From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia
In 1978, three young men on a gap year strayed into Cambodian waters and were discovered by members of the Khmer Rouge. Holly Baxter retraced the steps of John Dawson Dewhirst, and his tragic companions, to uncover a haunting tale
It was June 1978 when Hilary received her final letter from her brother John. “He used to write to me on his travels,” she tells me, 40 years later. “They were getting the boat ready and he was going on his final trip before coming home.” John Dawson Dewhirst was 26 years old, and had spent the year after graduating from his degree (a bachelor of education with English from Loughborough University, which he’d attended on a scholarship) travelling round southeast Asia. He’d always been adventurous, says Hilary, “and outdoorsy. He loved writing – poetry, fictional stuff – he had a very unusual, quirky style.”
He was known by friends to be sensitive, gentle and thoughtful. Much later, family members would find out that he was described by the person who ordered his murder as “a polite young man”.
John set out to Japan and worked briefly as a teacher, and then a contract employee – “a headline writer”, Hilary thinks – for The Japan Times between June 1977 and January 1978. Hilary knows that after John left Tokyo and The Japan Times, he travelled extensively. “South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia…” He made friends along the way, including two men called Stuart Glass, a Canadian, and Kerry Hamill, a New Zealander. They met in the Malaysian city of Kuala Terengganu, at the time a small harbour town with a tropical climate which faced onto the South China Sea, with a palm-lined beach and traditional stilt houses dotted across the river.
More posts on Cambodia
In the summer of 1978, six months after John had left Japan, the three decided to take a trip on Kerry’s yacht, the Foxy Lady, with John acting as a paid charter. They set off on a course towards Bangkok, three experienced sailors on a relatively short hop across the water. John, a keen photographer, took pictures of the deserted islands they passed on the way, splitting his time between navigating and cooking simple food below deck. Then they vanished without a trace.
At the other side of the world in New Zealand, Kerry Hamill’s brother Rob had also received a final letter in “either June or July of 1978”. Kerry’s girlfriend Gail had been on the boat with the crew fairly consistently throughout the year, but she’d flown out to Hawaii to visit her parents in June and returned to meet up with the boys a few weeks later. When they didn’t show up, she knew something was wrong.
For both the Dewhirsts and the Hamills, periods of no communication from Kerry and John were normal. It was still relatively rare for young people to set out on their own for trips around southeast Asia; the places they visited weren’t well-worn backpacker trails in the way they are now. The internet, of course, was decades off, and mail delivery across continents was slow at the best of times. Spending time on a boat meant you didn’t always have the opportunity to post your letters anyway. But as time went on and no letters arrived, the families began to worry… read more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/cambodia-khmer-rouge-killings-fields-genocide-pol-pot-a8543801.html
Thirty minutes away by car is the most
prominent of the sites known as the Killing Fields, the Choeung Ek Genocidal
Centre. This is where the inmates at S-21 were transported to after their
confessions had been written up, rewritten and perfected by the head of the
prison, the ruthless Khmer Rouge operative and former maths teacher known as
Comrade Duch. At Choeung Ek, visitors nowadays are met with rows and rows of
human skulls dug out from the mass graves into which slaughtered people were
thrown for crimes that included being able to speak French, wearing spectacles
or loving a family member “too much”. The skulls, piled high, stare out from
behind polished glass.
It was June 1978 when Hilary received her final letter from her brother John. “He used to write to me on his travels,” she tells me, 40 years later. “They were getting the boat ready and he was going on his final trip before coming home.” John Dawson Dewhirst was 26 years old, and had spent the year after graduating from his degree (a bachelor of education with English from Loughborough University, which he’d attended on a scholarship) travelling round southeast Asia. He’d always been adventurous, says Hilary, “and outdoorsy. He loved writing – poetry, fictional stuff – he had a very unusual, quirky style.”
He was known by friends to be sensitive, gentle and thoughtful. Much later, family members would find out that he was described by the person who ordered his murder as “a polite young man”.
John set out to Japan and worked briefly as a teacher, and then a contract employee – “a headline writer”, Hilary thinks – for The Japan Times between June 1977 and January 1978. Hilary knows that after John left Tokyo and The Japan Times, he travelled extensively. “South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia…” He made friends along the way, including two men called Stuart Glass, a Canadian, and Kerry Hamill, a New Zealander. They met in the Malaysian city of Kuala Terengganu, at the time a small harbour town with a tropical climate which faced onto the South China Sea, with a palm-lined beach and traditional stilt houses dotted across the river.
More posts on Cambodia
In the summer of 1978, six months after John had left Japan, the three decided to take a trip on Kerry’s yacht, the Foxy Lady, with John acting as a paid charter. They set off on a course towards Bangkok, three experienced sailors on a relatively short hop across the water. John, a keen photographer, took pictures of the deserted islands they passed on the way, splitting his time between navigating and cooking simple food below deck. Then they vanished without a trace.
At the other side of the world in New Zealand, Kerry Hamill’s brother Rob had also received a final letter in “either June or July of 1978”. Kerry’s girlfriend Gail had been on the boat with the crew fairly consistently throughout the year, but she’d flown out to Hawaii to visit her parents in June and returned to meet up with the boys a few weeks later. When they didn’t show up, she knew something was wrong.
For both the Dewhirsts and the Hamills, periods of no communication from Kerry and John were normal. It was still relatively rare for young people to set out on their own for trips around southeast Asia; the places they visited weren’t well-worn backpacker trails in the way they are now. The internet, of course, was decades off, and mail delivery across continents was slow at the best of times. Spending time on a boat meant you didn’t always have the opportunity to post your letters anyway. But as time went on and no letters arrived, the families began to worry… read more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/cambodia-khmer-rouge-killings-fields-genocide-pol-pot-a8543801.html
