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00:00In the shadows of history's darkest conflict, a flame of courage burned bright behind the walls and barbed wire of prisoner of war camps, awe-inspiring tales of valor and resilience, as captured soldiers, sailors, and airmen dared the impossible to win their freedom.
00:23They dug tunnels, stole planes, forced their way through deadly jungles, and marched huge distances pursued by death squads.
00:34Some of these stories have become the stuff of legend, but many remain shrouded in mystery, even today.
00:43These are the greatest escapes of World War II.
00:53In this episode, an adrenaline-fueled dash through Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Flight of the Crow, a death-defying escape across the world's most perilous mountain range, and the largest escape of World War II, by men who chose death over dishonor.
01:18It's a story of heroism and luck that's rarely told, in the midst of Nazi-occupied Europe in September 1944.
01:36Over 100 POWs, marching nearly 300 kilometers to freedom, in the midst of Nazi-occupied Europe in September 1944.
01:48It was led by an army private called Ralph Churches, better known by his nickname, the Crow.
01:59A nod to his birthplace in Adelaide, South Australia, where early settlers were called Crow-eaters.
02:05Born into a farming family in 1917, Ralph took a keen interest in world affairs, and was especially troubled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s.
02:22Hitler!
02:23Hitler!
02:24Hitler!
02:25Hitler!
02:26Hitler!
02:27Hitler!
02:28I think there was very little insight amongst the Australian community into what was happening with the Nazis and Hitler.
02:39And there were very rare individuals who said, no, this really is something that has to be stopped.
02:46He understood what was going on in Germany, and he wrote a letter to his mother when he was about 16, when Hitler first came to power and said, this is a very bad man, and this is a really dangerous time for global politics.
02:59When Hitler's army invaded Poland in 1939, Germany invades Poland and the peace state of Damascus, Warsaw is long, blasted and killed. Poland is in ruin.
03:13It wasn't long before Ralph, who'd been working as a bank clerk, decided to join the Australian army.
03:20His intelligence and eye for detail meant he'd be trained as a mapmaker.
03:24He was dispatched to the Australian command headquarters in Greece to try to repel the Nazi menace.
03:31April 6th, 1941. The German blitzkrieg strikes at Yugoslavia in Greece.
03:39In Greece, that was a terrible conflict and resulted in a lot of Australian casualties and a huge number of prisoners relatively early in Australia's war.
03:47Hitler is absolute master of the continent. Both countries fall within 17 days.
03:52As the Germans overrun Greece, Allied troops retreat to the coast, hoping to be evacuated.
04:01With a few others, Ralph tries to escape on a rowing boat to Crete.
04:06But after eight days, on May the 6th, 1941, they're picked up by a German patrol boat and readied for transport to a POW camp.
04:15He was enlisted in June 1940. By May 1941, he was in prisoner of war camp.
04:23Ralph was taken to a camp at Corinth in south-central Greece, where conditions were appalling.
04:29The Germans really hadn't planned to capture that many prisoners.
04:32They didn't have enough food. They didn't have enough medical supplies.
04:36There was one tap for 10,000 people to drink from.
04:40It was horrible. He got cholera. He got dysentery. He got malaria. He barely survived.
04:46And that was true of just about everybody else in that camp.
04:52After two months at Corinth, Ralph endures a torturous journey by cattle car, deep into Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.
05:01A train in the middle of summer, overcrowded.
05:05There were some people who were so exhausted from the time in the camp that they died.
05:11At the morning when the train stopped for water, the Germans would open the door and the dead bodies would be pulled out and laid along the side of the railway train.
05:21They're taken to a place none have heard of before, the city of Maribor in Slovenia, near the Austrian border.
05:28Conditions in prison camps tended to be harsh.
05:33These men had already been through combat in some pretty stressful situations.
05:37And they would now do their best to survive in the camp.
05:40The work was anything from farm work, building dams, repairing roads, building railways.
05:47Dad's first job was building a road about 20 kilometres outside of camp.
05:53He is then sent to work in a quarry.
05:56Back-breaking and monotonous work, and is barely fed.
06:01He's sick, and he's well and truly at the end of his tether.
06:07And then the first mail arrives, and the letter that he gets says that his favourite sister had died of heart failure, and that broke him.
