Frederick Royden Chalmers

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Frederick Royden Chalmers
DSO
Frederick Royden Chalmers c. 1922
Administrator of Nauru
In office
October 1938 – 26 August 1942
MonarchGeorge VI
Preceded byRupert Clare Garsia
Succeeded byJapanese occupation
Personal details
Born(1881-01-04)4 January 1881
Mentioned in Despatches
(2)

Frederick Royden Chalmers,

Second World War
.

Early life and military service

Frederick Chalmers, son of Robert Hamilton Chalmers and Emily Louisa (Walter) Chalmers, was born in Brighton, Tasmania, on 4 January 1881,[1] into a farming family. He had four brothers and four sisters.

At age 18 he enlisted in the army and served in South Africa during the

Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1919.[3]

Returning to Tasmania with his new wife, Lenna Annette French, whom he had married in London in 1917, he worked for several years in agriculture in Bagdad and in mining on the west coast of Tasmania. He headed an association of veterans and was involved in the Boy Scouts.

Administrator of Nauru

In 1938, Chalmers was selected from among 70 candidates to succeed R.C. Garsia as head of the administration of Nauru, a Pacific island supervised by Australia under League of Nations mandate. It had over 3,500 inhabitants,[4] and was of strategic importance to the Commonwealth owing to its very large deposits of phosphate (which was used in fertilizer, making it critical to Australia and New Zealand's agriculture-based economies). His affable manner made him a popular figure on Nauru. He introduced Berkshire pigs to the island to improve the local livestock, and also gambusia fish to combat the proliferation of mosquitoes.

On 27 December 1940, after the outbreak of the

Second World War, an auxiliary cruiser of the Kriegsmarine, the Komet, appeared off Nauru's shore. After warning the residents via signals, the German commerce raider began shelling the island's mining facilities, fuel storage tanks, and cantilevered loading jetties, causing tremendous damage.[5] An infuriated Chalmers reportedly stomped along the waterfront hurling insults at the enemy ship. A year later, the decision was made to evacuate the island with the outbreak of the Pacific War. All Westerners including civilians and military garrison were taken off in February 1942 along with half the foreign workers, however, 191 Chinese were left behind along with the native Nauruans. Chalmers (along with four other Australians, two of whom were missionaries) chose to remain feeling it was their duty to look after the islanders;[6] despite being told they would be evacuated later, they were not due to the rapid pace of the Japanese advance during the South-East Asian campaigns of 1941–42.[7][8]

Death

When Japanese occupation forces invaded the islands in August 1942, Chalmers and the other Australians were interned in a house near the island's native hospital.

On 25 March 1943, after an American bombing raid on Nauru's Japanese-built airfield, the garrison's second-in-command, Lieutenant Hiromi Nakayama, ordered the execution of all five Australians. Chalmers and his companions were beheaded, bayoneted, or shot (later testimony varied) and buried on the beach. After the war Nakayama was found guilty of murder by an Australian war crimes tribunal at Rabaul. He was hanged in August 1946.[9]

Chalmers' wife Lenna died while he was in captivity. They had four daughters. He also had a son Roy and two daughters, Molly and Emily Noreen, with his first wife Mary.[1]

Legacy

A monument to Chalmers, as well as the other victims of the war, was erected on Nauru in 1951.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Keneally, Kerry F. "Chalmers, Frederick Royden (1881–1943)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 2 June 2016.
  2. ^ "Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Royden Chalmers, CMG, DSO". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 2 June 2016.
  3. ^ "No. 31370". The London Gazette. 30 May 1919. p. 6793.
  4. ^ Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 35, p255, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics
  5. ^ "Enemy Attack on Shipping at Nauru – December-1940, Captain J.M. Stott". Retrieved 2 June 2016.
  6. ^ The Chinese Communities in the Smaller Countries of the South Pacific: Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, Cook Islands (PDF). MacMillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury. 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 May 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2018. Working Paper 10
  7. ^ Pacific Magazine History of Nauru during Second World war Archived 8 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ISBN 92-1-070936-5
    .
  9. ^ Japanese Atrocities on Nauru during the Pacific War: The murder of Australians, the massacre of lepers and the ethnocide of Nauruans, Yuki Tanaka, www.japanfocus.org
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