LibGuides: Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms: Japanese POWs

On this day: Australia’s biggest prison breakout

Sergeant Hajime Toyoshima, captured after a Japanese air-raid on Darwin, blew a bugle to start the Cowra breakout.

Image credit: Australian War Memorial

On this day: Australia’s biggest prison breakout
SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT on 5 August 1944, an unauthorised bugle call suddenly blasts out across the Cowra Prisoner of War Camp in outback NSW. The bugler is Sergeant Hajime Toyoshima, the first Japanese soldier ever to be captured in Australia, and he is signalling his comrades to launch a mass prison breakout like the world has never seen.
Breakout
From 1941, Cowra in western New South Wales was the site of a major prisoner of war camp. The camp housed various nationalities, including German, Italian and more than 1000 Japanese prisoners. The Japanese, unlike many of the others who seemed to accept their fate, brooded on the dishonour they had brought to themselves, their family and their country by being taken prisoners of war. In 1944, the Australian authorities were informed of an escape planned by the Japanese at Cowra POW camp. They decided to separate the prisoners.
Links to records of the Cowra breakout
A selection of the most significant records about the breakout of POWs from the Cowra camp held by the National Archives, and by the Australian War Memorial.

Map of Australian Internment camps

Source: https://cowrajapanesecemetery.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Australia_CampsMap913px-1.jpg [From Mayumi Kamada ed., Retracing National Memory, 2012, p. v.]

NAME OF CAMP	STATE	LOCATION	CAPACITY	REMARKS
Gaythorne	Queensland	Gaythorne	1800	Mainly used for interrogation
Cowra [No. 12]	NSW	Cowra	4000	Breakout happened in August 1944
Hay [No. 6]	NSW	Hay	1000	Accommodated Japanese civilian internees and later PWJMs [Prisoner of War Japanese Merchant Seaman] only after July 1943
Hay [No. 7, No. 8]	NSW	Hay	3000	Accommodated Japanese prisoners of war
Liverpool	NSW	Liverpool	500	Used as a staging or transit camp
Tatura [No. 4]	Victoria	Tatura		Mainly accommodated women and families
Murchison [No. 13]	Victoria	Murchison	4000	Accommodated Japanese officers and other ranks
Loveday [No. 14]	South Australia	Barmera	4000	Accommodated single civilian men
Harvey [No. 11]	Western Australia	Harvey	500	Used a s a transit camp

Source: Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Online Database - POW and internment camps [https://cowrajapanesecemetery.org/pow-and-internment-camps/]

Cowra
The prevailing cultural attitudes of the Japanese soldiers dictated that to be captured and imprisoned brought great shame: shame on the prisoner, his family, Japan and the Emperor. Many Japanese soldiers avoided capture by taking their own lives. Those who were captured often did not give their true names and refused the opportunity to contact their families. Better, they thought, to let their families believe they had been killed in battle serving their country.

From Field Service Code (Senjinkun) - the pocket-sized English translation of the Japanese military's Code issued to soldiers in the Imperial Japanese forces. The English translation was adopted on 8 January 1941 in the name of then-War Minister Hideki Tojo.

Source: Internet Archive [https://archive.org/details/1941-senjinkun-english/page/n9/mode/2up]