The deep suffering of Australia's wartime prisoners has been channelled into music — an hours-long "prayer for the dead" — to help a handful of surviving veterans and their families heal.
More than 30,000 Australians became prisoners of war (POWs) during World War II. Most were imprisoned in harsh camps in Japanese-occupied territories.
Now, 80 years after the fall of Singapore and the start of the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway — a brutal endeavour in which many prisoners died — musicians have drawn on accounts shared by POWs and their relatives to create a personal work of remembrance.
'Almost a taboo' to speak of war
Musician and conductor Chris Latham led the creation of an epic concert, the POW Requiem, which premiered in Canberra over the weekend.
More than 200 civilian and military musicians took part in the three-hour performance, which featured 24 movements.
"Largely, they are prayers for the dead," Latham said.
"It does us good to remember."
One in four of Australia's WWII prisoners died in captivity.
Those who survived were sometimes described as walking dead; many rarely spoke of their experiences in POW camps such as Sandakan, in Malaysia, and Changi, in Singapore.
"It was almost a taboo and to the point that we don't even know how to say the word Sandakan," Mr Latham said.
As artist in residence at the Australian War Memorial, Latham was tasked with creating an ongoing musical counterpart to the official war art scheme.
He said he hoped giving new life to old memories through music would help POW families heal.
"It must do good because otherwise it would be a catalogue of atrocities," he said.
"What we want to do is advance reconciliation and healing and forgiveness — particularly forgiveness.
"It opens your heart to forgive, it is really good for you."
'It is very personal'
Sir Jonathan Mills was among the contributing composers to the POW Requiem.
"Until Paul Keating was prime minister, there was no official acknowledgement by Australian governments of the extent of the horror of what people went through in those prison camps," he said.
"It is very personal, and it is not so much about recreating that moment in all its horror as offering a requiem.
Mills drew on his father Frank's experiences at Changi and Sandakan as a POW and surgeon.
He said Frank Mills used bamboo to create disposable surgical implements in the camps.
"The word that he used was he 'improvised'," he said.
"He improvised instruments, he improvised medicines.
"Nothing was wasted: the ash from the fires was ground down and put into a saline solution, and drunk for the purposes of healing tropical ulcers.
"Clay was boiled up and powdered, and used as a dressing."
But after many years, life as a POW took its toll.
"The esprit de corps was pretty good until after about four or five years of this treatment and the sun and the humidity and the jungle and the cruelty of the Japanese," Jonathan Mills said.
"They held up quite well because they held each other up."
Hope that suffering won't be repeated
Three of retired major-general Dave Chalmers's relatives were POWs.
Only two returned home.
His first cousin once removed, Stuart White, died in captivity.
"Stuart suffered in the way that all men did who went to work on the railroad," he said.
"He went to Sandakan and he eventually died of malaria in Sandakan in February 1945.
"For us, there hasn't been a great need for reconciliation.
"We have rather tried to move on and recognise that what happened was horrible and hopefully an aberration, something that hopefully won't happen on that scale again."
Joanne Fisher also lost a POW relative.
"It is a tragic story but it is a story that needs to be told," she said.
"Prisoners of war are the cost of war, and it is often a story that we don't really speak of."
Ms Fisher's great uncle Richard Clarke was among those who died during the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway.
"My mum was still receiving letters from him after his death," she said.
"So that was traumatic, and my elder sister often recalls that the porch light was always left on in a lot of homes, hoping that the soldiers would return, once they knew that they were prisoners of war."
