Introduction

During World War II both the Allied and Axis Powers interned people of enemy origin in the name of national security. After Japan entered the war on 8 December 1941, Japanese living in many parts of the world under Allied control were interned. The United Kingdom (UK) arrested about 5,000 Japanese in various places including India, Malaya and Singapore, and held them in camps in India. Ninety-six Japanese were also arrested in the UK and held on the Isle of Man.1 The American and Canadian governments pursued policies of wholesale internment of Japanese. About 22,000 Japanese Canadians and 112,000 Japanese Americans were put in camps. In the Philippines 17,800 Japanese were interned for a short time until Japanese forces landed on Mindanao on 20 December.2 Japanese were also interned in South America. The Peruvian government, for example, interned approximately 1,800 Japanese at the request of the United States (US) and these were later transferred to the US.3 The internment of Japanese in Australia was part of the worldwide actions taken by the Allies against the Japanese. This book deals with the experiences of Japanese nationals and people of Japanese origin who were interned in Australia during the war.

Australia interned about 16,700 people who were classified as being of enemy origin – mainly German, Italian or Japanese. They comprised two groups – local internees arrested within Australia and its territories (hereafter referred to as “local internees”), and overseas internees held on behalf of other Allied governments (hereafter referred to as “overseas internees”). In Australia, 4,301 Japanese were held: 1,141 locals and 3,160 from overseas, principally the Dutch East Indies (hereafter NEI), New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. About 600 Formosans were arrested as Japanese and included among the internees from NEI. Some Koreans were also arrested as Japanese, but their number is unknown as they used Japanese names.

Although this book deals with the common experiences of both overseas and local internees, such as background to migration, arrest, internment and repatriation, the emphasis is on local internees. Australia only accepted overseas internees at the request of other Allied nations and was not legally responsible for them beyond their internment while in Australia. There is closer analysis of the pre- and post-war experiences of local internees and discussion of internment policy is limited to this group.

The Japanese in this study had emigrated for various purposes. They ranged from single men earning money to take back to Japan, to families who settled and raised children. There were men and women from poverty-stricken parts of Japan who emigrated because they hoped to find economic opportunities that they could not find at home. Some were also hoping to find personal freedom. Some saw themselves as the advance guard of the Japanese Empire, fulfilling Japanese destiny in the region. Bankers and business representatives also came, as did prostitutes and others who provided services for those better placed than themselves. They lived both in Japanese communities and in isolation from other Japanese. Finally, there was a second generation, frequently born to mixed marriages between Japanese fathers and local mothers. D.C.S. Sissons has written extensively on the early history of Japanese immigration to Australia, while others in both Japan and Australia have written on migration between Japan and Australia.4 The background history chapters in this book benefited from their research.

Relatively little research has been done on the wartime experiences of internees during World War II in Australia. The pioneer work in this area is Margaret Bevege’s Behind Barbed Wire, published in 1993. It covers all the nationalities, and one chapter is devoted specifically to the Japanese. Kay Saunders has written extensively on the wartime experiences of people in Australia in general and has written a number of articles on the treatment of enemy aliens in Queensland, some of which were included in her recent work War on the Homefront in 1993. In studies such as Paul Hasluck’s Australia in the War of 1939–45: The Government and the People, the treatment of civilian internment, in Saunders’s words, “displays the tendency to cast the dissident figuratively as an outsider”.5 Gerhard Fischer’s book Enemy Aliens, on the interment of Germans in Australia during World War I, has given historical perspective to the author’s view of civilian internment. It has also allowed the author to highlight the similarities between Australian government attitudes towards two ethnic minority groups in Australia – the Germans during World War I and the Japanese during World War II. The presence of Japanese prisoners-of-war at Cowra in Australia during World War II is well-known due to the mass breakout which occurred there.6 This book is concerned only with civilians who were interned as Japanese.

