Persecuted war hero’s unmarked grave identified after 70 years of wondering by family

The resting place of former Z Special Unit member Abu Kassim, an Asian Muslim and victim of racist segregation policies, has finally been revealed.

Snowy Wade, the great grandson of Abu Kassim's common law wife, Faye, with David Thomas and researcher Bec Linton where they think is Kassim's grave is at Karrakatta cemetery. Picture: Colin Murty

Bec Linton ended seven decades of wondering and waiting for the Dodson family in a few brisk hours, delivering an Anzac Day gift of hope that their lost soldier, Abu Kassim, had at last been found.

Since 1949, he has lain in an unmarked grave in Perth’s Karrakatta cemetery, belying his service to a country that sent him to war but would not allow him to wed the woman he loved, the mother of Indigenous rights campaigner and Labor senator Patrick Dodson.

The ease with which Ms Linton pinpointed Kassim’s presumed resting place is testament to the skills she honed identifying nameless war graves and the injustice that befell the Malaya-born pearl diver who became an unsung hero of the army’s elite Z Special Unit in World War II.

“It opens up the opportunity for the family to visit him, and that’s the most important thing,” the researcher said from the gravesite on Sunday, alongside Sergeant Kassim’s great grandson, Snowy Wade, 31, and David Thomas, a former SAS warrant officer who heads the Claremont RSL sub-branch in Perth.

“It also acknowledges the service of Abu Kassim. He doesn’t lie unknown anymore.”

Before he joined up in 1942, on the back of Darwin and his hometown of Broome being bombed by the Japanese, Kassim had been barred from marrying the then ­Patricia Djiaween under the racist segregation policies of the day.

Their two daughters, Faye Wade, now 85, and Georgina Sulai­man, 80, spent much of their childhood in orphanages as a ­result.

As revealed in The Weekend Australian, the couple had three strikes against them as far as the narrow-minded authorities were concerned: she was Aboriginal, he Asian and a Muslim to boot. With Kassim’s blessing, Patricia went on to marry Senator Dodson’s father, Snowy Dodson, a truck driver of Irish descent who promised he would look after her and the girls.

If he wasn’t good enough in official eyes to marry Patricia, Kassim was certainly soldier enough to shine in the crack Z Special Unit, forerunner of today’s SAS and army commandos.

He spent six months behind Japanese lines in occupied Borneo in 1944 in a hair-raising operation to scout for an Australian invasion of the jungle island and sow insurrection among local tribes.

Bayoneted, he never regained his health.

Instead of the hero’s welcome he deserved after the war, Kassim died a lonely death in Perth in 1949 and was buried without a headstone in what was then the Muslim section of the cemetery. Mr Wade’s father, Eric, made repeated efforts to find the grave.

“We have always known he was in Karrakatta, just not where,” Mr Wade said. “For years, Dad wanted to get Nana Faye and Nana Georgia down to Perth to show them where he was buried. It just seemed the right thing to do.”

Ms Linton, 43, a mature-age student working towards a degree in historical inquiry and practice at the University of New England, was put on the case last Thursday by Mr Thomas when Senator Dodson decided to go public with his family’s story. She had previously helped the RSL locate the lost graves of returned soldiers.

In Kassim’s case, one issue was how the army recorded his name, reflecting woeful ignorance of Islamic patronyms such as Abu, generally denoting “father of” but sometimes a nickname, which was listed as a surname by the army. His birth name remains unknown.

Ms Linton quickly established that Kassim was evidently buried in March 1949, recorded age 29, under another variation of his name, Abu Kassin Bin Marah. This meant father of Kassin, son of Marah, with the ‘m’ in Kassim evidently misspelt. It was not a big discrepancy, but enough to throw off word searches of the computerised deaths register.

She then tracked down an April 21, 1949, Perth newspaper article reporting that “former ‘Z’ Force man Abu bin Kassim” had died the previous month after 15 months in Hollywood General Repatriation Hospital.

The date of death on the burial records matched up and contained a gravesite number, 0128, in Karrakatta cemetery.

“I am as certain as I can be that the grave is that of Kassim,” she said.

Senator Dodson welcomed the news. “If they have actually found the site … of old Abu’s grave and it’s marked, it will be a great thing in itself,” said the man known as the father of Aboriginal reconciliation.

“But the day a monument is erected there and the two old girls, my two sisters, are able to pay their respects, I think that will bring closure and great joy to the family.

“It does not lessen the sadness of how … this all took place, but from a personal point of view it will be a fine way for them to pay tribute to the father that they loved.”

Rick Moor, national vice-chairman of the Australian Special Air Service Association, which has offered to fund a headstone for Kassim, said special forces’ veterans looked after their own.