Media Room: Defence Speech
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Defence |
| 26/10/2006 | MSPA 261006/06 |
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MEDIA BRIEFING
REMAINS OF
‘UNKNOWN SAILOR’ LOCATED ON R1
THEATRETTE, THURSDAY 26 OCTOBER 2006 Item: Report on
the search, excavation and repatriation of the remains of the unknown sailor,
thought to be a crew member from the HMAS Sydney (II). speakers: Captain
Jim Parsons, excavation team leader, Australian Navy; Commander Matthew
BLENKIN, forensic dentist, Australian Navy; Jo Button, Strategic communications
advisor, Australian Navy JO BUTTON: Good afternoon ladies and
gentlemen, thank you all for coming. My name is Jo Button and I'm the strategic
communications advisor to Navy. I'm
just going to give you a brief outline of the presentation this afternoon, and
also define the format for this media opportunity. We
have two team leaders, sorry, two members of the Navy-led expedition team here
with us this afternoon. The team leader Captain Jim Parsons on my right, he
will deliver a statement outlining the journey of the unknown sailor from Then
we'll hand over to Commander Matt Blenkin, behind me, one of the team's
forensic dentists, who will deliver a statement outlining the process for
analysing and identifying, attempting to identify the remains. It
should be emphasised that no conclusive findings from the analysis and
identification process are available today, will be released today, because
they’re simply not available. The
analysis and identification process has only just commenced and it's expected
to take at least eight weeks, and that excludes DNA recovery, if that's even
possible. So
I request that you allow these people to carry out that work over the next
eight weeks and more will be released as it comes to hand. It
should also be emphasised that there has been some misinformation in the public
domain about the unknown sailor from It
was reported in the Minister's media release that was issued last Tuesday, 17
October, that there is an object lodged in the skull of the remains that
appears to be a bullet. Confirmation of this object though, can only be
achieved by conducting detailed analysis, which is commencing tomorrow, Friday,
27 October. If
you have any questions I just request that you hold them until the end. We do
have a question and answer session following Matt's presentation, and we do
have microphones available. So I do ask just one question at a time and please
use one of the microphones available. We
do have a slide show going on behind us this afternoon and there are CDs
containing all of those images that are available after this presentation.
There are also copies of the release and there is also an Australian War
Memorial release going out this afternoon, today as well, that you can get
copies of afterwards. I
will now hand over to Captain Jim Parsons, the team leader. JIM PARSONS: Good afternoon. On 19 November 1941
an action took place between HMAS Sydney
and the German raider, Kormoran. As a
result of that action both ships sank. On
6 February 1942, a Carley raft was seen floating in Flying Fish Cove off The
loss of As
a result, Navy attempted to locate the grave in 2001 which an initial
reconnaissance team which included a resident from the The
current project started in early 2006. It mainly started again as the result of
lobbying by interested parties, and the fact that some new evidence came to
light that people had not fully understood in the past. The
evidence mainly revolves around this photograph. The photograph itself doesn't
mean a lot. What you had to do was talk to the person who took the photograph
and realise the implications of the photograph that he took. This
photograph was taken by a man called Brian O'Shannassy; Brian worked on He
took this photograph to remind himself of where the gravesite was. He believed
it was over here. Now I ask you to just remember the shape of that tombstone
there because it will become important as we talk through the issue. So this
photograph had to be linked with Brian O'Shannassy's evidence. The
Navy then conducted an interview with Brian and also with a Mr Say Kit Foo. Say
Kit Foo was born on the Both
of these people during their interviews indicated a position on the map where
they believed the gravesite to be, and these positions were very close to one
another. The
headstone I talked about is here, so we're in fact looking at a picture that's
turned upside down. The reason is that that's north to the top and all survey
maps are done like that. Brian's
photograph was taken from this position here, and the two of them indicated
this area down here as the most probable area for the grave. This
is the more complex map. The orientation is exactly the same. There's the
tombstone at the end, that's the position where Brian took the photograph and
that's the position where they believe it to be. The blue area is a ground
penetrating radar search that was done a few years beforehand with no result;
the red area is where the Navy expedition in 2001 took place. The
interviews with Say Kit Foo and Brian O'Shannassy established that there was
sufficient evidence for us to warrant a new search. I started work as the team
leader of this expedition in July 2006 with a task of planning the expedition
to investigate the evidence, and to form a team with the appropriate skills to
conduct the excavation. The
team consisted of myself, an archaeologist, a forensic anthropologist and two
forensic dentists, Matt being one of them. The plan was developed based upon
the area indicated by Say Kit Foo and Brian O'Shannassy. Preparations