06:15He makes his first attempt to escape a few days after Christmas, 1941.
06:21He simply walks out of the front gates of the camp without food or money, or even an idea of where to go.
06:28He's wandered around and slept in a barn and was discovered the next day.
06:32The punishment camp that Dad was sent to was quite close to a camp for Soviet prisoners of war.
06:41And basically it was an extermination camp.
06:44The Germans were trying to kill them all.
06:46The means of extermination?
06:48Starvation complicated by hard work, abuse, beatings and tortures.
06:52Incredibly crowded sleeping conditions and sicknesses of all types.
06:56Dad's punishment was to go in, pull these bodies out, put them in a cart, take them to the top of the hill, watch as the Germans pulled the gold teeth out of their mouths, tip them into a pit and then poured quicklime on them.
07:11And he did that every day for six weeks.
07:18That experience gave Dad a cold rage towards the Nazis.
07:23Looking at what the Nazis were doing and saying, right, I'm going to do something about this.
07:27I don't know what, but I'm going to do something that probably involves escape.
07:31Having been imprisoned in a punishment camp in Maribor, Slovenia in late February 1942, Ralph Churches has moved to a new sub camp where he begins to learn German.
07:51He knew that the more German he understood, the more he'd be able to gather intelligence about what was going on and plan a better escape than just bolting as he had last time.
08:03The Germans were very supportive of somebody learning German.
08:07They could be somebody who could be useful to them in terms of organising the other men.
08:13And so Dad was unanimously elected by all the other members of the camp to be the chief negotiator with the Germans.
08:19What it meant was he then stayed in camp and he had administrative jobs to do, which included distributing and managing Red Cross parcels.
08:27This is very typical of my father.
08:29He persuaded all the prisoners of war to pull all of their rations from the Red Cross parcels.
08:36He called it the combine.
08:38Then we have access to a large pool of real coffee, real chocolate and real cigarettes, which the Germans haven't seen for some time.
08:45We can buy a whole bunch of black market goods and buy favours from the prison guards and the camp commandant.
08:55Through the combine, Ralph gets his hands on a compass and a map.
09:00He then assembles a small team of escapees who start gathering the food and gear they'd need for life on the run.
09:10He's now in charge of getting all of the fresh food for the camp.
09:14So Dad went to the market to buy the fresh supplies and he would use that as a means of talking to the locals and seeing what they knew about any resistance to the Germans.
09:27Ralph knows that unless the escape team has help, they won't get far in the surrounding thick forests and steep mountains.
09:34Dad started hearing in the German press about these evil communist bandits in the hills.
09:40In the marketplace, he heard them called the partisans.
09:43Somewhere in Yugoslavia, the famous partisans of Marshal Tito, men and women of many nationalities, come to join this army.
09:51Albanians, Hungarians, Romanians and Yugoslavs.
09:55These were basically guerrilla fighters who refused to be occupied.
10:00The partisans engaged in an active war against the Germans throughout the time of occupation.
10:05And it was something the Nazis were never really successful in quelling.
10:09And it was a real thorn in their side in Yugoslavia throughout the entire war.
10:14What helps Ralph's escape plan is that Maribor is on a major railroad to the Eastern Front.
10:20The Germans rely on it to support their occupation of the Soviet Union.
10:25It's constantly being sabotaged by the partisans.
10:29By night, they destroy the tracks.
10:32And every morning, the POWs are sent to repair the damage.
10:41In August 1944, Ralph's POW group is taken to a work site at Oswald, west of Maribor.
10:48A hotbed of partisan activity.
10:51Ralph and his band don't know how to make contact with them.
10:56But one man figures out a way.
10:58A British soldier called Leslie Laws.
11:02Les is absolutely critical to this story because he's the person on site.
11:07And his job is to go and collect water from a farmhouse up in the hills.
11:12He found out that this annoying man, Anton, that had been hanging around the work site, bumming cigarettes and being a nuisance.
11:23He was supposed to be some sort of forestry inspector, was in fact a partisan spy.
11:29Through Anton, they discover that the partisans have an established escape route nearby.
11:34Somewhere in Yugoslavia, the famous partisans of Marshal Tito. On their walls are pictures of their allies.
11:41The partisans were getting supplies from the British and Americans.
