Description
Hintok, - Railway, Far East; prisoners of war camp. Jack Chalker was serving in the Royal Artillery when he was captured at the fall of Singapore. In October 1942 he was in a party sent to Thailand to construct the Burma-Thailand Railway. Chalker secretly made drawings of the various camps and conditions endured by the prisoners. He drew and painted on whatever materials he could find or steal from the Japanese, hiding his work in sections of bamboo buried in the ground, the attap roofs of huts, or the artificial legs worn by amputees in the hospital camps. His work provides a candid and moving record of the prisoners' suffering. Re: date - While the drawing is titled with a date of 1943, many of Jack Chalker's sketches were reproduced in 1945 at the Australian Medical Headquarters in Bangkok. At the end of the war Chalker travelled to Bangkok at the request of Weary Dunlop. Chalker was required to reproduce three sets each of many of the sketches he had made while in captivity.
Details
Accession Number
ART90844
Artist
Jack Bridger Chalker
Object Type
Work on paper
Physical Description
Medium: watercolour with pen and ink on paper mounted on card
Measurement
Overall: 29.2 cm x 38 cm
Medium
watercolour with pen and ink on paper mounted on card
Credit Line
Presented by the estate of Edward (Weary) Dunlop 1998
Copyright
AWM Licensed copyright
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