The Invasion Debate
In his book Was there a Battle for Australia? (2006), the former Australian War Memorial historian, Dr Peter Stanley, has written:
The attack-on-Australia option was dead by the end of January 1942, before the fall of Singapore.
The meaning of the statement could not be clearer, but not everyone interested in the question of Japanese wartime intentions toward Australia agrees with Dr Stanley. It remains one of the enduring debates from the Pacific War, and the divided opinion revolves around the word ‘plan’ . What precisely is meant by a ‘plan’, and how is the word defined in the context of a proposed Japanese invasion in 1942?
The foundation of Dr Stanley’s statement rests on the reasoning that a Japanese plan for the invasion of Australia, formally constructed and appropriately authorised, has never been located. But this is a very narrow perspective when allowing for the huge and exceptionally complex Japanese military undertaking in the Pacific and Southeast Asia following the attack on Pearl Harbor. We will see that Dr Stanley’s definitive statement is very fragile, and it ignores evidence that pushes the invasion question well away from the apparent inability to locate relevant archival material.
A careful appraisal of Dr Stanley’s statement reveals a conclusion that is very curious, even astonishing. An extension of this wording would read:
There was not any plan for the Japanese to invade Australia after January 1942. We cannot locate any hard evidence, so therefore there was not a plan.
There is a lapse of reasoning here. A ship may have sunk in a particular area and searchers cannot find the wreck. According to the logic of Dr Stanley’s statement, the ship didn’t sink. This serious flaw in historical evaluation can be readily validated by the available contradicting and overwhelming evidence. It will be seen that Dr Stanley’s assertion should be more akin to:
There is not any confirmed written archival evidence supporting the Emperor’s authorisation for a Japanese plan to invade Australia. Without this approval, the invasion question requires an in-depth consideration of all other known factors to obtain a balanced view on this subject.
A component of the invasion debate is caught up in the totality of the Australia–Japan relationship prior to World War II. The war, of course, transformed this relationship, but while the bombing of Darwin and Broome, the submarine raid on Sydney Harbour and the shelling of Newcastle are all well documented, the question of Japan’s broader military intentions towards Australia remains controversial.
To the invasion question there has now been added a previously unexplored element – a single unheralded incident that was barely noticed at the time – Annette Wagner’s aerial photographic excursion to Newcastle. Knowing the motives of her mission presents a new instalment in the question of the Japanese intention for the southern continent.
Hashida’s Diary Giveaway
In addition to the military facts Major Hashida accumulated during his extensive Australian visit, his agenda included instructions to commence the exodus of Japanese civilians from Australia. Hirohito’s decision to go to war with the West had been delicately and subtly passed down to his army and navy chiefs, and it was time for planning the return to Japan of embassy and trading company staff and their families. Hashida’s diary noted:
21/2/40 A great number of Japanese women and children will depart on the 21st by the ‘SUWA MARU’ to Japan. Only Mitsui’s stand firm.
We may only guess at why Mitsui was not completely cooperative on the ‘return’ issue, but it appears most other trading firms complied. Had Military Intelligence previously speculated on the one-way movement of Japanese civilians, (and it would have), the capture of Hashida’s diary confirmed that Japan was destined, in the short term, for a war beyond Asia’s boundaries – a conflict that would necessarily include Australia.
Japan’s Strike South
Before examining the invasion debate further, we need to briefly review Japan’s naval expansion and Pacific territorial aspirations in the years between World War I and World War II. This was kick-started when the Japanese navy occupied the German Pacific territories (the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline island groups), following the commencement of hostilities in 1914.
The mandate from the League of Nations would transform the potential of Japanese naval influence in the Pacific with the addition of the vast ocean territory now under its control. Previously developed theoretical plans for war with the West, and a naval confrontation with the United States in particular, were dusted off and the new Pacific advantage became a cornerstone in the strategy for the future expected victory over the United States Pacific fleet.
