Patching Rubber Boots

Patching of shoes and boots was so successful that the Japanese guards also bought theirs to be repaired. Of course these took priority but were designed to fail in the shorter term.

This image of Des Bettany’s artwork has been reproduced with permission from the book ‘Don’t Ever Again Say “It Can’t Be Done”’ published by The Changi Museum, Singapore.

‘In the early days of our prisoner of war career… a handful of volunteers got together with a view to repairing shoes … (it) later proved to be the birth of one of the most essential and useful installations in the camp: namely, the Rubber Factory.’

‘On the strength of these experiments it was decided to open a factory for the manufacture of these rubber soles. Tappers, to tap the rubber trees and bring the latex to the factory each morning, were trained. Mixers were trained to mix latex, laterite and cement in their exact quantities.’

Source: Robert Moffett, ‘Rubber Factory Report’, in Lachlan Grant (ed.), The Changi Book, Published by New South in association with the Australian War Memorial, 2015, pg. 200, 203