Carefree War Page 3

  The belief in the ‘Empire of the Sun’ was reinforced. In 1927, the Tanaka Memorial, stated in part, ‘… in order to conquer the world, we must first conquer China…’ These words are generally regarded as fraudulent, however, when the silk trade collapsed, with thousands of peasants losing work, Japan’s foreign policy did focus on China. The Japanese became entrenched in right-wing politics with government promises of improved living standards. The domination of the rest of Asia became a matter of Japanese public interest and was seen as their divine right.

  As Japan asserted itself over China, Great Britain, France and the United States, with the power to check aggression, failed to, merely closing borders with Hong Kong and Burma. In September 1931, Japanese forces challenged the League of Nations authority, invading Inner Manchuria in northern China. The Japanese puppet government of Manchukuo was not recognised. In February 1932, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations.

  Widely reported in the Australian Press in detail, and noted by anxious civilians, was the behaviour of the Japanese Imperial Army in China. After Japan’s subjugation of Shanghai, Nanking, (the then Chinese capital), was captured in November 1937, the ‘Rape of Nanking’ following. Australians read how for over six weeks, undisciplined Japanese soldiers were left to loot and pillage, declaring ‘kill all, take all’ in the surrounded city, some boasting of numbers of citizens killed each day. Exact figures are debatable, but thousands were killed, women raped, mutilated and countless children and babies murdered. Barbarous incidents by Japanese soldiers, only a few of whom were tried later, were photographed and reported to the world Press by missionaries and Europeans, caught in the mayhem. The ‘Rape of Nanking’ marked a vicious change in Japanese military strategy that would become infamous in the Pacific War and definitely accelerate evacuation on the home front.

  Cynthia Fisher (nee Reinhold):

  We, as a family, lived at Wavell Heights, a suburb of Brisbane. My mother voluntarily evacuated myself and my older brother from Brisbane during the war. The story going around was, apparently, that the Japanese were coming and would be raping the women and bayoneting the babies. As I was a baby at the time, born September 1940, it was decided to take us to Inglewood, where we were billeted with a family, a Mrs Calligan or O’Calligan, very close to the Condamine River. I have no memory whatsoever of this, I was too young. But my brother, born May 1934, now unfortunately deceased, had lots of memories.

  There were a few children in the family, and these country children took delight in making life difficult for the city boy. They were playing ball and threw it into a bindi patch, and told my brother it was his turn to go and get it. They thought it was a great joke. My mother told me she was very worried about me crawling around through the dirt and dust that was everywhere. Mum and Keith were very pleased when it was again declared safe to return to Brisbane.

  Japanese ambitions led to conflict with the United States of America, who became her arch enemy. In spite of its formal recognition of the Vichy government, the United States, Japan’s best trading partner, imposed a total embargo on steel, oil and gasoline in August 1941. The Japanese military discussed invading India to plunder her riches but Australia was thought preferable, not only aligned with the arch enemy, but available to them as a Pacific base.

  As the American navy was an obstacle to Japan’s expansionism, on Sunday, 7 December, 1941, Japanese planes bombed the US fleet in Pearl Harbour, destroying half of it. The Americans immediately joined the Allies in World War II.

  As a previous ally, Japan had an uneasy relationship with Australia. In the War Precautions Regulation of 1916, all Japanese were required to register as aliens. Japan and Australia had collected intelligence from the mid-nineteenth century, The Times correspondents using the telegraphic link between Tokyo and London which was slow, expensive and censored by the Japanese, had shared it with Australia.

  In the 1920s and 30s a remarkable collection of international Japan enthusiasts and journalists worked for the North China Standard and the Japan Times. A George Gorman, became a pro-Japanese propagandist and was imprisoned in Tokyo, accused of espionage, but later employed by the British government. Another, Charles Dunn, an academic, was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for promoting the Japanese language. Journalists lived in dangerous times, some tortured and murdered by the police.