Contrary to the League’s demand that the previously German-controlled islands of the South West Pacific remain open, Japan effectively halted foreign visitors and the world remained oblivious to the military expansion on the islands. This designed exclusion had been specifically banned under the mandate, but limiting the shipping in the islands to Japanese vessels ensured that all passengers could be vetted and controlled prior to leaving the shipping ports of origin in Japan.
One American to beat the odds on reaching the islands was the writer Willard Price. By the mid-1930s no Westerner had been granted permission to visit the mandated islands since the Japanese occupation began in 1914. Through some minor trickery of his own, Price managed to land on several of the islands, and although incessantly accompanied by authorities, noted military preparations underway that were strictly prohibited by the League of Nations. In his book detailing the journey ( Japan’s Islands of Mystery, published in 1944), Price noted the reason for Australia’s apprehension following the Japanese absorption of the Micronesian islands:
Micronesia extended the Japanese arm to the equator. It placed the Japanese fingers within easy reach of the Philippines, New Guinea, Borneo, Java and even Australia … The southern limit of the Japanese Mandate was shown to be the equator – and the northern limit of the Australian Mandate was also the equator. Along that line, for some 1,400 miles, Australian and Japanese sovereignty met17.
The mandate from the League of Nations – judged aggressively by the Japanese as being a free transfer of sovereignty – became the first phase of the planning for the islands, the acquisition. The second phase was the economic exploitation process, which would produce an immigration outlet as well as food resources for Japan, with little regard for the native populations already on the islands. This was to be accomplished by the government encouraging migration from the overcrowded Japanese home islands to the Pacific colonies. The third phase was the covert building of military infrastructure – roads, port facilities and airstrips – and finally the complete militarisation of the islands. Japan’s springboard for aggression against the West, gifted to them by Germany’s offensive in World War I and subsequently confirmed by a weak League of Nations, would then be complete.
But was Japan’s future aggression in the Pacific to include occupying continental Australia? Historians have unsuccessfully searched records for definitive documentary evidence to cast light on the question. Without the hard evidence of authorised and written corroboration, the Stanley argument has emerged that Japanese invasion plans for Australia did not exist.
There are, however, commanding instances in this discussion which cannot be ignored. Together, they create an entirely different manifesto from which the invasion debate may be measured – and seriously redefined.
1: Removing the Evidence
Immediately following Japan’s surrender, and before the arrival of American forces, there was a mass destruction of pre-war and wartime documents. Any written evidence attaching to the Emperor and members of the royal family was a priority for disposal. Protecting the major war criminals was a further urgency. The Japanese had witnessed the legal developments in the future prosecution of German war criminals, so very little written evidence of military importance awaited the American arrival. It is possible, perhaps likely, that Japanese plans for Australia were included in the destruction.
2: Japan’s Destiny Re-affirmed – Australia in Plan B
The initial Japanese plan for aggression and occupation following Pearl Harbor probably did not include Australia. But because an array of factors can distort the accuracy of military projections, it is likely that the timing of an invasion of Australia would have been subject to the state of the Japanese army and naval forces following the completion of the initial military objective, which included Papua New Guinea. Port Moresby would serve as the focal point from which the invasion would be planned and military and naval forces dispatched.
Japan’s global military aspirations are often neglected under the weight of post-War politics and the new world of strategic alliances. The fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 established a triumphant mood in Japan of almost hysterical proportions. Courtney Browne, biographer of Japan’s wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, wrote in his book, Tojo – The Last Banzai:
It did seem, as Toshikazu Kase (a senior foreign affairs official) observed, that in an incredibly short time since Japan had gone to war, the Swastika of Nazi Germany and the Rising Sun of Japan were destined to meet in the Persian Gulf. And Australia and New Zealand were to accept the inevitable. No reliance, Tojo told them, could be placed on the British or Americans for protection.
As for a Japanese landing in Australia, Browne noted:
‘The Supreme Command was divided between the army and navy,’ Tojo admitted after the war, ‘and they would not work in unison.’ Originally the plan had been to carry out combined operations for landing troops in northern Australia. This was now dropped because of the refusal of the army high command to provide the necessary number of divisions.
