Italian prisoners of war

Enlisting in the Italian army as a student, Giuseppe Mistretta was just twenty-one years old when he was captured in Tobruk, Libya by Australian military forces in 1941. Giuseppe was transported to Australia with other Italian prisoners of war on the Queen Mary and was then transferred to number 12 prisoner of war camp in Cowra, New South Wales. By 1943, Giuseppe and his younger brother Santo, who had also been captured, were moved to Western Australia where they were sent to work on several farms in Bridgetown. In a letter, Giuseppe assured his mother in Italy that he and his brother were “very well off here…. Santo and I are working on a farm and we can’t complain. We have everything we want except liberty.” Following the end of World War II prisoners of war were repatriated; Giuseppe and Santo Mistretta were shipped home on the Chitral in September 1946. Despite the many years they had spent as prisoners in Australia, Giuseppe and Santo Mistretta willingly returned in 1951 to live permanently. Giuseppe became a naturalised Australian in 1957. The National Archives of Australia holds many records relating to prisoners of war. These records can be found by searching the RecordSearch database, available at www.naa.gov.au.