JAPANESE MILITARY AGGRESSION EXPOSES THE INADEQUACY OF AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCES
Australian Defence Policy 1918-1938: The "Impregnable Singapore Bastion"
Between 1918 and 1938, defence spending was a low priority for Australian governments. This was possible because Britain had undertaken to defend Australia should a threat arise to British interests in East Asia. To this end, Britain had promised to construct an impregnable naval base at Singapore. When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, and responded to criticism of its military aggression by withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1933, work on the Singapore naval base was accelerated.
With the development of long-range bombers and aircraft carriers during the 1930s, Australia's Army chiefs became concerned that too much reliance was being placed on Britain's Royal Navy and the Singapore naval base for Australia's defence. The concern of the Army chiefs was shared by Labor politician John Curtin, who was then in Opposition and unable to influence government policy. It took the Munich crisis in 1938 to prod the Australian government into some tentative questioning of its reliance on Singapore as an "impregnable bastion" for the defence of Australia.
British
troops among the 130,000 Allied troops who surrendered to the Japanese
after Britains sham "Fortress Singapore" had been under siege for
only seven days.
As a British Dominion, Australia automatically became involved in World War II when Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. Despite questioning of the Singapore defence policy, nothing had been done by the Australian government to address the issue, and Australia's defences proved to be pitifully inadequate at the outbreak of World War II. Australia had no tanks, no modern field artillery, no modern machine guns, no modern wireless equipment, no Army motor transport, and no clothing for recruits to the armed services. However, it did have rifles and ammunition for its small permanent army. The Royal Australian Air Force had a total of 373 aircraft. Included in this number were fifty-three Hudson medium bombers. The rest were mostly obsolescent Wirraway trainers. Fortunately, the Royal Australian Navy had several warships on which to fly the nation's flag.
The raising of Australia's 2nd AIF
On the outbreak of World War II, the Menzies Government acted quickly to raise a Second Australian Imperial Force, or 2nd AIF, composed of volunteers for military service overseas. Four Australian infantry divisions, the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th, were raised between 28 September 1939 and 18 December 1940. On 29 November 1939, the Australian Government announced that the 6th Division of the 2nd AIF would be sent to the Middle East to aid Britain in its struggle against Germany and Italy as soon as its training was completed. Two additional divisions, the 7th and 9th, would later follow the 6th Division to the Middle East. Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey was appointed General Officer Commanding the 2nd AIF in the Middle East. Units of the 8th Division were sent to Malaya, Rabaul in New Guinea, and the chain of islands between them. These units of the 8th Division would all be lost in resisting Japan's drive towards Australia in 1942.
The Australian Government responds to the threat of Japanese aggression
While Britain was resisting the German onslaught in the great aerial conflict known as the Battle of Britain, the Japanese Imperial Government joined Germany and Italy in September 1940 in an alliance for world domination called the Tripartite Pact.
In October 1941, the Curtin Labor Government assumed office in Australia. With tensions rising between Japan and the United States over Japan's savage war of aggression against China, the Curtin government quickly took stock of Australia's defences. They were virtually non-existent. Most of the 2nd AIF troops were overseas fighting the Germans and Italians in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. The 8th Division was scattered across the northern approaches to Australia. Australia's Air Force was mostly in England serving beside the Royal Air Force in the defence of Britain. Australia's Navy was scattered around the world serving Britain's interests in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific operational theatres. The Australian Government recognised the increasing danger facing Australia from Japanese aggression and began to raise volunteer militia battalions for the defence of Australia. Those militia battalions were destined to play a vital role when Japan attacked Australia in January 1942.
