In Cowra finding Murakami’s grave

My collaborator Dr Lorna Kaino and I drove through the Blue Mountains, past Bathurst and arrived in Cowra in search for Yasukichi Murakami’s grave.

My first visit to Cowra was in 1997 when I arrived at the Japanese Gardens to install fifty photographs from my exhibition Unseen Faces of Japan which had been exhibited at the Japan Cultural Centre Sydney (Japan Foundation) six months earlier. Since then I have been here a dozen times, and as years pass and my understanding of history, war, peace, and people have deepened, so has my understanding of Cowra.

Yasukichi Murakami is buried in the Japanese War Cemetery in Cowra. All Japanese people who died in Australia during WWII are buried here. Unknown airmen, POWs and civilian internees, like Murakami.

His grave somehow feels out of place.

Lorna commented that she somehow had been expecting a monument more outstanding as he was an outstanding figure in our minds. Yet like all graves around the world associated with war, his grave looks identical to everyone else’s, all neatly in a row one after another. Even with all his achievements and leadership, friendships with people in high places along with his 47 years in this country, none of it made any difference in the end.

But then again, every single person here buried would have a story to tell, a mother and a father, people they loved and people who loved them, even the 3 day old baby and the unknown airman who air raided Darwin. When I remember this I realise that Murakami, although may have a common grave like everyone, else has earned his name. He is in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. And here we are, Lorna and I, searching and finding his grave 67 years after his death.

Yasukichi Murakami’s grave at Japanese War Cemetery, Cowra. Photo by Mayu Kanamori

– Posted by Mayu Kanamori