KREDIT : SUZY NEVE - WW2 BATTLES AND STORIES
LT BEN HACKNEY
The Battle of Muar ended in Japanese victory.
The six-day battle on the Muar front ended in victory for the Japanese. The Indian 45th Brigade, despite close air and naval support during the operation, was destroyed as a fighting body.
The Muar force destroyed its vehicles and weapons and pushed toward Yong Peng by infiltration, leaving their wounded behind. The Batu Pahat defence force (a detachment of the Indian 11th Division) skirmished with the Japanese on the Batu Pahat-Ayer Hitam road. The Indian 8th Brigade Group, 9th Division, having withdrawn from the Segamat sector to positions astride the main road between Labis and Yong Peng, was attacked by enemy. The East Force repelled the Japanese attempt to cross the river at Mersing. The partly trained Indian 44th Brigade, reinforced, and 7,000 Indian reinforcements arrive at Singapore.
At Parit Sulong the Japanese rounded up the wounded Australian and Indian soldiers left behind from the Battle of Muar. They were forced to surrender all their belongings including their clothes, which were later returned. The men, now Prisoners of War were beaten, tormented and denied food, water and medical attention.
At sunset the men were roped or wired together in groups and led into the jungle where they were shot with machine guns, doused with petrol and set alight.
Only Lieutenant Ben Charles Hackney and VX523333 Reginald Arthur Wharton survive, feigning death despite repeated brutalities by the Japanese.
They were left behind. Hackney crawled away (with two broken legs) and eventually found another member of his battalion, Sergeant Ron Croft, who had also escaped. Joined by an English soldier, the three eventually reached a Malay house where they were given assistance. Hackney, who could not stand, convinced the others to leave him. The Malays, fearing reprisals by the Japanese, carried him off some distance from the house and left him. He managed to crawl from place to place, but was generally refused assistance by Malays, who appeared to fear reprisals, but was given assistance by Chinese.
On the 27 February 1942, thirty-six days after he escaped the massacre, he was caught by a party of Malays, one dressed as a policeman, taken back to Parit Sulong and handed over to the Japanese. He was again subjected to brutal treatment by the Japanese, but after a series of moves on 20 March 1942 he arrived at the Pudu gaol at Kuala Lumpur. He was later taken with other POWs to Changi gaol. He survived the war and returned to Australia.
The commander of the Imperial Guards, Lt Gen. Takuma Nishimura, was later in charge of occupation forces in eastern Singapore. He was indirectly involved in the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore.
Nishimura retired from the Japanese army in 1942 and was made military Governor of Sumatra. Following the war, he was tried by a British military court in relation to the Sook Ching massacre. Nishimura received a life sentence, of which he served four years. As he returned to Japan, Nishimura was removed from a ship at Hong Kong, by Australian military police and charged in relation to the Parit Sulong massacre. Nishimura was taken to Manus Island in the Territory of New Guinea, where he faced an Australian military court. Evidence was presented stating that Nishimura had ordered the shootings at Parit Sulong and the destruction of bodies. He was convicted and executed by hanging on 11 June 1951.
Picture of Lieutenant Ben Hackney from the Australian War Memorial.
Copy and paste: 26 March 2020 / 2 Syaaban 1441H : 9.05 pm
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