Winston ‘Blow’ Ide, Edwin ‘Dooney’ Hayes and Cec Ramalli
He has been the subject of a Japanese television documentary and a best-selling novel. Neither is surprising, given that the life and times of Winston ‘Blow’ Ide involved love, tragedy, stupidity, determination, bungling, bravado and the ever-threatening cloud of racism.
In Japan, more than 70 years after his horrible death, Blow, who was half-Japanese, half-Australian, is regarded as a sporting treasure. In Australia, which he gallantly represented on the rugby field and in battle, he has virtually been forgotten — even though his life story was courageous and uplifting.
His final words reveal the man.
Blow was on a prisoner of war ship that had been torpedoed by an American submarine. Despite repeated calls to clamber onto an overcrowded life-raft, Blow ignored his own plight, and continued helping his fellow POWs by dragging them towards anything they could float on.
The saved kept yelling out to him: ‘Blow. Blow. C’mon. Swim here while you can.’
He ignored them, finally offering a brief wave: ‘No, mate, no. I’m staying here to help my mates. In any case, I’ll swim to Australia if I have to.’
Then he disappeared.
For several years, his family did not know Blow had been lost at sea. To add to their turmoil, they were involved in the most humiliating of political battles, where they were treated disgracefully by a country that previously used their son as a propaganda tool.
They ran his photo to boost Australian Army recruitment. If a half-Japanese wanted to fight for Australia, why not you?
Then the about turn. The same mob now treated his family as if they were the enemy. This was despite three of them at the time fighting in the Australian forces.
Winston Phillip James Ide (pronounced Eedy) was born in September 1914. His father Hideichiro, known as Henry, was a Japanese silk trader who settled in Australia in 1890. Twelve years later he was naturalised. Henry ran the successful Ide and Co. silk importing business in Sydney, embraced his new country and constantly proclaimed he was a proud Australian. He married Clara, who was of British stock.
Blow was one of seven children, the youngest of four boys. Named after Winston Churchill, his nickname was given to him as a youngster as he would regularly puff his cheeks before blowing out a gust of air.
The Ide family lived in the affluent Sydney suburb of Northbridge, with the brothers all going to North Sydney Intermediate (Technical) High School, which for decades nurtured prominent Australian sportsmen, including national rugby and cricket captains Trevor Allan and Allan Border. The Ides were popular Northbridgeans. Their house, named ‘Nikko’, was palatial, with its own grass tennis court and a cherry tree orchard. Until the Presbyterian Church was built nearby, its church services were held at ‘Nikko’. Henry was on the original committee of management of the Presbyterian Church, and he, Clara and their children were keen parishioners.
While Blow was a proficient swimmer and tennis player, rugby was his favourite pastime, playing with the Northbridge club as well as captaining his high school’s first XV team.
This was despite intense opposition from Henry, who believed Blow should instead be focusing on his studies. Blow’s elder brothers often covered for him, especially when he came home after football matches with grazed knees and elbows. They soon ran out of excuses for Blow being mysteriously muddied and bloodied.
Straight from school, he made the Norths first-grade team, appearing in the centres and at five-eighth. This was a considerable feat as Norths was at its most powerful, and had won the major club premiership, the Shute Shield, for the first time.
Even in his first year of senior football, Blow was being noticed. Test player turned sportswriter Sid King wrote that ‘nippiness and speed off the mark’ and ‘great courage, low, hard tackling and fearless going down on the ball in the face of charging forwards won him a lot of admirers’.
Two years on, Blow was a member of another Norths Shute Shield winning side, which saw him promoted to the NSW centres in 1935–36.
However, the state selectors preferred Cyril Towers in 1937, and Blow, whose dream was to represent his country, headed north, after officials told him he was a better chance of making the Test team if playing for Queensland. It would also be wise if he joined the well-to-do Brisbane GPS Old Boys — one of the oldest rugby clubs in Australia, which had strong connections. In its ranks were numerous notable state representatives, including Queensland captain Edwin ‘Dooney’ Hayes, Boyd Oxlade, ‘Wally’ Lewis and Bill McLean.