  In Australia, information was collected en masse by Japanese students, traders and merchant navy officers. Civilians were well aware of this and uneasy about it. The Director of Government Railways in Japan requested a map of the city of Sydney from the Town Hall in June 1919 and not only did the Town Clerk respond obsequiously to the flattery, he volunteered a map of the drainage systems as well!

  From the City Surveyor’s Office, (signed by the city surveyor):

  I forward herewith a Map of the City of Sydney which could be forwarded to the Director of Government Railways in Japan in response to his request. For fuller information regarding this City, a copy of the Vade Mecum (manual), could be sent. As to the system of development, it seems to me that requests might be made to the Premier for a copy of the Greater Sydney Bill and to the Water and Sewerage Board for information as to the development of water and drainage systems…

  The Town Clerk to the Secretary of the Water Board:

  Dear Sir, I have the honour to inform you that the Lord Mayor of Sydney has received a request from the Director of the Imperial Government Railways of Japan, Tokyo, asking for information … and I should be glad if you could forward me a copy of the Souvenir which was issued by your Board, some time ago …

  Requests to help improve their infrastructure by examining the best systems in developed countries were flattering in tone and it worked. Piecemeal information was useful. Darwin continued to be a centre of interest and navy personnel asked if aboriginal people could perform manual labour. In an article in the Journal of the Australian War Memorial in 1987, Bob Walton established firmly that the Japanese Navy had spied on the coast.

  Archives reveal a constant flow of requests from Japanese local and central government authorities, consulates and firms. One query in 1910 concerned training of naval cadets, another in December 1919 by the Japanese Consul in Sydney, was for a panoramic view of Melbourne for their education department. Requests in the 1920s and 1930s were about agricultural policy, communism, maps and government statistics, and continued into the war period with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library being asked for land maps and air charts for Australia and British Islands in the Pacific! The Japanese Consul-General 1934-1935, was given a detailed report (provided by the Department of the Interior), on Canberra’s water system.

  Like ostriches, many authoritative figures refused to acknowledge what was plainly obvious. Visiting United States geography professor Ellsworth Huntington wrote in 1923 that he was surprised ‘how many intelligent Australians were concerned over this matter’.

  As WWII approached, sampans to the north of Australia were scrutinised. If Japanese Mandated Islands were taken as a base, it was calculated 50 sampans could enter Australian waters with 3,750 Japanese. Dossiers were open on every Japanese person in the Commonwealth. Interpreters who could be trusted were sought.

  On February 14, 1942, the Japanese Navy initiated plans at their Imperial Headquarters to invade Australia. Captain Tomioka of the Naval Staff’s pressing for the taking of Australia with a token force was labelled ‘so much gibberish’ in the Imperial General Headquarters’ secret diary. Prime Minister Tojo rejected the plan because huge distances in Australia meant stretched supply lines, open to enemy attack. There was a divergence of opinion between the navy and army and within both bodies. The navy contended that Japan should push forward. They were aware of the increasing flow of American war materials, especially aircraft, to Australia, indicating allied intent to use it as a counter-offensive base. The navy insisted that Japan be actively on the offensive, attacking Australia for her wool, wheat, chemicals, meat, and fertilizers.

  The wo
rld’s three largest navies in 1939 belonged to the United States, Great Britain and Japan. The Japanese navy was overconfident from its recent successes. The Japanese army, however, strongly opposed over commitment, rejecting the proposed invasion as a reckless undertaking far in excess of Japan’s capabilities, contending the required 12 combat divisions would weaken other fronts and available shipping was unequal to transport.

  From Senshi Sosho the official Japanese war history published by the Japanese Defence Agency, we learn that: ‘The Navy High Command wanted to invade Australia, in order to eliminate it as a potential springboard for a counter-offensive by the Allies, but the army baulked at this as requiring an excessive commitment of manpower’.

