Remembering internment #3: Evelyn Yamashita

EvelynSuzuki_N31A2138_cropEvelyn Yamashita
Born: Thursday Island, 1928
Interned: Tatura (Victoria), 1941–47

The morning of December 8, 1941 was thick with humidity on Thursday Island, the Torres Strait community located just beyond the northernmost tip of mainland Australia. As clouds roiled in the sky overhead, the island’s Japanese (most of whom were employed in the pearl diving industry), Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Filipino, white and native Torres Strait Islander inhabitants prepared to go about their business before the heat of the day peaked. Thirteen-year-old Evelyn Yamashita woke to find that army personnel had built a barbed wire fence around their entire community. ‘Nearly all the Japanese lived in that one area. Others in town… were brought [to] where we were living,’ Evelyn explains. At the time, few in the community had heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which had occurred just hours earlier.

The approximately two hundred-strong Japanese population was held within the barbed wire enclosure for the next two weeks. A few days before Christmas, they were transported south by ship. The Yamashita family—comprising mother Tei, who was born on Thursday Island, father Haruyoshi, who had emigrated from Japan 43 years earlier, and their eight Australian-born children, of whom Evelyn was the eldest—spent both Christmas and New Year’s Day on the cramped ship. They finally arrived at Tatura internment camp on January 9th, 1942. It was to be their home for the next five-and-a-half years.

‘The kids across the road used to stand on the footpath
and chant, “Ching-chong Chinaman!”’

Evelyn, who was surrounded by her large family at camp, has few bad memories of her years in internment. Security wasn’t strict at Tatura—especially not for the children, many of whom were from New Caledonia and could only speak French. They played sport and occasionally went on picnics. ‘A guard would accompany us with his rifle. On one occasion, one of the older kids carried the rifle for him,’ Evelyn recalls. Some nights, they were treated to a film. ‘A chap from the Kraft Walker Cheese Company used to show us some films: mostly Charlie Chaplin and educational films. We enjoyed them.’ Evelyn’s greatest regret was not being able to attend school. ‘I did my intermediate exams [Year 10 equivalent] while I was interned and I wanted to do my leaving exams [Year 12], but I couldn’t—that was when the war ended and camp was disbanded.’ Despite the gap in her formal education, Evelyn didn’t resent her internment. ‘It was explained… that [because we] were Japanese… if [we] were outside, [we’d] fare a lot worse than inside camp.’

Evelyn was released in February 1947, staying at a friend’s place in Manly to attend secretarial college. ‘I asked to be released so I could help my family by learning office work,’ she says. The rest of her family remained interned after the war ended while authorities searched for appropriate housing. ‘They didn’t have anywhere to send us. Thursday Island was in a mess—it was still a military zone.’ In Sydney, Evelyn quickly adjusted to life outside camp. ‘Nobody took me as Japanese,’ she says. ‘The kids across the road used to stand on the footpath and chant, “Ching-chong Chinaman!” when I waited to catch the bus… I just ignored them.’

‘In those days, Asians were not allowed to own any land, because of the White Australia Policy.’

The Yamashita family was finally released in August 1947, two years after the end of the war. Evelyn’s father, who had owned a soy sauce and miso factory on Thursday Island, lost all his assets during the war. ‘There was nothing left. As far as we know, the army dismantled it during the war.’ (Nagata 1996, p. 230) ‘I was told most of the materials were taken to New Guinea to make buildings for the Australian Army… We had four buildings, including our house. The trouble was, in those days, Asians were not allowed to own any land, because of the White Australia Policy. My father didn’t own the land, [so] he didn’t get any compensation for his buildings [after the war].’ After the family returned to Thursday Island, a Chinese friend rented a house to them and helped Haruyoshi set up a general store business. ‘[We] were readily accepted back into the community by most people on Thursday Island. [But] there were a few [new] people who… didn’t like us.’ (Nagata 1996, p. 231)

Evelyn eventually married a former internee whom she had met at Tatura. The couple settled in Sydney and had two children. Evelyn is now eighty-five years old.

Read more about internee memories here and here.

