Cowra

Cowra is a small town in south central New South Wales. The city is mainly known for the "Cowra Outbreak", in 1944, in which over a thousand Japanese Prisoners of War broke out of their camp. The riot was a brilliantly idiotic display of their collective insanity, made worse by the fact that the prisoners actually had a democratic vote about whether they should rebel or not - and 80% voted in favor of "an honorable death".

Only a relative handful of them actually died in the riots and in the manhunt that followed. All in all, 4 Aussies and 231 Japs were killed, really just because of the sickening death-cult practised by the Royal Japanese Army, in which every last man was expected to perish for his Emperor and his country. Many of the prisoners reportedly used false names so as not to be identified at home in Japan, as it would cast shame on their families. Of those who survived and were sent home after the war, few ever admitted what had happened, even to their friends and relatives, so great was the shame of being taken prisoner.

The visitor centre in Cowra has a nice little exhibition about this, and also about both the Italians and the Indonesians imprisoned there. The Indonesians were there largely on request of the Dutch, but it soon dawned on the Australians that the Indonesians were, in fact, not pro-Japanese, they were merely critical of Dutch rule. So they were eventually let loose, and proved themselves a valuable source of labor in hospitals or even in military intelligence.

There were also a large group of Italians in the camp, and except for a few hardline fascists, they were a completely different matter. Most of them had been captured in Libya and then spent some time in British camps in India, before being shipped off to Australia. The vast majority had no desire to go back to the war again and did their best to integrate in their new surroundings.

The war effort had led to a lack of manpower in the Australian economy, so most of them worked on the farms around Cowra; it was reported that many became a "part of the family" to the locals. They formed bands and played instruments and sang, they cooked their Italian food (mmmm), they played soccer (still vital to most Italians!) and there are pictures in the visitor centre of Italian POWS with a small copy of the Colosseum, which they'd made out of earth. In short, they integrated and were welcomed by the Aussies as well as any enemy force could reasonably be.

After the war they were shipped back to Italy, but many returned to Australia and became citizens; to this day there is a very large presence of Italians in cities like Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne.

At the visitor centre they have some interesting artifacts and information related to the outbreak, but the piece de resistance of the centre, is the POW Theatre in which an actress walks in and out of a display, interacting with the objects, and generally appearing to be a live, 3-inch person. The technology used is called "Pepper's Ghost", after a John Pepper of London, who created a primitive version of it in 1862. This version uses modern technology and is quite fascinating.

All Cowra pics here.

The camera kinda sorta reveals the image better than the eye. She LOOKED much more like a real person, and not transparent.


A machine gun of the type used by the guards at Cowra.


Replica of a guard tower out where the actual prison camp had stood.


Today, nothing remains of the actual camp.