OLD AZURIANS

So far it has not been possible to establish exactly when Mr Cater joined the school as Secretary, nor when he retired, but he was certainly present in that post in the early 1950s and was still present, as the Bursar of the 6th Form College, in 1974.

 

Similarly his biographical details are unsure because of inconsistencies between different sources of information. Genealogical sources suggest that he was born on 2 March 1911 in Lewisham and died in Chichester in September 2003, aged 92, but his service records suggest a date of birth of 9 March 1921.

 

What is known for certain is that during the Second World War he was a Prisoner of War held by the Japanese. His service and other records show that he was an Aircraftman in 211 Squadron RAF which was sent to the Far East to counter the Japanese attack on Malaya. The Squadron was sent too late to be based in Singapore, so instead went to Sumatra, and when this became untenable the Squadron moved to Java.

 

Java too was over-run by the Japanese and, by March 1942, 211 Squadron had been disbanded and attempts had been made to evacuate its personnel. These attempts were only partially successful in that only 87 of the Squadron’s personnel escaped, the remaining 340 or so being captured by the Japanese. Aircraftman Cater was one of the unlucky ones taken prisoner on 8 March 1942, but, unlike 179 of his fellow squadron members who died in captivity, he survived and was liberated on 2 November 1945.

 

The captured men of 211 Squadron were eventually transferred to the tiny rain-soaked island of Haruku where they were used as slave labour building an airstrip from coral hacked by hand from a hump that would otherwise have made landing an aircraft impossible. Conditions on the island were appalling: within a matter of months 20% of the prisoners had died from disease, malnutrition, and mistreatment. One particular Japanese guard on the camp was later to be hanged in Singapore for war crimes he had committed on Haruku.

 

Haruku camp was finally closed by the Japanese on 1 August 1944, though the airstrip constructed with such suffering and death was never seriously used by the Japanese. The surviving prisoners were transferred to the neighbouring island of Ambon, where many of them were marooned for lack of transport to Java and faced another year of deprivation before they were finally rescued.

 

The terrible details of what Mr Cater must have gone through during those years in captivity were not generally known. To most of us he just seemed a mild and quiet man who was devoted to the school and who gave his support to the Old Azurians Association.