Remembering Internment #2: Maurice Shiosaki

Maurice Shiosaki
Born: Broome, 1939
Interned: Tatura, Victoria, 1942–46

As a boy interned at Tatura in Victoria, part-Japanese, part-Aboriginal Maurice and his older brothers made kites to pass the time. Standing in the barbed-wire enclosure of the family camp, they released their kites and watched them soar high above them. “We used to make our own kites out of bamboo and the paper that apples used to be wrapped in. We made glue out of flour and water. We used sewing cotton for the string. The older boys used to crush light globes into a powder and mix flour and water in, run the mixture along the string and then dry it out. Then we’d fly our kite, and the boys from the other compounds used to fly theirs—so we’d be standing in different compounds—and we’d go voom! To try to cut their string. That was kite fighting—it was all friendly, though.”

Kite fighting was one of many activities Maurice did during the five years he was interned, from the age of two to seven. He also recalls taking part in sumo matches against other kids and occasionally being treated to picnics outside camp grounds. “I remember eating hot dogs. We used to go in army trucks out to this lake. It was a nice area—a lot of wildlife. They had big containers to boil hot dogs in.”

“They said, ‘Pack your things up, you’re going.’ That was it…
[My father] lost everything.”

The Shiosakis were a family of 10 (mum, dad and eight kids), so there was never a shortage of playmates for Maurice, who remembers his time at camp fondly. “We were treated very well, as far as I can remember… All the time we were there, we were very happy.” Maurice spent so much time socialising with the other Japanese kids at camp that his Japanese became better than his English. “I could talk Japanese A-1 until I left the camp… [But] I’ve forgotten it all now.”

But the family experienced hardship in other ways. Maurice’s father, Shizuo, owned a laundry business in Broome, but when war broke out with Japan he was forced to abandon it. “They said, ‘Pack your things up, you’re going.’ That was it… [My father] lost everything.” When the family was finally released from internment in 1946, they had to start afresh. Maurice’s father found work in Perth doing the laundry at Clontarf Boys Town, then later in Mullewa (WA) working on the railway.

“The saddest part was when it was time to leave…
Everyone was crying. Everyone was clinging to the fence.”

On the day of their release from internment, the Shiosakis farewelled the life they’d known for five years and the people they’d shared it with. Many of their friends were being sent to Japan against their wishes as government policy dictated that Japanese who weren’t married to British subjects or who didn’t have Australian-born children couldn’t stay in Australia. “The saddest part of all our time at camp was when it was time to leave,” Maurice says. “There were rows and rows of army trucks the day we started to move out. Everyone was crying. Everyone was clinging to the fence.”

Read about more internee memories here.

Remembering internment #1: Mary Nakashiba

Mary Nakashiba
Born: Thursday Island, 1926
Interned: Tatura, Victoria, 1942–44

Seventy years have passed since half-Japanese Mary was interned as a 15-year-old, but the shocking turn of events after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor is still clear to her. After being arrested in Darwin, Mary and her family were transported to Sydney by ship along with hundreds of other Japanese. “When we got off the ship, there was a crowd of people lining the harbour. They were screaming, ‘Kill them! Shoot the bastards!’ I couldn’t believe it—these were Australians, people of my own country. I’ll never forget it. I was in total, utter shock. That was the point that I realised my life would never be the same.”

“They were screaming, ‘Kill them! Shoot the bastards!’”

Mary and the rest of her immediate family—her Japanese father who migrated to Australia 50 years earlier, her European mother and her 12-year-old sister—spent the next three years inside the barbed-wire fences of Tatura camp in Victoria. Although they were treated reasonably well by staff at camp, it was a far cry from the comfortable life they’d had in Darwin, where Mary’s father had a general store. They endured freezing winters and had to sleep on sacks stuffed with straw until Mary’s mother negotiated with the Red Cross to receive proper mattresses and bedding. For a vibrant teenager such as Mary, the years at camp were “a time of extreme boredom”. “You felt powerless… I thought many times of climbing that fence. But I thought, if I do climb that fence and they don’t shoot me, where would I go?”

During the many months she was interned, Mary mourned “the loss of [her] Australian identity”. “I felt betrayed by my country… That was the biggest hurt of all—to know that I was an enemy alien in my own country. I had no people, no country, because I wasn’t accepted by the Australian people, and I wasn’t accepted by the Japanese. I couldn’t identify with anybody.”