included consultation with the Department of Environment and Heritage, because
the cemetery is heritage listed. And also having an exhumation order issued by
the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads. At
this point it was decided to include Brian O'Shannassy as he was a direct link
with the gravesite and could provide the last piece of evidence as to the
gravesite. When
we got there this is what we found; that's the significant headstone on the
end. The area in Brian's photograph is the area along here, and that's the area
where we commenced our excavation. That
gives you an idea of what the cemetery is like, that's starting from near the
entrance and the area we were just looking at is up on the top of the rise
here. I guess it's worthwhile noting the slope here and it's an absolutely
unique location for any form of cemetery. This
is a close-up of the area where we're going to search, and again note the slope
down here, and the area over the back there; it was about a 45 degree slope
that goes right down to the waterfront. This
is how we conducted the search; we expected the grave to be lengthwise, that's
the end grave I keep on pointing out. And so we laid out a search pattern with
a one and a half metre gap between trenches, the idea being that if we missed a
gravesite at one end of the trench, you'd pick them up with the next one. We
started at the centre of the search area and worked initially towards the end,
this is the far end of the cemetery, and we finished up with six of those
trenches, which covered an area nearly 30 metres long. We found nothing. At
this point we thought, perhaps there's something smaller we expected in
between. So we went back and narrowed the gaps between and followed a couple of
leads where we thought there was something that didn't look quite right. Again
we found nothing. So
it was back to square one. Brian O'Shannassy, I might add, was a bit baffled at
this stage. So what we did was go back to square one here and have a look at
what this photograph might be representing. Now Brian thought it was there, but
why would you stand on a grave back here on the left hand side of it to take a
photograph on the right? So
in looking at it and knowing that we'd fully searched the area which had been
identified by the two of them and found nothing, it had to be somewhere else,
it had to be somewhere within this photograph. Eventually
I decided that this area here has got to be the centre of the photograph. So
therefore we decided to excavate the position there. Now
that end grave was not there in 1942 when the sailor was buried, so in fact
this grave here would have been the end of the cemetery. So it would seem
logical for the grave to be just beyond that. This
is the point where we've just started to excavate the new area, which is the
point here, and again there's the distinctive headstone. There's the six
trenches we'd done and I can't tell you what it was like working there, it was
incredibly hot, it was incredibly humid and the ground was – to say it's hard
is probably an understatement. All of this was done by hand as there was
absolutely no ability to get any form of mechanised equipment up there at all. It
wasn't long before we realised that we might be in an area where we might find
something. Notice the step down here? What we found having removed the
overburden, if you like, was that this end, and this is the uphill end of this
trench, and that blue bit is the trace of the far grave. Once we removed this
we found that this area here was rock hard like everything else. The area along
from there though, was not quite so rock hard. In other words, if you put the
crowbar into it, it went in about an inch here and it went in about two inches
over there. So
it started to look as it someone might have been there before. So we kept
digging down and then Eureka, this area down here the crowbar went in, pulled
back out again, it went in a bit deeper than we'd expected it to, it came out
with a trace of wood on the end of it. At that stage the crowbar was put aside
and we went in with the more gentle tools and commenced to take this out using
small trowels and so on. Within
a couple of hours we found more evidence of the wood and some nails, which
probably were coffin nails. We packed up and went to lunch at that stage and
came back again, all revitalised and ready to go and kept on digging, and some
hours later found the first trace of the fact that it was a grave, and that was
a tiny little bone from the ankle. At
this stage we sealed this up, covered it over with something solid because we
knew there was something there. This trench is something you could not work in,
it was too small. So we had to enlarge it, and this edge went right across to
there, it went out this way and it was made longer. This
is actually after we'd recovered the body, that's that end grave, you can see
how far we moved down there. And this hole at this stage was about 2.2 metres
deep, it was about 2.5 metres long and about two metres wide. We estimate about
10 tonnes of dirt came out of there, again by hand. Now
from there it was a case of uncovering the remains as carefully as we could,
bearing in mind that they were very, very fragile, and then recovering them,
packing them up ready for shipment back to Australia. And that was done in a
RAAF aircraft. On
arrival they were taken direct to the Now
what makes us think we've got the right guy? The Standing Committee that I
mentioned earlier on concluded on the balance of probability that the body in
the Carley float found off the shore of Christmas Island in 1942 were most
likely that from HMAS Sydney.
