Golden opportunities

With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the 1950s and ’60s were pivotal decades for the NSW Central West. It was a time when the residents of the primarily agricultural town of Cowra got their heads together and decided they should acknowledge some of their war history.

Towards the end of WWII more than 300 of 1000 Japanese prisoners who had been interned in a camp on the outskirts of town made an escape attempt that resulted in the loss of life of 231 Japanese and four Australians. By the ’60s, sufficient time had elapsed for Cowra’s returned servicemen, who tended the graves, to initiate further reconciliation for this violent past. The bodies of all Japanese people who died in Australia during the war were moved to the Japanese cemetery in Cowra to lie with their countrymen who had died during the breakout and the land was ceded to Japan in 1963 creating the only Japanese war cemetery outside Japan. Talk also began about a memorial Japanese garden, which was finally realised in 1979 when a five-hectare bushland site designed by renowned Japanese landscaper Ken Nakajima was opened in 1979. These days, the Kaiyushiki (strolling) garden attracts more than 41,000 visitors a year, as they walk or