Courtney Browne states clearly that Tojo admitted after the war there was a plan to invade Australia, and the only inhibition was the army’s belief that adequate forces for the operation could not be made available at that time.
The formal document encompassing the details was probably destroyed as in 1 above.
Another Tojo quotation from Browne assesses the Japanese invasion during a speech to the Diet (Japanese parliament) on 27 May 1942. Tojo was referring to the Battle of the Coral Sea fought three weeks earlier.
It had, he said, ‘led to the disappearance of the naval forces defending Australia’, which was now ‘the “orphan of the Pacific”, helplessly awaiting Japanese attack’.
Tojo’s speech was undermined by the important fact that the Japanese had lost the Battle of the Coral Sea, not won it, but it confirmed Japan’s intention to invade Australia.
3: The Yamamoto Plan
To accept the argument that Japan did not have an invasion plan for Australia necessitates the insertion of ‘official’ or ‘authorised’ before ‘invasion’. There were probably numerous invasion plans for Australia circulating around the Imperial Headquarters inside the Emperor’s palace in Tokyo, but none received approval from Hirohito, who authorised all major military operations.
One of these proposals deserves mention.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the fleet commander of the Japanese navy, and his leadership prestige went well beyond his iconic status in Japan. His naval planning for the Pearl Harbor attack, by necessity, was accompanied by subsidiary preparations for Japanese naval operations following the attack.
Yamamoto knew the ‘bigger picture’ campaigns to be commenced following Pearl Harbor. He understood the ‘Grand Plan’ of Japan’s future aggression. He knew Australia was ear-marked for invasion – at some future date. But he also understood, more than most Japanese, the industrial capacity of the United States, and he was conscious of the need to avoid a prolonged conflict with a nation whose military productive capabilities significantly exceeded that of Japan.
Yamamoto’s strategy for an invasion of Australia emerged in February 1942 following the initial successes of the Japanese army’s southern push, well ahead of schedule. To invade Australia now, the Japanese would benefit by controlling the entire western Pacific rim. This would present the Americans with the loss of critical bases and staging areas. With Australia occupied, the Japanese would instal a southern defensive perimeter with air bases from the East Indies, through New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. The tactical disadvantage to United States forces could therefore be enormous, and Australia’s contribution in the war against Japan would cease to exist. The reasoning behind advocating a Japanese occupation of Australia made military common sense.
Yamamoto passed his plan on to General Tomoyuki Yamashita (the ‘Tiger of Malaya’) whose army had defeated the British in Malaya and Singapore. Yamashita believed the plan was feasible.
The historian David Bergamini, in his book, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, describes the essence of the strategy:
Despite the vastness of Australian distances, he (Yamashita) felt that it would be feasible to land a division almost immediately at Darwin and thrust hard and fast down the north-south railroad and road links toward Adelaide and Melbourne on the south coast. Later, he proposed, a second division could be put ashore on the east coast to leapfrog its way from port to port down toward Sydney.
Ultimately, the Yamamoto plan was quietly rejected by Hirohito. Bergamini states the reasons for this rejection:
… a Japanese force would have to depend entirely on supplies from the rear. The Japanese merchant fleet was already taxed to the utmost without taking on new assignments. Also, if the United States became alarmed and poured Flying Fortresses into Sydney, it would be difficult to maintain air superiority. On the Australian badlands Japanese columns would be fearfully vulnerable to long-range, high-level air attack.
And the Japanese Commander-in-Chief arbitrates:
On reviewing the arguments of both sides, Hirohito decided that the invasion of Australia could be postponed until after the conquest of Burma. In terms of global strategy and of dividing the world with Hitler, an advance toward India and the Middle East took precedence over the capture of Australasian land’s end.
