While in Arnhem Land I visited a memorial to an Ipswich minister who was beheaded. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

Leonard Noel Kentish appeared unremarkable when he was born in Victoria in 1907 because like many from down there, he moved to Queensland with his parents when he was three years old. His father led a group of 200 Victorians to settle in western Queensland. Young Kentish grew up on scrub land near a little town called The Gums which is eighty miles from Dalby on the Western Downs.

It was in the Queensland sun that Kentish began to show the promise of his ancestry. A great-granduncle was a preacher for a founder of Methodism worldwide John Wesley, and for two centuries relatives continued to be preachers. Young Kentish delivered his first funeral service when around twelve-years-of-age. That’s because when his teacher died at The Gums, there was no minister in the district, so the duties fell to the youngster.

Kentish attended Dalby High School. Driven off the land by a succession of dry seasons, the Kentish family moved to Ipswich and that’s when young Kentish got his first job as a junior clerk in the Ipswich City Council. That’s where the professional career of this amazing young man first began.

He then entered King’s College, where I also went, at the University of Queensland, gained honours in philosophy, and became the first Methodist minister in Queensland to earn the degree of Bachelor of Divinity.

Our paths crossed again in Arnhem Land, from where I just returned from having been on-country with the communities there.

You see, the newly minted Reverend Kentish was sent to minister in the Northern Territory. It was on the 22nd of January 1943, that The Reverend Kentish and five of his Aboriginal parishioners at the mission on Milingimbi Island boarded the ship HMAS Patricia Cam, which was a requisitioned tuna-fishing trawler. Milingimbi is the largest island of the Crocodile Islands off the coast of Arnhem Land. What happened next was recalled by one of those indigenous parishioners Narritjin who became a famous Arnhem Land artist.

At 1.30pm off Wessel Island, north of Nhulunbuy, a Japanese Navy float plane approached the ship with its engines cut and dropped a bomb into the ship’s open hatch. The bomb blew the bottom out of the boat, causing it to sink within a minute. All the lifeboats were shattered, leaving survivors clinging to debris.

The plane returned and dropped a second bomb. For half-an-hour it circled with its rear gunner firing at survivors in the sea. The plane landed on the water and the machine gunner opened fire again. One of the Japanese air crew then climbed onto the plane’s floats with a pistol and gestured for the men to swim closer. Kentish, being the closest, volunteered and was forced inside the aircraft, which then took off, and he was never seen again.

It wasn’t until three years later, in 1946 after the war had ended, that Kentish’s body was recovered from Dobo Island in eastern Indonesia.

It transpired that a sub-lieutenant Sagejima Maugan of the Imperial Japanese Navy had beheaded Kentish just weeks after his capture. Maugan was tracked down after the war and hanged as a war criminal in Hong Kong in 1948.

Reverend Kentish was the only Australian captured by Japanese forces in Australia during World War Two. He was just thirty-five-years-old and a father of four at the time.

I visited the memorial commemorating the former tuna-fishing trawler HMAS Patricia Cam. It’s at the Nhulumbuy boat ramp entering the sea where the events happened. It was from that boat ramp that I went fishing near the kill zone, and ironically we caught a very tasty tuna as we reflected on the former tuna-fishing boat with the Ipswich minister on board.

It was as if The Reverend sent the tuna to let us know to remember him.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
HMAS Patricia Cam memorial Nhulunbuy, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20250717_063913.
HMAS Patricia Cam memorial Nhulunbuy, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20250717_063721.
The Reverend Leonard Kentish – Australian War Memorial.
Patricia Cam prior to her commissioning by the Royal Australian Navy – Australian War Memorial 301155.
Japanese from the Japanese Imperial Navy charged at the War Crimes trial in Hong Kong, January 1948 – AWM P02654.003.
Nhulunbuy tuna, 2025 – Harold Peacock P7172487.