The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will commemorate the service and sacrifice of Kindred resident Sergeant Wason Herbert Watsford Arnold at the Last Post Ceremony on Tuesday 24 June 2025, the 81st anniversary of the sinking of the Tamahoko Maru.
"Wason Arnold was born in Kindred on the Central Coast of north-west Tasmania on 29 July 1910, the son of Henry James and Alice Arnold," Australian War Memorial Director Matt Anderson PSM said.
"With the coming of the Second World War, Wason Arnold served in the Militia for three months before enlisting in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 4 June 1940."
Arnold served with the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion in the Middle East from April 1941 until the end of the year.
With Japan entering the war, the AIF was recalled to Australia. As Arnold and his comrades sailed towards home aboard the Orcades, they were caught in the Japanese thrust towards Singapore and Java. In March 1942, Arnold became one of thousands of Allied prisoners of war of the Japanese.
On 24 June 1944, Sergeant Wason Arnold was aboard the Japanese hell-ship Tamahoko Maru when it was torpedoed by a US submarine and sank. Of some 770 prisoners of war on board, 560 died at sea, including Sergeant Arnold. He was 33.
The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30 pm every day except Christmas Day in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial.
Each ceremony shares the story behind one of 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour. To date, the Memorial has delivered more than 4,100 ceremonies, each featuring an individual story of service from colonial to recent conflicts. It would take more than 280 years to read the story behind each of the 103,000 names listed on the Roll of Honour.
"The Last Post Ceremony is our commitment to remembering and honouring the legacy of Australian service," Mr Anderson said.
"Through our daily Last Post Ceremony, we not only acknowledge where and how these men and women died. We also tell the stories of who they were when they were alive, and of the families who loved and, in so many cases, still mourn for them.
"The Last Post is now associated with remembrance but originally it was a bugle call to sound the end of the day's activities in the military. It is a fitting way to end each day at the Memorial."
The Last Post Ceremony honouring the service of Sergeant Wason Herbert Watsford Arnold will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/awmlastpost.
The stories told at the Last Post Ceremony are researched and written by the Memorial's military historians, who begin the process by looking at nominal rolls, attestation papers and enlistment records before building profiles that include personal milestones and military experiences.
HANDOUT image: www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1067204 (Wason Arnold is pictured second row, 7th from right)
