The Cowra Voices Audio Archive Project

Overview of the Cowra Voices Audio Archive Project

The Cowra Voices Audio Archive Project archives 18 interviews with Cowra residents recorded for Cowra Voices, a geolocative storytelling app about the unique history of Cowra’s friendship with Japan and grassroots peacebuilding. Transcripts of these interviews also form part of the Archive.

These interviews were used to create the stories in the Cowra Voices app, and the original 20 stories in this geolocative app are also included in the Cowra Voices Audio Archive.

Transcripts of the five audio stories written by historians about individuals buried at the Cowra Japanese War Cemetery have been translated into Japanese and also archived.

The Cowra Voices Audio Archive is part of the Nikkei Australia website, giving wide public access to a collection of intimate first person narratives about Cowra’s unique history.

With mobile technology constantly evolving, the Cowra Voices app will need to be rebuilt in the near future. Archiving these original audio interviews will ensure public access to these voices will continue, even if the app becomes obsolete. These stories belong not only to the community, but to all Australians. Ease of accessibility may inspire community members and others in Australia and Japan to imagine new ways to share these stories in the future.

PLEASE NOTE: Please be aware that the transcripts of the audio interviews are not exactly word for word. Fillers (such as ums and ahs) and repetitions of certain words have been omitted from the transcript for ease of reading. But the audio interviews have been left intact in order to preserve the speech patterns of the interviewees. Only portions of interviews that were sensitive, not relevant, or difficult to hear have been edited out.

Cowra Council is the copyright holder of all the audio works and images in the Cowra Voices Audio Archive. If you would like to reuse or copy any of the materials in this Archive, please contact Cowra Council.

For citations, please include at minimum: 1) Cowra Council; 2) the writer/creator of the content in the Archive; 3) the title of the audio story/interview.

Australian copyright law is set out in the Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth), including all amendments.

All audio is in mp3 format.

This Project was funded by the 2022 Create NSW Cultural Grants Program administered by the Royal Australian Historical Society.

The List of Audio Interviews and their transcripts can be found here.

The Original Cowra Voices stories and their transcripts can be found here.

The Cowra Voices Audio Archive Project team:

• Lawrence Ryan (Cowra Council)
• Masako Fukui (Nikkei Australia)
• Chie Muraoka (Nikkei Australia)
• Shoko Ono (Nikkei Australia)
• Junko Howe