Strength in numbers. At the start of the 1938 season, Blow, happy he was getting regular work in Brisbane as a textile expert, made his first appearance for GPS. Blow was most excited that next to him was the excellent rugby teacher, Toowoomba-born Hayes. A masterful player, Dooney knew everything about tough times. He never took anything for granted. In the mid-1930s, this noted straight runner was Queensland’s version of Towers. Dooney, also a quality cricketer, was Queensland’s most intelligent attacking footballer. There was apparently nothing he could not do, including positional kicking and goal-kicking if asked. He was elevated to the Queensland captaincy ranks, followed by Australia in 1936. However, the delights of becoming the first Queenslander to lead a Wallaby team on an overseas tour soon soured when he tore a rib cartilage in the opening match against Auckland.
Dooney ignored the pain and a week later appeared against Hawkes Bay, only to be replaced as he couldn’t breathe. He withdrew from the All Blacks series and so missed his chance to lead Australia in the Test arena. Dooney tried not to let this demoralising moment get to him, instead taking every opportunity that came his way. He stressed the same to Blow.
The Blow–Dooney GPS club combination worked, to the extent that within weeks they were Queensland teammates. Then they were the Australia centre combination when the All Blacks came to Brisbane in August 1938. Australia lost 20–14 in a fast, open international, with Ide immediately adapting to Test football. The losers were widely applauded, with their coach A.C. ‘Johnny’ Wallace describing the Test as the best he had witnessed in Australia.
Pat Frawley wrote in the Brisbane Courier-Mail that Ide was ‘one of the outstanding players’. ‘Northerner’ in The Referee said Ide was ‘the man for the big occasion’. Syd Malcolm wrote Ide ‘played with so much ability’.
After such an encouraging performance, Australia were hopeful of defeating the then-unbeaten All Blacks in the final Test in Sydney. But the All Blacks reigned again, winning 14–6. Ide was once again prominent, as was 19-year-old halfback Cec Ramalli despite having his nose smashed for the second Test running.
Due to the scheduled 1939–40 Wallaby tour of Great Britain, there were no domestic internationals in the season leading up, just a series of trial matches, where Ide excelled, guaranteeing his name in the touring party alongside three fellow GPS players — Lewis, Oxlade and McLean.
Even though diplomatic relationships between Australia and Japan had begun to fray, Blow’s background had not worked against him. With a distinct Aussie accent and a carefree demeanour, Blow was always regarded as part of Australian rugby’s inner sanctum. There were the occasional ‘ching chong’ slurs, but Blow laughed them off.
The fact he was a Wallaby representative hit the headlines in the Japanese media, who were impressed the son of a Japanese migrant had made ‘the big time’. Blow was similarly proud of his Japanese links.
Still, the disappointment of being on the aborted 1939–40 Wallaby tour took some time to overcome. Blow had even taken a set of golf clubs with him to Great Britain, and they had to be left behind. Also frustrating was that the game where he was to play in the Australian colours against a local team in Colombo on the voyage back to Sydney was called off due a scheduling mess-up.
At least he could revive a close friendship he had with a Warwick girl Heather Reynolds, whom he had met in Brisbane just before leaving for Europe. His sister Doris had introduced Blow to the young female rugby fan, and they were soon inseparable. Whenever possible they would head to the Gold Coast, where the footballer taught the fan how to surf.
The time away had not diminished their affection for each other, and despite Blow telling Heather he, like many of his Wallaby colleagues, would be joining up, they decided to get engaged. The wedding would wait until he returned from service.
Heather was as committed to the war effort, deciding at virtually the same time to join what became known as the Australian Women’s Army Service. Blow agreed to a request from his Queensland colleague, Bernie Schulte, to join the recently established Queensland 2/10th Field Regiment of the 8th Division in July 1940. The plan was for Ide, now a bombardier, to be sent with the regiment to protect Singapore. Two of Blow’s brothers, Charles and Harrie, also enlisted.