  Australia’s Army Commander-in Chief, General Thomas Blamey, ‘remained confident’ of holding Australia. He later wrote: ‘Had the Japanese wished to seize it, Western Australia, with its vast potential wealth, might have fallen an easy prey to them in 1942. While it would have extended their commitment to a tremendous degree, it would have given them great advantages.’

  The capture of the Australian administered islands New Britain and New Ireland during the first operational stage of Japan’s Pacific aggression was to be followed by the capture of Port Moresby in the Australian Territories of Papua and Tulagi in the British Solomon Islands. There was clear intention of the Japanese invading sovereign Australian territory before Pearl Harbour. At an Imperial Liaison Conference held in Tokyo on 10 January, 1942, the Japanese army supported a plan to isolate Australia from the United States, known as Operation FS, the aim of which was to ‘throttle Australia into submission’ with a tight blockade, using psychological pressure, presumably, behind the sporadic shelling and bombing of different locations.

  Immediately following the fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942, Army Chief of Staff General Sugiyama advised his Japanese navy opposite number Admiral Nagano: ‘… it is useless for us to plan for an invasion of only part of Australia.’

  As the British had their backs against the wall, John Curtin’s appeal to the nation was in all the newspapers. The Melbourne Herald, 26 December, 1941: ‘…Without any inhibitions of any kind I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’. This sent shock waves across the world as a disloyal rejection of Britain; but it was a bold statement of Australia’s increasingly desperate position. Japanese bombers attacking Darwin in February 1942 raised fears even more. The Curtin cabinet had appealed for help to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and to US president Franklin Roosevelt even before the fall of Malaya, New Britain or Singapore. How good Australian intelligence was has yet to investigated, but reports from Tokyo must have acknowledged invasion, because it was repeatedly under discussion.

  Australians, complacent in the vast inland distances of their country had to reflect on the fact that history is littered with bad military decisions, like Hannibal crossing the Alps with unfortunate elephants, and Napoleon and Hitler’s advances into Russia in winter. As Japanese forces advanced on Port Moresby in New Guinea, killing everyone in their path, the major Japanese base at Rabaul allowed Japanese forces to harass supply routes between the United States and Australia and New Zealand, as well as intimidate Australian civilians by their proximity.

  John Curtin later said, ‘An actual danger of invasion had never existed and the likelihood diminished through 1942 as allied victories eroded Japan’s offensive capability’. The first part of that statement is questionable, the second is true.

  In hindsight, the picture becomes more transparent, but not clear and in the 1940s, no-one in Australia could be certain of events because the Japanese themselves were indecisive. Australians discussed the news anxiously over endless cups of Bushells tea, trying to guess Japan’s intentions so that they could safeguard the most precious beings in their lives - their children.

  Would the first bombs be followed by the carpet bombing devastating Londoners, or three submarines in the Sydney Harbour followed by a fleet? Their house could be hit by a shell or bombed. The government’s policy of calming the population with heavy censorship just made them more uneasy.

  Chapter 3

  Who’s Telling the Truth?

  Injured sailors from the Harbour were brought there after the sub raids. Within hours of their arrival all the staff would have known what had happened, and within a couple of days so would all their families and the whole street … It really was foolish of the government to think it was ‘keeping things quiet.

  – Cassie Thornley

  The Japanese reached New Guinea and Indonesia. The enemy was on our doorstep. Everyone was uncomfortably aware our industry and population were around the coastline, many men were fighting overseas and refugees flooding in with tales of Japanese atrocities.

  The weekly Darwin train arrived with mail and Chinese miners aboard. Well aware of the ferocity of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the miners fled to the safety of the hills. They were not waiting for official confirmation that a Japanese attack was imminent. Much of the confusion among the civilian population was caused by not knowing which authority was in charge, a case of the tail wagging the dog. The passenger lists of evacuees in the National Archives at Darwin show a chaotic record, with arrows, revisions and crossed out words.

