Posted on 08/22/2014 6:14:01 PM PDT by naturalman1975
In the dead of the night 70 years ago, more than 1,000 Japanese men stormed the barbed wire perimeter fences of Cowra prisoner of war camp in central NSW.
Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened kitchen knives, hundreds of Japanese prisoners overcame machine gun posts in what would become the biggest POW escape of World War II.
The mass breakout at the detention camp on August 5, 1944 resulted in a 10-day manhunt as Australian soldiers and police searched for hundreds of armed escapees roaming the Cowra countryside, 300km west of Sydney.
A total of 359 Japanese prisoners escaped and the death toll reached 231 in the days following, including 31 suicides and 12 who perished in huts they had set on fire themselves.
Four Australian soldiers were killed in the breakout, including Privates Benjamin Gower Hardy, Ralph Jones and Charles Henry Shepherd. Lieutenant Harry Doncaster was killed when he was ambushed during the rounding up of passengers.
Japanese man Teruo Murakami, who took part in the infamous Cowra breakout, returned to NSW for the 70th anniversary earlier this month as survivors and descendants gathered in Cowra for a memorial service.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I don't deny the bravery of the Japanese, but personally I wish a headline in a British/Australian publication had instead focused on the bravery of Private Benjamin Hardy, Private Ralph Jones, Private Charles Shepherd, and Lieutenant Harry Doncaster who died as a result of this breakout - some of the relatively small number of Australian soldiers killed fighting the enemy on our own soil. Private Hardy and Private Jones both received the George Cross (personally I think they should have got the Victoria Cross - while the GC is equal in prestige and honour to the VC, so there is no slight on their honour at all, the VC requires the action to be in the face of the enemy while the GC does not - it was ruled at the time that because the Japanese were prisoners not combatants, the GC was more appropriate - but two men standing their ground manning a machine gun as several hundred Japanese soldiers charged towards them and dying at their post when they are overwhelmed... to me, that is the face of the enemy, and I don't think it should be classified as anything else).
They were treated so much better than our guys.
I did not know about this escape. Thank you for posting.
very very true
The Japanese soldiers fought to enslave the world,the Aussies fought to free the world.I know which ones deserve honor and it isn’t those screaming “banzai”.
It sounds like a fair number were not accounted for unless they were recaptured.
In a way there was not any real chance for them to get back to Japanese territory, or was there?
All were recaptured or died.
There was no realistic chance of getting out of Australia. For the Japanese, it was about their code of honour. Being prisoners was dishonourable - attempting to escape and dying in the attempt restored their honour under the Bushido code.
Shoulduh shot them dead in Nam...
I used to work with a guy whose Father-in-Law was a farmer in South Alabama. He had a large number of German POWs working for him. He only had to pay them what they earned as a soldier which wasn’t much.
He gave them a bonus of a coca-cola and a pack of cigarettes. The prisoners would get Red Cross packages from Germany which contained among other things, cigarettes. The first thing they would do is throw the German cigarettes away.
There are always a few hard cases but these Germans, who were from the Africa Corps, seemed completely happy. I know the farmer got Christmas cards from several until he died.
some were at Camp Howze near Gainesville TX.
Paul B Johnson State Park, South of Hattiesburg was constructed by German POWs from Camp Shelby.
Germans did everything including the engineering for the dam and lake, then built it.
I always think about things like these when pointing out the difference between Conservative and liberals. If we somehow found our into concentration camps we would immediately plan an escape like this or Sobibor. The libs would be fighting for coed showers.
I too did not know of this attempted escape. Thanks. Awkward, but they were wrongly imprisoned IMHO and an escape was justified.
My uncle who was a Japanese prison guard in California during WW2 and I get into arguments about this all the time. Sorry, I believe we were wrong.
Wrongly imprisoned? They were POWs and the Aussies had only two choices. Shoot them or take them prisoner.
These were POWs not internees.
Very interesting. Thanks for the post.
I think Drango has assumed these Japanese were civilians who were interred - which did happen to civilians from Axis nations resident in Australia, as it also happened in the US. And I can see why somebody might feel that was wrong (especially when the people were citizens of their adopted country they were living in).
But this was not an internment camp - it was a Prisoner of War camp holding Japanese and other enemy soldiers captured during the war.
Hello?
Thanks. Awkward, but they were wrongly imprisoned IMHO and an escape was justified.
Regarding the point you thought you were making. There will come a time when you can not tell your enemies from your friends. In hindsight, everything is clear.
See what I have written just above your post - I think Drango has made an assumption that these were a different type of prisoner - civilian internees.
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