Thankfully there appeared to be a last chance to play a game of representative rugby when, in September 1940, Blow, along with 1939–40 Wallaby squad members Vaux Nicholson and Bill McLean, was invited to play in a curtain-raiser to the Brisbane versus Ipswich rugby league match at The Gabba to raise funds ‘for patriotic purposes’.
However, they had to withdraw as the Queensland Rugby Union ruled that anyone ‘participating with League players would be automatically disqualified’.
As the Brisbane Truth commented ruefully: ‘Apparently Rugby Union is a greater power in the land than the fighting services.’
At the same time, Brisbane newspapers ran Blow’s photo, explaining how he was doing his bit for Australia by enlisting in the army. On signing up, one paper described him as a major ‘sporting personality’. Editors realised the newsworthiness of a person with Japanese features showing his allegiance to Australia, especially with war threats intensifying from Tokyo and beyond. His photo was given prominence.
Ide felt at home in the 2/10th Field Regiment as apart from Schulte it had in its ranks Nicholson and Queensland centre Bill Gannon. In February 1941, Ide’s regiment travelled on the Queen Mary to Malaya. The battalion’s early months were trouble-free, involved in training and manoeuvres at Mersing. Blow had time to regularly write home to his fiancée, sending postcards and shots of himself with mates in front of a makeshift Anzac club somewhere in Malaya. Blow and Gannon played in a Queensland Heavy Artillery–New South Wales Infantry Battalion match in the Malayan town of Seremban in May 1941. Queensland won 11–7 over an opposition that included NSW Colts captain John Fuller. The Straits Times newspaper covered the game, reporting under the headline ‘Rugby Football as Australians Play it’.
Blow was rated the best outside back on the field. Then, in November, he was in a strong AIF team that defeated the British Army 21–0 at the Jalan Besar Stadium in Singapore. The British team included three Scottish internationals, while in the AIF line-up were Schulte, Gannon, noted Sydney forward Roger Cornforth, and Blow’s 1939–40 Wallabies colleague Cec Ramalli. This time, Schulte and Ramalli excelled.
Ramalli’s background was even more exotic than Blow’s. He was the son of an Indian Muslim trader called Ali Ram, who had changed his name to Ramalli, and an Aboriginal woman, Adeline or Madeline Doyle, who hailed from north of Mungindi.1
Ramalli, a merchant from Bombay, started up a successful general store in Mungindi, a town on the border of NSW and Queensland, then purchased a substantial 10,000-hectare sheep grazing property, named ‘Bombay’. Several lucrative wool clips enabled Ali to send Cec, the youngest of seven children, to Hurlstone Agricultural High School in Sydney, where he established himself as an outstanding scrumhalf. At 18, he was in the Western Suburbs first-grade team, the NSW line-up and the Test XV that confronted the 1938 All Blacks. The Referee rated him the 1938 Australian player of the year.
Two years on he was Lance Corporal Signaller Ramalli with the 8th Division posted in Malaya.
The Straits Times reported the substantial AIF win was a ‘measure of the stubborn and desperate resistance the (British) Army put up against a team that towered above them in dash, initiative and tactical skill’. Three weeks later, the AIF won the return match 6–3, with Ramalli captaining the side, and according to The Straits Times, he gave ‘his usual magnificent performance’. The game was ferocious, as ‘the teams tore into each other from start to finish’.
This was Blow’s last football appearance, as shortly after, with Japan entering the war following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was immersed in defending the Malay Peninsula and Singapore. The rapid Japanese advance down the Malay Peninsula began in early December 1941, and the next month Blow, manning an artillery battery, saw action when his regiment played an instrumental role in an enemy ambush near Mersing. For several days the regiment provided solid artillery support for the successful attack in the Nithsdale rubber estate.
However, Japan’s control of the air battles and glaring strength in numbers prompted a frenzied Allied retreat to Singapore, which Britain foolishly believed was its impregnable South-East Asian base. The happy postcards home suddenly stopped, as the 2/10th went to the north-west of the island in preparation for the Japanese attack. For several days, the regiment was subjected to an intense artillery barrage, forcing them to move to the Tanglin golf course, where they were constantly threatened by Japanese air strikes.