11:46Bomber crews were being given silk maps of Slovenia and told if they get shot down over Germany, try and ditch your plane in Slovenia.
11:53The partisans will get you out.
11:55Same with any prisoner of war that escaped from a prisoner of war camp, the partisans will get you out.
12:00On August the 30th, 1944, the big day comes.
12:07Leslie Laws, Ralph and five other men, bribe guards to let them take a short, unaccompanied stroll into the forest.
12:14They turn a blind eye on the promise of eggs. At the end of the day, no problem, off you go.
12:20They're met by armed partisans, who take them to the village of Lavrentz, which they've just liberated from the Germans.
12:27Greeted as heroes, Ralph and his friends are free.
12:31And there's a party going on, and it's involving the whole village.
12:36This is what life is going to be like after we get rid of the Germans.
12:40And so there's a lot of food and a lot of drink that they've liberated from the German headquarters in the village.
12:47This is a major recruitment drive by the partisans.
12:54Dad is told to go and have a good drink and have a good time.
12:58So he has a drink and he has a dance and he's having a really good time and then he feels guilty.
13:03Why can he possibly be having such a good time when the rest of his mates are back in camp?
13:09He's got to do something about it.
13:10And so he convinced the partisans not only to help him continue his escape, but also to go back and to liberate more prisoners.
13:18Ralph Church has decided at considerable risk when he was already basically free to go back to rescue the rest of his party.
13:28Because I think he exhibits the characteristics of a genuine hero.
13:33He was totally committed.
13:35And that meant not just him to get away, but those who were with him.
13:41The next morning, on August the 31st, 1944, Ralph and the partisans return to the work site.
13:49The train comes around the corner, drops everybody off, the guards, the prisoners.
13:54The minute the train is around the corner, there's a whistle.
13:58All the partisans jump up, armed to the teeth.
14:01And Dad's standing up at the top saying, don't do anything stupid.
14:04Don't do anything stupid to the guards in German.
14:06And then saying to everybody else, right, we're on our way.
14:09Freedom.
14:10Come on, let's go.
14:11Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill.
14:13And everybody's in shock.
14:15This is not how the day is supposed to go.
14:17The guards, they didn't even touch their rifles.
14:21So in the end, an escape attempt by one man turns into an escape of about 100 prisoners from the camp.
14:28105 British, Australian, New Zealand and French soldiers have been freed without a single shot being fired.
14:39Getting out was only the first part.
14:41I think it was a difficult ordeal for them.
14:43Physically, not having enough food, not having the right clothing, but also mentally.
14:47Unlike Ralph, the other prisoners that were liberated were not prepared.
14:51They knew that Dad had put them in danger by doing this.
14:54Surrounded by armed people who they don't trust.
14:57They've got no idea where they are.
14:59And they know the forests are full of wolves and bears.
15:02I can't begin to imagine the stress that was on these men.
15:05I can't begin to imagine how they dealt with this risk of capture,
15:08with the risk of being betrayed by a civilian, with the risk of death.
15:13The POWs are led by relays of partisans through the forest and over the mountains.
15:21The territory is crawling with German patrols.
15:24Having the partisans with them was a double-edged sword because they had protection,
15:28they had men who could fight, they had experienced soldiers with them.
15:31But at the same time, these men were also being hunted by the Nazis.
15:37Four days into the escape, the POWs and partisans stumble into a German ambush.
15:44The group came to a farmhouse that would normally have supplied them,
15:47but they didn't reply to the password correctly,
15:50and then the partisans knew that the Germans were there.
15:54In the firefight that follows,
15:56they're only saved by a bit of quick thinking and deception.
16:00The Germans could see a large group of people out there in the field
16:03and the partisans pretended that this was a large battalion
16:07of partisans attacking this German outpost.
16:11The Germans eventually retreated and the whole of the group,
16:15in the meantime, had scattered through the woods.
16:17One partisan is dead and six escapees are missing.
16:21But there's no time to search for them,
16:23with German reinforcements closing in.
16:27One of the critical points in this escape was getting across the Sava River.
16:33On the other side of the Sava is an airfield at a town called Samich,
16:38where they will rendezvous with the RAF.
16:40The river is being guarded.
16:43German sentry posts are everywhere.