For Mary, one of the most difficult aspects of internment was living with the imperialistic Japanese internees at camp. When Mary refused to bow in the direction of the flag, one of the compound leaders forcibly pushed her head down. And when Japan bombed Darwin in February 1942, Mary was enraged the internees around her celebrated. “They put on a celebration. Banzai! It was just terrible… I lost a lot of close, close friends [in Darwin]. So that bred a lot of hatred. I think hatred keeps you alive, keeps you going… My mother used to say, ‘You mustn’t hate.’ But I hated.”

“I think hatred keeps you alive, keeps you going”

The Nakashiba family’s inability to fit in with the more traditional Japanese internees was a continual source of friction, culminating in a dispute over laundry facilities. “My mother was using a boiler in the laundry, and the compound leader came and took out her washing and dumped it all on the ground so that he could use it. She objected, so he hit her on the head with a stick. I threw a bar of soap at him. Then he blamed me for the fight, saying I attacked him first.” As a result, Mary’s family moved into a neighbouring compound that housed mostly Japanese from the Dutch East Indies. “The people in the Indonesian camp were very nice people,” Mary says. “We made a lot of friends.”

Mary’s father, John, had a mental breakdown after his arrest in Darwin, which she attributes to the conflict he felt as a Japanese who’d lived nearly all his life in Australia. “He felt Australia was his country, his home… and so to have this disrupted and find that you are an enemy alien… And also there was the heartbreak [of the Darwin bombings]—this was his country that was doing it… He knew there was no place for him.” John died a few years after he was released from internment in 1946. “It’s the older people, not the younger people, that are really affected by warfare,” she says.

After the war and the death of Mary’s father, the family relied on the kindness of friends, relatives and strangers to get by. Despite Mary’s ordeal, she’s not bitter and doesn’t want an apology or compensation. “It’s part of my life, I accept it… I think it built a lot of iron in me. It built resilience. And I tell you what, it certainly gave me a lot more compassion.”

Read more about Mary’s life in internment and her later deployment as an Australian nurse in the Malayan Emergency in Beyond Borders: A Memoir (Bookpal, 2010). Buy it from Booktopia, Amazon and eBay.

Through a glass darkly: photographs of internment

A look at the photographers—both official and underground—who captured life in internment in the US and Australia.

Manzanar Relocation Center, California by Ansel Adams
Bill Manbo

Bill Manbo (1908-1992)

A friend sent me a link to this New York Times feature on the photographs of Bill Manbo, a Japanese-American internee at Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming during World War II.

Internees weren’t allowed to take photographs in camp for security reasons (primarily because internees were thought to be spies). But with a keen interest in photography, Bill snuck his 35mm Zeiss Contax camera into camp and built a tripod made of scraps he found at camp (talk about resourcefulness!) and took some beautiful Kodachrome colour slide photographs of his fellow internees. Sumo matches, girls dressed in kimonos for the Bon festival and a boy scout band—colourful slices of everyday life within the drab confines of camp.

For more on Bill’s photographs, see: Colors of Confinement: Rare color photographs of Japanese American incarceration in World War II  edited by Eric Muller (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Toyo Miyatake by Ansel Adams

Toyo Miyatake (1896-1979)

Toyo Miyatake was another Japanese-American internee who documented his internment experience in photographs. Before the war he’d trained under master photographer Edward Weston and set up a photographic studio in Los Angeles. When he was interned at Manzanar (in the Sierra Nevada of California), he smuggled a lens and film into camp and with the help of a carpenter made a box camera and took photos of his surrounds.

Toyo was later introduced to the camp director and eventually permitted to freely take photographs of camp. He returned to professional photography after the end of World War II, and a year before his death in 1979, his photographs of internment were published in a book alongside Ansel Adams’ (Two Views of Manzanar, Los Angeles: Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, UCLA, c. 1978). Toyo’s stark and stunning black-and-white images hold their own alongside Ansel’s.

Toyo’s photographic studio is still open and is operated by his grandson. A selection of his images of internment can be viewed on the studio’s website.

Tom Kobayashi by Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

World-famous photographer (and one of my personal favourites) Ansel Adams documented life at Manzanar War Relocation Center in inland California. Ansel was invited to photograph internees as he was friends with the camp director, but he was banned from photographing guard towers or any other negative aspects of camp life. What resulted was a series of poignant portraits of Japanese-American internees, set against the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains. There’s smiling farmer Richard Kobayashi with a cabbage under each arm, beautiful young nurse Aiko Hamaguchi, a baseball game and a dressmaking class.

