Cowra breakout 1944

Cowra POW Camp, 1st July 1944

Private Ralph Jones

Private Benjamin Hardy

On the 5th August 1944, some 1,000 of the 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from the No.12 Prisoner of War camp near Cowra, in New South Wales, Australia. Many of the non-escapees committed suicide or simply did not particpate. The unit guarding the camp was the 22nd Infantry Battalion, a Militia unit. Five Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed during and following the breakout. Four other Australians were injured or wounded. Privates Benjamin Hardy, Ralph Jones and Charles Shepherd were killed during the breakout; Lieutenant Harry Doncaster was killed when ambushed during the recapture of the prisoners and Sergeant Tom Hancock was killed by accidental friendly fire whilst manning a picket at Blayney Railway Station on 7th August. Privates Hardy and Jones were posthumously awarded the George Cross (GC). ^[1] It was the largest POW breakout in the Second World War and became known as The Cowra Breakout. ^[2]

The bugle used in the Cowra Breakout

Whilst 'trouble' had been brewing for several months, the catalyst for the breakout appears to have been the impending separation of Privates and NCOs by transferring many. In fact, B Compound, where the enlisted Japanese POWs were housed was indeed over-crowded, with 1,100 being housed in the 1,000-capacity section. ^[2] On 4th August, after being informed that all Japanese prisoners except for Officers and NCOs were going to be transferred to the POW camp at Hay, New South Wales, the Japanese commander of B Compound, Sergeant Major Kanazawa, called a meeting of the twenty hut leaders; at which the hut leaders were told to explain the transfer situation to their men and find out if there was support for a mass outbreak. It was decided the compound would launch a mass breakout. The POWs agreed that injured and incapacitated prisoners could restore their honour by committing suicide prior to the escape and that no civilian would be harmed. ^[3] The escape was to commence with a bugle blast at 2.00 am the following morning, and the huts set alight. The alarm was given, however, some ten minutes early which resulted in some confusion for the escaping prisoners. ^[2]

The escapees were armed with filed-down (and sharpened) cutlery and baseball bats embedded with protruding nails, and protected against the barbed wire fences by baseball mitts and blankets. The Australians were woken by the sound of almost a thousand Japanese prisoners of war and warning shots given by three of the guards. Stray bullets soon severed the main electricity line. Within minutes, Privates Benjamin Hardy and Ralph Jones had manned the No. 2 Vickers machine gun, housed outside the centre of B Compound and directly in the path of the bulk of escapees as they sought out the woods beyond, and were firing at the first of the escapees, but they were soon overwhelmed by great numbers and killed. Hardy removed and concealed the feeding lock as he was being clubbed to death. This stopped the Japanese from being able to use the gun to take over the camp. The No. 1 machine gun, housed near the B Compound guard barracks began firing after Hardy's gun, however, the number of Japanese attempting to breach the fences there were minimal. Private Charles Shepherd was also killed during the breakout, near the B Compound guard barracks, by being stabbed in the heart with one of the filed-down knives. ^[2]

Sunday Telegraph - Headlines reporting the mass breakout of Japanese POWs at Cowra

Three hundred and thirty Japanese escaped. It took nine days to find them all them, with some travelling as far as fifty kilometres away. The Royal Australian Air Force, New South Wales Police, Commonwealth Military Force trainees and members of the Australian Women’s Battalion stationed at Cowra all helped look for the escaped prisoners. Many of the escapees chose to take their own lives rather than be taken back to the prison camp. Two threw themselves under an oncoming train, many hanged themselves, some garotted themselves. Once they were recaptured, some pleaded to be shot, some decided to surrender peacefully. Two prisoners were shot by local civilians and several by military personnel.

Lieutenant Harry Doncaster, of the neighbouring 19th Infantry Training Battalion, became the only Australian killed in the roundup, when he was attacked, bludgeoned with a baseball bat and murdered by Japanese eleven kilometres north of Cowra. Those responsible were later discovered, hanged by their trouser belts. ^[2]

The forgotten casualty of the breakout was Sergeant Tom Hancock, of the Volunteer Defence Corps' 26th Battalion, based in Blayney, north ofCowra. The VDC were requested to picket the railway stations to deter the yet escapees at large from travelling to Sydney. Tom was picked up from home about 8:30pm on the 7th August by Corporal Norm Gardiner and they arrived at VDC HQ in Blayney at 9:00pm. As they were alighting from Norm's ute, Norm collected his Lee Enfield rifle from behind the seat. Tom was standing in the passenger side doorway. As Norm slid the rifle out it was, carelessly already loaded and cocked, and aiming for Tom's groin area. The safety switch was faulty and the rifle 'went off'. Whilst the doctor was one of the first on the scene, and operated on Tom immediately at the hospital, several days later the wound turned septic and Tom died of blood poisoning. He was buried in Blayney Cemetery with a military headstone. His widow received compensation for the Federal Government (£400 as a lump sum). A military Court of Inquiry found that he was a serving member of the Commonwealth Military Forces, on duty at the time of the shooting, and that his injury and death was occasioned 'indirectly by the escape of Japanese Prisoners-of-War from Cowra PW Camp on 5 Aug 44'. So, why is he not remembered? Why does his name not appear in the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour? ^[2]

Whilst neither was officially reprimanded for their roles, 22nd Garrison Battalion commanding officer and camp commandant Lieutenant Colonel Monty Brown and Major Bob Ramsay MC, officer commanding B Compound, were found at subsequent inquiries to have erred greatly in the lead-up to, and during, the breakout and its aftermath. ^[2] Ramsay 'retired' on 5th October 1944 and Brown likewise on 13th March 1945. In Ramsay's defence, a decorated First World War officer, he was influenced in his role by the fact that his son, also Robert, had been a POW of the Japanese since the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 and was 'working' on the infamous Thai-Burma Railroad. He ought not to have been given the posting.

Burial of Australian soldiers killed during the Cowra breakout

The aftermath to the breakout is also of interest. After several weeks living in tents, as they had burnt their huts, the remaining Japanese NCOs and enlisted men were transferred to the Hay POW Camp; boarding trucks on 30th August for the long drive west (over 400 kilometres). The Japanese officers remained at Cowra until transferred to Murchison, in Victoria, in February 1945. ^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Anzac day.org The Cowra Breakout
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7} McLachlan, Mat. The Cowra Breakout. Hachette Australia, Sydney NSW, 2022. ISBN 978-0-7336-4762-8
3. ↑ Australian War Memorial The Bugle used by the Japanese at the Cowra breakout

See also

• National Archives Australia - Fact sheet on the Cowra breakout
• National Archives Australia - pdf More about the Cowra prison break August 1944
• www.Japan Times.co.jp - Ghosts of Cowra breakout haunt Japan to this day