While interned in Australia, the internees set up and administered their own township with Hay currency (which is now a valuable collectors’ item) and an unofficial "university." When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the prisoners were reclassified as "friendly aliens" and released by the Australian Government. About a thousand volunteered to join the Australian Army and, having shown themselves to be 'dinkum', were offered residency at the end of the war. Almost all the rest made their way back to Britain, many of them joining the armed forces there. Others were recruited as interpreters or into the intelligence services.