The Sword and the Flower

Episode number 3 of Series “Warriors”.
For some Australian ex-servicemen, wartime experiences have created permanent feelings of bitterness towards the Japanese. For others, like the men interviewed in this program, their contact with the Japanese led to a completely different attitude to war and their former enemies. Those interviewed include Norman Sparnon, ex-Major in Australian Army Intelligence who served as an interpreter in New Guinea and post-war Japan, George Beard who recalls his experiences in a Japanese POW camp in Thailand, Gordon Parker and Alan Pedder who both returned with war brides from Japan, Stephen Kelen, the only Australian soldier in Hiroshima on the first anniversary of the Bomb and Kenneth Wybrow, a barrister who assists the mixed-blood children left behind in Japan by Australian servicemen.