Hirohito may have ordered the postponement of the Australian invasion, but that was all – just a limited postponement. The Japanese campaign to occupy New Guinea and the islands in the immediate region was expected to serve two important purposes – to defeat the American naval forces in the South West Pacific, i.e. to finish what was commenced at Pearl Harbor, and to be positioned to invade Australia when circumstances allowed.
While the Yamamoto invasion plan was rejected, it was nevertheless highly significant in the question of Japan’s intentions for Australia. Yamamoto was the Japanese navy’s head of operations, and undoubtedly knew the broad plan for the Pacific conquests. He had to know this in order to contribute to the navy’s essential role in Japan’s war aims. Had Australia not figured in this strategy, it is highly unlikely he would have considered the operation, and even less likely that he would have interfered with the army’s plans by involving General Yamashita who, after capturing Singapore, was elevated to super-hero status in Japan.
In April 1943, while undertaking a tour of inspection near Bougainville, Yamamoto was killed in an American aerial ambush.
Offering more than a hint as to the Japanese political intentions for Australia were speeches by Prime Minister Tojo to the Diet in January and February 1942. As Japanese troops stormed down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore, Tojo announced that should Australia resist, it will be ‘crushed’. This did not represent a ‘plan’, but the meaning was clear.
Four months later, Yamamoto raised the Australian strategy again in plans to be implemented immediately following a Japanese victory in what would later be known as The Battle of Midway – one of the great decisive battles in World War II. For the Japanese, this historic naval encounter was to be a launching pad of major proportions. The American author, Edwin P
Hoyt, in his book Japan’s War – The Great Pacific Conflict, has quoted from the Japanese historian Agawa Hiroyuki’s biography of Yamamoto, The Reluctant Admiral:
The Midway plan encompassed only the occupation of Midway and the Aleutian Islands. But Admiral Yamamoto’s plans were far more grandiose. Midway would be taken in June. Afterwards the battleships of the Combined Fleet would return to Japan, but the cruisers and carriers and destroyers would go to Truk18, to prepare for the July capture of New Caledonia and the Fiji Islands. Admiral Nagumo’s carrier striking force, no longer inhibited by the sunk American fleet, would strike Sydney, Melbourne and other south-east coast Australian cities. Then the naval forces would reassemble at Truk and prepare for the invasion of Johnston Island and the Hawaiian Islands in August.
It is evident that the Japanese invasion of Australia was subject only to timing and resource availability. It may well have been that a formally approved plan did not exist, but had Guadalcanal and New Guinea fallen, and the Battle of the Coral Sea been lost, Yamamoto’s proposals would have been surveyed by Hirohito and his advisors in a very different manner.
Matsuoka’s Faux Pas
Not all the Japanese gusto for invading Australia was reserved for the period during the military successes following Pearl Harbor. Hints at Japan’s greater ambitions had been expressed in various ways since the war with China began in 1937.
On 25 February 1941, in the midst of Major Hashida’s spy trip around Australia, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, stated in an address to the Diet:
While it is difficult to conduct political affairs according to advocated ideals, I believe that the white race must cede Oceania to the Asiatics.
In the context of Japan’s sphere of immediate interest, ‘Oceania’ clearly meant Australia and New Zealand. The following day the Japanese Consul in Sydney was asked for a clarification of Matsuoka’s statement. He replied there had been a ‘mistranslation’. There was, however, very little to mistranslate from. It was clear that Australia, one way or another, was scheduled to enter Japan’s empire.
4: The Race War
In a warped parallel to Hitler’s code of racial ‘superiority’, the doctrines of the day in Japan alleged the Japanese people possessed a racial, cultural and spiritual supremacy over anyone else, including the Germans. This was fundamental to the principles contained in the national ideology. The racial pre-eminence factor was accepted in Japan without question or debate, with the exception of those educated with transnational experiences. In fighting the Americans, this ‘advantage’ would be translated into a unified Japanese fighting force of far greater quality than could be mustered by the fragmented mixed-race opposition.