When Singapore fell to Japan in February 1942, Blow was among more than 45,000 Australian and British troops captured. He was sent to Changi for several months before being drafted with Ramalli into A Force — a large work party of 3000 prisoners of war transported to build the Burma–Thailand Railway. This dreaded 415-kilometre Death Railway took the lives of more than 2800 Australian soldiers, with many experiencing cruel treatment from the Japanese guards, along with malnutrition and tropical diseases including malaria, typhus, beriberi and cholera. Countless Australian soldiers suffered painful tropical ulcers and wasted away. Many more died from beatings or exhaustion from a heavy and cruel workload.
Even getting to the designated railway site was horrendous, as the A Force was crammed into Japanese cargo ships, suffering inhospitable conditions for several weeks, before berthing in Burma. Many on board had severe bouts of dysentery, with the only toilet available being a crude plank stuck over the side of the boat. A lack of fresh air in the crowded hold, a shortage of drinking water, the overwhelming stench of those suffering from dysentery and no washing facilities turned these boats into a floating hell.
Despite Blow’s Japanese heritage, he did not receive preferential treatment. Instead the Japanese could not comprehend why he was fighting for the enemy, and gave him a tough time. He was subjected to numerous beatings, and was soon suffering from disease and malnutrition. His weight dropped alarmingly, but his spirit never dimmed.
With Blow in A Force was Ramalli.
Back at home, the Ide family were experiencing emotional and financial hardship. Despite his sons serving in the army and having been an Australian citizen for many years, the government treated the head of the Ide household with deep suspicion. Henry Ide became the victim of ever-growing hysteria within Australia over a possible Japanese invasion, which had escalated through the bombing of Darwin in February 1942.
Around the same time, Ide’s recent business trips to Tokyo had the 79-year-old targeted as ‘having a detrimental effect upon morale’. The Minister of the Army, Frank Forde, signed a detention order, which saw Henry arrested at his Northbridge home and in early March 1942 taken to the Liverpool Internment Camp. The following month he was transported 700 kilometres west of Sydney to the arid town of Hay and its internment camp. Ide was among more than 4300 Japanese regarded as ‘enemy aliens’ interned in Australia.
An elderly parent being marched off to an isolated town was dreadful news for the rest of the Ide clan, who could not believe a quiet, honest, deeply patriotic octogenarian was regarded as an enemy of the state. The Hay Internment Camp was no holiday venue, primarily built to accommodate Italian prisoners of war and Jewish citizens who had fled Nazi Germany. At its peak, several thousand were crowded into a compound which was subject to extreme heat waves and dust storms. Conditions were rudimentary. Ide’s offspring were worried Henry would be unable to cope.
When forwarding the detention order, Forde wrote that Ide’s internment ‘may cause some resentment among his family . . . but I presume that Military Intelligence will look after this aspect’.
Henry sought a release. At the tribunal hearing in May 1942, Henry did not stand for too much nonsense, as shown from the response to the opening question from tribunal chairman W.H. Sharwood: ‘You speak English, do you not?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? I have been here 52 years,’ Ide replied.
Stating his religion as ‘Presbyterian’, Henry was asked if he was aware that as Japan was at war with Australia, the reason he had been interned was ‘because of your Japanese race’.
Ide nodded, before stating he had concerns that if he was released, he would have to live 100 miles (160 kilometres) away from the seaside, so that he could not spy on the local waterways. This would be awkward, as he had lived in Northbridge for 28 years ‘and everyone knows me’.
‘I am nearly 80 years old and was naturalised 40 years ago. Two of my sons are in the AIF — one in Palestine, and my youngest in Singapore. Of course he may be a prisoner now. I have two son-in-laws who are all in the Defence Forces. My other son is also in the Defence Forces.’2
Captain O.J. Gillard, appearing for the Australian Army, probed him about his business links with Japan. He was asked why he purchased his silk from Japan, rather than France, because ‘wasn’t French silk the best in the world?’
‘Yes, very good, but it’s too dear. I cannot sell it. Naturally I get it from Japan, wholesale.’
‘Why do you keep your connection with Japan?’
