What led Japanese and Indonesians in Western Australia 100 years ago to spill blood in the Broome race riots Joseph Lam life@scmp.com Workers grade and sort mother-of-pearl shells at Broome, Western Australia, in 1953. The town, long a centre of the pearling industry, drew migrants from Japan and Southeast Asia, who several times came into conflict. Photo: Frank Hurley for National Library of Australia
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.