On Australia Day comes news of the death at 93 of
a true national hero, big in physique , vision and
heart , Tom Uren . The great ALP figure , who took part in boxing matches in Darwin before
going to Timor and
being captured there by the Japanese , was regarded as a hero by Darwin resident and longtime
East Timor campaigner , Rob Wesley-Smith,
founder of the NT Civil Liberties
Council who, like Uren, opposed the Vietnam War .
Wes met Uren several times when he was a
politician and welcomed his support
in parliament calling for an act
of self determination for East Timor . Australia, said Uren , had a moral debt to the Timorese for their assistance
given to Australian soldiers in 1942.
Wes had
other dealings with Uren . In his capacity as an
agronomist ,he attended a dry range
farming conference in Russia and was mightily impressed by the
layout of the city of Frunze in the
southern province of Kirgizia, with numerous roads, canals, grass verges
. At a reception there Wes made a speech , drank the
powerful local brew, and was
branded a son of
the city, who would come back one
day.
On returning to Australia , Wes
made contact with Uren , then responsible for better cities through decentralisation in the Whitlam Government , one of those listed for attention being
Townsville , and urged him to go to Frunze to get ideas
for urban Australia. Furthermore , Wes said he would be
only too happy to come along with Tom as his guide , if the
government paid his fare . It did not happen
. Nice try though,Wes.
The two met again in Sydney when Uren was courting his second wife , a music student, who
lived up the road from Martin Wesley–Smith , a lecturer at the Conservatorium of Music.
In his autobiography, Straight Left
, Uren described boxing matches in Darwin before being shipped to Timor, capture by the Japanese , work on the Burma-Thailand
railway, brutal life in POW camps, working under Weary Dunlop and being
in Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, only 80 kilometres away, the war
coming to a sudden
end.
Other points of interest from the
book relevant to the present day:
*In supporting the Fidel Casto victory over the “cruel and ruthless
criminal Juan Batisa”, Uren wrote that Cuba and
Vietnam had become the Achilles
heel of the United States and it was long overdue to normalise relationships with both . President Obama is attempting to do this
right now in respect of Cuba .
*Hatred of the Japanese, during
the war, he wrote had been great, the propaganda excessive. Now the same people who sent us off
to war were trying to sell
off part of Australia to the Japanese ... “ Partriotism is a
terrible thing. You know what I
mean – a band marches down the street
playing patriotic songs and men follow it
and respond to the call
to arms. It takes real courage to stand up to this type of manipulation , but
we really must make sure that we don’t
allow politicians and ‘statesmen’ to lead Australian people into any further wars.”
