Cowra breakout
The Cowra breakout occurred on 5 August 1944, when at least 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from a prisoner of war camp near Cowra, in New South Wales, Australia. It was the largest prison escape of World War II, as well as one of the bloodiest. During the ensuing manhunt, 4 Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed. The remaining escapees were captured and imprisoned.
POW camp
Cowra, a farming district, 314 km due west of Sydney, was the town nearest to No. 12 Prisoner of War Compound, a major POW camp, where 4,000 Axis military personnel and civilians were detained. The prisoners at Cowra also included 2,000 Italians, Koreans who had served in the Japanese military, and Indonesian civilians detained at the request of the Dutch East Indies government.
By August 1944, there were 2,223 Japanese POWs in Australia, including 544 merchant seamen. There were 14,720 Italian prisoners, who had been captured mostly in the North African Campaign, and 1,585 Germans, mostly naval or merchant seamen.
Cowra
Cowra is a town in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. It is the largest population centre and the council seat for the Cowra Shire, with a population of 9,730.
Cowra is located approximately 310 m (1,017 ft) above sea level on the banks of the Lachlan River in the Lachlan Valley. By road it is approximately 310 km (193 mi) South-West of the state capital Sydney and 189 km (117 mi) North of the nation's capital Canberra. The town is situated at the intersection of three major state highways the Mid-Western Highway, Olympic Highway and the Lachlan Valley Way.
Cowra is included in the rainfall records and weather forecast region for the Central Tablelands division of the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts.
History
The first explorer, George William Evans, entered the Lachlan Valley in 1815. He named the area the Oxley Plains after his superior the surveyor-general, John Oxley. In 1817 he deemed the area "unfit for settlement". A military depot was established not long after at Soldiers Flat near present-day Billimari. Arthur Ranken and James Sloan, from Bathurst, were amongst the first white settlers on the Lachlan. They moved to the area in 1831.
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