Therefore our task is to try and link what we've found with the recovery of the
Carley raft in 1942. What
we've got is a very odd burial. First of all we found an unmarked grave in a
cemetery full of marked graves, so that's got to indicate something. Secondly,
it's very close to being in the position where we expected it to be. What we've
also got is a very odd shaped coffin. History tells us that they built a coffin
around the remains. This would indicate there was something a little different. What
we've got is a coffin that is only 1.4 metre long and it's nearly 0.8 metre
wide; a very odd size. And the position of the body in this is also unusual. All
of that leads us to the conclusion that we are probably dealing with a person
that was recovered from the Carley raft in 1942. Yes,
there's one other point that I missed, with the recovering of the remains,
there were a couple of things we found. One was press-studs - certainly what
appears to be press-studs. They're badly corroded, but that's what they look
like. Again,
history tells us that the sailor when he was recovered was wearing blue
overalls, bleached white by the sun, with press-studs down the front. Again,
another piece of evidence that suggests it's the right person. The
other thing we found were some brass eyelets, which have got us puzzled a
little bit. This is the foot of the grave here. That's actually the outline of
the coffin that you see at the end there. Down
at the end here, which is the foot, there were four or five of these quite big
brass eyelets. That may or may not be associated with a piece of canvas or
something like that that might have been used to remove the remains around
during the recovery process. These
are all part of the artefacts that we handed over to the Australian War
Memorial earlier this week for analysis because it appears that both the
eyelets and the press-studs have some minute traces of material still jammed
between where they're pressed together and we're hopeful that we might be able
to analyse something out of that. Again
I refer to the media release from the Australian War Memorial that's available
to you all, all after that. All right then. Thank you Matt. MATTHEW BLENKIN: Thanks Sir. Okay. Now with the remains
safely housed at the What
I'd like to do now is take you through a little bit of what's actually involved
in that examination and analysis process because there's a lot to it. There's
actually quite a number of examinations that are going on at the same time,
most of them in parallel. There's the dental analysis, the anthropological
analysis, the pathological analysis, the ballistics, including metallurgy, a
DNA analysis and there's the work being done by the War Memorial on the
artefacts that we found in the grave. The
whole idea of this process is to hopefully -- the reason we're examining the
remains is to hopefully identify them as we're directed to do by the Senate
Standing Committee. So
I'll take you through each of these processes and just let you know exactly
what's involved. Firstly, with the dental analysis, we basically -- we take a
look at the remains, we look at the fillings and the missing teeth, the teeth
that are there and we document them, photograph them and x-ray them. Then
we try and compare what we have found in the remains to the dental records of
the sailors that were on the ship at the time, looking for a match. In that way
it's a bit like looking at fingerprints, in that you're trying to find matches
in the patterns between what you find on the body and what you've got on the
record. So
you're really trying to look for, what we call points of concordance. Is the
body missing this tooth, is this sailor missing this tooth. Has he got fillings
in this tooth, this tooth and this one? Are they the same there? There's
some quite distinctive dental work, so we're actually hoping that that will
allow us to positively identify - we'll get a match. We're hoping that we're
getting a match with these records. If
we can't get a match, what we may be able to do is narrow down the field and
get to a point where we can say, well we haven't got a definite, it's this guy,
but what we may be able to say is he's one of 20 men. That's
probably, you know, so that's where we're headed. The only problem that we've