Ansel wanted to portray the loyalty of Japanese-Americans. He said: “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.” Sadly, when his photographs were published in 1944 in the book Born Free and Equal (US Camera, 1944). it was not well received by the wartime public. In 1965 Adams donated the photographs to the Library of Congress (which is why they’re not copyright-protected today). He said of the photographs: “…from a social point of view that’s the most important thing I’ve done or can do, as far as I know.” Ansel Adams died not knowing what would become of these images.

Browse the images online:  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/

Tanforan Assembly Center, California by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)

Another great American photographer who was called on to photograph the internment camps was Dorothea Lange. Best-known for her Depression-era photographs of the working class, Dorothea approached the internment of Japanese-Americans with a similarly unflinching eye: queues of well-dressed Japanese, others forced to sell their belongings for next-to-nothing, and the spartan accommodation at a temporary barracks. As the New York Times notes: “In harrowing images that uncomfortably echo the Nazi round-ups of Jews in Europe, Lange’s photographs document long, weaving lines of well-dressed people, numbered tags around their necks, patiently waiting to be processed and sent to unknown destinations.”

Lange visited 21 locations in all—from processing centres to temporary barracks and permanent camps such as Manzanar. Like Ansel Adams, Dorothea was restricted in what she could photograph: she wasn’t allowed to photograph wire fences, watchtowers, armed guards or any sign of resistance.

The Army, which had commissioned Dorothea to take photographs, promptly deposited them in the National Archives, and they weren’t discovered by researchers until 60 years later. In 2006, a collection was finally published as Impounded (WW Norton & Co, 2006). See a selection of the images online.

A Japanese internee & clogs in Loveday camp 14B by Hedley Cullen

Hedley Cullen (?–1994) and Colin Halmarick (1914–?)

In Australia, photographs of the internment experience are rarer—perhaps because of the fewer numbers of people interned here (16,000 compared to well over 100,000 in the US), and also because the Australian government didn’t want to publicise the fact they were interning thousands of people in Australia.

Hedley Cullen took many images of Japanese internees in Australia that I’ve used for my research. He photographed everything from the transport of internees and the physical setting of camps, to voluntary labour and internee recreation.

Colin Halmarick worked for Melbourne newspaper The Argus, as well as the Australian Army. He photographed the officers who guarded the camps, camp grounds and daily life of the internees.

To view the hundreds of images both men took, go to the Australian War Memorial website and do a “collection advanced search” using the photographer’s name and checking “photograph” and “Has image: Yes”.

Yasukichi Murakami

Yasukichi Murakami (1880-1944)

As far as I know, Japanese businessman, inventor and photographer Yasukichi Murakami didn’t take photographs while he was interned in Australia, but I’ve included him here as it’s possible he did in secret. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1944 while interned at Tatura camp in Victoria at the age of 63. He’d been in Australia for 47 years.

According to historian DCS Sissons, Yasukichi was involved in recruiting and lending money to pearling crews in Broome. He also designed and patented a diving suit in 1926. His remains are interred in the Japanese War Cemetery in Cowra, NSW.

Sydney-based artist Mayu Kanamori is researching the life and photographs of Yasukichi Murakami, with the help of his descendant Julie Murakami. They’re searching for a lost archive of Yasukichi’s photographs. To learn more about Mayu’s project, visit: aboutmurakami.wordpress.com

Let me know if there are any other notable photographers of the Japanese internment experience I’ve missed…

Tatura family internment camp

James Sullivan obituary, Herald Sun, March 22, 2012

Update: Vale James Sullivan

I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of James Sullivan, a former officer at Tatura internment camp, on March 22, 2012. Jim was 91 years old.

I was glad to have had the opportunity to get to know him. He was an entertaining raconteur, keen to share his knowledge, and author of Beyond All Hate: a wartime story of a Japanese internment camp 1941-1946, his self-published account of his time overseeing Japanese internees in Victoria.

