This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII.
Christine Helliwell is a New Zealand-born anthropologist, author
and academic, currently Emeritus Professor at the Australian
National University. She has been carrying out research on Borneo's
indigenous Dayak peoples - including living with them in their
communities for months at a time - for almost forty years, and has
written widely on Dayak social and cultural life.
Since 2014 Christine has been researching WWII in Borneo, with a
particular interest in the special operations conducted there by
the Australian secret organisation codenamed Services
Reconnaissance Department, popularly known as Z Special Unit. As
part of this research she has travelled extensively throughout
Sarawak, in the north of the island, and spoken to hundreds of
elderly people who still remember the war. She has also interviewed
almost all the remaining veterans from these operations, forming
friendships with several in the process. In 2016 she was
instrumental in organising a ceremony to honour the men and women
of SRD/ Z Special Unit, at the Australian War Memorial. In 2018 she
co-curated an exhibition at the Memorial on SRD/Z Special Unit
operations in Borneo.
Christine lives in Canberra. Her book Semut - on the most important
of the Borneo 'Z' operations - took her almost four years to write.
"The incredible, little-known story of Australia's top secret 'Z' operations deep inside Japanese lines in Sarawak in 1945 - aided by Dayak tribes who, with Australian approval, had resumed the ancient practice of headhunting . . . against Japanese patrols. Christine Helliwell records the dying months of the Pacific War, the terror of the Japanese, the world of the indigenous tribes, the intensity - down to the very smell and taste - of this jungle conflict with such menacing immediacy that this book will possess you long after you lay it down. A superb read, brilliantly researched, written in prose as sharp as a machete." --Paul Ham, author, Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath
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