US ambassador Kennedy addresses Coastwatchers ceremony
A message from the Navy Association of Australia
Second World War Coastwatchers were commemorated in a moving ceremony in Brisbane at the Jack Tar Navy Memorial at Southbank on 24 July. The ceremony was attended by US Ambassador to Australia, Her Excellency Caroline Kennedy, whose father John F Kennedy was saved by Coastwatchers in New Britain in 1943 after his patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, was sunk by a Japanese destroyer.
The ceremony also honoured Lieutenant James Connal Howard Gill who led an exhausted group of soldiers, native porters and Navy Coastwatchers through the jungle to escape the Japanese invasion of New Guinea. His daughter Dr Rosemary Gill told the story of the 23-year-old Brisbane law student who joined the Naval Reserves when war broke out in 1939.
More than 200 people attended the ceremony, including soldiers and personnel from the Navy base HMAS Moreton, as well as representatives from the US Navy and US Marines. Consuls from Papua New Guinea, Tonga, the Netherlands and the Solomon Islands also attended. The event was covered by ABC and 4BC Radio, Channel 10 News and the Sunday Mail.
The Coastwatchers
The Coastwatchers were the brainchild of Eric Feldt, a Naval Intelligence officer who had monitored the build-up of Japanese power in the Pacific. He assembled a group of courageous European planters and issued them with radios to report back to the Navy on Japanese air, sea and land movements. This was incredibly dangerous work as discovery resulted in immediate execution.
Over the course of the war, Coastwatchers rescued 75 prisoners of war, 321 shot-down Allied airmen, 280 shipwrecked naval personnel, 190 missionaries and other civilians, uncounted Islanders and 260 Asian people who had put their own lives into danger.
A memorial in Madang in Papua New Guinea that’s dedicated to the 36 Australian Coastwatchers killed in the line of duty says: ‘They watched and warned and died that we might live’.
John F Kennedy
Ambassador Kennedy spoke about her father’s efforts in keeping his crew alive. Kennedy carved his position on a coconut, which was relayed by an Islander to a Coastwatcher, who then saved them.
‘If the Coastwatchers had not saved my father’s life, there would have been no President Kennedy and I would not be standing here today with you,’ said the Ambassador.
Ambassador Kennedy surprised and delighted the group by presenting the Naval Association with a replica of the coconut that her father scratched the message on. He kept that coconut on his desk in the Oval Office in the White House. Since then the Association has received a letter from the Ambassador thanking them for the opportunity to be part of the ceremony and her desire to be involved with all veterans as part of the special relationship of our two countries.
Connal Gill
Lieutenant Gill recruited, trained and managed a network of ordinary people who stepped up and achieved extraordinary things for their country.
Gill led a group of twenty soldiers and sailors for two months across more than 400 kilometres of thick rainforest and three mountain ranges in monsoonal rain. The diet of meagre tinned rations and yams was insufficient protein for forced daylight marches carrying heavy equipment and supplies. They constantly avoided air attacks and Japanese patrols with side arms as their only weapons and risked detection by radioing Japanese sea and air movements. Everyone, including Gill, developed bouts of malaria, dysentery, ulcerated legs and injuries from falls.
Rosemary Gill said: ‘The diary reveals his quiet, measured decisions, no overthinking, just the selfless ability to do his job by “getting on with it”, a quality thankfully his generation had in spades.’
Her father wrote numerous books and articles until he passed away aged 82.
‘Dad’s health never really completely recovered from the War, but it didn’t stop him living a long life of public service and was awarded an MBE and an AM,’ said Rosemary.
The service of the Coastwatchers was sparsely acknowledged by the military. Gill received a Letter of Commendation from the Navy, addressed to ‘James Grill’.
For more information, please contact Jayne Keogh (naaqldmedia [at] outlook.com).
The Coastwatchers commemorative ceremony, with US Ambassador to Australia Her Excellency Caroline Kennedy (centre)
