Changi
Pearl, 11.50pm
Professor Bill Dwyer (Terry Norris) is a lecturer in mathematics, much loved by his students. On his final day he presents his farewell speech to a packed auditorium, following which he is visited by a young student Joanne (Katherine Slattery). She bears a remarkable resemblance to the girl he fell in love with before joining the army.
Joanne believes Bill to be a friend of her grandmother and brings out a photo of her as a young girl, standing with a handsome young man in army uniform. Bill is immediately drawn back to the day the photo was taken: his final day before leaving for the war . . . and the day he proposed to the beautiful Betty O'Neill.
He shows Joanne a drawing he has kept for nearly 60 years - a sketch done by Tom of Bill, Curley, Gordon, David and Eddie in their prison barracks - and begins to tell her of his lost years as a prisoner of war.
In Changi, a young Bill (Leon Ford, above with Slattery) eagerly takes the opportunity to attend 'classes' held by some of the other POWs. He meets Doctor Hurrell, an English academic imprisoned when Singapore fell, who cultivates in Bill a love of numbers and mathematics that is to stay with him all his life.
Lieutenant Aso forces Tom to sketch the camp commander Nakamura, in preparation for a visit to the camp by General Tanaka of the Japanese Imperial Army. Bill and his friends, 'the secret nine', decide to make the proceedings more interesting by doctoring the sketch.