16:45The 100 escapees, who've now been walking for 14 days,
16:50must wait for nightfall to make it to the other side and safety.
16:54But there's a real danger the guards will hear the sound of so many men crossing.
16:59The partisans have managed to organise a whole bunch of diversions to keep the Germans occupied.
17:06Local farmers drive livestock into the river to cover the sound of the POWs being rowed across.
17:12Not only the 100 prisoners, but an extra 200 partisan recruits across the river in a single night.
17:18Once they got to the other side of the river, they're in the area that the Italians had now surrendered,
17:28and the partisans were keeping the Germans out.
17:30The POWs reached the airfield, elated to be alive, but dismayed to learn the Germans had recaptured the six men who went missing after the forest ambush.
17:52They knew that they were safe, and just the realisation they didn't have to walk another mile.
17:59They just had to rest.
18:03Ralph and his men have flown to freedom in Italy.
18:07Incredibly, they'd walked nearly 300 kilometres across Nazi-occupied territory.
18:14The largest successful escape of World War II.
18:17For his bravery, Ralph is awarded a British Empire Medal,
18:24and returns to his banking career,
18:28eventually becoming a leading light in the insurance industry.
18:32It is years before his role in the incredible escape,
18:37The Flight of the Crow is known, even to his own family.
18:40There were very mixed emotions for prisoners when they returned after the war, whether they'd escaped or not.
18:49Once the war was over, they struggled to convey what they'd been through.
18:54Well, as one prisoner of war said once he got back,
18:57now my new war is starting.
18:59There were the men who didn't want to talk about what happened in combat,
19:02because they'd seen horrific things.
19:05But then there were the men who felt as though they hadn't contributed enough,
19:10because they were captured.
19:13While Dad felt a sense of shame about being a prisoner of war,
19:17and a sense of failure about not having fought as much as he did,
19:21he was incredibly proud of what he actually achieved with the Crow's flight.
19:25After the war, Ralph returns five times to Slovenia to reunite with fellow veterans,
19:32and the partisans who bravely risked their lives for them.
19:36He dies in 2014 at the age of 96, a proud, yet reluctant hero.
19:42August 1939. Nazi Germany is preparing for war.
20:00Adolf Hitler delivers an ultimatum to Britain.
20:03Back off and let him invade Poland.
20:05Europe now stands on the brink of what will be the most destructive conflict in human history,
20:14in which up to 60 million will die.
20:23But thousands of kilometers from Europe,
20:26in the beautiful and untamed Himalayas of British India,
20:30fears of war hardly seem to matter.
20:35Certainly not to 27-year-old Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer,
20:41who's chasing fame by climbing a dangerous face of a peak called Nanga Parbat,
20:47or Killer Mountain.
20:50Harrer's one of Europe's climbing elite,
20:53renowned for being among the first to scale the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland.
20:59Heinrich Harrer's character,
21:01that inner drive that he had to succeed,
21:05the ambition, determination and single-mindedness,
21:09qualities which make a great mountaineer.
21:12And from that he's able to go on and join Himalayan expeditions.
21:17The last days of peace are slipping away,
21:20as Harrer and his team start their expedition to the Daimere face of the Nanga Parbat,
21:25to see if an attempt on the summit would be possible.
21:28When Harrer and his party came down from the mountain,
21:33they discovered that war was on the verge of breaking out.
21:37September the 1st, 1939.
21:41Hitler invades Poland.
21:43The Abbot and hopes of diplomats for peaceful settlements
21:47are transformed into the roar of gunfire.
21:49Two days later, Britain declares war on Germany.
21:55The problem was, Heinrich Harrer couldn't get back home.
21:59The ships had been stopped, the aircraft had stopped flying,
22:03and he was pretty much stuck where he was.
22:06And being German, he was an enemy alien.
22:08Harrer and his friends, desperate to evade capture,
22:12try to make it by car to Persia, then a neutral country.
22:15But it didn't happen.
22:18They were picked up by the British shortly after the outbreak of war.
22:22As a defence precaution, been turned as dangerous enemy aliens.
22:27And like all other Austrians and Germans, they're sent to intern in camps.
22:32He was a fit young man and he wasn't really inclined to sit behind the wire and sit out the rest of the war.
22:42For someone like Harrer to be in the camp,
22:46the obvious thing for him to do was to try and escape.
