The Japanese and the dark legacy of Australia's camps

SBS World News Radio: Some of the last survivors of Australia's WW2 internment camps have shared their stories of one of the lesser-known, dark legacies of the Second World War.

The Japanese and the dark legacy of Australia's campsThe Japanese and the dark legacy of Australia's camps

The Japanese and the dark legacy of Australia's camps

Tomoko Irlean Matsumoto remembers her father fondly.

"He was a beautiful man, very quiet, strong, very strict, especially with daughters. He only had one."

But the memories are tinged by a war that separated her family.

She was just four years old, living in Darwin, when, thousands of kilometres away, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and prime minister John Curtin announced the war had come to Australia.

Ms Matsumoto's father worked in the pearling industry, and he was rounded up along with the other Japanese civilians living in Australia at the time.

His family intially went with him from Darwin to a civilian internment camp in Tatura Victoria.

Other camps had been set up around the country and already held Italian and German civilians.

Altogether, around 4,700 Italian civilians living in Australia, 4,000 Japanese and 2,000 Germans were detained.

But for Ms Matsumoto, there was an extra cruel twist.

Her mother was Aboriginal, and she and her siblings were later separated from their parents and sent to a Christian mission in the Tiwi Islands with children of the stolen generations.

"(I'm) probably still a bit traumatised about being separated from our parents. Yeah, it's just only, I suppose ... mainly, I remember the picnic days, you know, when the older girls used to take us out picnicking."

Joe Murakami, who now lives in Japan, was 14 years old when his family was also interned at Tatura.

His father was a successful businessman and photographer in Darwin, but he died in the internment camp.

Mr Murakami says he remembers their lives being thrown into chaos in 1942.

"Well, the war broke out, and the soldiers came trooping in. We didn't know what was going on. And they said we were to be taken to an internment facility and (to) get everything together in the few hours we have, two or three hours. And we had to abandon everything."

At the camps, each detainee was given a number.

Despite 75 years passing, Joe Murakami says he will always remember his.

"Oh, yeah, 18102, that was my number. They gave us sort of a plastic medal that we wore around our neck, like the troops were wearing. There was no school. Everyone would congregate at the dining hall. (We) couldn't go outside the barbed-wire fences, but we could play outside the hut."

Japanese-Australian historian Yuriko Nagata says the story of the civilian internment during World War Two is a very important one.

"This is a story of the immigrant as well. Australia is an immigrant country. So, the history of internment during World War Two should be written, and it has to be known."

After the war ended, Tomoko Irlean Matsumoto and her parents were reunited.

"We were reunited in 1948. Don't ask me what time of the year it was. All I remember was the grass, the spear grass, was so high, so it must have been sometime after the wet down there. For myself, everything just seemed to be right when we were all back together again."

Both the United States and Canada have apologised for the internment of Japanese civilians during the war.

But Ms Matsumoto is not looking for an apology from Australia.

She says she simply hopes history will not forget her father.

"He was just a worker. He lived in Australia for so long, and they still took them, you know, so ... In a way, I think that wasn't fair."

 

 


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By Jarni Blakkarly


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