00:26:54:00 - 00:27:22:11
Speaker 2
And again, this is one of those stories that that often, gets missed. Another instance is, in the case of Australia, there are a lot of uncles, for example, that are buried in, Yokohama because these were young men who never had a chance to, you know, get married, have a family and have descendants. And through an exhibition such as ours, I discovered one of my own students currently, that I'm teaching.
00:27:22:13 - 00:27:34:00
Speaker 2
His grand uncle is buried in Yokohama. And for them, just to reconnect again with that story, which is otherwise a missing, family member, is a wonderful thing.
00:27:34:05 - 00:27:54:02
Speaker 1
There's actually quite a large postwar section, and we see these in Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites often, but they're not kept in the records of the Commonwealth war graves. So I always have a deep curiosity. Who's buried in those postwar plots? Do you happen to know why this is a larger postwar plot?
00:27:54:02 - 00:28:20:15
Speaker 2
You just have to imagine that the cemetery is being constructed between 1946 to 1951, when it was dedicated in 1950, the Korean War breaks out. Australia also had, well, not just Australia. There was the British Commonwealth Occupation Force that was assisting the Americans in the occupation of Japan, and a lot of its members passed away whilst on duty in Japan.
00:28:20:17 - 00:28:44:09
Speaker 2
But again, there were members who died in the Korean War who were brought back and buried at Yokohama. And the postwar plot was developed for them. So it doesn't come strictly under the Second World War Register of Deaths, which the Commonwealth War Graves Commission ordinarily, maintains. But they are there nevertheless, and they've chosen to bury them in this plot.
00:28:44:11 - 00:29:09:02
Speaker 2
The interesting thing also about this postwar plot, which a lot of people haven't realized, is that it was the original site of what we call a chicken high or a memorial to the lost souls, as they would say in Japan. And it was, built in the 1930s to commemorate the Japanese war dead of the Russian Japanese War and the Sino-Japanese War.
00:29:09:04 - 00:29:37:16
Speaker 2
And they would have annual ceremonies at this site to commemorate their own dead. And it had ashes within this memorial. And one of the policies immediately after the occupation of the country through MacArthur was the demilitarization of ideology across the nation, and part of that was to remove any such structure that represented this militarization. And one of the casualties of that was this monument.
00:29:37:18 - 00:30:07:22
Speaker 2
So you can see this space had a sacred space in the Japanese imagination before it became a cemetery. And the stone that was dismantled from this memorial goes into building part of the the cemetery itself, the the the main cemetery. It was something that was happening across all of Japan. This urgency to demilitarize that ideology that that saw Japan, get involved in the war in the first place, to some extent.
00:30:07:23 - 00:30:31:00
Speaker 2
I am not quite sure whether or not this monument itself was necessary to be demolished because, again, it was a memorial to another nation's dead in previous wars. Do you destroy all such remnants of their past history just because you occupy the country? I don't know, but it's something that happened, and it's something that we should remember for.
00:30:31:00 - 00:30:40:14
Speaker 1
Anybody in the public who's interested in learning more, where did they go? What can they go? And see? Is there websites? Can they go see it in person? What do they need to know?
00:30:40:16 - 00:31:07:00
Speaker 3
So the main website would be the Shrine of Remembrance website, which is Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia. And the name of the exhibition is Eucalypts of Huda Gaya, and that has other material like articles that we have recently published in the media, as well as another podcast and any other related events.
00:31:07:05 - 00:31:35:18
Speaker 2
There was also a video that was developed for the exhibition that includes what's an audio visual portion of the exhibition, which includes lot over a large model of the site. The video itself runs for about seven minutes. It gives a very good account of the history of Yokohama War Cemetery, and I believe that the video has been shared with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who will be promoting it on their social media pages.
00:31:35:18 - 00:32:03:19
Speaker 3
And in the exhibition you will see the drawings, the plans, the sketches that were made by the architects and objects that were collected from the families, the descendants of these architects from all over the world and from archives in the US, in Japan, in London and also in Australia. And some of these objects are really quite remarkable. For example.
00:32:03:21 - 00:32:33:04
Speaker 2
Ellen Robertson's Ellen Robertson was one of the initial architects of the Anzac Agency, and his story is really quite compelling because he was an officer who served in Malaya and was captured at the fall of Singapore and ends up being transported to Japan, where he served his time as a P.O.W. in Japan before being released, and he carries with him on this journey from the beginning of the war, all the way through to his incarceration at the Tsuji prisoner of war camp.
00:32:33:06 - 00:32:56:20
Speaker 2
A suitcase of his artifacts, his Bible, a book that he was given by the Red Cross Association. And also he kept, a collection of sketches and drawings that he taught other prisoners of war about architecture, the history of architecture, and design their homes. And we have all of this collection on display at the exhibition.
00:32:56:20 - 00:33:01:09
Speaker 1
It's going to be on till August 2026 before it moves to Japan. Is that correct?
00:33:01:09 - 00:33:18:17
Speaker 2
It is on for a year at the Victoria Shrine of Remembrance, and we hope to take a traveling component of this exhibition to Japan to open on Anzac Day in 2026, which is April the 25th, a significant day for Australia. It's probably the most, significant national day.
00:33:18:17 - 00:33:30:14
Speaker 1
It's really, really neat to see the impact that you're both having, whether it's in the classroom in Australia or in Japan, and it was just such a thrill to chat with you both. I hope you'll come back. Because I think we'll be talking cemeteries with you again.
00:33:35:16 - 00:33:55:02
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for tuning in. Story. Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Rise Across America Radio Network on iHeartRadio. Audacity and tune in to search for wreath. We air every Thursday at 10 a.m. eastern on the Red Cross Radio Network. Thank you for tuning in.