This year's Anzac Day service at Redfern in inner-Sydney holds special significance for two sisters who will tell the story of their father, Percy "Gunner" Suey.

Each year, the commemorations at Redfern reflect the service of Indigenous soldiers, with the focus of this year on prisoners of war.

The story Lynette Goodrum and Linda Boney tell is one of courage but also one of injustice.

Gunner Percy, later known as Percy "Gunner" Suey, enlisted at Curlewis near Gunnedah in northern New South Wales in 1941.

Later that year his unit, 2/15th Field Regiment, sailed for Singapore.

Records show that in April 1942 he was reported missing in action and was imprisoned by the Japanese for more than three years.

Ms Goodrum understands he was placed in a camp on the Burma-Thailand border.

"Because he looked like he'd fit in with the people, he'd just put a sarong around him and got out," Ms Goodrum said.

"He use to go into the jungle and come back with all the food and herbs, medications.

"His skills he learnt from my nan. She was a full-blood Aboriginal and she taught him everything - what he can use out in the bush."

The sisters had heard that their father had even managed to catch monkeys to eat.

Gunner Percy did not tell many stories from the war, but he did talk about a scar on his head.

"When they found out he was doing all that, they actually hit him in the head, in the side of the head, with a bayonet and he was left to die," Ms Boney said.

While there were opportunities for Gunner Percy to escape, other POWs have told the sisters that he stayed behind to look after them.

"The men said he could have gotten away but he just wouldn't leave them because he knew they wouldn't survive without food, proper care," Ms Goodrum said.

"The guys told us that he kept them alive in there."

Returned soldier

Linda Boney proudly holds a photo of her father. ( ABC News: Sarah Hawke )

When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Gunner Percy was discharged and he returned to Moree.

Like many prisoners of war, his return home was not easy.

However, his struggle was exacerbated by the inequity of laws for Indigenous people, who were not recognised as equal citizens until 1967.

Ms Goodrum remembers a visit to the RSL in Moree with her father in the mid-1950s.

"He took us to the Christmas party down to the RSL club and we had to go around the back," she said.

"They opened the window up and they'd pass out a sandwich and cake to us on a paper plate and I can remember my father afterwards with tears in his eyes."

Ms Boney also remembers her father's sadness over his family's treatment.

"[You] fight for this country and then come home and having to deal with prejudice and racism - it was another thing you know to go over," she said.

"Spend three years in a prison camp and come home and it doesn't change much.

"We still weren't allowed in the shop. We had to stand outside in the rain and waited until they finished, whoever was in the shop, so the shopkeeper could come out and ask us what we wanted.

"That really shot through my father."

Pensions denied

Private Fredrick Beale (left) and Private George Henry Beale of the 2/20th Battalion. Private George Beale died from injuries sustained in 1943, while working as a prisoner in Japan. The brothers were cousins of Gunner Percy. ( Australian War Memorial )

Pastor Ray Minniecon, from the Babana Aboriginal Men's Group which organised this year's commemoration in Redfern, says it was difficult for all retuned Indigenous servicemen and women.

"Many of the Aboriginal people came back and they had to go back under the Act again - the Aboriginal Protection Acts here in New South Wales and Queensland and all the other states - that restricted them a lot," he said.

"Some of them missed out on their pensions and their entitlements that came from being a returned soldier."

To help deal with what the sisters believe was post-traumatic stress disorder and the difficulties on his return to Australia, Percy Gunner would drink or "go bush" for weeks at time where he would take up work ringbarking trees or clearing land.

"When he drank he was a different man," Ms Boney said.

"There were times when he was asleep [when] we had to be very careful how to wake him because he'd just grab our arms and nearly break our arms thinking that we were Japanese or that he's still fighting over there in the war."

Ms Boney says her father always looked forward to marching on Anzac Day.

"It was my dad's best day of the year, and to see your father marching with the rest of the returned soldiers was a beautiful thing. He was a proud man on those days," she said.

In 1976, at the age of 64, Percy Gunner disappeared.

He was never found and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance remain a mystery.

A plaque recognising his service has been erected in Moree.