22:50And like a lot of people locked up, he became obsessed with escaping.
22:55In early 1941, he gets his first chance of freedom,
23:00when he's among prisoners being moved in a convoy of trucks
23:03to Dayalali Internment Camp, 170 kilometres north of Bombay, now Mumbai.
23:11On the Indian Plains in the dry season, it was very dusty,
23:15and he realised that the distance between the trucks was such that often the truck behind
23:20couldn't see what the truck in front was doing because of the dust.
23:22He and a friend of his decided that they would simply jump off the truck and try and hide and avoid being spotted.
23:30It didn't work.
23:31Harrer got partly away, but the guards spotted his companion, opened fire.
23:37Harrer was actually able to get back in the confusion,
23:41and they didn't realise that he was also escaping.
23:43But he learned from that, that if he was escaping with another person, they should both be self-sufficient,
23:51because in this case, his companion had everything they needed for the escape.
24:00Undeterred, Harrer gets his next break in late 1941,
24:05when the internees are moved again,
24:08this time to a purpose-built camp at Dehradun in northern India.
24:14Behind the camp, Harrer can see the Himalayan peaks,
24:18the snow-capped mountains.
24:20It's a beautiful view from there.
24:22Of course, this fills his imagination.
24:24He knows that he can survive in the Himalayas.
24:27He can escape and cross into Tibet.
24:30It's the perfect place for Harrer to escape from.
24:33The icy roof of the world.
24:36Its borders encompassing the eastern end of the Himalayan mountains.
24:40The mystery land that few have entered.
24:44Tibet is a hermit kingdom ruled by a young religious leader,
24:49the Dalai Lama.
24:51Harrer knows few foreigners are allowed into Tibet.
24:54But that doesn't deter him.
24:57He starts to learn Hindustani and Tibetan.
25:01Harrer prepared intensely.
25:03He worked very hard on his physical fitness.
25:06He was proud of being a strong, fit young man.
25:09His second escape attempt in June 1943 fails.
25:13But this time, he managed to reach the mountains.
25:18Once again, he was held back by one of his companions who couldn't deal with the altitude.
25:24He had to go back down with his sick companion.
25:27But Harrer's determination and courage, plus his refusal to leave his sick friend behind, earned him plenty of admirers.
25:37The British had to abide by the rules and put him in solitary confinement.
25:40But there is no doubt that they were hugely impressed by this escape and really thought quite highly of him for it.
25:49300,000 Germans are encircled in Stalingrad.
25:5394,000 were killed in three weeks.
25:56As the war drags on, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the largest in history, has been beaten back after a staggering loss of life.
26:07In North Africa, allied victories force the Germans to retreat.
26:17Any hopes for a quick end to the war fade among the internees.
26:21By this time, Harrer is in custody, along with Peter Aufschneider and a number of other climbers from his Nanga-Pavad expedition.
26:29The men come up with a simple but audacious way to get out of the camp.
26:37That escape relied crucially on a couple of the Germans posed as British officers, while the other Germans and Austrians escaping with them disguised themselves as Indian coolies.
26:49And that worked.
26:50They were able to simply stride out through the gates, ordering the gates opened as they marched up without attracting any attention at all.
26:59Harrer and Aufschneider travel by night and hide during the day until they reach the mountains.
27:06Although they split into smaller groups, they ran into each other, which sounds unlikely in such a big area, but in fact there are only certain routes that you can go on through the high mountains.
27:17The route ahead of them is a grueling one.
27:20Their clothing is inadequate, and they have little to eat.
27:23But after 19 days of climbing, on May the 17th, 1944, they crossed the Sang Chokla Pass and finally entered Tibet.
27:42The area that they were attempting to enter was western Tibet, and that's an extremely desolate landscape.
27:55It's a high altitude desert.
27:57You can famously get frostbite in the hand that's in the shade and sunburned in the hand that's in the sun.
28:08The trip is so severe that the mules make only one trip annually.
28:12Then they are rested for an entire 12 months, through the perpetual snow of the Himalayas and into an ancient trading centre of Tibet.
28:19Any villagers they're going to find are not going to have supplies.
28:24They've got nothing to share because they need everything they've got.
28:28Hera and El Schneider, they're in rags. Their feet are held together with burlap sacking.
