ABSTRACT
In death, soldiers remain subjects of their nations, subject to the politics and passions of war and the machinations of peace. So too are their resting places subject to those politics. At Cowra, in provincial New South Wales, a unique burial ground contains the bodies of more than five hundred Japanese prisoners and internees of the Second World War. Around half of them were killed in the course of a mass escape attempt at Cowra Prisoner of War camp in August 1944. Yet it is not necessarily this event that makes the cemetery unique. Rather its significance lies in the way it catalyses personal and national memories of the Pacific war, showing where those memories contend and compete.
