In 1945, 15 August was a day of special importance for the only Australian naval officer of Greek descent. James Paizis was on board the HMAS Colac which was being repaired after battle with the Japanese at Choiseul on the Solomon Islands.
It was the day when he heard the news that Japan had surrendered to the Allied forces and the Second World War was finally over.
Mr Paizis and John Raftopoulos, who served in the army, are the remaining two of the 316 Australian Greeks who served in the New Guinea campaign during the Second World War.
In September 1942, Mr Paizis, now aged 96, had already worked for two years as an accounting clerk at the YMCA when he volunteered to join the armed forces at the tender age of 18.
The year he joined, 1942, was a big year in Australian history. The country was under direct attack by a foreign power, Japan. By September, when he enlisted, the Japanese had already begun their air attacks on Darwin (starting on 19 February) and in May and June had carried out submarine attacks on Sydney and Newcastle.
In July, a large heavily armed Japanese force had landed at Gona in New Guinea to launch an attack on Port Moresby. So began the gruelling and desperate battles along the Kokoda track to halt the Japanese and prevent them taking the airfield at Port Moresby from which they could attack the eastern seaboard of Australia.
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In an atmosphere of impending invasion, Mr Paizis volunteered for the navy and turned up at Flinders Naval Depot for training onboard the HMAS Cerberus for the next four months.
In that time he was asked to interview for the naval officer’s training school.
“I don’t know why I was selected as I had not been a top student but I was commissioned to serve on one of the 56 Corvettes in the navy,” he told Neos Kosmos. “Whatever they were looking for, I must have had it.”
All he received was eight weeks of training before he was commissioned to serve as a midshipman on board his first corvette, the HMAS Glenelg. The corvettes were named after Australian towns.
Corvettes, with a crew of 80, at 60m in length were about half the size of a destroyer. Their main role was to protect convoys of ships carrying troops, supplies and cargo from Japanese submarines that operated along Australia’s eastern seaboard and further north.
“We would leave Sydney and sail up the coast to Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea. As the war progressed we moved up the east side of New Guinea and ranged as far north as the Solomon Islands.
“We also supported the troops in the fighting and bombarded Japanese positions,” he said. These operations were a welcome relief from the monotony of convoy work.
Mr Paizis was the ship’s gunnery officer charged with looking after the ship’s armaments and training the crew. But his other role was as Officer of the Watch from midnight to 4am on the lookout for submarine activity.
“There were five officers on board and three of us took turns as Officers of the Watch.”
READ MORE: Greek Australians in the Australian Armed Forces
He was promoted to sub-lieutenant and a year later, in 1943, and was transferred to another corvette, the HMAS Colac. Mr Paizis is the only officer of Greek origin to serve on the Australian navy during the Second World War.
“I got on well with everyone, there was never a problem,” said Mr Paizis.
His father, Aristomenis, was born in Ithaca in 1880. He first worked in Perth before moving to Melbourne in 1923, the year he married Penelope who also came from the island. Mr Paizis was born in 1924. He went to Carlton Primary School and then University High School before finding work as a clerk at the YMCA and the navy two years later.
As the war progressed, the submarine menace on Australia’s waters lessened.
“The Japanese were very efficient. Their I-Class submarines were nearly 400 feet (120m) long – they were big enough to carry midget submarines that raided Sydney harbour bridge and they were 80 feet (24 m) long,” he said.
His last mission on the HMAS Colac, on 25 May, 1945, nearly proved to be its last when it was tasked to attack and destroy Japanese troop barges that were anchored at Emerald Anchorage, a narrow harbour at Choiseul, in the Solomon Islands. The barges were being used to ferry Japanese troops to Bougainville to fight against Australian forces.
The first raid on the barges was a success.
“We sailed into the harbour, we opened fire and damaged a lot of them (the barges) and sailed through the harbour,” he said.
Emboldened by the success of the raid, the captain decided to make another raid the following day, this time the Japanese were better prepared to meet them.
The Japanese had overnight positioned guns on a headland opposite the harbour entrance.
The first shell to hit the ship killed two sailors. The second hit the ship’s engine room below the waterline as she tried to manoeuvre her way of danger.
“We had to get out (of harbour) with the engine room filling with water. Eventually the engine crew were called out but there was still steam to turn the engines. We were about two miles off the coast when engines finally stopped.”
The crew threw overboard everything that was heavy including depth charges, and cables and other moveable things to prevent the Colac from sinking.
The two men who died were officer steward Brian Shute and Stan Smith. To this day Mr Paizis keeps in his bathroom cabinet as reminder the bathroom razor that the fallen steward had given him when he lost his own.
A US supply ship towed the vessel to Treasury Island where a salvage ship welded a plate over the blast hole and the engine room was pumped dry. The ship was eventually towed to Sydney where more extensive repairs were carried out.
It was on 15 August, 1945, while he was stationed in Sydney, living on board the Colac while it was being repaired that he heard on national radio that Japan had finally surrendered.
The news on that day was greeted with great joy in Sydney.
“We had an idea (peace) it was close as by then the Americans were bombing the home islands (of Japan) and they had dropped the atomic bombs.
“It was big relief to know that we could sail without worry about the danger of the submarines.
“I was just happy at the thought of finally going home,” he said. But demobbing was not a simple process. Mr Paizis was transferred to the frigate HMAS Lachlan which was surveying the harbours for the navy’s charts. He was eventually discharged in June 1946.
“The discharging of personnel was part of an organised process so that those who had served longest were the first to be discharged. The ships were still needed for a number of roles including the return home of the prisoners of war as well as for other duties,” he said.
Mr Paizis returned to work at the YMCA where he was to meet his wife Val, an Australian whom he married against his family’s wishes. They were to stay together for 68 years until her death six years ago. He is the father of two sons and a daughter, with six grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.
Over the years he has maintained a close association with the navy and has been part of the Corvette association which holds annual reunions at the towns which inspired the names of the ships.
The HMAS Colac was in service in various capacities until 1987 when she was sunk following the test firing of a navy torpedo in Jervis Bay.
“After the war many of the Australian Navy’s 56 corvettes were sold off to other navies but those that were not needed were sold as scrap … to Japanese companies,” said Mr Paizis.