For Japanese banker Miyakatsu Koike, the arid but picturesque landscapes of South Australia in 1941 could only be compared to the "scene in an oil painting".
The then 36-year-old was taken from his home in the then Dutch East Indies (DEI) and arrived on South Australian soil alongside thousands of his countrymen and other adversaries of Australia in World War II.
The large group was transported to be interned at Australia's largest World War II camp in the small Riverland town of Loveday.
Mr Koike spent four years as a civilian internee and detailed what it was like to be far from his family, and homeland, in a diary.
Eighty years on, his diary has been translated into English — released as In Four Years in a Red Coat: The Loveday Internment Camp Diary of Miyakatsu Koike — with the help of a group of researchers including, Peter Monteath, a professor at Flinders University.
"People don't think of the Japanese being a substantial population in Australia, and it was mostly those brought into Australia from places like the DEI which make those numbers so large.
"We've known more about the Italian experience or the German experience, but this is a distinctly Japanese perspective, and it gives us some sense of how that community coped with the rigours of being interned."
Miyakatsu Koike's life in Loveday
Prior to arriving in the Riverland, Mr Koike enjoyed a middle-class life, working for a Japanese bank in the DEI – now known as Indonesia.
This was at the same time Japan attacked the American port of Pearl Harbour.
As Mr Koike was originally from Japan, Australia viewed him and about 5,000 other people as security threats.
They were rounded up from several different countries, including the DEI, New Caledonia and Taiwan and transported to squalid conditions at Adelaide's Outer Harbour.
Mr Koike and his fellow internees then travelled six hours by train to the Riverland, arriving in January 1942.
"I saw a wide expanse of grass fields, which were scorched due to the dry season," Mr Koike wrote while on this part of the journey.
While the internees were not forced to work and many Japanese refused to do so at first, "as it only benefited the enemy", the one shilling per day on offer eventually persuaded many.
"I remember that the available work included growing vegetables, growing poppies or rubber, and looking after pigs," Mr Koike wrote.
"However, those who engaged in such work could not erase the thought that they were assisting the enemy.
"Because the poppies were used to produce morphine as an anaesthetic, internees tried to grow poppies without any flowers."
Mr Koike remained at Loveday until early 1946, with Australia keeping Japanese internees for six months after the country's surrender.
When he finally returned to Japan, he found his home country ravaged by war and learned of the death of his father and first-born child during his absence.
Mr Koike joined efforts to reconstruct Japan and returned to his work at the bank.
He lived until 1998 when he died at the age of 93 from a heart attack.
An important contribution
Rosemary Gower is passionate about retaining the history of the Loveday Internment Camp and has devoted much of her life to uncovering its stories.
She said it was significant for the region to understand a Japanese person's first-hand account of their experience at the Riverland camp.
"This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first Japanese internees who were taken to Loveday, and there remains an ongoing connection with the Japanese community, and the families of internees, to the Riverland."
