Toyoshima Hajime’s bugle. AWM

Collection
Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Object Name
Cowra bugle

Object Description
Brass; silver; long double-loop brass bugle, with a silver mouthpiece fitted with a chain and linked to the body of the bugle. The bugle was made by Boosey & Co; Boosey & Hawkes Ltd. United Kingdom: England, London, c.1930-1939. The bell is impressed ‘Boosey & Hawkes Ltd Makers London no 278. The bugle is in good condition however there is damage to the bell end of the bugle, and the reinforcing loop has separated from the body. Japanese POW Toyoshima Hajime used the bugle to signal the start of the mass escape of Japanese POWs from Cowra POW Camp.

On December 7 1941 Japanese bombers attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. On the day after the attack the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Australia declared war on Japan too. For the first time Australian feared that Australia would be invaded. The Australian Prime Minister John Curtin called it the “gravest hour in our history”.

Japanese forces moved quickly into Honk Kong, Borneo and the Philippines. British and Australian troops had to retreat to the British naval base in Singapore. The naval base was well protected from the sea but not from inland attack from Malaysia. The Japanese moved very quickly through Malaysia and attacked Singapore on the 9th of February 1942. The British surrendered on the 15th February 1942. 13,000 Australians were taken prisoner of war (POW) and most spent the rest of the war in POW camps, the most notorious being Changi. Of the 13000 only about 4000 were alive at the end of the war. Many died building the ‘Death Railway” between Burma and Siam (Thailand).

Britain was fighting for survival in Europe. Japan was moving quickly into Asia and the Pacific. Australia’s most experienced soldiers were in the Middle East. Australia felt vulnerable. When Singapore fell, the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin demanded that Australian troops be sent back from the Middle East to protect Australia. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted the Australian troops be sent to protect Burma- then a colony of Britain. Curtin refused and over 46,000 troops returned to Australia. It was he first time an Australian Prime Minister disobeyed Britain.

In 1942 General Douglass MacArthur was made Supreme Commander of all U.S. and Australian troops in the South West Pacific. The US sent thousands of tonnes of arms on equipment. Approximately 33,000 U.S. troops arrived in Australia. Australia reintroduced conscription and by June there were approximately 500,000 Australian troops available to defend Australia. Japan invaded north New Guinea in July 1942. The Japanese planned to move across land to Port Moresby on the Kokoda Track. From there Japanese forces could attack Australia at will. The Japanese were only 48 kilometres from Port Moresby when they were stopped by Australian troops. They Australian troops pushed the Japanese back to Kokoda and eventually off the New Guinea mainland in 1944. Many of Japanese prisoners of war (POW) were taken, despite the Australian’s policy at time of taking no prisoners. These POWs were interred at Cowra.

The U.S. and Japanese navies waged awful sea battles in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast and at Midway in the west Pacific. Many Japanese survivors were pulled from the ocean and made POWs. These Japanese POWs were also interred at Cowra.

Toyoshima Hajime was Australia’s first Japanese POW. Toyoshima had been the pilot of a Japanese Mitsubishi Zero B11-1 aircraft, from the Japanese Imperial Navy Aircraft Carrier ‘Hiryu’, who participated in the first air raid on Darwin. During the raid his plane was damaged and he made a crash landing on Melville Island, where he was disarmed and captured by aborigines from the Snake Bay settlement who then took him to Bathurst Island and handed him over to Sergeant Leslie J. Powell, 23 Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers.

Looking west showing compounds of the Cowra prisoner of war camp with the group headquarters buildings in the foreground. AWM
A large army training camp was established just outside Cowra in 1940 which trained some 70 000 personnel throughout World War II. The following year, a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp was built at the north-eastern outskirts of town. On 5 August, 1944, this camp became the site of the largest mass POW escape in British military history. It was also the only such escape attempt to occur in Australia.