got with the records of the ships' sailors - the dental records held on ship,
were that when the ship sank all the dental records went down with it, which
was handy, really - it's quite annoying. What
we did manage to recover though were the dental records that were taken on entry
into the navy, when these guys went through recruiting centres they were given
a medical and dental examination. We
managed to get some of those, but we only managed to get about half the ship's
company's records. So we're a bit limited, probably by about half, as far as
being able to compare to the entire ship's company. But
we're going to work with what we've got and it does take a lot of time and
we're slowly, myself and the other forensic dentist, Lieutenant Lane, are
slowly and as the Captain said, painstakingly, comparing what we've found in
the body to the dental records one at a time, one at a time. So
that's going to take a little while. Another stage, which is actually happening
in parallel to this, is the anthropological analysis. Now what that will give
us is what we call a biological profile - the gender, age, race and height of
the remains of the person. Now,
as I said earlier, we may not be able to positively identify them from the
dental records, we may just narrow the field. The biological profile may help
narrow the field down even more. So
where the dental evidence has given us, for example, a group of 20 or 30, once
we take into account the height and the age of the person, that may half that
number. So
we're getting narrower and narrower and slowly working down towards the point
where we can hopefully identify who this person was. At
the same time, the forensic pathologist is also examining the remains. Now he's
looking for signs of trauma, which obviously the metal fragment in the head is
a good example, but he's going to look at the rest of the skeleton to see if
there's any other signs of trauma anywhere else on the skeleton at all. He'll
also be looking for signs of previous disease and any other signs of trauma,
such as broken bones when he was a kid that may have healed up. We can still
see those on the bones. That's in the service records sometimes, in the medical
history and again that helps narrow the search down. It helps exclude people or
include them in our list of possible identities. Now
the ballistics guy, the actual ballistics expert is, in his day job, works for
the New South Wales Police Force and what he's going to do is basically
determine the nature of that object that's lodged in the skull. If
it, you know, determine if it is a bullet or if it is shrapnel. At this stage,
while it appears to be a bullet, we can't be 100 per cent sure because it's
only an interim finding, it was only from a very cursory examination. So
his job is basically to determine the nature of it. If it is a bullet, what
sort of weapon did it come from? He's got access to a number of different
weapons from both sides of the conflict and to the rounds in those weapons. So
he'll do some test firings and compare the object to those bullets fired from
those weapons to see if it matches, or to see if he can narrow down exactly
what we're looking at. He'll
also get a metallurgical analysis undertaken and that will help also to
determine the type of object. So if it is a bullet, what was it made up of,
where did it come from, what were its origins? If
it's shrapnel, also you know, where did the shrapnel come from and what was it
made from? What's it shrapnel of? So all these little pieces of the puzzle are
slowing coming together over time. There's
the work being done by the War Memorial to look at the buttons. Ideally we'd
love them to say, yeah they're the buttons from a boiler suit, from this
period, but we've got to wait and see. We don't know, but hopefully they will
be able to help us again with that information. The
final step, if we need it, if we can't get a positive identification from the
dental records and the biological profile, is DNA analysis. The reason we leave
this to last is that when you extract DNA from bones, you're actually
destroying the bones to do it. And
we really want to complete the thorough examination of those bones before we go
crunching them up to try and get DNA out of them. There's a problem with, I
guess expectations of what the DNA can give us and I'd like to blame CSI for
