There is a saying that we die twice:

The first time being our physical death.  

The second being when our name is mentioned for the last time.  

「人は二度死ぬ」と言われます。
一度目は肉体の死
二度目は、その名前がもはや口にされなくなったときです。

When You Call My Name is a collaborative project honouring civilians who were brought from Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, across Australia and Aotearoa / New Zealand as ‘Japanese enemy aliens’ to be interned in Australia and Aotearoa / New Zealand during World War II, and died during internment.

They include 26 people from Taiwan and one from Korea, who were included among the Japanese because Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula were under the rule of Japan during the Pacific War. There are also three people from Thailand, who were originally interned in Aotearoa / New Zealand, and died in a plane crash on their way to be interned in Australia.

193 people are now buried in the Japanese Cemetery in Wiradjuri Country in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia; 12 people who died in the plane crash are buried at the Waikumete Cemetery in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland; two who died on the voyage to Australia from Indonesia (the then Dutch East Indies) were buried at sea; the remains of one who died on Matiu / Somes Island were taken back to his family in Tonga by a friend; and one is unknown.

While the civilian internees died in various parts of Australia, their remains were transferred to Cowra in the 1960s, and consolidated in the Japanese Cemetery. Japanese prisoners of war who had died in a prison breakout, known as the Cowra Breakout, were already buried there, and their graves were being cared for by the local residents. When the Japanese government proposed that the civilian internees’ remains be re-interred in Cowra, the community responded positively. The Japanese Cemetery in Cowra was officially opened on 22 November 1964.

There is a saying that we die twice. The first time being our physical death. The second being when our name is mentioned for the last time. With this saying in mind, our project facilitators called on their respective communities to take part in this collaborative project, and gave each participant information about a particular deceased internee to ‘adopt’. The participant was then asked to respond to their learnings with an artwork, or a photograph of a work. The only prerequisite was that the artwork include the name of their ‘adopted’ internee. This first edition catalogue documents the 225 artworks created by 166 artist/participants, honouring 208 internees. Some internees were ‘adopted’ by more than one artist.

The information about the internees we provided was mostly based on research by Dr Yuriko Nagata for the Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Online Database, and documents available online at the time, held at the National Archives of Australia. The information about internees who died in Aotearoa / New Zealand was researched by Dr Sophie Constable at the Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand and Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland Library, expanding on existing work by Professor Judith A. Bennett. Some of our participants conducted further research into their ‘adopted’ internees through other libraries and archives, sometimes even their own family archives.

The artworks in this website are being incorporated into a large-scale group collage. Workshops to create this collage, its exhibition, and the official project launch are being held at the School of Culture, History & Language within the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University in September 2025.

We’ve taken great care, but some visuals, language, or descriptions may be culturally sensitive or not typically used in certain public or community settings. This is especially true given the diverse cultural perspectives in a project like this. Some terms or annotations reflect the views of their time or origin, and may be seen as inappropriate today, or in the future.

However, despite differences, we have created this group work in the hope that we will never repeat this history of civilian internment, and to speak out for peace.

This project would not have been possible without the kind and generous support of our partners and sponsors, the expertise of our dedicated volunteers (and their many long hours of work), and the heartfelt words and artistic skills of our talented participants.

Mayu Kanamori
on behalf of When You Call My Name team
August 2025

Click here to view the details and guidelines of the callout for artworks.

When You Call My Name は、第二次世界大戦中に「敵国人」として、東南アジア、南太平洋諸島、オーストラリア各地、ニュージーランドにて身柄を拘束され、オーストラリアとニュージーランドの収容所にて亡くなった民間人を追悼する共同プロジェクトです。

亡くなった人々の中には、太平洋戦争中に台湾と朝鮮半島が日本の統治下にあったために日本人とみなされ、共に収容された台湾出身者26名と朝鮮出身者1名も含まれています。また、もともとニュージーランドで収容されていたタイ出身者3名もおり、彼らは日本人収容者たちと共にオーストラリアへの移送中、交換捕虜として本国送還される過程で、飛行機事故により命を落としました。

現在、オーストラリアのニューサウスウェールズ州のカウラにある日本人墓地に、193名の人々が埋葬されています。飛行機事故で亡くなった11名はオークランドのワイクメテ墓地に埋葬されており、当時のオランダ領東インド（現在のインドネシア）からオーストラリアへの航海の途中で亡くなった２名は海葬されました。

このプロジェクトでは、参加者ひとりひとりが、ある特定の収容者に関する情報キットを受け取り、その方を偲ぶアートをそれぞれに制作しました。作品には、その収容者の名前が入っています。各作品はウェブサイトやカタログに掲載される一方で、全作品を含む大きなコラージュ作品としても展示される予定です。