Enemy aliens

• Internment of enemy aliens in Australia

  1940-1945
• Several thousand supposed ‘enemy aliens’ were interned all around Australia
• Groups affected by internment

  • Japanese pearl fishermen
  • Australians of Italian descent
  • Australians of German descent
• Many of those interned had been born in Australia or had lived in Australia for years
• Interned individuals were forced to leave their homes and their livelihoods
• Australians captured about 19,000 enemy soldiers, including Italians, Japanese, and Germans
• POWs were generally treated in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Convention
• Japanese POWs tended to see adherence to the Geneva Convention as evidence of fear and spiritual weakness
• National Security Act 1939


  Granted the government power to intern enemy aliens
• Types of individuals interned

  • Germans
  • Italians
  • Naturalised Australians
  • Australian-born people of enemy descent
  • Enemy aliens transferred from overseas
• Internment camps were scattered across Australia
• Internment disrupted families, created financial hardship, and led to significant personal and social upheaval
• By August 1944, there were more than 2000 Japanese POWs in Australia
• Half of the Japanese POWs were in Camp B of the POW camp near Cowra, New South Wales
• Japanese POWs saw their imprisonment as deeply shameful
• Japanese POWs viewed death as the only honourable alternative to capture
• Japanese prisoners broke out of the Cowra camp

  5 August 1944
• During the breakout, four guards were killed and three others were wounded
• Many remaining prisoners set fire to prison huts or attempted suicide
• Within 10 days, 334 prisoners had been recaptured
• 234 prisoners were dead, many from suicide or having their friends kill them
• 108 prisoners were wounded