‘It is convenient for me in the business. If you were in the same position, you would do just the same.’
Ide, who had been to Japan on several occasions in recent years ‘for business purposes’, was asked if he was still a Sydney member of the Nippon Jin Kai — a Japanese ‘goodwill’ club — and if he had contributed to the Japanese Comforts Fund.
‘No. Nothing, because I have no money. I am broke now.’
Ide’s financial problems began with the outbreak of war, when local authorities started to treat him with suspicion.3
‘After that, I could not do any business. I lost my property and everything. You go and ask the Commercial Bank of Sydney. They advanced the money, and I could not pay it back. Business stopped. I was doing business for over 40 years, and I lost all my property — my house and everything.’
Ide was now ‘supported by my sons’.
The hearing ended with Gillard asking Ide if he was a leading member of the Japanese community.
‘No, I am not such a leading member; I am only the old resident here.’
‘The grand old man in the silk trade?’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
‘But are you not one of the leading members of the Japanese community?’
‘Of course. I am the oldest; they all respect me.’
‘By the way, what country do you want to win the war — Australia or Japan?’
‘Goodness knows. I do not know. How would I know?’
In explaining the army’s case to the tribunal chairman, Gillard said Ide had been interned because he was ‘obviously a close contact with the Japanese’.
‘He has been constantly in Japan. There is no doubt he regards himself as a Japanese, irrespective of his naturalisation. The fact that his sons have answered the call4 is irrelevant, because it is not his act. They must be fairly elderly boys and for that reason it is submitted that he cannot gain any reflected glory or reflected righteousness from the fact that his children are serving in the Forces. He is a pleasant old gentleman, elderly, and his sons have answered the call. These factors are in his favour. As against that, I think the other factors weigh more heavily — namely his contact with the Japanese, the acceptance of him by the Japanese community and finally his obvious Japanese personality.’
The chairman was as forthright, stating that Henry ‘in his outlook and surroundings is thoroughly Japanese’.
‘Should any secret agent or other emissary of Japan visit Sydney, we feel that his name would be one of the first on a list of people to be interviewed and from whom information could be obtained.’
There were concerns over Ide’s close links with the Japanese consul, that he had attended weekly Japanese luncheon parties at the Hotel Australia, was a member of the Nippon Jin Kai (Japanese Nationals Association) and the Japan Australia Society, that he had between 1933 and 1940 travelled to Japan four times, and in 1941 had given £1 to the funds for the Japanese Army and Navy wounded soldiers.
It was decided ‘in the interests of the community’ that Ide should remain in the internment camp.
Unbeknown to Henry, the Australian Government had made a close confidential security check on Blow. They soon discovered he was deeply committed to the Australian war effort and moved on.
Then Clara was investigated, with friends stressing that she, a British subject, was ‘a woman of excellent character, but cannot vouch for her political views’.
‘She has few associates, and the only place she frequents is the branch room of the Northbridge Comforts Fund for the Soldiers.’
Another report stated that Clara ‘does not keep late hours or hold parties frequented by foreigners’. She ‘had never been heard to express any anti British or subversive utterances and is not considered a disturbing influence by residents of the locality’.
Her hobby was ‘sewing and knitting for the Soldiers Comforts Fund’.
Local police recommended no action be taken ‘to restrict this woman’s movements’.
Charles Ide was investigated in 1943, following NSW police concerns ‘from a most reliable source that there is at present a man, alleged to be Japanese, employed on the Pipe Line near Penrith’.
Constable H.G. Back wrote to the Commissioner of Police that ‘the man whose name I cannot ascertain, is about 40 years of age and has a moustache. He is married to a white woman and has a definite Oriental appearance. The Chinese employed in the gang regard this man as a Japanese and will not recognise him as one of their countrymen.’
The constable said the matter should be referred to the Security Branch. The branch soon responded, explaining the person was Charles Ide, who was assistant engineer with the Warragamba Pipe Line project and was working for the Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board.
‘He is very highly recommended by his employers, and they declare that he is most trustworthy, and his loyalty has never been questioned,’ the branch report said.