5: Mapping the Invasion
All military invasions require maps, and the Japanese possessed what was needed for the invasion of Australia prior to the commencement of hostilities at Pearl Harbor. An example is a detailed 1938 military map of Darwin referred to by Robert Clancy (author’s brother) in his book Maps that Shaped Australia:
The Japanese had amassed extensive information on Australia which included Australian military maps overprinted in Japanese. The Darwin map was obtained covertly and reprinted with Japanese characters. It contained important artillery correction data relevant to the protection of the port.
Included in the Japanese collection of Australian maps was a series of aerial photographs detailing the port of Newcastle, obtained in April 1939.
Japan’s New Continental Colony – Australia
Accompanying Japan’s military conquests was the seemingly innocent but convenient political propaganda of ‘Asia for the Asians’. What was left unsaid by the Japanese invaders was just which Asians would benefit from the policy and who would be subjugated. Also left unsaid was the future of Western influences in Asia, which were earmarked for extinction. To allow Australia and New Zealand to exist undisturbed at the base of the new Japanese empire was inconceivable. Allowing these two countries to remain independent would be contrary to the spirit of the principles the leaders of Japan deemed to comprise the national destiny.
Whether it was to be sooner or later, Australians and New Zealanders would have suffered the same fate as others under Japanese control.
Following the successful military occupation of Australia, the population would be subjected to some form of Japanese administration – initially by the military. Kennosuke Sato was a man who knew a great deal about Australia and was expected, by sources familiar with his role in Japanese militarism during the 1930s, to be appointed the civilian administrator of the southern continental flank of the new Japanese empire.
Sato had received a western education in the United States, England and Germany. He was a feature writer for a Japanese newspaper, and also wrote several books on contemporary Japan and the West. He travelled to Australia in 1935 and remained for five months collecting facts and figures for an ‘information book’. He also cultivated associations with several politicians and business leaders while adding his influence to organisations positioned to offer moral support for past and future Japanese aggression.
Sato’s wartime activities were linked to the brutal interrogation of captured Australian army and air force officers as he unsuccessfully actioned his task of grooming individuals for serving in the management of the proposed Japanese occupation and administration following Australia’s capitulation.
The following extract is from an article titled ‘The Jap who Expected to Govern Australia’ in the 2 January 1946 edition of the Melbourne Herald.
Why is Ken Sato, who was to have been Japanese administrator of Australia, at large and not under arrest as a war criminal? That is what Australian officers who suffered at his instigation now chiefly want to know about him.
Sato told Denis Warner, in a despatch to the Herald yesterday from Osaka, that Australia’s surrender was expected to follow the projected landing in Queensland, the capture of Brisbane and Sydney, and the thrust towards Melbourne.
This was, according to Sato, the Japanese project for early 1942. It was deferred when the invasion fleet was halted at Rabaul while the Japanese secured their new lines of communication …
This is another version of the same theme in the invasion debate. According to Sato, Australia was scheduled for Japanese occupation, but precisely how and when only depended on suitable military circumstances.
Peter Stanley’s statement that ‘no plan’ existed, taken to a literal extreme, is probably correct – but it is very misleading. His mistake has been to omit the reality that had the conditions suited the Japanese, there would have been an invasion. Only the uncertainties of military risk and priorities in other areas of conflict interfered with the opportunity for a finalised and emperor-approved ‘plan’.
It is undeniable that invading Australia was an issue raised several times by people senior enough to have proposals considered at the highest level. These proposals were rejected on the basis of doubts as to immediate success. They were not rejected for any other reason.
Renovating History – The Cost of Compliance
How did the ‘no plan’ historians get it wrong? The answer is in the immediate post-war period when the wartime emperor was sanitised by both the occupying Americans and the Japanese – for totally different reasons, but with the same outcome.
