Edward Dunlop Biography

Weary Dunlop was an Australian surgeon who was captured by the Japanese during the World War II. He received much acclaim for his leadership skills and bravery in captivity. A graduate of the University of Melbourne with first class honors in pharmacy and in medicine, he was commissioned into the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1939. He was serving as a surgeon during World War II when he became a prisoner-of-war in 1942. He was among the 106 Australian doctors captured by the Japanese and was placed in charge of prisoner-of-war camps in Java by his captors. After being held in a number of camps, he was eventually moved to the Thai-Burma railway where he, along with the other prisoners was forced into strenuous labor with inadequate food and regular physical punishments. But even in the harshest of circumstances, he maintained his optimism and helped to ease other prisoners’ pain with his skills as a doctor. A courageous human being, he not only healed his fellow prisoners, but also boosted their morale which helped to keep the survival rates of the Australian prisoners higher than those of other nationalities. He survived the war and in the post-war years he devoted himself to the health and welfare of former prisoners-of-war.