28:35They are impoverished. They are half-starved, rather sick, and exhausted.
28:42The government delayed giving them permission to enter the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.
28:46On January the 15th, 1946, well after the end of the war, 20 months since escaping from their prison camp,
28:58Hera and El Schneider enter the capital.
29:02Both are given jobs by the government and permission to stay in Tibet.
29:08They were recovering, and just the psychological pressure that they'd been under for so long
29:13seemed to be relieved when they were in Lhasa. They could finally relax.
29:19Hera became the Dalai Lama's official photographer, his personal tutor and lifelong friend.
29:26He and El Schneider stayed until the invasion of China in 1950, helping map the city of Lhasa and plan a power station.
29:33A famous writer and explorer, and until his death in 2006, Hera remained the tireless campaigner for Tibetan freedom.
29:43Melville Island, 80 kilometers off the north coast of Australia.
29:54In the middle of February 1942, dazed and injured, a young Japanese man stumbles out of the rainforest.
30:01He's found by locals who quickly hand him over to the Australian military.
30:08The man tells them he's called Tadao Minami.
30:12That's a lie, but one thing's for sure.
30:15The 22-year-old, whose real name is Hajime Toishima, has just become the first Japanese prisoner of war captured by the Australians.
30:23Toishima concealed his identity because he was a Zero fighter pilot.
30:30The Zero was one of the most feared Japanese aircraft, and only a handful had been captured by the Allies this early in the war.
30:37Hardy, frugal and of great physical endurance, to fight what it thinks may be a hundred years' war.
30:44Though his interrogators don't know it, Toishima has already seen plenty of combat.
30:49He participated in the Pearl Harbor attacks, he participated in a number of other missions that followed that,
30:58and then eventually he participated in the bombing of Darwin in February 1942.
31:04Japanese bombers over Darwin, through four successive days, a sweep of bombs in straight line across the city.
31:12During that mission, he came under anti-aircraft machine gun fire,
31:17and the suspicion is that one of these bullets pierced the oil line in his engine.
31:23On his way back to the aircraft carrier, the plane ran out of oil, the engine seized, and he crash-landed on Melville Island.
31:32He knew what a great coup it would be to the Allies to have a pilot in their hands.
31:37And it quite successfully hid his true identity from the authorities.
31:40He's taken to a town called Hay, in southwestern New South Wales.
31:47Originally, Toishima, when he was first captured, was sullen, he was uncooperative.
31:53In Japanese culture, the shame of capture was all-encompassing.
31:56And whenever we see a photo of him, he's glaring at the camera, and his face is all banged up from the accident.
32:05Toishima has often moved between camps.
32:08Wherever he's taken, he's always the only Japanese prisoner of war.
32:13He was curious about the world around him.
32:15I'm in Australia, so let's learn English, let's learn a bit about the enemy.
32:23As fascinated as Toishima was with his captors, Australia became fascinated with him.
32:32He became a mini-celebrity.
32:35People were amazed to actually see a Japanese person up close.
32:38He had received fan mail from a small boy who had heard that this Japanese flyer was in town,
32:45which Toishima replied to, and was wishing the young boy well,
32:49was hoping for eventual peace, and thanking him for his kind letter.
32:53It's just remarkable that, with all the turmoil that Toishima was going through
32:58and struggling to face this new life of being a prisoner,
33:01he still took time to write a letter to a small boy in Melbourne.
33:05So, it shows the extraordinary depth of character of the man.
33:13In the four months since Japanese fighter pilot Hajime Toishima crashed on Melbourne Island,
33:19the Pacific War has been raging.
33:21In the spring of 1942, the Axis powers were winning the war.
33:26The Japanese had established a base in Papua New Guinea,
33:30and occupied islands across the South Pacific,
33:32threatening American supply lines to Australia.
33:39Back in Australia, Toishima adapted very well to his life in captivity.
33:44He was very charismatic, he was a very intelligent man, he taught himself English.
33:49And just about every Australian who got to know him spoke about how much they liked him.
33:53They said he was strong, he was good-looking, he was athletic, he was funny and charming.
33:56There was a real camaraderie between the prison guards and Toishima.
34:02But in June 1942, there's a crucial turning point of the war.