The decision not to place Emperor Hirohito on trial for war crimes had its origins in both the need to ‘leave something’ for Japan’s long-suffering and downtrodden population, and the changed international order following World War II. The American fear of a popular uprising should Hirohito be treated as a criminal also weighed heavily on the decision. So the Emperor was now transformed into a man who stoically endured the indignities of having military thugs coerce him into signing documents approving Japan’s military ventures and the suppression of the Southeast Asian people. This is a convenient standpoint that is far from the truth, but dovetails in well for the historical faint-hearted.
The evidence supporting the Emperor’s supposed concerns in the growth of his country’s militarism is highly subjective. We do not know if such reports were genuine or later issued and ‘diarised’ to protect Hirohito from wartime responsibilities. So we should ignore all these doubtful ‘recollections’ and assess Hirohito not on what he supposedly said, but only on his actions.
Under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, terminated in 1945, the emperor was invested with enormous power. The first chapter of the constitution is devoted to the emperor, referred to as ‘The Tenno’, or deity in the Shinto religion. The emperor was a ‘heavenly sovereign’, a god, so much so that the common people were forbidden to look upon his physical being.
Article III of the Constitution states, ‘The Tenno is sacred and inviolable’, i.e. the emperor is a living god beyond censure or fault.
The emperor’s association with the armed forces is expressed in three articles:
Article XI – The Tenno has the supreme command of the Army and Navy.
Article XII – The Tenno determines the organisation and peace standing of the Army and Navy.
Article XIII – The Tenno declares war, makes peace, and concludes treaties.
This was the approval basis on which Japan, until its defeat in 1945, conducted its military operations. It was necessary for the emperor, an all -powerful living god, to authorise actions by the armed forces on foreign soil, and to prepare the army and navy for future undertakings, which he did.
Considering the above, what corrective actions did Hirohito undertake in 1931 when his army undertook military incursions in Manchuria? None. What did he do to halt the Japanese invasion of northern China in 1937?
Nothing. When his troops murdered 200,000 people during the infamous attack on Nanking in December 1937 what was the emperor’s response? Silence, but an uncle of Hirohito, Prince Asaka, was a commander of the forces responsible for the massacre.
The Emperor’s approvals for Japanese military expansion during the 1930s were unmistakable, and his endorsement of the great naval expansion from mid-1935 was equally apparent. When fresh international condemnation focused on Japan’s appalling military conduct, Hirohito may have edged towards addressing the more outrageous of the incidences, but never quite enough to hinder the ultimate goals.
An insight into Hirohito’s war plans was evident in the ‘Imperial Rescript’, or Proclamation from the Throne, signed by Hirohito and issued on 8 December 1941, formally declaring war on ‘the United States of America and the British Empire’. The bulk of the proclamation is a factually farcical summary of Japanese propaganda of the previous twenty years. The final paragraph, however, includes a revealing ambition of Hirohito, which for a decade or more he had quietly nurtured through his immense but elusive powers.
… We19 rely upon the loyalty and courage of Our subjects in Our confident expectation that the task bequeathed by Our forefathers will be carried forward …
‘The task bequeathed by Our forefathers’ – just six words divulging to the world that the historical roots of achieving Japan’s destiny lay in the expansion of the Empire by military force. When Hirohito issued the proclamation he had been stirred by assurances from his military leaders that Japan would win the war. The success of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor had endorsed those assurances.
Hakko Ichiu – All Under One Roof – Japan’s Roof
The term Hakko Ichiu was coined in the early twentieth century to describe, with varying degrees of interpretation, the role of the ‘pure’ Japanese people as the righteous leading light to the remainder of the world. This was transformed by the militarism of the 1930s to something more sinister. The ‘leading light’ was translated into close proximity to aggression, occupation and slavery. Japan’s destiny demanded this and the term inserted neatly into the aspirations of the armed forces.
Hakko Ichiu received a full endorsement from Hirohito and the royal family. As the Japanese people were accorded a divine origin – unlike anyone else – and the emperor was a god – unlike anyone else – the idea of world dominance would appear, to any patriotic Japanese person, a natural progression for humanity. It presented the Japanese militarists with the ‘right’ added to the ‘might’.
