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00:00Princess Pia has a big place in my imagination because my grandmother was here the day one of
00:18the ships came in at the end of World War Two. She was a nurse and the ship she told me about
00:24was carrying survivors of Japanese prisoner of war camps. Many were so frail that she and her
00:32fellow nurse Betsy could carry them off the ship themselves. She'd tell me that as soon as the
00:38ambulance doors were closed her and Betsy would just fall apart, hug each other because she said
00:45Rachel they were still just skin and bones.
00:48With my grandmother's first-hand account and famous drawings created by prisoners of war,
00:58I had an idea of the horror and brutality suffered by our POWs.
01:05But there's something hidden here amongst the nation's war machines that reveals a side of
01:12the story I could never have imagined. Oh wow. It's one of resistance, creativity, love.
01:23Were they risking death? Oh yeah, of course. And the art of survival.
01:32I'm Rachel Griffiths and I believe that when it comes to understanding war,
01:37art is our secret weapon. So in this series, I'm putting this theory to the test. One war and one artwork
01:48at a time. Because while journalists tell us what happened. They left in scenes that are now part of
01:56television's history. It's our performance. When the song was released, it was banned. Yeah.
02:01Filmmakers. Peter, we have a pick. Writers. The narrow road to the deep north. Artists. I was the only one not
02:12carrying a weapon. And musicians. If it's too risky to say, sing it.
02:18Who help us make sense of it. Holly. This is incredible.
02:23Art's not just there to be pretty and admired. Art is the magnifying glass and the mirror. This
02:32was a pub rock song that changed our lives. That's what art can do. This is when the war is over.
02:40If you've ever been to Thailand, chances are you were lured by white beaches and manicured resorts.
02:56But 80 years ago, on this spot, well, it was far from a tropical paradise. In fact,
03:02this place earned the nickname Hellfire Pass.
03:11This railroad cutting was largely done by hand with the forced labour of Australian prisoners
03:16of war during World War II. It's part of the notorious Burma-Thailand Railway.
03:25The Australian prisoners here were just some of the 22,000 captured in the Pacific in 1942
03:31by Japanese forces intent on expanding their empire. For the next three and a half years,
03:39these POWs were put to work on projects that furthered Japanese domination.
03:48All over Asia and the Pacific, more than 8,000 Australians died.
03:53And we think of places like this, as close to hell as we could possibly imagine,
04:02when we think of the Australian POW experience. But it's not the only story.
04:07Oh wow. I feel like I'm in the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
04:25What? And amongst all this incredible stuff,
04:33we have this extraordinary item. Oh wow.
04:35Oh my gosh.
04:47Isn't that beautiful?
04:52Oh. Hasn't been tuned for a while.
04:55Quite a long time. Yeah.
04:57Award-winning writer and actor Neil Piggott is an expert on a little known aspect of Australia's
05:03military history that puts theatre folk like us in the frame. So two old actors who are war nerds.
05:12Can you read what this says?
05:16This piano belongs to the history of World War II. It's a piano from Changi Camp.
05:21Changi, Singapore. It was here that Japanese troops interned thousands of Allied soldiers in 1942.
05:33I speak to you all under the shadow of a heavy and far-reaching military defeat.
05:41Singapore has fallen. It was a shocking military blow.
05:46Japanese forces immediately turned Singapore's British army barracks at Changi into a massive prison,
05:55holding 15,000 Australians.
06:02How did they get a piano?
06:05They left holes in the wire so they could go out and scrounge for food, whatever.
06:10Well, a guy was out scrounging one night. He comes across the piano and he thinks,
06:14oh jeez, that'd be handy. Came back, 12 of them went through the wire, two kilometres, carried it back into the camp.
06:24Were they risking death to get this piano? Oh yeah, of course they were.
06:28Any time anyone went through the wire, they were risking death.
06:34But the notes of this piano soon began to ring out through Salarang,
06:39the Australians' quarters in Changi. The Japanese very rarely went into Salarang. I mean, in Salarang,
06:45there were 15,000 Australians. So there was some sort of, I wouldn't call it safety, but at least
06:51some sort of sense of security. And they didn't believe they were going to be there for that long.
