A History Lesson At Cowra

We stayed at Boorawa Caravan Park last night with power, toilets and a great spot for the kids to ride their bikes around and play. We took a drive around town and wondered over many well kept old structures like the enormous court house that since 1988 has been used as the town’s Visitor’s Centre.


This morning we drove into Cowra, home of the 1944 ‘Cowra Breakout’. Somewhere along the lines, my Australian history knowledge has had a huge gap. I didn’t know that Australia had 28 internment camps for prisoners of war (POWs) during World War II to ‘house’ prisoners from countries like Italy, Japan and Indonesia. POW camps in countries such as India were overflowing, so a decision was made to transfer a number of POWs to Australia to relieve the overcrowding. The Cowra camp was camp number 12.


First of all we went to the Japanese cemetery which was part of a large park that houses the remains of the old POW camp as well as the graves of over 200 Japanese soldiers who died during the breakout.


This passage is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowra,_New_South_Wales. (the photo is one of mine though…)

During World War II Cowra was the site of a prisoner of war (POW) camp. Most of the detainees were captured Japanese and Italian military personnel, On August 5, 1944, at least 545 Japanese POWs attempted a mass breakout from the camp. Simultaneously, other Japanese prisoners committed suicide, or were killed by their countrymen, inside the camp.
The actions of the POWs in storming machine gun posts, armed only with improvised weapons, showed what Prime Minister John Curtin described as a "suicidal disregard of life", and had no chance of success.
During the breakout and subsequent recapture of POWs, four Australian guards and 231 Japanese died, and 108 prisoners were wounded. The dead Japanese were buried in Cowra in the specially created Japanese War Cemetery. This is the only such cemetery in Australia, and also holds some of the dead from the WWII air raids on Darwin.
In 1971 the Cowra Tourism Development …proposed a Japanese Garden for the town. The Japanese government agreed to support this development as a sign of thanks for the respectful treatment of their war dead; the development also received funding from the Australian government and private entities.

The garden was designed by Ken Nakajima (1914–2000), a world-renowned designer of Japanese gardens at the time. The first stage was opened in 1979, with a second stage opened in 1986.

The gardens were designed in the style of the Edo period and are a kaiyū-shiki or strolling garden. They are designed to show all of the landscape types of Japan. At five hectares (12 acres), the Cowra Japanese Garden is the largest Japanese garden in the Southern Hemisphere. An annual Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festival) is a major event in Cowra's tourism calendar and is held in the gardens during September. The festival celebrates the birth of spring. It attracts performers from across Australia and around the world. Locals, Australian and International visitors alike have the opportunity to experience traditional elements of Japanese culture.

In the excellent Cowra Visotor’s Centre we watched a 9 minute hologram that described the internment camp and breakout from the point of view of a young Cowra woman. The presentation talked of over 1000 Japanese soldiers attempting to breakout. There was explanation of how in the culture of the Japanese military at the time meant that being a prisoner was dishonourable. Many of the prisoners had given false names so that word would not get back to their families that they were imprisoned. Suicide was seen as being less shameful to a soldier than remaining a prisoner of war.


The hologram was an effective way of telling the story. We have sat through lots of DVDs that encapsulate a town’s history but using the hologram tool made this story stand out from the rest. Max’s blog tells a bit more of the actual breakout (see Max’s blog).

The most moving item to me in the Visitor's Centre was a large black and white photograph of two elderly men sitting together and laughing. One man was Australian and the other Japanese. To see their camaraderie was very moving, and shows just how powerful photography can be.


These three photos show Max out the front of the Japanese Gardens.

Tonight we found a free camp at Carcour a few kilometers out of Bathurst. It is very basic but we'll be on the move again tomorrow.