One of the greatest breakouts of prisoners during the Second World War took place 70 years ago last month.

We do not know too much about this incident here at home as it happened just outside Cowra on the Lachlan, a rural town in the centre of New South Wales, Australia.

Cowra is one of my favourite towns in Oz, and I well remember the time when they were thrust into wartime history.

Four large compounds just outside the town housed the prisoners including 3,000 Italian, Korean and Formosan men.

In B camp there were 1,104 Japanese prisoners who were quietly planning to breakout. To our eyes it was a forlorn hope as Cowra is hundreds of miles from the sea, but the deluded men had been brainwashed that to be captured was a disgrace.

In the early hours of August 5, 1944, and wearing extra clothing and towels to protect themselves from the barbed wire 1,000 Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) armed with sharpened knives and baseball bats waited for a blast on a bugle before rushing the barbed wire fencing.

Some lay on the wire acting as a bridge for others to pass over them. Before storming the fences the huts in which they had been living were set on fire. Some of the men committed suicide in the huts and were consumed by the flames.

It must have been a dreadful scene which roused the nearby town. The bid to escape freed 378 prisoners, 108 were wounded and three Australian guards were killed. In the next few weeks patrols scoured the area, unfortunately one such patrol found came across a number of POWs who in the ensuing melee killed their officer Lt. Doncaster.

One patrol found 25 bodies and two Japanese threw themselves under a train bound for Cowra.

Three escapees turned up at a farmhouse where the farmer’s wife was at home. Unconcerned for her own safety Mrs Walter Weire invited them in and served hot tea and scones until the military arrived to take them away.

Two others arrived at another farm and were given a meal before being arrested. Such is the friendliness of the people of Cowra.

A few of the prisoners did stay behind hiding under beds in the hospital and the Italian, Korean and Formosan’s also did not take part in the breakout.

Although the media from Sydney were soon besieging the little town for stories, the authorities put a complete blackout on the event. At a court of inquiry later it was decided that the whole affair had been premeditated.

The Australian soldiers died from head wounds and two of them Pts. Benjamin Hardy and Ralph Jones were awarded the George Cross posthumously for outstanding gallantry and devotion to duty.

After the war the camp was dismantled but in recent times the site has become a tourist attraction and a mock lookout tower has been built.

Japanese and Australian soldiers who died there have been laid to rest in a special section of the town’s cemetery. Almost every weekend Japanese visitors arrive to see the graves.

My late brother Ernest and myself were driving past, and stopped to visit the cemetery and were invited to join in.

Flowers were laid at the Australian graves and then the party moved to the Japanese memorial where we were given lighted joss sticks to lay with the flowers and prayers were offered in an unfamiliar tongue.

A feature of Cowra is the wonderful Japanese Gardens just outside town laid out on the side of a hill and culture centre as a mark of postwar cooperation between Cowra and the Japanese people.