WHAT WAS THE BATTLE FOR AUSTRALIA 1942-43?
Japan brings death
and destruction to the tranquil beauty of Sydney Harbour. The Australian Navy
barracks ship,
HMAS Kuttabul lies on the bed of Sydney Harbour after a Japanese midget
submarine attack in 1942.
What was the Battle for Australia 1942-43?
The proposal to commemorate the Battle
for Australia 1942-43 was initiated by
then RSL National President Major General W. B. Digger James AC, MBE, MC and
me in a series of letters and discussions that began in July 1997. At that time,
I was Honorary Counsel to the Victorian Branch of the RSL, adviser to the RSL
on public affairs, and a member of the RSL State Executive.*
That proposal was endorsed and strongly supported by Mr B. C. Ruxton, AM, OBE,
President of the RSL Victorian Branch.
* RSL is an abbreviation for Australia's largest veterans' organization
The Returned & Services League of Australia.
We were aware from research by the
distinguished Japan scholar Professor Henry Frei*
that the major
Japanese offensive against Australia that began with the Battle
of the Coral Sea (7-8 May 1942) had two purposes. The first was to sever
Australia's lines of communication with the United States, and thereby, deny
the Americans access to Australia as a base from which they could launch a counter-offensive
against Japan. The second purpose was to deny American support to Australia
and compel Australia to surrender to Japan. At the time of the Battle of the
Coral Sea, Australia had already ignored two demands for its surrender made
by Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo in the Diet in January and February
1942. See Frei at page 172.
* Author of the definitive work on Japan's hostile plans for Australia in 1942 "Japan's Southward Advance and Australia" (1991) Melbourne University Press.
What became the Battle for Australia was not contemplated by the Japanese high command as part of the First Operational Stage of Japan's campaign of military conquest that began with Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Australia was included in the Second Operational Stage at the behest of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue who was commander of the 4th Fleet, or South Seas Force, based at Truk in Japan's Caroline Islands League Mandate. Admiral Inoue was responsible for absorbing and defeating an expected American counter-offensive against the Japanese-held Marshall and Caroline island groups, but he warned the Navy General Staff of the grave danger that Japan would face if the Americans were allowed to establish bases in Australia and its New Guinea Territories for their inevitable counter-offensive. Inoue urged an offensive against Australia and the British Solomons to counter this danger. His arguments were accepted by Navy General Staff and ultimately adopted by Japan's Imperial General Headquarters. See the chapter "Before Pearl Harbor, Japan targets Australia's New Guinea Territories".
Japan's Imperial General Headquarters assigned the code reference "Operation FS" to the offensive directed against Australia and the British Solomon Islands. The Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo (and his generals) believed that the severing of Australia's lifeline to the United States produced by Operation FS, together with a tightening blockade and increased psychological warfare, would compel Australia to surrender to Japan.* The US Navy strategy in the South-West Pacific in 1942 was primarily directed to preventing the Japanese occupying Australia, its New Guinea mainland territories, and the southern Solomon Islands in order to preserve them as bases from which the United States could launch counter-offensives against Japan.** Control of access to Australia was considered vital by both the Japanese and Americans in 1942, and both were determined to prevent the enemy gaining that access.** The Battle of the Coral Sea and the Kokoda Campaign were initiated by the Japanese in 1942 to gain control of Australia by implementing Operation FS. On 7 August 1942, the US Navy initiated the Guadalcanal Campaign to block Japanese control of the southern Solomon Islands which would threaten American lines of communication with Australia.
In seeking to deny that there was a Battle for Australia, in the sense of control of access to Australia, Dr Peter Stanley and the Australian War Memorial bureaucracy appear to have no appreciation of these very important strategic considerations that shaped the course of the Pacific War from January to December 1942.
* See Professor
Henry P. Frei, Japans Southward Advance and Australia, (1991) MUP, Melbourne,
at pp. 160-174.
** Richard B. Frank provides an excellent account of US Navy and Japanese Navy
South Pacific strategies in 1942 in his magisterial work Guadalcanal,
(1990) Random House at pages 1-32.
We chose the term "Battle for Australia" to describe these Japanese campaigns directed against Australia in 1942 partly to acknowledge that control of access to Australia was considered vital to the strategic war aims of the United States and Japan, and partly in deference to Australia’s wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, who first used the term "Battle for Australia" in reference to the expected struggle for survival facing Australia after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. See the chapter "He was coming South - to compel Australia's surrender to Japan".
When I first set out to define the concept of a Battle for Australia, I proposed to Major General James that its scope be limited to a series of battles during 1942 when the Japanese threat to Australia was at its greatest and Australia's fate hung in the balance. I proposed including the Battle of the Coral Sea and the bloody Kokoda Campaign that took place entirely on Australian soil in what was then the Australian Territory of Papua. After discussion with the internationally respected Australian military historian, Professor David Horner, and acting on his advice, we expanded the scope of the Battle for Australia to include the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Battle of Wau, and the Battle of the Bismark Sea. Despite its crucial role in turning the tide of the Pacific War against the Japanese, the Battle of Midway was not included in the Battle for Australia because it was a diversion from implementing "Operation FS" produced by the Doolittle Raid on Japan on 18 April 1942.
It was agreed that the Battle for Australia should cover the initial landing of Japanese invasion troops at Rabaul in the Australian League Mandate Territory of New Guinea on 23 January 1942 and end with the Battle of the Bismark Sea, 2-5 March 1943.
The rationale for defining the scope of the Battle for Australia in this way was that Japan was on the offensive against Australia from 23 January 1942 until its defeat in the Battle of the Bismark Sea on 5 March 1942.
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