On 20 October 1945, under the supervision of Captain Houghton, 23 Australian War Graves Unit, some slit trenches in No 1 Compound were opened. We found many bodies of prisoners piled one on top of another. There are perhaps 250 to 300 bodies in this area. Only one set of identity discs was found belonging to R F Irving. From the state of decomposition of the bodies Lieutenant Colonel Johnston, 2/13th Field Ambulance, estimated they had been in the ground for four to five months.
We located a body on a flat piece of ground in a bamboo grove. Here was the usual evidence of murder - four spent rounds and an Australian felt hat.
No 1 Cemetery contains 661 graves. 75 are Australian, of which 38 have crosses with personal details. One big plot contains 400 graves with nothing that identifies any who are buried there. 78 graves are marked with numbers suggesting that some sort of cemetery plan exists but nothing has yet been found among Japanese documents.
In No 2 Cemetery there are 253 graves, but, there may be many more buried there than this number suggests. When 24 graves in one row were opened we found on digging down that there was more than one body per grave. Some contained 8 bodies. There were 80 British graves all marked with personal details.
On 20 October 1945, under the supervision of Captain Houghton, 23 Australian War Graves Unit, some slit trenches in No 1 Compound were opened. We found many bodies of prisoners piled one on top of another. There are perhaps 250 to 300 bodies in this area. Only one set of identity discs was found belonging to R F Irving. From the state of decomposition of the bodies Lieutenant Colonel Johnston, 2/13th Field Ambulance, estimated they had been in the ground for four to five months.