that. It's
because it's actually given a lot of people, not just the general public, but
the judiciary, juries, a range of people have unrealistic expectationS of what
DNA can provide. It
doesn't happen overnight; in fact it doesn't happen in that 40 minutes between
ad breaks. It takes quite a lot of time and it's very, very technical and it's
not just some new beaut little machine you can plug a piece of bone into and
get a profile out of. The
chance of getting DNA from these bones is very low. DNA degrades slowly over
time, but the one thing that really degrades DNA badly and renders it useless
as far as identification goes is water. Now
these bones have been in the ground in That's
all that was left and it was mostly due to the water washing through that
dissolved that away. It does the same to DNA. So we're not... Well we will try
and get DNA from the bones if we need to. We don't hold high hopes for it. So
as far as the results go, preliminary analysis that was undertaken in the field
have indicated that he was a relatively young Caucasian male, relatively tall
for his … for that time. He
has a number of distinctive dental characteristics, which include a number of
fillings and some missing teeth, which are currently being compared to the
existing dental records and the object in the skull appears to be a low
velocity object and if it is a bullet, it looks like it's come from a small
calibre weapon and it's unlikely to have come from a high velocity, large
calibre military weapon such as a machine gun. But
still early days and we are moving on with that process. Like I said, the
ballistics expert starts his work in earnest tomorrow. In the interim, what
we've actually done is we've taken moulds of the object in place, because it's
quite old and corroded and very fragile and the last thing we want to do is,
once it's removed, have it crumble apart and lose any trace of what it
originally looked like. So
the casts have been made of the object and the next step is to actually remove
it and start looking at what it is. Finally,
I just want to re-emphasise that in an undertaking of this type where we're
looking at historic remains, the likelihood of identifying him positively is
actually quite low. Thank you very much. JO BUTTON: We will now hand over for
questions. We invite questions from the floor. REPORTER: Just can you tell us a little
bit about the state of the remains? Is there a complete skeleton or is it
basically just gone and the main bones left? MATTHEW BLENKIN: Yes. We're actually pleasantly
surprised to actually recover a complete skeleton. Originally, after the first
dig, we were a little concerned, back in 2000, that maybe the soil content was
such that the bones would dissolve away as the wood did. Some analysis was
actually done on the soil and it actually showed a PH that was conducive to
preserving the bones and as it turns out, we actually did manage to recover an
entire skeleton. REPORTER: Geof Parry from the Seven Network.
The discovery or the possible discovery of a bullet in the skull was considered
to be somewhat of a surprise I understand. Does that only go towards fuelling
some of the conspiracy theories or the theories about, you know, the possible
involvement of Japanese submarine and does it go to settling anything or does
it only go to fuelling those conspiracies further? Or those theories? JIM PARSONS: I don't think we can draw any
conclusions yet on this. Yes, it will fuel some of the theorists out there that
believe these things, but I think what we've got to do is wait until the
analysis of this is complete and find out what we really have. Yes, it was a
surprise. I was quite stunned. But I think it's too early to draw conclusions
from that yet. REPORTER: Patrick Walters from The Australian. What about facial
reconstruction? Will you be attempting to do something in that area? MATTHEW BLENKIN: I guess it is a possibility. There's
no reason why we couldn't. It's something that the police have used in the
past. If all other avenues of identification are fruitless, I guess that's a
decision that will be made later on. I wouldn't rule out those other avenues of
identification first though. REPORTER: The actual dental records you're
working from on enlistment, I presume they're just words written on a page?