The branch said there was no reason for any further investigation.
In another police report, it was stated from their inquiries there was no evidence Charles was ‘indulging in subversive activities’.
‘He does not associate with other persons of Japanese blood, other than his own family and his near relatives. Ide is very bitter towards the Military Authorities and rather outspoken in criticism for the internment of his aged father, especially on account of his age and the fact that he had two brothers serving with the AIF overseas.’
Henry was eventually allowed to leave the Hay camp in January 1943, but was under virtual house arrest. He had to stay in his Northbridge residence in Baroona Road, and could only leave the house with the permission of the NSW Deputy Director of Security. This came after authorities checked whether the area was a ‘populous one’ and the house had a ‘view of the ocean or harbour’.
It didn’t. It was several miles from the coast and ‘had a very restricted view of the upper reaches of Long Bay connecting Flat Rock Creek’.
Police were even asked if Ide returning to Northbridge would ‘cause friction in that area’. Henry assured the authorities by letter: ‘I am sure no friction would occur with the general public.’
While relieved to at last be at home, even if confined to its borders, there was still great concern they had heard nothing of Blow. All they knew was that he had been captured when Singapore fell.
By this stage, Blow’s old Queensland mate Dooney Hayes was gone. He had enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), serving as a flying officer in the Middle East. In October 1942, Dooney had a lucky escape in a mid-air collision, where he had to bail out.
But on 12 January 1943, Flying Officer Hayes disappeared. His plane was never found. His war records indicate he was ‘detailed to fly Kitty hawk, then located in the Magrun area, Libya’.
‘The aircraft was last seen by an accompanying aircraft about 30 miles south east of Baroe at approximately 1400 hours and nothing is known regarding the fate of the pilot.’
For some time, it wasn’t known if Hayes was alive or not. And there was further confusion when his wife Jacqueline at the family’s Toowoomba home received a letter from the makers of Caterpillar parachutes saying Dooney ‘had saved his life with one of our chutes, and therefore wishes to become a member of the Caterpillar club’.
Caterpillar sent a membership card, providing the family with a membership pin. This provided brief hope that Dooney was alive, until a re-check with Caterpillar discovered they were referring to his October 1942 incident. This only added to the family agony.
The army at least retrieved Hayes’s personal effects, sending them back to Australia in a large tin trunk. Inside was a souvenir boomerang, family letters, an inscribed wrist watch, ten pairs of drawers, gloves, scarf, razor, woollen mittens, leather slippers and a Sudan jacket.
As for Blow, he suffered endless months of agony during the construction of the Thai–Burma Railway. After originally building airfields, he was involved in the body- and mind-sapping work of clearing thick jungle for the construction of the railway, together with laying sleepers and rail-line. Blow continued despite lack of food, constant torture from the guards and inadequate medical supplies.
He was eventually transferred to the Markham Camp in Kanchanaburi, followed by two months in Changi accompanied by Ramalli.
It was then decided Blow would be among those from the 2/10th Field Regiment to be taken to Japan for slave labourer duties. Japan was in desperate need of labour for its heavy industry.
Several Japanese boats, including the cargo ship Rakuyo Maru, were used to transport the prisoners, who were jammed into the holds. Many were close to death as they were shoved onto the ship.
The ship, part of a Japanese transport convoy, was supposed to have Red Cross signs on it, to indicate there were prisoners of war on board. Instead it had no form of identification, making it an obvious target for American submarines in the China Sea at the time. Believing the Rakuyo Maru was a Japanese ship carrying important cargo, the crew of the US submarine Sealion II torpedoed it on 12 September 1944 near the Bonin Islands. A direct hit to the hold, followed by another to the middle of the ship, gave many prisoners no chance of getting out of the hold in time.
Those who did scrambled to any floating debris they could find. Blow, who was in the overcrowded forward hull, was lucky enough to get out from the ship’s bowels and, within minutes of the torpedo, was in the water, attempting to help whoever he could. While the Japanese crew, who immediately abandoned ship, took over every lifeboat available and were picked up by nearby vessels, the POWs were left to their own devices.
