Just outside the Wairarapa town of Featherston, a memorial garden marks the site of the death in 1943 of 48 Japanese prisoners of war and one guard who died on February 25th 1943.
The camp opened in 1942 to hold 800 Japanese POWs captured in the South Pacific. In early 1943, a group of recently arrived prisoners refused to work and staged a sit-down strike. A guard fired a warning shot which may have wounded Lieutenant Commander Toshio Adachi. When the prisoners rose to their feet, the guards opened fire. Wartime censors concealed details of the tragedy amid fears of Japanese reprisals against Allied POWs.
A military court of enquiry absolved the guards of blame, but acknowledged that there were fundamental cultural differences between captors and captives. The Japanese government did not accept the court’s decision.
The first former POW to return to Featherston after the war burned incense at the site in 1974 and a joint New Zealand–Japanese project established a memorial ground. Today, a plaque commemorates the site with a haiku:
Behold the summer grass
All that remains
Of the dreams of warriors.
NZHistory