Operation “Rimau”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29222, 4 June 1960, Page 3

Operation “Rimau”

The Heroes. By Ronald McKie. Angus and Robertson. 285 pp.

Any inference that may be drawn from the title that this book is unduly sensational is swiftly dispelled as its story unfolds. Actually the word "heroes” was first used by the Japanese in describing the enemies who carried out against them one of the most daring attacks of the late war that found no record in official history, because all those engaged in it perished. This happened at the end of 1944. and the operation was called "Rimau.” A year before a similar expedition into enemy waters, called “Jaywick” had, against every law of probability, been successfully carried through. Both operations were the work of a secret organisation—the “Z Force,” composed of British and Australian naval and military elements, and consisted of a 2000mile journey from Australian ports through the perilously narrow Java Sea (both sides of which were held by the Japanese) to Singapore. Here, by a special method of destruction known as’ a “limpet,” the little force succeeded in blowing up nedrly 40,000 tons of enemy shipping in Singapore harbour, the actual work being carried out by three special-type canoes each with a two-man crew. The base for this final stage of the plan was a tiny uninhabited island some 30 miles from the objective where the parent ship arranged a rendezvous a fortnight later. This little vessel was a converted Japanese fishingboat—4o feet long, and while the canoe-party carried out its work the Krait as she was now called, cruised aimlessly about the enemy waters, flaunting a dirty Japanese flag, and hoping against hope to avoid notice.

The initiator of this extremely hazardous enterprise was an officer of the Gordon Highlanders. Captain Ivan Lyon, who had some personal knowledge of Singapore, ■and could direct operations, being one of the canoe party; but the navigation of the Krait was entrusted to an Australian naval officer, Ted Carse, whose unerring seaman’s instinct and skill saved the ship and its little company of 14 men again and again from destruction. The raid completely mystified the Japanese, who put in hand a search for a mythical Allied submarine, the “limpet” being a weapon which performed its work without leaving any trace of its origin. Meantime the canoes returned to the rendezvous, and the Krait made for home. The raid took two months to complete, and was kejst on the secret list till the end of the war. Rimau was launched with the same object in view. This time the plan and the weapon of destruction were alike different. Twenty-two men were employed; once more the commander was Ivan Lyon (now a LieutenantColonel) and five of the “Jaywick” party were included. The plan was to pirate an enemy ship with the help of a submarine, and this was done by seven armed men, who under cover of the submarine’s guns boarded ahd took control of a 100-ton Malay junk off an* isolated little island near Borneo. .

Unluckily a Japanese patrol boat challenged the junk, and from then onwards the heroic venture was doomed to failure. Some of the party (inclading Lyon himself) were killed in sporadic fights on the various islands to which it scattered, but 10 men were picked up by the Japanese in a state of such acute exhaustion that they could not be said to have surrendered. It was the fate of these men-that the author set out to discover many years later; and by patience and a stroke of luck he located the Japanese interpreter, Hiroyuki Furuta, who had befriended them while they awaited trial in prison at Singapore. As they had been flying the Japanese flag, and had not identifiable uniform they were deemed by their captors to be “spies,” and as such they were indicted and ultimately executed.

But the Japanese attitude to this brave and intrepid enemy was a mixture of admiration and awe. In contrast io the brutality inflicted on prisoners generally they were accorded every privilege, and carried with them, in Japanese eyes, some of the mystique of their own honoured heroes. When informed that. they could ask for “mercy” they all refused, and met their deaths with a cheer; ful stoicism. The commander-in chief of the Japanese 7th Area Army said of'them when addressing his troops, “We Japanese have been proud of our bravery and courage in action, but those heroes showed us a fine example of what true bravery is.” Five weeks after their execution the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Japan capitulated. In telling these two stories the author has refrained from heroics, allowing the. epic quality of the adventures to spleak for itself As a war book it can have few equals for its description of brave men, and of events which should be recorded in the proudest annals of British and Australian history.