SHIOSE Mori
Born: 30 August 1892 – Died: 24 September 1943
Particulars:
Mori was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. Although he had a wife living in Fujisawa in Kanagawa, he was working as a retailer in Ponorogo in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia when the Pacific War broke out. He was taken to Australia and interned at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. He died in hospital at age 51. The cause of his death is not recorded in documents at the National Archives of Australia. His grave is in the Japanese Cemetery in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
–Mayu Kanamori
More info:
Rebecca Hausler
Artist/s Statement:
This digitally edited photographic work acknowledges the injustices experienced by Japanese civilians during World War II, including forced deportation and internment in remote camps around Australia. In 1964, remains were moved from their original campsite graves to the newly created Cowra Japanese War Cemetery, where civilians were buried alongside Japanese military prisoners of war. Here, Shiose Mori’s name was misspelled as ‘SHOISE, Mori’ on his grave marker, despite his name being recorded accurately in archival records. In this piece, I digitally altered the image to correct his name. The phrase ‘his name is SHIOSE Mori’ is subtly superimposed in Japanese, suggesting echoes of memory that affirm Shiose’s existence and identity as a Japanese casualty of war.
Artist Bio:
Rebecca Hausler holds a PhD from The University of Queensland, Australia. Her thesis analysed literary representations of the riot and escape attempt of Japanese prisoners of war, commonly referred to as the Cowra Breakout. Her publications include an article in the ‘Journal of Multilingualism’ on Inoue Hisashi’s depictions of linguistic imperialism in his 1977 novel ‘Kiiroi Nezumi’, and a chapter in the 2023 edited collection ‘Border-Crossing Japanese Literature’ analysed three novels depicting Japanese internees in Australia. She was an invited speaker at The Australian National University’s Japan Institute Seminar Series in 2021, was a visiting research fellow at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo in 2023, and an invited panellist at the University of British Columbia’s Rethinking Global Japanese Studies Symposium in 2024.