Portrait of NX53198 Sapper (Spr) (later Lance Corporal) Walter Mervyn Dorman, 2/12 Field Company, ...

Portrait of NX53198 Sapper (Spr) (later Lance Corporal) Walter Mervyn Dorman, 2/12 Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, of Lewisham, NSW. Spr Dorman enlisted on 24 June 1940. He became a prisoner of war of the Japanese, and was one of hundreds of Australian and British prisoners of war being moved from camps in Thailand to Japan aboard the Rakuyo Maru when it was sunk by a US submarine on 12 September 1944. Sapper Dorman survived the sinking and was one of the prisoners rescued by Japanese ships, taken to Japan and placed in prisoner of war camps. Lance Corporal Dorman died of illness in Tokyo on 21 May 1945, aged 39.