Ron Vickress

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of VP (Victory in the Pacific) Day commemorations, UNE alumnus and former Royal Australian Navy sailor Ron Vickress reflects on the Japanese surrender that officially ended World War II.

Ron Vickress on HMAS PirieRon Vickress on HMAS Pirie

A commanding performance

The precise moment the peace treaty was signed on September 2, 1945, signalman Ron Vickress was at his post on the Australian corvette HMAS Pirie, watching the ceremony through a pair of binoculars.

"We had sailed into Tokyo Harbour on August 31 and were anchored about half a mile from the USS Missouri, the American flagship on which the documents were signed," says the 95-year-old Armidale resident. "We had been sailing with the British Pacific Fleet off Okinawa but had to wait two weeks for permission to enter the harbour, steaming up and down the coast in cyclonic weather.

"We were told not to relax our vigilance, because there were still floating mines that the Japanese had let loose. We didn't know if the Japanese would actually go through with the surrender or not."

While he recalls feeling immense relief that the war was finally over, Ron says what happened the next day left a more lasting impact. "We got a signal saying a British aircraft carrier was coming alongside the Pirie with Australian prisoners of war (POWs) on board, who were heading home to Australia," he says. "It turned out that ours was the first Australian flag they had seen in three years. We spontaneously started singing Waltzing Matilda and I think there was a tear or two on both decks."

At first the Pirie sailors could not distinguish their fellow servicemen from the British crew. "The POWs were mainly infantry blokes who had been working in coal mines and factories within the Japanese prison camps, and they had come aboard the aircraft carrier in rags," Ron says. "They were then fitted out in British naval uniforms."

After signingAfter the peace treaty was signed, Tokyo Harbour September 2, 1945

Such rich memories of his military service - which began in March 1943 at the tender age of 17 and eight months - have informed and coloured Ron's remarkable life. Although war themes have only recently emerged in his work, the prolific writer has drawn heavily on personal experiences to share stories of mateship and sacrifice in verse, prose, novels and plays.

"In those days you just shrugged off the painful things that happened; you had to get on with life," Ron says. "Now, little pieces appear in what I write."

After his discharge from the Navy, Ron married and started a family but "drifted" for seven years before enrolling in Sydney Teachers' College and commencing work as a primary and then secondary teacher. "I didn't discover it immediately, but through teaching I found what my forte was - theatre, English writing and drama," he says.

Having joined an amateur theatre group in Ballina in 1960, Ron began to write, act in, direct and produce plays. It inspired him to enrol in a Bachelor of Letters (Litt. B.) at UNE, which he completed externally (in 1963) while teaching at Ballina High School.

"I realise now that the Litt. B. provided an intellectual, academic approach to the arts of drama and theatre," Ron says. "It suited my varied interests: the development of language through drama (especially in the Tudor period), and the craft of writing plays. The course was a gift. It stimulated my interest in what would become 40 years of practice."

But war again intervened in the late 1960s, when Australia announced it would conscript men via a "marble lottery" to fight in Vietnam. With his son Bruce turning 20, Ron (by then 42) attempted to enlist in his place. "He wasn't even eligible to vote; he had no say in our foreign policy, so I didn't see why he should be forced to fight," says Ron, who was unsuccessful in his bid and went on to become the teachers' representative on the Sydney Vietnam Moratorium Committee. "We didn't have any business being in Vietnam, and conscription, to me, was un-Australian."

Bruce's number, fortunately, did not come up. But Ron officially joined the anti-war movement in Sydney in 1970, attending protests as a marshal and bailing out demonstrators arrested during rallies. By then "completely opposed to war", he also got caught up in the great political and social upheaval sweeping the country that demanded Indigenous rights and an end to apartheid in South Africa.

"They were interesting times and put me at odds, somewhat, with many other members of the Returned Serviceman's League (RSL)," Ron says.

Ron as Ebenezer ScroogeRon as Ebenezer Scrooge in 'A Christmas Carol'. Script by Ron Vickress.

When appointed senior lecturer in English and Drama at the Armidale Teachers' College in 1972, Ron introduced the 'theatre-in-education' course and embarked on a Masters in Education at UNE, graduating with honours in 1978. When he was not treading the boards himself - two of his one-act plays comprised his Masters thesis - Ron was devising productions for students to perform in, forging a close relationship between the college and UNE through theatre.

"Some of my plays were first performed in the UNE Arts Theatre (including the first performance of his anti-Vietnam War play Crossing, in 1973)," says Ron, who estimates he has produced and performed in about 50 works, as recently as 2010. "I love the theatre, the voice and the visual spectacle. I have played many parts and met so many interesting people."

But the theatre of war has been a common backdrop. Last year Ron toured Victoria, South Australia and Queensland to visit six other surviving Pirie* seamen, several of whom he hadn't seen since leaving the Navy. He keeps in touch with old shipmates through a quarterly newsletter he writes, although these days the sons and daughters outnumber the sailors.

With his memoirs well advanced, Ron is "trying to come to some conclusions" about the attitudes he has developed during almost a century. Nearly 40 publications, plays and musicals, and counting, provide ready inspiration and insights.

"I can't cash in my chips yet," Ron says with a laugh. "I have too much unfinished work to do."

*In a strange quirk of fate, HMAS Pirie was the sister ship to HMAS Armidale, which was sunk by the Japanese off Timor in December 1942 with heavy loss of life. A school mate of Ron's survived the sinking and for many years Ron has represented the NSW Corvettes Association at the annual Royal Australian Navy commemorative service in Armidale to mark the sinking.