Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (8 page)

The other men nod in agreement, but even if they didn't, no one is brave enough to argue with him because although he's unfit, everyone knows he can pack a punch and would KO anyone he threw his fist at.

‘There was the bombing of Darwin, Changi, the Thai–Burma Railway,
and
the Sydney Harbour submarine attack.'

‘They are literally on our doorstep,' Bill adds. ‘We
should
be worried!'

‘And think about Pearl Harbor,' Fat Bobbo continues, looking specifically at Banjo. ‘You know about that, don't you?' Fat Bobbo thinks the Blacks are dumb and useless and sighs when Banjo gives no response. ‘The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941! They killed about two and a half thousand Yanks. It was the worst fucking attack in history.'

‘Where do you get all these details?' Johnno asks.

‘I listen to the broadcasts on my wireless, it's a Stromberg Carlson valve radio. It's top of the line, probably the best wireless in Cowra. I hear the Japanese propaganda and Tokyo Rose too. All the anti-US stuff. So yeah, I listen to the enemy broadcasts – gotta keep one step ahead of those bastards.'

When no one says anything, Fat Bobbo goes on, preaching confidently. ‘This is shit we need to be on top of, chaps. We need to know about what's going on in the world. How else are we going to keep ourselves safe from the yellow peril if we aren't one step ahead of them?

‘The Japanese are the most hated race on earth and we need to fight them now, because they might invade here. They purposely crash their planes into ships. It's called a Kamikaze attack.' He does a nosedive with his hands and makes a splash and explosion sound. ‘They'll do that to our ships just like they did with the Americans, and they'll start in Darwin.' Fat Bobbo is almost spitting, he is talking so fast and so passionately. He is a little scary to the other men, who still just listen and watch.

‘We don't want the yellow peril here. We're
white
Australia,' Fat Bobbo states.

‘But,' Banjo interrupts, ‘we're not white.'

Fat Bobbo doesn't correct himself, just shrugs his shoulders. ‘I reckon they should have electric fences at the camp and then the bastards can't escape. Or at least they'd get electrocuted trying to!' And he laughs his big, fat, belly laugh as if death by electrocution is hilarious.

Banjo is trying to contain the anger he can feel building up. He doesn't want to get in an argument with the whitefellas and he doesn't want to wind up the Blacks, but he's willing to take the risk. He remembers the sad, gruesome site of the dead Japanese soldiers he saw the morning after the breakout and his own sense of humanity takes over. He wasn't raised to speak with such hatred, and he doesn't want to be around it. He wonders how the hearts and minds of some people have been poisoned to such extremes.

‘War is hideous, but we need to remember that soldiers, even the enemy, are human. They are men like you and me who do their best for their country. And the Japanese aren't the only ones fenced in around here. Erambie,' he says, and the white men roll their eyes. For the first time, Fat Bobbo starts to put his hammer to a nail. ‘All I'm saying is that, as far as I'm concerned, there are two prison camps in Cowra. And neither of us want to be where we are, living under someone else's rules.'

‘At least the Japs get fed well,' George, another Aboriginal builder, says. ‘They're not on rations, are they? They get more than sugar, flour and tea. I'd rather be in
that
camp than ours.'

The men stop work and listen. Even Fat Bobbo, who's already tired from two swings of the hammer.

‘How do you know that?' Banjo asks.

‘Jim told me. And apparently most of them are fatter than when they arrived. And the Japs, they get rice with most meals and their fish is from New Zealand. Our fish from the Lachlan isn't even good enough for them.'

‘So they are treated too good then!' Fat Bobbo says. ‘They should be on rations too.'

‘No one should be on rations!' Banjo is furious and forms a fist that he wants to put into Fat Bobbo's head. ‘Everyone, including the prisoners of war, should be treated like human beings.'

‘But look how they treat our men!' Fat Bobbo yells.

‘I know what you're saying about our POWs, but you're missing my point, Bobbo! My argument is about how we are treated like prisoners too, at Erambie. We shouldn't be on rations. We should all be paid the same for the same work and have enough money to buy food for our families – not just flour, tea and sugar rations and whatever we can hunt or manage to grow. It's not fair for anyone. The prisoners of war are just like us.'

‘There used to be heaps of camps around town when I was young,' George says. ‘The football ground in West Cowra was a camp. So was Taragala and there was another in North Cowra.'

The other workers – except for Fat Bobbo – nod in acknowledgement; they all know the truth, they just don't talk about it much.

‘And then Erambie was created, to round up all the Blacks together.'

‘Oh, come on, it's not all bad,' Fat Bobbo says. ‘I thought you liked living together.'

The truth is they do. And people follow other family members to Erambie to live together.

‘The thing is, Bobbo, Erambie was my family home before we had to live under a Manager. My grandparents were born in Brungle but my parents were born here. This was home for them before it was turned into a reserve twenty years ago. It's home for me, it always will be. Even if we are trapped by the Manager.'

‘What the hell are you saying, Banjo?' Johnno asks. ‘Sometimes you speak in riddles.'

‘I'm saying that this government treats its prisoners better than it treats us and so we should be angry at the government, not the Japanese POWs. These fellas are just doing their duty to their country, like Aussie soldiers are. War is not any soldier's fault.'

