Broome Japanese Cemetery

The Broome Japanese Cemetery on Port Drive is the largest Japanese cemetery in Australia, with over 900 graves of Japanese pearl divers who died working in the Broome pearling industry between the 1890s and the 1940s. It is one of the most distinctive and affecting heritage sites in Western Australia.

The neat rows of Japanese headstones, many inscribed in Japanese characters, sit in the red dirt of the Kimberley — a vivid reminder of how different this corner of Australia once was from the rest of the country. The pearling industry drew workers from Japan, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Aboriginal Australia; Broome's Chinatown and this cemetery are the most visible remnants of that cosmopolitan history. The cemetery is well maintained and freely accessible.

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The cemetery contains over 900 graves, the majority Japanese, and reflects the extraordinary demographics of the Kimberley pearling industry at its peak. Japanese divers were prized for their skill and endurance, but the work was brutally dangerous — cyclones, the bends, and shark attacks all took lives. At various points Japanese nationals made up the single largest ethnic group in Broome, a fact difficult to reconcile with the Australia of that period's White Australia Policy.

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