War and Pieces – Cowra NSW Australia

Peace.

Is there such a thing?

At the moment – at least in my corner of the world – there is an absence of war.

Given the current political climates internationally, this absence of war does not feel like “peace”. It feels like a precarious balance of competing tensions: a temporary truce, while one holds ones breath. All around the world, there are military or authoritarian governments in power; there are people trying to live in cities that have been reduced to rubble; and there are people on the move, trying to escape conflict. And Australia, which is ostensibly “at peace”, has thousands of ADF (Australian Defence Forces) personnel deployed to various overseas and internal operations aimed at protecting Australian national interests and borders.

In her 1994 book Time on our Side, Dorothy Rowe, renowned Australian psychologist and writer, posited that true peace is not really possible while we raise children on what she considered “the violence” of bribes and threats, and while governments attempt to subdue each other through trade sanctions (bullying) and more powerful weaponry (force). I fear she is right, but I can’t see an alternative while we have such difficulty with finding common ground across so many domains.

These and other musings on the impossibility of drawing an agreed clear line between concepts integral to the human condition (nature vs nurture; the personal vs the societal; freedom vs responsibility; etc., etc.) whirled around my head after a visit to Cowra, a small town in the Central West of New South Wales, surrounded by fields of grain, orchards, vineyards, vegetable-growing and pastoralism. 

Cowra was the site of the bloodiest — and largest — prison escape[s] in British and Australian War history. At the behest of the British Government, Australia built 28 Prisoner of War camps across the country to house soldiers captured in North Africa and the Pacific. Camp Number 12 was built at Cowra in 1941, not far from a Recruit Training Battalion. 

At 1:50 in the morning of August 5th 1944, 1,104 Japanese Prisoners of War (POWs) staged a mass breakout from Compound B at the Cowra POW camp. Three hundred and seventy-eight Japanese POWs made it over or through the fence, and 231 died during or as a consequence of the attempt. Five Australians died; all of the escapees who survived were eventually rounded up.

This rather tragic episode was later attributed – in part – to a misunderstanding, but it also highlights some of the enormous differences possible in societal world-views. 

Even today, Japanese society is experienced as collectivistic by Western individualist standards; at the time of WWII this was even more the case. Although the country was not without anti-imperial dissidents, Japanese were raised to revere the Emperor as a living deity, and to see war – ideologically – as an act of purification. Following the practice of Bushido, the ancient samurai code of ethics, surrender to enemy forces was unthinkable. In the Field Service Code of 1941, General Tojo instructed: Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.

In practice, whether Japanese soldiers agreed with these views or not, they had little choice, and surrender would not only disgrace themselves but also bring shame to their families. Most fought until they were killed, or they committed suicide: those who were taken prisoner were often too ill or injured to kill themselves.

Although the captured Japanese in Allied POW camps were treated in accordance with the 1929 Geneva Convention governing the treatment of POWs, their country was not a signatory, and they were expected to vigorously resist incarceration.

This resistance led to the planned mass attack on the camp guards, the Australian soldiers of the 22nd Garrison. What we call the “Cowra Breakout” might better be referred to as the ‘night of a thousand suicides’.

Either way, like most episodes in war, it resulted in tragic loss of life.

That ANZAC quilt brought my Cowra visit to a perfect end: it was a reminder of the losses and sacrifices on all sides in times of conflict.

Somehow, we never learn.

Lest we Forget

Pictures: 12-13April2019