34:08The decisive American naval victory over the Japanese Imperial Fleet.
34:14The Battle of Midway, its carrier group destroyed in one day.
34:20Japan's rampage across the Pacific has finally been stopped.
34:25Washington's Navy headquarters receives electrifying news, the victory off Midway Island.
34:33Six months after Pearl Harbor, out of treachery sudden flame, America's might emerges.
34:38This is the Navy that was not destroyed, that has risen to strike with growing power.
34:43The number of Japanese prisoners taken is really a barometer of Japan's fortunes in the war.
34:53And as they began to lose more territory, as they began to lose more important battles,
34:58more men were taken prisoner by the Allies.
35:00It was something the Australian authorities hadn't anticipated.
35:02In January 1943, after almost a year of captivity, Toishima is transported to a POW camp in New South Wales,
35:14near a small country town called Cowra, some 300 kilometers southwest of Sydney.
35:20The conditions in the Cowra prisoner of war camp could not have been any more different
35:25than the ones that the Allied soldiers were facing in the Far East.
35:28For a start, this camp was run under the rules of the Geneva Convention,
35:33so these soldiers were treated relatively well.
35:36The Cowra camp was designed to hold somewhere in the vicinity of 500 men,
35:40but the numbers grew very, very quickly, with many more men arriving every day.
35:45And it was something that was not sustainable.
35:47By the end of 1943, more than 1,100 Japanese military men are being held at Cowra,
35:54along with 2,000 Italian prisoners,
36:00many of whom have been POWs since 1941,
36:04and are happy to be out of the fighting in North Africa.
36:08They had never been particularly dedicated soldiers in the first place.
36:12They saw this as now their lot in life, and to make the most of it.
36:15So they made wine, they sang into the night, and because the Italians were not particularly difficult prisoners,
36:22and lots of them had farming experience, they were often sent out on work parties completely unsupervised.
36:27The story that sums up the relaxed attitude of the Italians to captivity better than any other,
36:32is a work party was sent out in a truck, unguarded, and they went out and worked all day.
36:36They jumped back into the truck to head back to the camp that night,
36:40and on the way back, the truck threw a tyre, and the Italians had to replace the tyre.
36:44By the time they had, it was after dark, they got back and the camp was in lockdown,
36:48and the Italians had to go up and bang on the gates of the camp,
36:51and ask to be allowed back in before they could get back into the prison camp.
36:55For the Japanese prisoners, though, Cowra was an entirely different experience.
37:00It's important to understand, in Japanese culture, the shame of capture was all-encompassing,
37:08and here they were languishing in a prison camp without contributing to the war effort.
37:12So the Japanese prisoners were often moody, they resented being captured,
37:17they were troublemakers, and having that many of them in a confined space
37:20was always going to create problems.
37:23For anyone in the Japanese military, being captured by the enemy is unthinkable.
37:29Something forbidden by the Warrior Bushido Code.
37:33The Bushido Code had been inculcated into Japanese society for several centuries,
37:40and for the Japanese, it was a code of honour.
37:47When a Japanese man was either conscripted or volunteered to fight in the military,
37:52and his family farewelled him, there were often great celebrations.
37:55They were congratulating him on his bravery in going off to die for the emperor.
38:00Their last-ditch fighters jumping to suicide rather than surrender.
38:05Men trained for death.
38:07Men trained for death.
38:09This was a death cult where the ultimate act was to die for the cause.
38:16This was the expected thing to do.
38:20Now for the Japanese, you've suddenly got these people who through no fault of their own have been captured.
38:26One way or another, the war's going to end, so if we go home, we are to be shunned.
38:34But it didn't stop there.
38:35If and when the family learnt they'd been captured, it was as if this dark cloud of humiliation descended on them.
38:42And they suffered in every social way.
38:47They called themselves ghosts.
38:49They were trapped in this world between the noble death on the battlefield that they had longed for,
38:54and a Japan that they could never go back to after the war and carry this great weight of shame.
38:59In Kaura, there's simmering hostility between the Japanese and their Australian Guards.
39:14Australian authorities had the notion that if they informed the Japanese of how badly the war was going for Japan,
39:21that would keep the prisoners docile.
39:23They used to distribute newspapers quite regularly to the Japanese and translate them into Japanese
39:29so that the Japanese prisoners could see that the war was going very badly for Japan.
