Beautiful heartbreaking story. It painful to read about how the Australian government treated the Aboriginal people and their culture. It was also a good learning experience about the Japanese culture. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed this well-written book by Anita Heiss. Set in Cowra during WWII, it tells of a breakout from the Japanese prison camp and how one escapee finds himself at the Aboriginal mission, Erambie. This was the time when Aboriginal people were housed in enclaves with basic houses, no power or running water, a mission manager, and a lot of restrictions on what they could and could not do, including curfews. There was always the fear hanging over them that their children could be taken away if they didn’t keep their homes spotless and follow all the rules.
When one family finds the Japanese POW under their house they hide him in the bomb shelter at the bottom of their yard. He lives there for a year, his food brought to him by the 17-year old daughter of the house. There is always the danger that the gossipy neighbour will ‘dob them in’ but solidarity wins out. The restrictions of Japanese culture and family honour are compared to the restrictions of Aboriginal life. The daughter and POW fall in love but when the war ends, the POW returns home and both go on to lead their own separate lives. The manner of the POW ‘coming out’ is delightfully handled.
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Anita Heiss PhD is a versatile and prolific author: she is well-known as an author of non-fiction and social commentary, commercial women’s fiction (which she calls choc-lit), YA, children’s books, and poetry. She was co-editor with Peter Minter of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008) (see my review) and with the late Rosie Scott also co-edited The Intervention, an Anthology (2015) (see my review). I have also read and reviewed her splendid Am I Black Enough for You (2012). But I have never read her fiction, until now…

Heiss writes what she calls choc-lit with a purpose: writing to engage non-Indigenous Australians with light-hearted novels about people ‘just like herself’, modern independent women who have or want to have great careers, women who network within great friendships, women who fall in and out of love, and women who face challenges and have their share of loss, failure or success. The difference is that her novels include characters otherwise mostly invisible in Australian fiction: Indigenous women getting on with everyday life, just like they really do in everyday life. And as it says in the article at Precinct news, she subverts the chicklit agenda by weaving into her plots the issues that concern her and should concern all of us: Aboriginal literacy, black deaths in custody, human rights, infringements, and Indigenous artistic protocols. These novels include Tiddas (201); Paris Dreaming (2011); Manhattan Dreaming (2010); Avoiding Mr Right (2008); and her debut in this genre, Not Meeting Mr. Right (2007).

Her latest book, Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms adds to these concerns with a departure into historical fiction which reveals aspects of Australia’s Black history. Her setting is Cowra and the Aboriginal mission at Erambie during World War II, and the book begins by introducing Hiroshi, who is wrestling with his conscience because he feels he can’t honour his Japanese heritage as a POW in the Cowra camp. As readers probably know, Japanese soldiers underwent harsh training to imbue in them the belief that surrender was ignoble and it was better to die than to be captured. And in the Cowra breakout on the 5th of August 1944, many of the Japanese POWs escaped only to commit suicide rather than live with the shame of seeing out the war in the comfort and safety of an Australian POW camp.

Heiss uses this historical backdrop for a love story between Hiroshi and a 17-year-old girl called Mary whose parents decide to offer refuge at Erambie to the escapee. And although I haven’t read Heiss’s other novels, I suspect that this novel has a harder edge than they do, because it depicts the institutional discrimination of the period, from which there was no legal escape for Indigenous people.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/09/12/barbed-wire-and-cherry-blossoms-by-anita-hei... ( )

I’m not sure about other Australians, but I grew up knowing about the Cowra breakout (it also was the term used every time my budgie tried to open the door of his cage). Later on, I visited Cowra in country New South Wales and saw the site of the prisoner of war camp and the beautiful Japanese gardens. I knew that there was a mass breakout of the Japanese POWs but I haven’t really stopped to consider the impact of the escape on all the townspeople. Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms covers the escape and subsequent months from the points of view of two groups not often considered – the Aboriginal people of Erambie Station and the Japanese POW Hiroshi. It’s a story that makes you stop and consider what you thought you knew about Australia at that time.

The story opens with the breakout from Hiroshi’s point of view. As he runs for his life and freedom, he sees fellow POWs killed (it is better to be killed than be a prisoner, as being a prisoner is shameful to the Japanese people). He makes it to Erambie, where he is spotted by Banjo Williams. Banjo is a kind man, and he knows what it’s like to be on the fringe and to be hated for being different. The Aboriginal man then takes Hiroshi home and hides him in the family’s bomb shelter. To Banjo and his family, Hiroshi is just another human being – not yellow like some of the townspeople say and just as in need of support and sustenance. Banjo’s family devise a plan to keep Hiroshi safe, dividing up their already meagre food rations. Because being an Aboriginal person at Erambie means that it’s not dissimilar to Hiroshi’s life at the POW camp – there’s rations, rules and restrictions but life at Erambie is even more controlling.

Mary, Banjo’s daughter and the designated deliverer of food to Hiroshi knows this all too well. She can’t marry who she wants – in fact, she needs to ask permission first! To leave Erambie, she must gain permission from the station’s manager, King Billie (aka John Smith). There’s never enough food to go round and living conditions are cramped and basic. Mary’s a smart girl too but she must work for the Smiths. She’s fascinated by Hiroshi, a gentle man who wanted nothing more than to write haiku. Each night they learn about each other’s living conditions and culture. Are the pair so different? Each restricted from doing what they planned to do – is it not a waste? It was beautiful watching this pair gently fall in love but what was to come next was painful, potentially brutal as Hiroshi is forced to come out of hiding and the pair to declare their love…

Anita Heiss doesn’t sugar-coat the facts, this is an honest story rooted in history. The White Australia policy, the Japanese hatred and the severe restrictions put on lives due to skin colour are all there. But the tone is much more gentle and loving than you might expect. Overall this is a love story and a beautiful one that will being a tear to the eye. (And if that doesn’t, the epilogue surely will). It’s well written and evokes not only the time period, but the setting of the land and the Aboriginal peoples’ close relationship with it. I’m glad to have read this story, I feel it’s made me consider that there’s more to history than the official, documented version.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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