Guide to the papers of Dr Rowley Richards

Dr. Richard's personal diary commences on 7 December 1941 with the receipt for the order for the Regiment to proceed to battle stations in southern Malaya. The diary was kept in a small, loose-leaf notebook and carefully wrapped and concealed in Dr. Richard's pack. It covered the period in action, capitulation, Changi, Tavoy in southern Burma and the Burma-Thailand Railway.The second section of the diary covers the period 25 December 1942 to 28 January 1944 at Tamarkam near Kanchanaburi on the River Kwai in Thailand (Siam) and covers the construction of the railway. On arrival at Tamarkam on 14 December 1943 everyone was thoroughly searched and the first part of Richard's diary was found and confiscated by the Japanese without major repercussions. The second part of the diary was not noticed.Prior to leaving Tamarkam on the 'Japan Party' fearing that they would fall victim to United States submarine attacks, Richards left the second part of his diary with Major John Shaw who carried it in the false bottom of a billy can. He returned it to Richards in Australia in December 1945.Richards did however, carry a six-part summary of the diary and a table of rations and illnesses which he buried in a bottle under the cross of Corporal Gorlick on Paulau Damarlaut, an island off the south west coast of Singapore Island on 11 August 1944. The summary was subsequently recovered by the Australian War Graves Commission and returned to him on 15 February 1947, just two and a half years after it was buried. A one- page condensation of the summary was secreted in the tubing of Richard's stethoscope but was lost when theRakuyo Maru, on which he was travelling from Singapore to Japan, was sunk on 12 December 1944 in the South China Sea. Eighty Australian survivors, including Richards, were rescued by a Japanese frigate and transferred to a whaling mother ship which carried him to Japan. He spent the last twelve months of the war in Sakarta on the north west coast of Kyushu with 28 other Australians and 281 British. During the period in Sakarta Richards kept medical records on his men and some personal notes but did not keep a diary.With the end of the war, Richards helped prepare a medical report, nominal roll and other reports relating to the Sakarta camp. He kept a personal diary from the period 15 August 1945 to 12 September 1945.A major strength of the collection is Richard's meticulously kept medical records and reports. These include medical records of Anderson Force Burma from 1942 to 1944; a dysentery register compiled in Changi in 1942 and weekly Tavoy medical reports; Burma-Thai Railway medical reports; detailed graphs and tables of rations and sickness on Burma-Thailand Railway; Sakarta medical reports 1944-45; 'A-Force' death registers and certificates for 1942-44; and medical reports on Sakarta and Japan relating to subsistence claims.