They're not X-rays or anything as useful as that? MATTHEW BLENKIN: That's a great question. With
contemporary cases, Coronial cases, disaster victim identification, like the All
of which is usually very distinctive. The problem with the written records, as
Max has actually pointed out, is that it's a bit like trying to do a
fingerprint comparison based on a written description of the fingerprint. So
the best … what we're probably hoping for I guess, looking at this, while you
can... With a fingerprint comparison, if it was to be written and described
rather than drawn, you could say, yes it sounds exactly like that but I
couldn't 100 per cent guarantee that that's a match. It
sounds like it, but I can't promise anything. It's the same with these dental
records. We are looking at a written description of what existed in the mouth
and from that point of view, I can't 100 per cent say, yes this is the guy. But
what I can say is that there's no one else on the ship that matches except this
guy. So in that way, because we're talking about a limited field of people, we
can exclude others. And
so, whilst I may not be able to get an exact match, what I can do is say, it's
definitely not this one, this one or this one. And so, in that way we kind
of... I don't know. It limits the ability to provide a perfect match. It does
actually still provide us with plenty of scope to narrow the search down. REPORTER: Gerard McManus from The Herald Sun. Why do you think the
Navy resisted so long and fought tooth and nail to approach this expedition? JIM PARSONS: I'm not sure that's a question I can
answer. I think it was a case of, we had to have real concrete evidence to
mount something like this again. Theories were not good enough and it wasn't
until the association between Brian O'Shannassy's photograph and his own
evidence came along that we really had something we could pin it down to. Now
you've seen the area we searched there. That took 14 days of digging and you've
got to have a fairly specific location in order to have any hope of succeeding.
And I think that's the reason why it didn't happen until such time as we had
the firm evidence. MATTHEW BLENKIN: I can support that. After digging for
14 days back in 2001, in a place where the body wasn't, it's really not
something you want to do unless you've got a lot of evidence pin pointing the
location. REPORTER: But this is years and years of
blocking and I mean, you don't even give acknowledgement to the one person who
pushed for this to happen. Is there any reason why you haven't talked about
that today? JIM PARSONS: No there's no reason at all. I assume
the person you are talking about is Ted McGowan, who raised a lot of these
issues in public. I did talk about the lobbying of interested parties and he
was certainly one of them and Glenys McDonald was another. JO BUTTON: We'll move onto the next question
thank you. REPORTER: Geof Parry from Seven Network
again and this is, I suppose, by way of a query. I understand that you have
some video of your operation up at JIM PARSONS: We have a small amount yes, which
will become available fairly shortly Geoff. REPORTER: Why has Navy being denying, for
a number of days, the existence of that video? JO BUTTON: That’s not correct. REPORTER: It is correct, because you told
the defence media centre that no video existed and I was wondering why and it's
not the first time. In fact, you've told them twice. JO BUTTON: The video taken on REPORTER: No, you denied its existence and
I was just wondering why that is? JO BUTTON: Two more questions from the
floor? REPORTER: Sorry, I didn't get an answer.
Is there no answer? JO BUTTON: I just don't think there's any
truth to that. There's certainly videos that will be made available this
afternoon. REPORTER: Which wasn't going to be made
available this morning because its existence was denied. JO BUTTON: Quick, yep, at the back,
thankyou. REPORTER: So, to the team leader, just
based on what you've discovered, what degree of probability would you say this
sailor or this person who was buried, was actually from the JIM PARSONS: I think you're bringing in some
issues there where I can't draw a conclusion from, but the Defence Standing
Committee drew the conclusion that on the balance of probability it was a
sailor from HMAS REPORTER: Just, is there any possibility
that the sailor could be a German? JIM PARSONS: It's not impossible and it would be
interesting to theorise how he got into the Carley raft, but it's certainly not
implausible. And this will be part of the process that we go through. JO BUTTON: Last one, thank you. REPORTER: This bullet wound, did it
actually penetrate the skull and if so, would it have been immediately fatal or
not long afterwards? MATT BLENKIN: It did penetrate the skull and with it
being lodged at the exit wound, it would have been immediately fatal, yes. JO BUTTON: Thank you ladies and gentlemen;
that will be all. Media contacts: Defence Media Liaison 02 6265 3343 0408 498 664 For a free subscription to Defence Direct, the
Minister for Defence's monthly e-newsletter, please follow this link: http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/defencedirect/spt/subscribe.html |
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