Blow was successful in saving countless other prisoners, but then he floated away, becoming one of the 1159 POWs who did not survive the Rakuyo Maru disaster. The dead included 549 Australians.
Survivors said Blow was spotted in the water, and was beckoned to join them on a raft. But he refused, saying he would stick by those who were ‘pretty badly hurt’. One said he ‘presumably died at sea, as he had always played, for his team’.
It was not until near the end of the war that the Ides were alerted Blow was not coming home. The sinking was not reported in the Australian press until mid-November 1944, explaining how the 92 Australian survivors ‘annoyed the Japs’ by singing ‘Rule Britannia’ when the Japanese refused to pick them up out of the water.
Ramalli, who was once locked out of a POW camp because the Japanese guards thought he was a native Malay, was supposed to be on the Rakuyo Maru with Blow, but at the last minute was told to stay on shore as there were too many POWs on board. Ramalli instead went on the next convoy, and was sent to work in the Nagasaki coal mines. At the end of the war, he weighed only 38 kilograms, and was suffering from malaria and several skin diseases. After resettling in Sydney, hopes of playing post-war football were dashed due to years of malnutrition. He involved himself in the junior rugby ranks, and died in 1998.
Blow was not the only 1939–40 Wallaby to disappear at sea following a POW boat torpedo attack. Kenelm ‘Mac’ Ramsay, the handsome second row forward who played four Tests before the war and scored Australia’s only try in the 1938 second Sydney Bledisloe Cup international, suffered a similar fate. Due to his physique and strength, the country boy from Quirindi joined the 1st Independent Commando Company. Corporal Ramsay was sent to Kavieng, the capital of the Papua New Guinea province of New Ireland, to protect the local airport. Attacked by the Japanese, Ramsay was among those who escaped in a small steamer, Indiana Star, which was captured by an enemy destroyer. He was then taken prisoner in Rabaul. Ramsay was one of 1053 Australians, including 845 soldiers the bulk of whom were commandos, who were on the Japanese POW ship the Montevideo Maru travelling from Rabaul to the Japanese-occupied Hainan Island, where they were to work in the coal mines.
As with the Rakuyo Maru, there were no markings on the Montevideo Maru, and once again it was torpedoed by an American submarine, USS Sturgeon. As the bulk of the Australians were locked in holds in the ship’s hull, no one survived.
One Japanese survivor, Yoshiaka Yamaji, told the ABC decades later that as a few Australians clung on to firewood as the ship sunk, they began singing.
‘I was particularly impressed when they began to sing “Auld Lang Syne” as a tribute to their dead colleagues. Watching this I learned the Australians have big hearts,’ Yamaji said.
Although the Montevideo Maru sinking was the greatest single maritime disaster in Australia’s history, it took an eternity before anyone knew it had happened. Families had to wait years before being told their sons had been on the Montevideo Maru. Ramsay’s war records finish in October 1945 with a stamp that states he was presumed dead. Gannon, Ide’s AIF rugby teammate, died of malaria during the tortuous Sandakan march in June 1945.
After the war, the Ide family struggled financially, but survived through Blow’s war gratuity and his personal will. Blow had in 1940 written a will that had his mother as sole beneficiary.
This money was desperately needed, especially after the 72-year-old Clara was in Royal North Shore Hospital for most of 1944 after being ‘run over by a bus’.
In November 1946, Henry’s restriction order was finally revoked. Four years later, after moving to the NSW Central Coast, he died.
Blow wasn’t forgotten. For many years, the North Harbour– South Harbour representative rugby teams played for the Blow Ide Memorial Cup, donated by his Northern Suburbs club mate Bjarne Halvorsen. Then, in 1993, Japanese writer Tsutomu Kaniya wrote a novel based on Blow’s life, titled: Shi Ni Itaru Nosaido (Death Has No Side.)
As for Blow’s fiancée, Heather, she remained in the armed services and was promoted to a commander position in the Women’s Army. Around 1968, she retired. Heather then returned from Melbourne to Brisbane, where she lived by herself.
For the rest of her life, Heather never took off the engagement ring Blow had given her.