DOES THIS EXHIBIT INDICATE DEFIANCE OF RUDD GOVERNMENT POLICY AS WELL AS A FAILURE OF SCHOLARSHIP AT THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL?
"Curtin
did not save Australia from any real threat."
This offensive claim by Dr Peter Stanley of the Australian War Memorial is shown
to be nonsense in the chapter "Defending
the character and leadership of Prime Minister John Curtin from unjustified
slurs". The quote is from Dr Stanley's essay:
"He's (not) coming South - the invasion that wasn't" (2002)
"
It is time that Australians stopped kidding themselves that their country faced
an actual invasion threat and looked seriously at their role in the Allied war
effort".
Dr
Peter Stanley of the Australian War Memorial exposes his ignorance of Japan's
plans to force Australia's surrender in 1942, and exposes his failure to understand
the dynamics of the Pacific War. From his essay:
"He's (not) coming South - the invasion that wasn't" (2002).
"It
seems to be that Australians want to believe that they were part of a war, that
the war came close; that it mattered...Set against the prosaic reality, the
desire is poignant and rather pathetic."
Dr
Peter Stanley of the Australian War Memorial insults Australians who believe
that their country faced a grave threat from Japan in 1942 when he speaks dismissively
of the deadly Japanese offensive against Australia in his essay "Threat
made manifest" (2005).
"Dr
Stanley has legitimate arguments in my opinion."
Major General Steve Gower, AO, Director,
Australian War Memorial,email dated 8 November 2005.
Pacific War historian James Bowen argues that the exhibit below promotes a false history of Australia's peril in 1942, impugns the leadership and character of Prime Minister Curtin and indicates a serious failure of scholarship at the Australian War Memorial.
Prominently displayed in the World War II gallery of the Australian War Memorial is the sign below. It asks, "Did the Japanese plan to invade Australia?" The misleading answer given to unsuspecting members of the public is, "No." See full text below.
Distorting
history for young Australians?
This exhibit was photographed in the Australian War Memorial at Canberra on 1 November 2005. It was still on display in the World War II gallery when James Bowen visited the Australian War Memorial on Saturday, 4 May 2008. Australians need to know that the Memorial bureaucracy has been told since December 2005 that the text contains major errors and/or distortions of Australian history. Those responsible for management of the Australian War Memorial have continued to display prominently this controversial sign in apparent defiance of reported criticism by former Prime Minister John Howard and then Leader of the Federal Opposition Kim Beazley. This denial of the gravity and extent of the Japanese threat to Australia in 1942-43 also appears to be intended to defy the Rudd Government policy of commemorating the Battle for Australia 1942-43.
The photographed exhibit reads as follows:
|
Invasion of Australia? Did the Japanese plan to invade Australia? No. When Japan went to war in 1941, its plans did not include an invasion of Australia. In early 1942, with Japan's forces victorious in Asia, some Japanese naval planners pressed for an invasion of Australia. Army planners disagreed, arguing that the army had too few troops. Japanese troops were engaged in China, and were also needed to hold Japan's conquered territories in the Pacific. The army also wanted a reserve in case the Soviet Union attacked in Manchuria. Then the navy realized that there were too few merchant ships to transport an invasion force and too few warships to protect it. By March 1942 the idea of an invasion of Australia had been dropped. It had never been more than an idea discussed by a handful of officers in Tokyo. By late 1942 the Prime Minister, John Curtin had learned that a Japanese invasion was unlikely. But he continued to use the fear of attack to urge Australians to support the war effort. |
I have added the bold emphasis to highlight five statements in this sign that I regard as being incorrect, misleading, or major distortions of history. The text withholds from the viewer the fact that planning to invade coastal areas of the northern Australian mainland reached the highest levels of the Imperial Japanese Navy in early 1942, where it was approved. The Imperial Japanese Navy plan for a limited invasion of Australia's mainland was not "dropped"; it was deferred at Japan's Imperial General Headquarters on 7 March 1942. The Japanese Navy agreed to its limited invasion plan being deferred in favour of an Imperial Japanese Army plan to isolate Australia completely from the United States and then pressure Australia into full surrender to Japan by means of intensified blockade, bombardment, and psychological warfare. This plan was assigned the code reference Operation FS. The Japanese generals did not rule out army support for an invasion by force of arms if Australia did not surrender as they expected.
It is difficult to see how an Australian surrender to Japan, of the kind contemplated by the generals, could be meaningful without some form of Japanese occupation that would exclude access to Australia by the United States.
The statement "When Japan went to war in 1941, its plans did not include an invasion of Australia" is misleading because plans were already in hand before Japan struck at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 to capture Papua which was then sovereign Australian territory. Japan's First Operational Stage began with the attack on Pearl Harbor. That first stage included capture and occupation of New Britain and New Ireland which were not sovereign Australian territory in 1941 but administered by Australia as parts of its New Guinea League of Nations Mandate. The Second Operational Stage included capture of Port Moresby in Australia's Territory of Papua. Britain transferred ownership of Papua to Australia in 1906. The Second Operational Stage was scheduled to begin after successful completion of the First Operational Stage. See the chapter "Before Pearl Harbor, Japan targets Australia's New Guinea Territories".
It was the Imperial Japanese Army that controlled the use of merchant ships to transport troops, and it was the Army, and not the Navy, that raised the difficulty involved in finding sufficient merchant ships to transport to and maintain twelve Japanese Army divisions in Australia.
The highlighted text in this sign appears to reflect views expressed by the Australian War Memorial's former senior historian, Dr Peter Stanley, in his first two published essays on this theme. I have demonstrated in earlier chapters dealing with Australia's grave peril in 1942, and especially the chapter "Proving that the Australian War Memorial is promoting a false history of 1942" that none of the highlighted claims in the abovementioned exhibit have historical support. The claim about John Curtin is nonsense. The grave peril facing Australia was not lifted until the first two months of 1943 when the last Japanese troops were expelled from Papua and Guadalcanal. This is explained in the chapter "Defending the character and leadership of Prime Minister John Curtin from unjustified slurs".
Since December 2005, I have been calling on Dr Peter Stanley and his supporter Major General Steve Gower to provide me with documentary evidence that they claim supports Dr Stanley's denial of the gravity of the Japanese threat to Australia in 1942 and Dr Stanley's attacks on the leadership and character of Prime Minister John Curtin. No such evidence has been produced to me despite my undertaking to acknowledge it on this web-site.
I believe that continuing support by the Australian War Memorial bureaucracy for Dr Stanley's controversial and unsubstantiated revisionism, as evinced by the continued prominent display of the sign above, justifies scrutiny of the standards of historical scholarship and management within the Memorial bureaucracy by the Federal Minister responsible for the Memorial.
In the next chapter, I will be addressing the question whether Major General Steve Gower should follow the example of Dr Peter Stanley and resign from the Australian War Memorial.