Thawley Prize Runner-up
For nearly 1300 days my father was tortured and starved and saw death up close. He witnessed an Australian soldier’s road-side execution with a Samurai sword and once saw a Gurkha behead a Japanese officer with his kukri. My father was a survivor of the Burma Railway and these were just some of the horrors that stayed with him until his death.
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Matthew Abbott is a Sydney PR man.
The 2016 Thawley Essay Prize theme will be announced in a forthcoming issue of The Spectator Australia
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