06:56And so they actually then started to write songs about Changi.
07:01Waiting for something to happen
07:05Might even drive you insane
07:09So we'd all be happier
07:12Feel a lot snappier
07:13If something would happen again
07:17The interesting thing is that waiting for something to happen and then something did happen.
07:21Did happen.
07:23Within months, POWs were being selected to leave Changi.
07:29They were told they were going to a place where there was more food. It was going to be like a holiday.
07:33We're going to build hospitals there. It was all going to be lovely.
07:36But it couldn't have been further from the truth. 3,000 Australians were now forced to build a 420
07:48kilometre railway. Today, passenger trains still use this part of the track built by prisoners of war.
07:59And riding these rails feels even more haunting with this book in my hand.
08:04Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
08:08They began to clear the jungle for the line.
08:12And break the rock for the line.
08:14And move the dirt for the line.
08:19Honouring his father's experience on the railway.
08:22Flanagan's 2013 novel introduced a new generation of readers to the POW story.
08:29It scooped a pool of literary prizes.
08:33And that winner of this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction is The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
08:42A priceless addition to modern literature.
08:44It's been published in 42 countries.
08:47And been adapted into a confronting television drama.
08:52Lauded for its unflinching depiction of the railway's horrors.
08:59But what this book also does, which is so powerful,
09:03is it puts the artist in the war, in this hell.
09:09This passage is about a character who risks his life to bear witness through simple drawings.
09:17It turned the page to a penning sketch of an Australian being beaten by two guards.
09:22To a watercolour of the Ulster Ward.
09:25To a pencil drawing of a skeletal man labouring, breaking rock on the cutting.
09:30His novel might be a work of fiction, but Flanagan could have been describing these drawings and sketches.
09:40Smuggled out by prisoners, determined to show the world what had happened to them.
09:45The pictures would survive, and the world would know.
09:56Really? Memory is the true justice, sir.
10:02Or the creator of new horrors.
10:06It's unimaginable, isn't it, that even here in the gates of hell itself, some were determined to bear witness.
10:20The art of captivity is an act of defiance.
10:26Defiance of death and our inhumanity.
10:30It says, we are human and we are here.
10:36It's said that there's a corpse for every sleeper on this railway.
10:53And those Australians, lucky enough to survive, returned to Changi as different men.
11:01Unbelievably decimated.
11:02Black Jack Galligan, who was the Australian commander, when his men came back from the railway and he first saw them, he just broke down and wept.
11:14And said, what have you done to my men?
11:16That's one of the only times that the piano stopped, for those few nights that the whole camp was in shock.
11:25The whole situation clearly becomes more serious.
11:36And around the piano, something extraordinary was taking place.
11:40They started to go, okay, well, we perhaps need to start creating new work that actually has some reflection on what's going on in here.
11:49And that's when we start to see original works being produced, original plays, pantomimes, original material.
12:00That is a product of what's going on.
12:02But as time went on, the importance of it became more around morale and actually giving people hope.
12:10Together, these soldier performing artists helped their audience imagine a future of freedom.
12:18Giving over 240 concerts as the Changi Concert Party.
12:22And their beloved piano was the centrepiece of them all.
12:30So this piano was a corralling of voices to share this common experience.
12:39It was for laughter.
12:42It must have also played some laments and more mournful tunes, or did they try to keep it very upbeat?
12:48Oh no, there were sad songs amongst the stuff that they wrote.
13:02As the war continued, prisoners at Changi lived with the ever-present threat of transportation to labour camps.
13:11Now everything seems to have changed, like the sunshine that turns into rain.
13:25We were together in trouble, in fun a good double, but they've taken my old pal away.
13:38It's like a love song, like to speak of male friendship like that.
13:42Yeah, I mean these guys, for them the war was a battle to keep each other going.