The Australian response to the Japanese threat to Singapore
Despite assurances to successive Australian governments that the Singapore naval base was "impregnable", British defensive planning for Singapore had effectively not advanced from the era of World War I. Britain's so-called "impregnable bastion" at Singapore was a naval base in name only. There was no fleet stationed there, and it was defended only by a few squadrons of obsolete aircraft such as the Brewster Buffalo. The ten infantry brigades stationed in Malaya lacked heavy weapons, and in particular, were deficient in artillery and tanks. The powerful guns at Singapore naval base mostly faced the sea approaches to Singapore and the armour-piercing shells were useless to defend the island against air attack and Japanese troops advancing from the landward side. The British had made only minimal preparations to defend Singapore against an invasion by Japanese troops advancing from the landward side or against sustained air attacks launched from Japanese-occupied Indo-China or Japanese aircraft carriers. Despite giving continuing assurances to Australia that Singapore would be resolutely defended if the Japanese entered the war, the British had in fact consistently neglected its defences before the Japanese entered World War II, and continued to do so afterwards.
Japan appreciated the serious weaknesses in Singapore's defences, and about thirty minutes before its surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops began to land at Kota Bharu on the northern coast of British Malaya (now Malaysia). The Japanese quickly achieved air supremacy over Malaya and control of the surrounding seas. With that advantage, and employing classic flanking and encirclement tactics, elite jungle-trained Japanese troops advanced quickly down the Malayan peninsula towards Singapore.
WINSTON CHURCHILL - NO FRIEND TO AUSTRALIA
Although happy to take all the sailors, soldiers and airmen that Australia was prepared to place at his disposal for the defence of Britain, Churchill had no concern about Australia's fate when Japan's conquering armies menaced Australia. His assurances of British military support for Australia proved worthless, and he even resisted the return of Australian troops from the Middle East to defend their own country.
Although repeatedly assuring Australia's Prime Minister John Curtin of the British government's commitment to the defence of Singapore, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already written off the defence of Singapore as a lost cause when he was giving those assurances. Churchill was now only interested in saving Burma and India, and ignored pleas from Curtin for meaningful reinforcement for the defenders of Singapore. Although not admitting this to Curtin, Churchill was obsessed with defeating Germany and was prepared to abandon Australia to the Japanese. To ease Curtin's deepening concern for Australia's safety, and resist Australia withdrawing its military forces from Britain, North Africa, and the Middle East, Churchill assured Curtin that a British fleet would be dispatched to save Australia if Japan invaded in massive strength. There was no truth in the assurance. Churchill had no intention of sending a British fleet to save Australia from a Japanese invasion.
Curtin was becoming convinced during December 1941 that Churchill's assurances of military support for Australia against Japan were worthless, and he was not prepared to see Australia abandoned by the British to a Japanese invasion. On 26 December 1941, the Australian Prime Minister addressed the nation in a radio address that made it quite clear that Australia was in grave danger from the Japanese and reflected Curtin's disillusionment with Churchill's assurances that Britain would furnish powerful support if Australia was threatened with Japanese invasion. In the course of this famous speech, which was published in the Melbourne Herald newspaper on 27 December 1942, Curtin said,
The statement caused a sensation. Churchill was furious, and addressed an angry cable to Curtin. President Roosevelt mistakenly believed that Australia was a British colony in 1941, and felt that Curtin's speech smacked of disloyalty. When it was explained to Roosevelt later that Australia was an independent nation, the American President came to respect Curtin's strong leadership and patriotism.
On 14 March 1942, with British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies now occupied by Japanese troops, and the Japanese on Australia's doorstep, Curtin addressed the people of the United States in a famous radio message. The Australian Prime Minister urged Americans to stand with Australia to resist Japanese aggression. Curtin accurately reminded Americans of their own danger when he used these words:
Curtin did not need to address these words to the Commander in Chief of the United States Navy, Admiral Ernest J. King, who was already convinced of the importance of Australia to the United States and the compelling need to keep Australia an American ally and a bastion of freedom. Since his appointment in December 1941, following the Pearl Harbor disaster, Admiral King had been fighting the demand by Winston Churchill and the top United States generals that Australia be abandoned to the Japanese so that all military resources, including those of Australia, could be directed to the war against Germany.