A general view of the space between the four compounds of the Cowra prisoner of war camp. “B” and “C” compounds are on the left while “A” and “D” compounds are on the right. AWM.
At that time the camp contained about 4000 prisoners who were held in four separate compounds of 17 acres each. A thoroughfare 700 metres long and 45 metres wide, known as Broadway, divided Camps B and C from Camps A and D. Adjacent Broadway was a 10-metre strip known as No Man’s Land, on each side of which was barbed-wire security fencing. Camp B, hopelessly overcrowded, held 1104 Japanese POWs.

Blankets thrown over the barbed wire fence during the breakout. AWM
On 3 June, 1944, a Korean prisoner reported a conversation in which he heard about a plan among the Japanese to attack the garrison, seize arms and ammunition and escape. As a result security was stepped up. Consequently, on 4 August, the leader of Camp B was handed a list of internees to be transferred to the POW camp at Hay on 7 August. At 1.30 a.m. on the 5th of August a bugle sounded and the prisoners of Camp B opened the hut doors. Screaming furiously, two groups – armed with knives, chisels, forks, saws, axe handles and baseball bats – rushed the wire separating them from Broadway while two other groups headed for the perimeter wire on the other side of the camp. They threw blankets over the barbed wire, or crawled under it, while others dressed in heavy clothing, threw themselves on the wire for others to climb over. Twenty buildings were burned down due to prisoners overturning heating braziers. The Australian Recruit Training Centre, 3 km away, was alerted by telephone and flares.

Two privates, who manned one of the Vickers machine gun trailers, were overrun and murdered, although Private Hardy managed to sabotage his gun before his death. Another private was stabbed to death in the fracas and a lieutenant was killed during the round-up the following morning. Another four Australian personnel were wounded and a civilian from Blayney died after a gun discharged in his vehicle during the round-up.

378 Japanese POWs escaped although the media were kept entirely in the dark about the event and local civilians were given partial and at times false information.

Within nine days 334 escapees were recaptured by the authorities and by civilians. One POW reached Eugowra, 50 km away. Others had been killed and some committed suicide – two by laying their heads on railroad tracks. In all 231 Japanese died and 108 were wounded – three dying subsequently of their wounds. The organisers of the break-out had ordered that civilians were to remain unharmed and this proved to be the case.

Daily Telegraph 4 August 1944. AWM
One story involved a local, Mrs Weir, who refused to hand over two escapees until she had given the men tea and scones as they had not eaten for days. These men returned to the Weir farm in the 1980s to thank the family.

Interestingly, the many Italian POWs were, for the most part, cheerful and cooperative and worked agreeably outside the camp while the Japanese POWs were surly, difficult and resentful. Attempts at employing them outside the camp had proved a failure due to their aggressive behaviour. Their lack of cooperation and the breakout itself arose from an overwhelming sense of shame engendered by a code of honour which viewed capture as a disgrace to themselves, their families and their country. Japanese soldiers were supposed to commit suicide rather than be humiliated by the subservience implicit in imprisonment. Indeed most of the prisoners were taken when they were too weak to offer resistance or they were merchant seamen scooped from the waters. They gave false names as they felt news of their capture would shame their families while the Japanese authorities reported all those missing in action as dead. When informed of the deaths during the breakout, the Japanese authorities asserted that those killed must have been Japanese civilians as, it contended, there was no such thing as a Japanese POW. When the internees returned many felt their ’shame’ would render them unworthy of return to Japanese society (some expected to be executed) and half did not tell their families they had been POWs.

Toyoshima convinced others that only a breakout to rejoin the war was the noble thing to do and so a mass breakout was planned. Many Japanese POWs were glad to be out of the war but felt compelled by those who enforced a Samurai warrior code and did not want to blacken their family’s names in Japanese society. The mass breakout was attempted on the night of 4/5 August 1944. The bugle was used at about 2 am by one of the leaders of the escape attempt, Toyoshima Hajime, to signal the start of the breakout. Once the breakout was over, his body was discovered, dead by his own hand, in a ditch just outside the perimeter wire.

The actual origins of the bugle are currently unknown, but the Camp Commander Major Edward Vivian Timms of Sydney, recovered it, took it home, and hung it in his sitting room until his widow donated it to the Australian War Memorial in 1978. Timms served in the First World War under his stepfather’s name (King) with 1 Battalion at Gallipoli and had returned to Australia by 10 October 1915. He re-enlisted for the Second World War on 7 June 1940 and was discharged on 21 June 1946.

