Cowra Voices and the Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Online Database, projects which spanned over 3 years were both completed in 2019.
Cowra Voices
Cowra Voices was launched on August 3, 2019 as part of the 75th anniversary commemorations of the Cowra Breakout. This project’s main aim was to link people and places with a geo-locative app – much like a heritage trail app – exploring Cowra’s unique story of civic peace and reconciliation. Its aims include facilitating a deeper, more intimate engagement with Cowra’s history through audio/multimedia storytelling. Cowra is the home of the famous Cowra Breakout by Japanese prisoners of war, one of the largest attempts at escaping prison during WWII.
Cowra Voices app includes stories of the Wiradjuri elders as well as personal histories of people buried at Cowra Japanese War Cemetery, and local narratives of grassroots peace building by members of the local Cowra community. It also involved students from Tokai University, Sapporo Campus who contributed to the design of the app. Students visited Cowra in February, 2018 to learn about Cowra’s unique history, immerse themselves in the local community and culture.
Cowra Voices was a partnership between Arts OutWest, Nikkei Australia, Cowra Council, Cowra Tourism Corporation, and Tokai University with support from ABC Central West NSW and app developer Sazae. Cowra Voices was partly funded by the Australian government through the Australia-Japan Foundation Grant 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Cowra Council, The Bruce and Margaret Weir Trust, the Nancy Shelley Bequest Fund, the Cowra Breakout Association and the Japan Foundation, Sydney.
The project team consisted of the following members:
Jacqueline Schultze
Masako Fukui
Chie Muraoka
Mayu Kanamori
To download the Cowra Voices app, go to cowravoices.org
For more information, go to https://cowravoices.wordpress.com/
Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Online Database
The Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Database project was commissioned by the Embassy of Japan in Canberra for three years between April 2016 and March 2019. The work was carried out by the project team and the website became available in 2019.
This bilingual database provides individual information on 524 graves in the Cowra Japanese War Cemetery, located in Cowra, New South Wales. Those buried in the cemetery were Japanese prisoners of war and civilian internees who died in Australia during the Pacific War. They include 25 Taiwanese graves and one Korean grave. They were buried with the Japanese because Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula were under the rule of Japan during the Pacific War. The database includes names, birth places, occupations, military ranks and units. In addition, reasons for internment, dates of capture, places of capture as well as movement histories, causes of death and burial histories, are included.
The project team consisted of the following members:
Dr Keiko Tamura
Dr Yuriko Nagata
Ms Mayu Kanamori
Ms Chie Muraoka
Mr Hideaki Kobayashi
To access the database, go to https://www.cowrajapanesecemetery.org/