13:49And I think that that's when the concert party really starts to,
13:54not just be a form of entertainment, but to be a form of social good.
14:00It's wonderful, so wonderful to think of a happy day when we can say we're back in circulation again.
14:14Created this sense of a hole amongst them.
14:19We forget that this is what art is into.
14:21The story of the creativity of Changi, why did this land for you?
14:27Because you spent a long time with...
14:31Over 30 years, which is quite remarkable.
14:34Although I haven't pursued it over 30 years, in a funny way it's kind of pursued me.
14:38Back when Neil was cast in a play about POWs in the 90s,
14:43a man in the audience changed his life.
14:47Slim de Grey, singer, actor and stand-up comic, has won three Mo Awards in his illustrious career.
14:54Slim told the young Neil that he'd honed his craft on the stage at Changi,
14:59as one of the concert party's only songwriters.
15:02I don't know, we hit it off and we went to the pub together and I said,
15:07where can I get an album of the songs?
15:09And Slim said, you know, we've never done that.
15:12So I actually funded the album myself.
15:14This fella, actor Neil Piggott, was captivated by the story
15:18and sank everything he owned in an attempt to rediscover the old Changi songs to make Australia know.
15:25I understood that there was a very big story to tell here,
15:30a very complex story of survival.
15:32And I understood that the songs were central to that story.
15:38We said goodbye to Alexander.
15:41So Neil and Slim toured the country with their newly minted album of the concert party songs.
15:48You've got Swingaroo.
15:56How come your captors and your jailers, the Japanese,
15:59allowed you to get away with it?
16:01There were thousands and thousands and thousands of us in the prison camp and about 50 or 60 of them
16:07guarding us. And I think they must have thought, well, while they're laughing and they're happy,
16:13they won't be plotting to get out and do us over.
16:16Against the background of what we perceive to be perhaps the most ugly experience that
16:22Australians have ever encountered in their modern history, there was this profound expression of humanity.
16:28And the nightly lullaby, although risque and a little vulgar, was, at the end of every bitter day, highly functional.
16:35And nothing would please the old gentleman more than to hear them go together.
16:44We made fun out of tragedy. Rather than step back, we stepped into it.
16:50But the backlash was brutal.
16:53We were attacked for trivialising the POW experience.
16:56In Neil Biggott's hands, the Changi experience has turned into a marketing exercise.
17:00There's the Changi calendar, the official Changi souvenir songbook, postcards, a children's book written for the children of Changi, a poster, even a CD.
17:11The idea that music could have been a part of the POW experience was just not acceptable.
17:20But if Neil copped flack for the album, Slim copped it worse in his final role.
17:30When he played a character looking back on his performing days in Changi.
17:41Although many aspects of the series,
17:44It just didn't ring true for some viewers.
17:55It just smacks of inauthenticity to me.
17:57There's no horror.
17:58Where's the horror, the trauma of these individuals who are suffering?
18:02This is the most fun I have ever had in my life.
18:06I want to do it again.
18:07The ABC series has come in for criticism, for getting details wrong and downplaying the true horror.
18:24This word Changi emerged as this hellhole.
18:28And I think what that did over subsequent generations and for probably until relatively recently,
18:35it meant that we had a very kind of narrow view of the of the POW experience.
18:43Perhaps some stories require more time before we're ready to hear them.
18:58It's just an overwhelming number.
19:10And I think if my son died up there, or my husband died up there, and it was in the years after,
19:21I don't know that I'd want to hear about the humor and songs of those that survived.
19:29I think it'd be too painful.
19:34And of course, if I'd been in my grandmother's shoes, seeing the condition of the POWs who'd survived,
19:47I might discredit the idea of Changi as a place of music and laughter too.
19:51When Changi was finally liberated in 1945, the concert party wanted their beloved piano to come home with them.
20:01When that request was denied, the men refused to board the ship.
20:05Finally, it was loaded and lashed to the deck.
20:09But while Changi itself might have been liberated, there was another group of Australian POWs in Sumatra,
20:16and they were still awaiting their fate.