A Japanese war cemetery was established by agreement with the Japanese government in 1964. It now contains the remains of all Japanese POWs and civilian internees who died during their imprisonment in World War II.

A student exchange program was established in 1970 between Cowra High School and the Seikei High School in Kichijyouji in Tokyo. The Japanese Garden and Cultural Centre was set up with the aid of the Japanese government in 1978-79 to honour the dead on both sides.

A number of annual events grace the Cowra calendar. The Festival of Understanding (which features a different guest nation each year) is held in March, the Cowra Picnic Races and the Cowra Wine Show in July, the Cowra Show in late September, Sakura Matsui (the Cherry Blossom Festival) in early October, and, at the visitors’ centre in November, the Art and Craft exhibition and Rose Fair.

The bugle has historic value as evidence of the events the surround the internment of POWs in Australia in World War Two and the experience of the Japanese POWs life at Cowra camp, the attitudes of the Japanese POWS to the war and internment and their relationships to other POW communities in NSW. The Japanese POWs were surly, difficult and resentful. Attempts at employing them outside the camp had proved a failure due to their aggressive behaviour. Their lack of cooperation and the breakout itself arose from an overwhelming sense of shame engendered by a code of honour which viewed capture as a disgrace to themselves, their families and their country.

The bugle provides a research tool for historians to explore the Second World War chapter of Australian history and give the story a wider meaning in the context of the history of migration and settlement of Australia. The material culture of the Cowra POW camp Collection reveals the diverse skills and backgrounds of the people interned there, including their educational and cultural background. Members of the Cowra POW community included Italians and Japanese.

The bugle has social value providing a reminder of the fears felt by the Australian, Italian and Japanese communities of war, the loss of loved ones and the insecurity of war time. POWs and guard’s families have a common link to the place and many local residents have developed a strong attachment to it. Many local residents are collectors and amateur historians carrying out many years of research and documenting the history of the site and the Collection. A lot of information still resides in the memories of the Cowra community. The place is a focal point for both Australians of Italian descent and visiting Italian and Japanese nationals.

The bugle is well provenanced to the Camp Commander Major Edward Vivian Timms who owned it until his widow donated it to the Australian War Memorial in 1978.

The Cowra POW Collection is rare in that it relates specifically to the POW occupation of the site and it is associated with those particular groups who emerge as significant participants at the Cowra POW Camp and World War Two NSW POW camp history.

The bugle represents the culture and traditions of the Japanese POWs. It is part of a larger collection representing the German. Italian and Japanese experience in Australia during World War Two and Australia’s strong historic links to Britain and the adherence to British foreign policy after Federation. The Collection represents Australia’s fear of subversion during the war and racial antagonism to cultural minorities in wartime. The Collection represents a time when Australia was moving away from Britain for foreign policy and becoming more confident of its place in the region but still held deep suspicions of non British immigrants.

The bugle is in fair condition with damage to the bell end of the bugle, and the reinforcing loop has separated from the body.

The bugle’s importance lies in its potential to interpret the place as a site associated to POWs and internment, the internment camp itself, the Japanese experience and the contrasting experience of Italian communities. The Collection presents the opportunity to interpret the stories of various individuals who were interned at Cowra POW camp and those who were repatriated after the War only to return as migrants and become successful members of the Australian community despite their experiences.

Bibliography

Coupe, S. & Andrews, M.
Was it only Yesterday? Australia in the Twentieth Century World,
Longman Cheshire, Sydney, 1992.

Regional Histories of NSW,
Heritage Office & Dept of Urban Affairs & Planning,
Sydney, 1996.

Significance: A guide to assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects and collections,
Heritage Collections Council. 2001.

Websites

www.awm.gov.au

www.naa.gov.au/fSheets/fs198.html

www.cowra.nsw.gov.au/
about/3252/3331.html

www.cowratourism.com.au