Walter Mervyn Dorman

Walter Mervyn Dorman was born on the 3rd July 1905, the son of Walter Henry Dorman (1883-1961) and Alice Lillian Dora Power (1882-1961).

Walter, better known as Merv, enlisted in the Australian Army as a Cadet in 1919. On the 24th June 1940 he joined the 2/12 Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers where he first served as a Sapper and later as a Lance Corporal.

Merv was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was one of 60,000 Allied POWs who were sent to work on the infamous Burma Railway. He survived this horrendous ordeal and was transported back to Singapore where he spent a further 4 months in a POW camp. On the 4th September 1944 Merv was placed aboard the Japanese ship Rakuyo Maru, bound for Japan.

On the 12th September 1944, the Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed by the US Submarine Sealion II. 1159 POWs from the Rakuyo Maru and the ship it was travelling with, Kachidoki Maru, perished at sea. Merv survived this event and spent two days at sea in a makeshift life raft. Although US submarines later returned to rescue survivors, Merv was one of the 136 survivors who were picked up by the Japanese ship Kibitsu Maru and taken to Japan.

In Japan, Merv and his fellow POWs were destined to see out the war working in Japanese mines, docks and rail yards until the American Occupation Forces emancipated them in September 1945. Merv was sent to the Sendai 9B Sakata Camp. The POWs here were slave labour, working as stevedores in the rail yards and docks.

Tragically, after all he had been through, Merv never made it home from Japan. He died at the camp of acute pneumonia on the 21st May 1945, aged 39. His grave is located in the Sydney War Cemetery within Rookwood Necropolis.