‘We get rations given to us out of an old horse stable and what gets handed out is very little,' George adds.

‘It was only a few years ago that Erambie was overcrowded with over two hundred people living on thirty-two acres.' Banjo is rubbing his lower back, which is sore from being hunched over, sanding. ‘Our life is different to places like Cummeragunga; they had the same number of people living on a twenty-seven-hundred acre station.'

Fat Bobbo, obviously bored with Banjo's history lesson and the Blacks complaining generally, changes the topic. ‘Did you hear the story about Walter Weir's missus at their farmhouse at Rosedale?'

‘Nah, what happened?' Johnno asks, equally disinterested in Banjo talking about Erambie's history, or Erambie anything, for that matter.

‘Apparently she offered some of the escaped prisoners fresh scones and tea, while their daughter Margaret went to alert the cops.' Fat Bobbo speaks as though the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth.

Banjo keeps listening, knowing that his wife would've provided the same hospitality,
was
providing the hospitality, and sending their daughter to provide food, not to dob anyone in.

Johnno jumps in with, ‘That's nothing, I heard Alf Bourke and his son found a group of six Japs while they were out on a rabbiting trip near Claremont. Reckons he shot two dead in self-defence.'

Fat Bobbo pretends to fire a gun. ‘I reckon he shot them dead cos he hates the Japanese bastards.'

The site supervisor walks over to see where things are up to and the men stop talking immediately. Johnno starts whistling and Fat Bobbo says, ‘I'm off for a piss, when's smoko?'

‘When I say so,' the supervisor says angrily, having been watching them from afar.

21 August 1944

W
hen Mary takes the paper home from the Smiths' she has already decided that she won't tell her parents that twice as many voters in Cowra were against the proposed referendum changes than for them. She's fairly sure they won't care about the result – it will only start another distressing discussion about how Aboriginal people don't have the right to vote. As she walks across the mission to home, she sees a group of kids huddled around something and squealing. She starts to walk faster. When she realises Jessie is throwing up across the way, she starts to run towards her.

‘What's wrong?' Mary asks, bending down and pulling the child's hair back. She smells the vomit before she sees it all over Jessie's clothes. Jessie has tears streaming down her face and when Mary wipes them away, she notices her sister is burning up. ‘What's she been eating?' she asks Dottie and Betty frantically.

Dottie shrugs. ‘Dunno,' she says.

‘She ate too many of those nuts from the pine trees,' Betty dobs. ‘She's probably sick because she didn't want to share.' She bends down and whispers in her sister's ear, ‘Mum always says to share. See what happens when you're a greedy guts?'

‘Stop it, Betty. Let's get her home.' Mary picks her young sister up, demonstrating a physical strength she didn't even know she had.

‘
Mum
, Jessie's chucking
uuuupppp
,' Betty screams at the top of her lungs and Joan, walking back from the church where she's spent the morning cleaning, starts to run, trying not to drop the clothes Father Patrick has given her for the goothas and an old pair of pants he was throwing out. She intends to mend the hole in the bottom of them and give them to Hiroshi, who has been in the same clothes for over two weeks.

By this time there is a circle of kids making vomiting noises and laughing, and a few of the teenage boys have appeared at their hut too.

‘Go find your Uncle Banjo, and tell him we're taking Jessie to the hospital,' Joan instructs Claude Williams, and he takes off with his mates in tow. He runs as fast as his legs will carry him.

‘You can wait in here,' a short, round nurse says to Joan with a frown when she arrives at the hospital with Jessie.

Joan looks around. It's the linen room. She knows they isolate the Blacks at Cowra Hospital, but she's never been
put in the linen room before. Once when Mary got sick at the Cowra Show they just put her in a separate room at the back of the hospital. But this is a new kind of segregation and Joan's worried about how Banjo will react when he arrives.

Jessie is asleep in her mother's arms when the doctor finally walks in to offer his services. Blacks are also the last to be seen, it seems. He takes the child's temperature and says very little before mumbling to a nurse by his side.

Joan feels like she is invisible, and asks, ‘Will she be all right?'

‘Temperature's down, and she hasn't vomited for –' he looks at the chart, ‘– two hours, so yes, I think the worst has passed.' The doctor turns to the nurse and offers instructions. ‘She will bring something for the child, and you can stay here till the morning, just in case.'

Just in case what?
Joan worries to herself but says nothing. All she needs to know is that the worst has passed.

Hiroshi starts to panic when Mary misses an evening visit. Is it all over? Have they changed their minds about protecting him? Are they planning to hand him over? Should he try to escape and, if so, where would he go now? He is still no better off than he was when he first left the POW camp. He has torturous hunger pangs and he spends hours pacing the small space. He loses count of how many sit-ups he does just to keep moving. He tries to do push-ups but his arms are weak from
lack of nutrition and only eggs for protein. He stretches out his entire body, sore from no real exercise since the night he ran here.

When he hears the sheet of iron above move, his feelings are a mix of relief and fear. As Mary's legs appear on the ladder, his heart lifts, glad that she has returned.

‘I'm so sorry,' she says, handing him some damper and a jar of water. ‘Jessie was very sick at the hospital and I had to stay with the other goothas.'