We Sons' first interview with the son of a non-British veteran!
This episode is the first of a two part interview with John Rouse from Sydney, Australia whose father, Norman, spent most of his war as a POW held by the Japanese.
Norman was taken prisoner with his brother. So, they looked after each other during their captivity - which took them from The Bicycle Camp, a former Dutch military base (that Norman described as "almost luxurious" compared to the horrors that followed), to camps along the route of the Thai/Burma railway that they were forced to labour on.
Norman Rouse spent his early pre-war years on the family's New South Wales stud farm, Gunterwang. But after the family left the estate, he took a job as a teenage jackaroo.
After the war Norman became a pastoral property manager. So, John grew up on isolated sheep stations.
In this first part of John's interview, he tells Matthew about his uniquely Aussie childhood - and about his father's early life up to his military service in the Far East when he and he has brother became POWs.
The next episode, John and Norman - Part 2, tells the story of their brutal imprisonment and explores its lifelong effects on the brothers.
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