39:35As the end finally approached, some 8,500 Japanese soldiers surrendered in swarms.
39:40But it did not have the desired effect.
39:43It actually amplified Japanese emotions because they felt that they simply couldn't sit by idly,
39:49safe in a prison camp while the Empire was at risk of falling.
39:54For many of these men, they couldn't stay locked up.
39:57They had to get out. They had to rejoin the war effort.
40:00In June 1944, with tensions at boiling point, camp commanders get wind of a planned uprising.
40:09The Australian authorities, with all due respect, I think there was a certain Australian casualness.
40:15Yeah, okay, maybe there's going to be a breakout. We'll see.
40:21The Australians don't believe what they're hearing and fail to grasp the danger of the situation.
40:28For the Japanese in Cowra, it was not to do with freedom. It was to do with battle.
40:33Their determination was to kill as many Australians in uniform as they could,
40:37to take over the camp and then eventually die in the act.
40:40The Cowra breakout was not about escape. It was about battle.
40:42In August 1944, the camp authorities suddenly announced they're going to split the Japanese prisoners up
40:53and send half of them to another camp.
40:56The Japanese decide they're going to break out before that can happen.
41:00It's now the 5th of August, 1944.
41:03Just before 2am, an unnamed man, a Japanese prisoner, tried to alert the Australian Guards that something was happening.
41:14He ran to the gates and he was hysterical and frantically shouting in Japanese,
41:20but unfortunately the Australian Guards didn't speak Japanese, they couldn't understand what he was trying to say.
41:23And before he had a chance to get his message across, he was overwhelmed and killed by his Japanese comrades.
41:30Before the guards can sound the alarm, there's the sound of a bugle.
41:35The signal the Japanese have been waiting for.
41:37Toishima was the man himself who blew the bugle to begin the breakout.
41:44Basically all hell broke loose.
41:46The huts were on fire.
41:47The Japanese were charging against machine guns and rifles armed only with baseball bats or knives.
41:53And the Australians were just pouring fire into this mass of escaping men.
41:57And so now every man was pretty much on his own.
42:07The Japanese prisoners escape into the night.
42:20The morning reveals a scene of carnage.
42:22234 Japanese lie dead.
42:29Many of whom have committed suicide.
42:33Among the dead are four Australian camp guards.
42:37The reason they launched the uprising that became known as the Cowra breakout
42:41was to regain that honour that they'd lost on the battlefield.
42:44Geography was the ultimate issue for these guys.
42:47They were being put in camps all over the Pacific, even in America.
42:52And you could still somehow relate this to, I could somehow get home.
42:56But Australia, Cowra, there was just no way.
43:01And that meant it's all or nothing.
43:05We are going to die in the attempt, but we will die with honour.
43:11Within nine days, all the escapees are recaptured.
43:14Toishima, Australia's first Japanese prisoner, is found near the main gate, a bullet in his chest and a self-inflicted wound to his neck.
43:27I think that even though Toishima had been a prisoner for a couple of years by the time of the Cowra breakout,
43:32he was reconciled to his fate.
43:35He realised he was never going back to Japan.
43:37I don't think he knew how his life would end, but I think he knew it would end during the war.
43:43People who had known him were astonished to find that he had a prominent role in the breakout.
43:49They just didn't think that that sat with his character.
43:51Toishima's war that took him from the skies over the Pacific to the jungle of Northern Australia ended in a blood-soaked corner of New South Wales.
44:04In his own way, free at last from the shame he'd felt as a prisoner.
44:10His gravestone in the Japanese cemetery at Cowra carries the alias he invented to save his family from shame.
44:21And not his birth name, Hajime Toishima.
44:52He was dead and killed his wife.
44:53He multiplied as a prisoner in the Japanese cemetery at the table.
44:56He took his man's death.
44:57He was killed by his fellow a carpet in the face.
44:59He had a kind of suicide for a long day.
45:00He knows a couple of years ago, but he was a victim of the pain as he did.
45:03The situation was a killer that was a good matter.
45:04He was killed by his men's death.
45:06He was killed by his father.
45:09He was killed by his mother.
45:10He was killed by the fire.
45:12While he was killed by his mother.
45:14He was killed by his mother.
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