Harry Gordon Park arrived in Sumatra from England on 1 June 1939 at the age of 22 years, to take up employment as a factory manager for the London Sumatra Tea Company at the Marjandi tea plantation. The plantation was located in central Sumatra, east of Lake Toba. All tea production was halted in Sumatra in January 1942, when Japanese naval units began to threaten sea routes to South Asia. Park joined a volunteer brigade of about 30 tea and rubber planters in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (Stadswacht), and contributed to defence efforts in the area. They were eventually captured in March 1942, but were spared execution and instead put to work on construction/repair works.
After being transferred to various POW camps in Sumatra, Park and his fellow prisoners from Sumatra were loaded onto troop ships and transported to Burma to work on the Siam-Burma Railway. Park was part of the first group of POWs to arrive for work on the railway, reaching Burma in June 1942. He was put to work on the Burmese end of the railway; British POWs from Malaya and Singapore were mainly on the Thai side. He noted that the workforce on the Thai end suffered more from illness and disease compared to men on the Burmese side, as “many of them were straight from Britain, and had been decanted into the shambles of Singapore, with no experience of tropical service nor of tropical heat.” On the other hand, the POWs on the Burmese side of the railway benefited from experience in the Javanese/Sumatran jungles. These men were able to identify and obtain plants or small animals to supplement their rations, such as bamboo shoots and jungle spinach (more commonly known as kangkong), as well as pythons.
Men on the railway were divided into different camps. Each camp worked on a specific section of the railway, and would leapfrog the others and move to a new section further down the line once construction was completed. Park and his contingent began work at Wegale camp. Following the attempted escape of two soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Yoshitada Nagatomo (Japanese commander of the base camp) forced the POWs to sign an agreement promising that they would not try to escape. The men signed “under duress”, using fake names such as Donald Duck and Charlie Chaplin. The aforementioned escapees were eventually captured and beheaded in front of their fellow POWs. Following the war, Nagatomo was tried in an Australian war crimes trial in Singapore (8 August-16 September 1946), and sentenced to death by hanging on September 15th. The trial had “set a record for its lengthy proceedings and the voluminous documentary evidence produced by the prosecution”.
In June 1944, Park and his group of British planters were transported to Saigon. They were originally to be sent via Singapore to work in Japanese mines, but the first ship (carrying Australian POWs) was ambushed and sunk by American submarines. The POWs were instead sent to work on the Saigon docks, loading and unloading “rice, military supplies, ammunition and aviation fuel”.
Immediately after the end of the war, the POWs remained in Saigon awaiting repatriation. During this time, Park worked as a guard for French families. As he spoke “French and a bit of Japanese, and was fairly conversant with the general situation”, he attended several meetings by the Allied Control Commission, sometimes serving “as an interpreter between the French and Japanese officers”.
Park was originally to be repatriated to Sumatra via Singapore, but due to the anti-colonial movement ongoing in the region, former POWs and internees from Sumatra (totalling about 100) were instead sent to Southampton in England. He arrived in Southampton on 24 November 1945.
Park subsequently returned to Scotland, where he married his Scottish wife (the marriage certificate was dated 27 September 1947). He returned to Sumatra nearly two years after his repatriation, this time with his wife. However, the East Sumatra revolution broke out in 1946 (violent uprisings in relation to the Indonesian independence movement). While Park and his wife were warned by locals before revolutionaries attacked their estate (and consequently escaped harm), they left the country temporarily to avoid further unrest. Their first child was born in Sumatra in 1949.
Park’s wife and son returned to Scotland in 1950, and he followed in 1952. After his return, Park worked as a farmer until 1970, when he took up employment as a primary school teacher. Park continued teaching until his retirement in 1981. He remained busy after retiring, and trained as a tourist guide in Scotland (1982).
Park revisited Sumatra a final time before his death, this time with his son Ian Park. During the trip, they retraced Park’s journey across the island, up to the point of his capture (as described in Park’s recollections of his time as a POW). Park died within a year after the trip, on 6 February 1990.