Below is a photo I took of him just a month before his death (read below for an account of the trip he took me on to visit the site of Tatura internment camp in July 2011):

Jim Sullivan (February 2012)

In July last year, retired army major James Sullivan was kind enough to give me a tour of the site of the Tatura family internment camp near Shepparton in northern Victoria. At 91 years old, Jim still has the ability to tell a good tale and draw upon his memories of 70 years ago. Jim was one of the officers employed to supervise the camp, which held many Japanese families. At age 22, he was one of the youngest officers assigned to the camp (after being injured while serving in New Guinea he was posted to supervise the camp), and as a result he became friendly with many of the Japanese families interned, and in 2007 he self-published a book about his experiences, Beyond All Hate: The story of a wartime internment camp for Japanese in Australia, 1941-1946 (available from Tatura Museum: www.taturamuseum.org.au/museum_shop.html).

Remains of the shower block at Tatura internment camp.

A quick history: the Tatura internment camps comprised seven separate camps in total. Three of the camps were for POWs, while the remaining four were for internees. Of the internee camps, two were for single males (mostly German and Italian), one was for German families, and another, Camp 4 near Rushworth, was for Japanese families. Each of the camps housed about 1000 internees (http://www.taturamuseum.org.au/prisoner_of_war__internment_camps.html).

Japanese internees at Tatura line up for a dental check (Australian War Memorial, 052460).

The family camps were established to house women, children and family groups of “enemy aliens”. In some cases, the Australian wives and children of internees chose to live with their husband/father in the family internment camp rather than be separated from him. Teenage boys under the age of 16 lived at the family camps, but after 16 they were transferred to the camps for single adult men.

Wooden chess set at Tatura Museum made by a “Japanese” internee (from Formosa/Taiwan), donated by James Sullivan.

After a quick stop at Tatura Museum (a very good regional museum, with informative displays about the internment camps, irrigation projects and other aspects of local history, see: www.taturamuseum.org.au), we made our way to the site of the camp. Like most of the other sites of internment camps around Australia, it now sits on private land. Luckily for me, the person who rents the land, a dairy farmer, was also keen to hear more of the history of the camp, and as such was happy to meet us.

The “prison” at Tatura internment camp – for misbehaving individuals. Unsurprisingly, it was the most robust building and is the only building still intact today.

Like the other internment camp sites I have visited around Australia, there is little that remains of Tatura: the concrete foundations of the lavatories and the shower blocks, and coils of discarded barbed wire that were left in the field to rust after the camps were dismantled in 1946.

Lavatory “cans” that internees sat on to do their business.
Japanese internees made these Japanese-style squat toilets, complete with foot pads!
Barbed wire that was discarded after the camps were dismantled.

In 1993, James Sullivan organised a reunion of former Japanese internees at Tatura internment camp in Victoria. Forty-six people came from Australia, Japan, Taiwan and other countries to attend the reunion, and were greeted with hugs and tears from their former fellow internees. Having spent up to six years in internment in Australia during the formative childhood and teenage years, the camp irrevocably shaped their lives. Seeing their old friends and acquaintances brought back memories both happy and sad.

They erected a plaque to honour the reunion and the memory of their time in internment—it is possibly one of the only plaques dedicated to the experience of civilian internees in Australia today.

Names of the 46 ex-Tatura internees who returned for the reunion in 1993.

70th Anniversary of the Loveday camps

Remains of a building at general headquarters, Loveday internment camp.

Winter in the Riverland district of South Australia is a season of extremes: dry, often gloriously sunny days and nights so bitingly cold it makes it difficult to sleep. I found out first-hand when I visited Barmera in June for the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Loveday internment camps and my hotel ran out of portable heaters—so I can only imagine what it must have been like for the internees who endured sub-zero temperatures while sleeping in tents in the early days of the camp before huts were built.

June 11, 2011 marked the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Loveday internment camps. The camps’ first inhabitants were 458 Italian internees who had been transported from Hay, NSW to Loveday Camp 1 near Barmera, South Australia. At their peak, the Loveday camps held more than 5000 Italian, German and Japanese civilian internees and POWs.

The Barmera branch of the National Trusts of Australia organised a weekend of activities to mark the anniversary. I attended (fresh off a plane from New York!), arriving in Barmera on the 11th to find it filled with visitors, as the weekend also coincided with Barmera’s annual country music festival.

