Paul Ham, author of the new book, "Sandakan", published by Random House wrote a letter to the Emperor of Japan and published it in The Australian on Tuesday this week (2nd October).

The murders (for that is what they were) were worse that just about any other atrocity imposed by the Imperial Japanese Army on Australian POWs.

You can read Paul Ham's article.

David Barrett, co-author of Digger's Story fought the Japanese Government through news paper articles and media appearances trying as hard as he could to embarrass them into apologising and paying reparations for many years.

This is all documented in the latter chapters of "Digger's Story" as I explained in a letter published in The Australian yesterday (see image at right).

Good news! The book Digger’s Story is about to be joined by a revised version more suitable for younger readers from about the age of 10 years upwards. It is expected that this version of the book will be available from the start of next year in time for the schools getting back after the summer break.

The manuscript for this version is already with the publishers. This would have pleased David no end of course because his ambition was to get the books into schools and he funded copies of the original book into all the hight schools in the Brisbane district.