Australia plan to compensate POWs

Australia honors its soldiers each April 25 on ANZAC Day

By CNN's Grant Holloway

CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- Australia is likely to pay compensation to Australian prisoners captured by the Japanese army during World War 2, following moves by Canada, the United Kingdom and now New Zealand to do so.

The New Zealand Government announced on Monday that it would pay about $10,000 to former prisoners of war and other soldiers who suffered ill health as a result of their service.

According to the Financial Times website FT.com, these include members of a Royal New Zealand Navy vessel forced to watch a British atomic bomb test on the Pacific Ocean in 1947.

That test has been described as a "guinea pig experiment" to assess the impact on humans near an atomic blast.

The Australian Government is expected to announce the compensation package when it releases its Budget for the year on May 22, and it has been suggested the prisoners of war will receive about $13,000 (Australian $25,000) each.

Mark Croxford, a spokesman for Australia's Minister for Veteran's Affairs, said the minister would not comment on Budget speculation.

However, he did say the Minister, Bruce Scott, had invited Australia's Ex-Prisoners of War Association to make a submission for compensation.

That submission had been received and was being considered in the light of the New Zealand move and decisions last year by Britain and Canada to offer similar compensation deals, Croxford said.

With 2700 Australian survivors of Japanese POW camps still alive, it is estimated the compensation would cost the Budget about $34 million.

Public holiday honoring war service

The war compensation talk comes on the eve of the ANZAC Day public holiday in Australia and New Zealand which honors both countries soldiers, living and dead.

The remembrance day stems from the disastrous First World War military campaign at Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey where Australian and New Zealand troops suffered nearly 300,000 casualties in a futile and bungled British-led campaign to take the peninsula.

Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer will be in Turkey for this year's ceremony at the Gallipoli site which is held jointly with the Turkish Government. Turkish forces suffered similar losses during the April 1915 campaign.

However with only 25 Great War veterans remaining in Australia, ANZAC Day is now a broader remembrance of Australia's wartime contributions, including World War 2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

And this year Australian 1500 troops involved in peace-keeping operations in the former Indonesia province of East Timor will be involved in ANZAC day marches and ceremonies.

ANZAC Day
Gallipoli

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