The 70th anniversary activities included:

Bus tour of the Loveday camp site remains

Remains of the piggery structure at Loveday internment camp.

Max Scholz delivered milk to the Loveday camps when he was a boy and wrote a book about his experiences: As I Remember: The Loveday Internment Camps (self-published, 2004). As part of the 70th anniversary weekend, he led a bus tour of the former sites of the Loveday camps.

A couple of months earlier I visited Barmera on a reconnaissance mission and Kris and I attempted to find the sites ourselves, but we ended up driving around in circles. There is very little in the way of signage, and most of the sites are now on private land. Furthermore, because many of the buildings were dismantled or made of wood, they have deteriorated over time and there is unfortunately very little to see—only the concrete foundations of a few buildings remain. But Max pointed out areas of interest, such as the location of the now defunct train station that was used to transport internees from Adelaide, the remains of a concrete building that stood in the general headquarters, and the remains of a piggery run by internees.

Anniversary dinner

Guests at the dinner watching military archival footage of Loveday camps.

The opening of an internment camp may seem like an odd cause for celebration, but the 70th anniversary attracted quite a lot of interest both in the local community and further afield, so it was a good opportunity for people to find out more about the history of the Loveday internment camps.

About 100 people attended the anniversary dinner at Cobdogla Club, and guests included local historians, museum professionals and members of the Italian community who turned out in force to learn more about their ancestors’ lives. Speakers included Tony Piccolo, state Labor MP for Light, South Australia, whose Italian ancestors were interned at Loveday; Mia Spizzica, PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, who presented her findings on the daily life of Italian internees at Loveday; and I gave a short presentation about my research into the lives of Japanese internees at Loveday. Rare colour footage of Loveday camps was also shown.

Me with some of the New Caledonian women whose Japanese relatives were interned at Loveday.

At the dinner I was delighted to meet a group of New Caledonian women, who all had Japanese relatives (fathers, grandfathers and uncles) who were interned at Loveday. One of them, Marie-José Michel, is the honorary consul of Japan in New Caledonia. She has made several trips to Australia to trace her Japanese grandfather’s journey after his arrest in New Caledonia. He was sent to Australia by ship to be interned, and his family in New Caledonia never saw him again. His story is typical of the thousands of Japanese men who were working in New Caledonia at the outbreak of war with Japan. Many had been living in New Caledonia for decades at the time of their arrest. (Japanese photographer and researcher Mutsumi Tsuda published a book about the impact of internment for many New Caledonian families: Feu nos peres : les émigrants japonais en Nouvelle-Calédonie, 2008—the National Library of Australia has a copy.)

Internment display at the Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum

A model of the sleeping huts used at Loveday, designed to hold up to 56 men (Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum internment display).

The weekend culminated in a visit to the Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum’s Loveday internment camp exhibition, with special drill squad rifle salute demonstrations throughout the day.

Although I wasn’t able visit the museum on this occasion, on a previous trip I had found the exhibition packed with information relevant to my research—particularly the models of the camps and sleeping huts, and the tools and handicrafts fashioned by the internees.

Nude wood carving created by a Japanese internee (Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum internment display)

Do you have a story about Japanese civilian internees?

Japanese civilian internees at Woolenook woodcutting camp near Barmera, South Australia, 1944 (Australian War Memorial, ID 122978).

As part of my research into Japanese civilians who were interned in Australia during World War II, I’m looking for people who would like to share personal or family stories about Japanese civilian internees (particularly Japanese who were interned at the Loveday camps in South Australia).

Can you help? If you are a former internee, or have a family member who was interned, or have some other personal connection to Japanese civilian internees in Australia (eg you worked at or lived near the camps), I’m hoping to:

  • Interview you/your relative about the Japanese civilian internment experience in Australia
  • Read any letters/diaries about Japanese internment in Australia
  • See photos of the Japanese internment camps

Your stories will help me complete my doctoral research project at the University of Technology, Australia (however, I won’t directly quote from the material unless you give me permission to do so).

My project comprises:

  1. A historical study about the impact of internment on Japanese civilians;
  2. A novel-length work of historical fiction set inside the Loveday internment camps in South Australia during World War II.

Want to know more? See the “About” page of this website, or email: lovedayproject@gmail.com