Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms is a slow-moving, tender love story by Anita Heiss – Author. The story is set around the events of 5 August, 1944, when over 1000 Japanese soldiers (prisoners of war) escape from their compound near Cowra. It is a cataclysmic event – hundreds are killed or commit suicide rather than face recapture. One soldier – Hiroshi – finds his way to Erambie Station, an Aboriginal mission, and hides under the verandah of Banjo Williams. When he is discovered, Banjo and his family decide to keep him hidden and safe, and to feed and care for him until they can decide what to do. Banjo’s oldest daughter, Mary, is given the task of seeing to Hiroshi’s care, and through their regular, daily meetings, the two begin to fall in love. But their dreams of a future together are threatened by their forbidden love and Hiroshi’s fugitive status.
This is a moving story that confronts the moral decisions around several historical events. Firstly, we are given the facts of the war from Hiroshi’s perspective – and he was, of course, the enemy. But he was also a man, a son, a soldier wanting to do his duty for his country. Hiroshi heralds from Kochi-ken in Shikoku, an area in which I lived for almost five years, so I could readily identify with his memories of his homeland. Anita uses Japanese language, customs and stories to supplement the character of Hiroshi and to bring him alive in the narrative. Different people in the book have various opinions about the ‘enemy’, about the nature of the Japanese, and about how they should be treated, which allows a compassionate rendering of his position. We are also given some insight into the Japanese mindset (particularly at that time) of honour, duty and sacrifice, of the humiliation of defeat, and of death rather than surrender.
The second issue that Anita addresses is the living conditions and circumstances of Indigenous people in the 1940’s. At that time, many were forced to live on Aboriginal missions, under the ‘protection’ (and restrictive laws) of Acts of Protection and Assimilation – a hard mission manager was responsible for doling out rations, and for sanctioning travel and marriage and work permits. The irony of the situation is that while Hiroshi had been imprisoned in the Camp, his food, shelter and conditions were by and large much better than those experienced by local Indigenous people. And once he was in hiding, it was those locals who provided him with safety and nourishment, at the risk of themselves being discovered and punished.
Anita also explores the larger argument of Aboriginal men being firstly unable (not allowed to enlist) to fight for their country, and then – when recruiters were getting desperate for more soldiers – being encouraged to do so, as long as they could say they were partly white. The whole concept of ‘country’ and belonging, and of white men fighting for freedom and equality, while Indigenous people still were not granted those rights (of freedom or equality, or even of owning their own land) is heart-breaking as it plays out amongst one ordinary family during an extraordinary time.
Exacting research is evident in this book, and while it is a work of fiction, much of it is fact-based. It is a celebration of love over adversity, but is also realistic and raw in its depiction of the rules and conditions under which people lived at that time. I found it quite enlightening, and although it is an adult book, I would recommend it to YA readers too for its addressing of issues of race and belonging set in a historical context, bundled up in a love story to which all young people could identify.
Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms – Anita Heiss
