Cowra is a town of 9500 people situated on the Lachlan River, 310m above sea-level and 320 km west of Sydney at the junction of the Mid Western and Olympic Highways. It is the commercial and administrative centre of a shire in which the major industries are livestock, wool scouring, vegetable growing and processing, vineyards, furniture making and tourism.

In 1941 a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp was built at the north-eastern outskirts of Cowra. On 5 August, 1944, this camp became the site of the largest mass POW escape in British military history. It was also the only such escape attempt to occur in Australia. The camp contained 4000 prisoners, in 4 compounds on 17 acres each. These camps were called A, B, C and D. Camp B held 2204 Japanese POWs.

On 5 August a bugle sounded and the prisoners of Camp B opened the hut doors. Screaming furiously, two groups - armed with knives, chisels, forks, saws, axe handles and baseball bats - rushed the wire separating them from Broadway while two other groups headed for the perimeter wire on the other side of the camp. They threw blankets over the barbed wire, or crawled under it. 20 buildings were burned down due to prisoners overturning heating braziers.

Two privates, who manned one of the Vickers machine gun trailers, were overrun and murdered, another private was stabbed to death in the fracas and a lieutenant was killed during the round-up the following morning.

378 Japanese POWs escaped, and within nine days 334 escapees were recaptured by the authorities and by civilians. One POW reached Eugowra, 50 km away. Others had been killed and some committed suicide - two by laying their heads on railroad tracks. In all 231 Japanese died and 108 were wounded - three dying subsequently of their wounds.

A Japanese war cemetery was established by agreement with the Japanese government in 1964. It now contains the remains of all Japanese POWs and civilian internees who died during their imprisonment in World War II.