The migration patterns, policies and events up to and surrounding World War II in the United States and Canada form a useful basis for comparison with the experiences of Japanese civilians in Australia during the same period. Because of the continuity of the North American Japanese communities and much larger numbers involved, there has been greater opportunity for research into their experiences. This research has sometimes been triggered by the controversies which surrounded internment there. American and Canadian internees and their descendants have successfully pursued claims for compensation from their governments for wrongful deprivation of their rights and property during the war. These claims were based on legal grounds in the case of the United States and largely on US precedent in the case of Canada.

Both the official and the oral sources on which this book is based have some unavoidable defects, but they do not undermine the purpose of the book. Most of the official records used in this research were obtained from Commonwealth Archives or the Australian War Memorial. Some were found in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives in Japan. Archives in the Netherlands, France, the UK and New Zealand have not been consulted. Some files were not completely open for access, so information is sometimes fragmented. The author was able to see a film of Loveday camp taken by Mr George Bolton of Adelaide during the war. The film is now made available at the Barmera Tourist Office in South Australia. It is invaluable in conveying a sense of the period and the atmosphere of the camp.

The author interviewed over 100 people who had been on both sides of the barbed wire – former internees now in Australia and Japan, and former Australian military personnel involved with the operation of the camps. Most ex-camp personnel who were approached agreed to be interviewed. Many responded to an advertisement placed in newspapers all over Australia in 1985. Twenty ex-Australian Military Forces (AMF) and government personnel were interviewed. The same method was used to locate former internees, and a number of letters came from them or from people who knew about them. The research involved travel to many places in Australia, Japan and Taiwan to meet these people and to search for others. Eighty-five former internees and their families were interviewed in Australia, Japan and Taiwan.

More than 50 years have passed since the end of World War II. The majority of the first generation of internees have died, so it was usually only possible to interview those from the younger generation during the war. Approximately half of the former internees interviewed were either teenagers or children at that time. Most senior camp staff and internees who were involved in running the camps have died and this will have influenced what the author was and was not told.

Many of the former internees were at first reluctant to talk about their past. Some wished to remain anonymous and others, both in Japan and Australia, still feel ashamed about having been prisoners during the war. How the arrests were made differed widely from region to region. Many experienced extreme humiliation when they were arrested, while in some small communities they were well-acquainted with the arresting officers and the whole process was carried out in a relatively friendly atmosphere. Post-war repatriation and, in some cases, deportation frequently divided family units. The Japanese community which existed in Australia before the war has largely disappeared.

Despite the obvious disruption to the lives of internees, they were all treated well in the camps. Australian authorities were deeply concerned over the treatment of Australian prisoners of war held by the Japanese and wanted to give no reason for further ill treatment.

The first purpose of this book was to assemble all of the information relevant to the experiences of Japanese internees in Australia. The presentation of this material in one volume bridges the gap in information caused by World War II and ties together the pre- and post-war periods of Japanese settlement in Australia. Although small in number, it is important to establish that there has been a continuous presence of Japanese in Australia, even during the most difficult period in Japanese–Australian relations of 1941 to 1945. This small group holds a unique position in Australian history as Asians of ex-enemy origin.

Notes

  1. A. 7.0.0., 9/11/1/10/2, 28 Feb. 1942. ↩
  2. Asahi Shinbun [Asahi], 29 Dec. 1984, p. 7. ↩
  3. Gardiner, C. H., Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States, University of Washington Press, 1981, p. viii. ↩
  4. See the bibliography for major works by Saunders and Sissons. ↩
  5. Saunders, Kay, War on the Homefront: State Intervention in Queensland 1938–1948, University of Queensland Press, 1993, p. 4. ↩
  6. Three books have been written on the Japanese POW breakout at Cowra. They are Charlotte Carr-Gregg’s Japanese Prisoners of War in Revolt: The Outbreak at Featherstone and Cowra During World War II (1978), Harry Gordon’s Die Like The Carp (1978) and Teruhiko Asada’s The Night of the Thousand Suicides (1970). ↩