What led Japanese and Indonesians in Western Australia 100 years ago to spill blood in the Broome race riots
- Broome in Western Australia once had a thriving Asian community, who flocked to the town to seek their fortune beneath the waves, diving for pearls
- But when jealousy arose between competing divers from Japan and Southeast Asia, blood flowed, and their clash was elevated to a national concern
The largest Japanese cemetery outside Japan is in a small seaside town in Western Australia, 2,000km (1,250 miles) and a 22-hour drive north of the state capital, Perth. Roughly 900 headstones line a lot on Port Drive in Broome, beside cemeteries for Chinese and other ethnicities.
Broome was once home to more Japanese, Malays, Koepangers and Ambonese from the Indonesian archipelago, and indigenous Australians, than Europeans. All were there for one reason – its pearling industry.
The town’s multi-ethnic past runs deep through the veins of Broome, which for a time was exempt from the White Australia Policy introduced in 1901 to end Asian migration to the country, but which also the scene of several race riots.
The tensions behind these riots were described in a 1937 book, Forty Fathoms Deep, by Ion Idriess, who served as spotter for the most decorated sniper of World War I, Chinese-Australian Billy Sing.
“There was always jealousy, sometimes bitter rivalry, among the Asiatic for the charms of the coloured sirens,” he wrote, referring to the pearls they were hired to dive for.
December 20 marks the centenary of the storming of Broome by more than 1,000 Japanese pearl divers who, armed with clubs, bottles and knives, went in search of divers from Koepang, in what is today West Timor in Indonesia.
