By Peter Jones*
The last two Second World War coast watchers, Jim Burrowes, aged 101 and Ron ‘Dixie’ Lee aged 100, passed away in Melbourne last Sunday and Monday respectively. The courageous deeds of the legendary and secretive World War II coast watchers represent one of the most illustrious chapters in Australia’s military history.
Despite their losses, the coast watchers’ contribution in reporting on Japanese shipping and air movements had a real strategic impact. The coast watchers finest hour was in the Guadalcanal campaign where they reported on incoming waves of enemy aircraft, rescuing the future President John F Kennedy and launching lethal guerilla raids on the Japanese with the assistance of fearless Solomon Islanders. It led Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey to say, ‘The Coast watchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the South Pacific.’
Prior to World War II the RAN detailed a former New Guinea District Officer, Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, to establish a network of expatriates who could covertly report on enemy movements around the coastline of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in time of war. In short order he recruited planters, patrol officers, and even a priest for this potentially dangerous assignment.
When the Japanese invaded the islands in 1942 these coast watchers undertook their mission with great courage and at great personal cost. Some were beheaded, others simply disappeared while others continued their clandestine task for months on end with the help of local villagers.
As the value of the coast watcher network became fully appreciated, servicemen from the three Services joined for this most dangerous of assignments. Signalman Jim Burrowes and Able Seaman Coder ‘Dixie’ Lee were among a cohort of radio operators who provided that crucial communications link using the cumbersome AWA Teleradio that was still portable with the help of half a dozen local native men who also risked their lives.
Jim Burrowes born in Melbourne served both on the north coast of New Guinea and then on the island of New Britain where he and two fellow Coast watchers reported on the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul. That town had a special meaning for him as his older brother Bob had been in the Army and captured there in 1942. Bob lost his life when the Japanese prison ship, the Montevideo Maru was sunk later that year by the submarine USS Sturgeon with the loss of over 1,000 prisoners of war and civilians. Jim’s twin brother Tom was a wireless air gunner in a Beaufort bomber that was lost off Rabaul in 1943.
On his website The Last Coastwatcher: Jim wrote: “As one of the coast watchers, I was also a signaller, and proud to play a key role in their operations. This was because the singular mandate of coast watching was not to confront the enemy but to report their movements. Hence, without a radio operator, there would not have been any coast watching parties. I am the last signaller coast watcher to tell the history of the coast watchers.
“I was lucky to be selected to be a radio operator, instead of infantry. I was lucky to be replaced as the radio operator in the disastrous Hollandia infiltration party when the signaller, Jack Bunning, was ambushed by the Japanese and killed. (Jim Burrowes was selected as the Signaller to go on that Hollandia venture, led by Captain ‘Blue’ Harris but, at the last minute, Bunning replaced Burrowes after recovering from sickness.) “I was lucky not to be caught and killed by the Japanese, while hiding in the jungle. Thirty-eight other coast watchers were killed.”
For his part ‘Dixie’ Lee born in Ulverstone, Tasmania, served in the Treasury Group of islands and the nearby Stirling Island and then Finschhafen, Milne Bay and Bougainville. At the later location he served with one of the most famous Coastwatchers, Lieutenant ‘Snowy’ Rhodes and provided some of those valuable reports of Japanese aircraft approaching Guadalcanal.
‘Dixie’ had joined the RAN as a coder at the age of 17, and was a high-spirited young rebel who got into his fair share of scrapes. He was still only 19 when he was encouraged to join the Allied Intelligence Bureau and volunteer for Coast watching duties.
In 2020 he told the Australian War Memorial: “We were sent to a little island called Stirling Island in the Treasury Island group which was just off Bougainville,” he said. “The islands were completely controlled by Japan, and we set up a little camp there.
“There were three of us – an officer, a sergeant in the army, and then me, a coder from the navy. Your heart probably beats a little bit faster because you don’t know what’s ashore… but I realised early on that I was immortal, so nothing frightened me. Some of our blokes were beheaded and terrible things … But I just did my job. The fighter pilots, and tail gunners, and things; they were the brave ones.”
After the war Jim Burrowes qualified as a Chartered Accountant, a Chartered Secretary and a Licensed Companies Auditor. He joined the then largest house-building company in Australia, A.V. Jennings Industries as assistant to the Company Secretary. In 1960 he became a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. Jim was to work at Jennings for 33 years, progressively becoming executive director of the Jennings Mining and Manufacturing Groups.
After nearly five years in the RAN, over half of which was as a Coast watcher, ‘Dixie’ Lee was discharged in early 1946. He became a successful land surveyor. In the 1970s he first hand-built a 30 ft wooden ketch, but gave her up after forever chasing leaks occurring after rough weather. He next had a larger, and dryer, steel-hulled 45 ft ketch custom built, and sailed in her for three years through much of the South Pacific retracing some of his wartime adventures. He was especially anxious to reach the Treasury Islands and Bougainville and for a time gained work there as a surveyor. Here it was like stepping back in time and ‘Masta Dix’ was reunited with many of his wartime local friends.
In 2015 ‘Dixie’ Lee was one of a small number of World War II veterans who was chosen to visit PNG as part of a commemoration marking the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Pacific.
Jim Burrowes is survived by his wife Beryl, four children, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. While ‘Dixie’ Lee is survived by his wife Mem. He had ten children, seventeen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
On the passing of Jim Burrowes and Dixie Lee, the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond has written that their sometimes harrowing service as Coastwatchers in New Guinea and the Solomons was “extremely dangerous but strategically vital to the war effort.” In a statement the US Ambassador, her Excellency Caroline Kennedy, said,
“I’d like to pay tribute to Jim Burrowes and Ronald (Dixie) Lee, the last two surviving Australian Coastwatchers who both passed away this week. Shortly after I arrived in Australia, I had the privilege to meet and honour Jim and Dixie at a ceremony at the Australian War Memorial. Through their stories and memories, I learned more about the heroism of the hundreds of Australian and Pacific Islander Coastwatchers and scouts who braved difficult conditions during World War II to monitor enemy movements and save lives, including my father’s. An Australian Coastwatcher and two Solomon Islander scouts rescued my father and his crew when their PT109 sank in the Solomon Islands. My sympathies go out to Jim and Dixie’s families and friends—I am truly grateful for their service.”
The coast watchers often deployed to an enemy held island as a pair and it is fitting that Australia’s last two coast watchers would go on join their former comrades together.
*VADM Peter Jones AO DSC RAN (Ret) is a former president of the ANI.
An abridged version of this article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