20:19And just like the men in Changi, they also turned to art and music in captivity.
20:25When 65 Australian nurses attempted to flee the fall of Singapore in 1942,
20:35only 24 would survive the bombing of their ship and subsequent imprisonment in Sumatra.
20:43Nurse Betty Jeffrey made it home.
20:46When I was old enough to understand and learn, her story was so incredible.
20:51I was really keen to keep sharing that story.
20:54Emily Malone's great-aunt Betty made an incredible donation to the Australian War Memorial before she died.
21:02So these are the diaries, sketches and objects that Aunty Bette brought home.
21:08There must be some unbelievably important things in here. Can we open them?
21:14Just like the artists of the railway, Betty risked torture and death to draw.
21:21Your enemy, the Japanese guards, look down on you from watchtowers at each corner of the camp.
21:27They have withheld medical supplies, adequate food rations and all external communication.
21:35Malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and beriberi are taking their toll.
21:40People have started to die.
21:45To me, this is just such an act of resistance.
21:49Betty weighed just 30 kilos when she was finally freed.
21:54Her recovery was long, but she set about turning her diaries into a memoir.
22:00White Coolies, the story of those Australian Army nursing sisters taken prisoner by the Japanese.
22:06It was a sensation, serialised in newspapers and on radio over 52 episodes.
22:13This is the truth about women who fought in the last war.
22:17Yes, I mean fought, for they did fight.
22:19The nurses' suffering was the focus of these adaptations.
22:23Take your filthy hands off me!
22:29Jenny, Jenny, you all right?
22:32Decades later, film director Bruce Beresford was inspired by a different part of the women's experience.
22:39His film, Paradise Road, with Cate Blanchett starring as Betty, unearthed an untold story of defiance.
22:49They came up with an incredible idea to form a vocal orchestra.
22:54So a choir of women who would use their voices as the instruments to create music.
23:02Symphonies and sonatas, classical pieces.
23:05And they would take what we know as a string quartet, the first and second violins, the viola and the cello,
23:13and they would create these four parts, write them down on scraps of paper,
23:17and then organise the women in the vocal orchestra to rehearse separately.
23:22One of the film's most memorable scenes is just as Betty told it to Emily.
23:27The Japanese guards had noticed this large gathering and started to run towards the group of women,
23:34shouting, yelling, waving rifles and bayonets.
23:57But as soon as the vocal orchestra started singing, the guards just stopped.
24:04It's hard to think of a more potent example of the power of art.
24:19Just like the concert party, the women in Sumatra created original work,
24:24including something they called the Captive's Hymn.
24:28It was sung every Sunday at church services in camp.
24:33Do you have that?
24:34We do.
24:35Can you have a listen?
24:36Yes.
24:36Yes.
24:44Yes.
24:48Cleanse by suffering, no rebirth, and see thy kingdom come on us.
25:13To come up with that.
25:15In the squalor of a prison camp.
25:17I just can't.
25:19I know.
25:21I'm just seeing it every Sunday.
25:25Sorry, I need tissue.
25:28I'm sorry.
25:29Step away from the precious documents.
25:31I can't be near the documents.
25:35Betty felt that what the women had achieved was so special that it should never be forgotten.
25:40One of the things that she said to me was actually our last conversation before she passed away.
25:48And in that conversation, she said how proud she was.
25:52And she said to me, please keep telling our story.
25:55Remembering the art of the brutal captivity takes nothing away from the unimaginable suffering and tragedy of our POWs.
26:09But it heralds the important role that art played in our wartime experience and the hope of humanity that it offers.
26:18Perhaps it even throws up a new kind of war hero.
26:23One without weapons.
26:25Just imagination.
26:27Next time.
26:43I don't want to be humble.
26:45I don't want to sit down.
26:46I just went as hard as I could possibly go.
26:49The art of resistance.
26:51I'm still here.
26:52We're still resisting.
26:53That exposes the wars fought right here on Australian soil.
26:58Even in the middle of the Australian wars, people kept making art.
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