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Australia

Royal Australian Artillery, 4 A/Tank. Regiment

Rank - Gunner

Son of Mrs. Ethel G. Morris, of Evington, Leicestershire, England

Joe Chamberlain was born in Leicester, England, in 1905. His mother Ethel Morris, was living in Dorset when Joe enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force at Caulfield on 17 June 1940. At the time he was living on the Mornington Peninsula and was employed as a boundary rider. He was 35 years old and single.

He underwent training at the Machine Gun Training Depot at Balcombe, but in August was admitted to the Repatriation General Hospital at Caulfield with a suspected fractured skull and concussion. After he recovered he was transferred to a light anti-aircraft regiment at Ballarat, but in December he was posted to the 2/4th Anti-Tank Regiment at Puckapunyal.

His regiment embarked on the Zealandia at Melbourne on 23 May 1941 and disembarked at Singapore on 9 June to join Australian forces defending Malaya and Singapore. After the Japanese attached Malaya in December, Joe was detached to the artillery headquarters in Malaya. He was admitted to the 2/9th Field Ambulance on 6 February, and became a prisoner of war when the Allied forces on Singapore surrendered nine days later.

In early July 1942, Joe was allocated to B Force, a group of 8th Division troops which was transported to Sandakan on the eastern coast of Japanese-occupied North Borneo on the tramp steamer Ubi Maru, and arrived at Sandakan on 18 July. Over 2,000 Allied POWs were held at Sandakan camp, and they were employed in airfield construction. On this day in 1944, Joe died of dysentery while a prisoner of the Japanese at the Sandakan camp.

He was initially buried near the camp, but after the war the Australian Army Graves Service considered the area to be too prone to flooding for a permanent cemetery, so disinterred all the remains and reinterred them at Labuan War Cemetery. Unlike many of the dead at Labuan, Joe’s grave is known and marked with his name and details.