It was not until the middle of 1942 that Curtin received concrete evidence that Churchill had been lying to him when he promised powerful British support to oppose a Japanese invasion of Australia. Curtin learned that Churchill had travelled to the United States shortly after Pearl Harbor and had persuaded the American President to give priority to the defeat of Germany. This involved treating the Japanese threat in the Pacific as a secondary priority. The American public was infuriated by the treacherous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and could not be told about the "Germany First" strategy. Adoption of Churchill's "Germany First" strategy effectively meant that Britain and the United States were abandoning Australia, the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies to Japanese occupation. Fortunately for Australia, Admiral King refused to accept that it should be abandoned to the Japanese.
The fall of Singapore
By 31 January 1942, the defenders of Singapore had been forced back by the Japanese to the island itself, and they cut the causeway connecting Singapore to the mainland. This also cut off the water supply to Singapore island from the mainland. On the night of 8-9 February, Japanese assault troops crossed the narrow stretch of water between the mainland and the island and secured several beachheads. Britain's so-called "impregnable bastion" was surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942.
Two brigades of the 8th Australian Infantry Division were lost with the fall of Singapore, and those Australians would endure cruel captivity under the Japanese. The battalions of the third brigade had been stationed as garrisons of island outposts across the northern approaches to Australia, and were lost when the Japanese captured Rabaul, Ambon and Timor. These Australians would also suffer cruel captivity at the hands of the Japanese.
Australia faces the Threat of a Japanese Invasion
At the end of February 1942, despite courageous resistance against overwhelming odds by British, Australian, American and Dutch forces, the advance of Japanese military forces across South-East Asia towards Australia appeared unstoppable.
When Prime Minister Curtin sought a response to his pleas for British military assistance to defend Australia against Japanese invasion, and mentioned the extent of the military assistance that Australia had provided to Britain in its struggle with Germany, Winston Churchill made it very clear to Curtin that Britain's highest priority was the defence of India, "The Jewel in the (British) Crown", and that no British military support would be provided for the defence of Australia.
On 8 March 1942, the Dutch surrendered the capital of the Dutch East Indies to the Japanese. By that time, most of the islands of their vast East Indies colony were already in Japanese hands, although heavily outnumbered independent Allied forces were still resisting the Japanese on some islands. The capture of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies provided Japan with the vast resources of oil, rubber, minerals and food that were one of the main reasons for Japan’s aggression.
The Dutch surrender left Australia as the last effective bastion against Japan in the South-West Pacific and exposed to the threat of a Japanese invasion. If the Japanese had immediately landed troops at Port Moresby or Darwin after the Dutch surrender, Australia would have had nothing to throw at them except raw militia recruits and a few obsolete aircraft.
Australia is saved from invasion by the Japanese Army!
In January 1942, Australia offered little in the way of economic resources to the Japanese, but senior admirals of Japan's Navy General Staff viewed Australia as a threat to Japan's newly conquered western Pacific empire, and they wanted to invade and occupy key areas of the Australian mainland. The admirals feared that the United States would be able to use Australia as a base to oppose further Japanese military aggression in the western Pacific region and to recover American territory already conquered by Japan.
Fortunately, by early March 1942, the Japanese Army had conquered and occupied so much territory from Burma to Australian New Guinea that it had overstretched its supply and manpower resources, and needed time to consolidate and fortify the boundaries of Japan's greatly expanded empire. Faced with this manpower shortage, the size of Australia, and transport problems, the Japanese generals refused to provide troops for an invasion of Australia at that time.
So, at a time when the Japanese Navy General Staff wanted to occupy key areas of the Australian mainland, and when Australia was ill-prepared to defend itself against a powerful and determined enemy, it appears to have been saved from invasion in March 1942 partly because the Australian mainland was so large, partly because the Japanese were running short of troops to occupy additional territory, and partly because of the difficulty of supplying them across a vast stretch of ocean.