Road Trip to Cowra (5 hours west of Sydney)

From his first visit to Australia in October 2008, my Dad wanted to visit Cowra which he'd read had a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during WWII. And that in association with this POW Camp - there was this "Cowra Breakout" where on Aug. 5, 1944 over 1,000 Japanese POWs attempted a mass breakout from this camp making this the largest prison attempt escape in the world. Most of the Japanese POWs were either recaptured or committed suicide as they felt shame at being caught in the first place.

The deceased Japanese were buried in Cowra in a specially created Japanese War Cemetery. Considering Australian's were at war with Japan during WWII the fact that the residents of Cowra treated the Japanese soldiers with such respect by burying them in a beautifully constructed cemetery was acknowledged by all of us and Papa played his shakuhachi at the cemetery in recognition of this sentiment.

The Cowra POW camp was similar to the Heart Mountain Camp outside Cody. Wyoming where my Mom and her family were interned during WWII in that there was also a very tall guard tower, barbed wire fencing, wood-constructed barracks and in the middle of nowhere.



On our way to Cowra, we visited Lithgow and spent one night in Bathurst at the Winter Rose Bed and Breakfast where we stayed in this lovely cabin surrounded by a beautiful garden.



In addition to the Japanese POW camp and the cemetery, we also visited the Japanese Garden in Cowra. It reminded me of the Japanese Garden in Saratoga, Calif. in that it too had a lake, canopy of wisteria and an elevated part of the garden where you could rest and look down on the rest of the garden and the horizon beyond.