  Beatrice Yell tells about her two aunts, who were married to Dutch businessmen, working in Jakarta:

  When the Japanese invaded in March 1942, so ending Dutch colonial rule, the two businessmen were arrested at work and sent to work, one on the Burma railway and one in the Japanese mines. The aunts, who had five young children between them, were given an hour to pack and be taken to a camp. They had no idea whether they would be away for a week or how long - never dreaming it would be for over three years. They packed two changes of clothes for everybody and one aunt took the youngest child’s teddy bear and sewed her jewels inside it. She told the child never to part with the bear. In the camp, one Japanese guard fell for one of the aunts, who was blonde and graceful and wanted to install her in a house outside the camp with her children. She was tempted to comply, because it would mean more food for her children, and walked a fine line between keeping him interested and staying faithful to her husband, whom she loved very much, and hoped to be reunited with. She was able to ask the guard for information. He told her that Sydney and Melbourne had been bombed flat. He also said the aboriginals would be ‘surplus to the needs of the Japanese’. The aunt believed him and thought that they must be better off in the camp in Indonesia than in Australia. Although the food was scant, she carefully saved the rough sugar that they were allowed, in a jar, and when they were eventually allowed to leave and come to Australia, she was able to give the sugar to her weeping Australian relatives.

  Some state government’s position on home front security of ‘wait and see’ and ‘it might never happen’ statements to the Press reflected their uncertainty. Les Reedman’s thoughts on the NSW government’s plans:

  I used to mow the lawn of Jack Frape, the Deputy Chief Inspector for Public Service Accommodation, and he told me that in case of invasion, the state government would retreat to Bathurst.

  Apart from official evacuation from Queensland, no plans were made for civilians. The state governments were, however resigned to the possibility of invasion. War preparedness was happening in secret. The government had signed the Official Secrets Act for activities against the Geneva Convention. For instance, the Australian Department of Defence set up the Chemical Warfare Board in 1924 (later the Chemical Defence Board). An Australian Women’s Army Servicewoman told me about mustard gas experiments in Proserpine in northern Queensland in 1943. She was told: ‘Lieutenant Graham, we have a very important posting to offer you. It is strictly confidential and top secret. You will be the only woman officer and the station will be isolated. You will not be able to discuss it with your fellow officers or your family. You must have tact and patience. The girls must not talk abo
ut what is going on and you will have to censor every letter’. She was a marvellous woman. Her handsome, clever undergraduate husband returned traumatised from a Japanese work camp, never able to lead a normal life.

  Since WWI, the military was obsessed with the idea of hydrogen cyanide being used in Australia. Japanese gas cylinders were found in New Guinea by the Australians as they advanced. Whether this gas was tested on troops is unclear.

  Richard Featherstone-Haugh:

  Dad had to go up to New Guinea. I saw him and my mother with their arms around each other, both crying. He picked me up and hugged me real hard. He came back, but he was not the same man and used to drink heavy. He would never take his trousers off or wear shorts on the beach and I found out that he had mustard gas burns from tests they did on the troops in New Guinea. My mother told me never to ask about it. He got a part pension. Later on, he was interviewed by Mike Willesee and after that he got a full pension with back payment.

  About 16 types of highly unstable phosgene and mustard gas bombs from Britain were put in 14 storage depots, one a disused railway tunnel at Glenbrook. ICI had a contract for bleaching agents for contaminated ground. Mr P. Weldon went to England to study toxic gases and gasmasks which were to contain charred coconut shell filters (processed at the Colonial Sugar Refining Company at Pyrmont). Asbestos fibre mixed with merino wool was also suggested. British scientists in Townsville found mustard gas to be four times more effective in the tropics. As Curtin had promised ‘a maximum of misery’ in defeat, volunteers, some university students, arrived cheerfully to be used as guinea pigs. Hapless tethered goats exposed to the gas all died in great distress.