This is the substance of how the ‘no plan for Australia’ advocates have misread Japanese history in the period 1900 to 1945. There was a plan for the Japanese to occupy Australia, but it was probably not a neat and detailed military operation with meticulous logistics and the appropriate authorisation. The plan was integral to the objective of embracing the future enlarged Japanese Empire. But the true measure of this could not be fully comprehended due to a large number of historical interpretations of events prior, or subsequent to, Japan’s war of destiny – the great Pacific conflict. Very quickly, however, Japan became yesterday’s enemy, and correspondingly many of the unpalatable deeds of the Emperor and his advisors were buried in the field of political convenience.
A Partnership Paradox – The Japanese in Australia 1890–1941
Australia’s early relations with Japan began when some enterprising businessmen recognised potential trading benefits available through engaging with the emerging nation. This occurred in the 1850s, very early indeed in the modern era of direct trade by Japan with Western nations. But a visit to Japan in 1870 would have revealed an industrially backward, feudal, and class-entrenched society. Daily life was governed by social and political values not only at a huge variance to the West, but also to other Asian countries.
A Westerner, travelling slowly between towns and villages, would have noticed something else. The arable land was completely utilised with the cultivation of rice and other crops, and small foundries and factories manufactured metal products and construction materials. The production of silk was huge. A sense of opportunity to buy and sell would have greeted any astute trader prepared to undertake a challenging journey to the newly opened Japan, with its unique identity and violent history.
From about 1890 limited numbers of Japanese trickled into Australia. The reasons were usually economic as the Japanese government worked to take control of the nation’s trade with the building of a significant merchant fleet and the encouraged growth of the large trading houses, or zaibatsu. The Japanese presence in Australia centred on the import-export operations of these companies, usually located in Sydney or Melbourne. Several small clusters of Japanese found work in regional areas and industries such as the pearling industry in Broome, or in a variety of small businesses in the larger population centres. But it would be names such as Mitsui, Kanematsu, Mitsubishi, Tashima and Iwai that would dominate the Japanese economic impact in Australia, exporting wool, minerals and farm produce to Japan, and importing back cotton yarn, textiles, toys, electrical goods, machine tools, crockery and a variety of household products.
Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the relationship between Japanese residents and the general Australian community was usually cordial. The Japanese had shaped a commercial and social level of conduct that most Australians respected. They were law-abiding, commercially reliable and provided good service to their Australian suppliers and buyers on both product delivery and price. Marriages between Japanese men and local women were not rare. It was not unusual for deportation notices issued to Japanese businessmen at the expiry of a visa term to be appealed and supported by substantial community petitions.
An example of the relationship between Japanese residents and the broad population is found in an early twentieth century road map of the pleasant Blue Mountains town of Leura, about 100 kilometres west of Sydney. Just north of the Great Western Highway was a cluster of streets with names including Togo Parade, Iwasaki Parade, Ito Parade, and Tokio Road. The streets were named following the visits to Sydney of the Japanese naval training squadron in 1903 and 1906 and echoed the regard held for the Japanese at that time. Unsurprisingly, the street names were changed shortly after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. They remain today as Churchill Street, Roosevelt Street, Victory Parade, and the like.
However, there was another side to the Australian-Japanese relationship. While the behaviour of Japanese residents may have been exemplary, the conduct of Japan’s rulers was, at least in the eyes of Australian defence strategists, alarming. The stunning victory scored by the Japanese over Russia in 1905 commenced a serious security and intelligence unease that would increase each time the Rising Sun was raised in new territory, where the legal or moral right to do so had not previously existed.
World War I brought the Micronesian Islands into the Japanese Empire. The Manchurian incursion in 1931 created the puppet state of Manchukuo. Open warfare with China commenced in 1937, by which time all of Southeast Asia looked on fearfully at the ruthless military conquests around them. Accompanying these expansionist policies was the Japanese retreat from international agreements. Included in this withdrawal was the naval treaty known as the Washington Conference of 1921 in which the capital ships of the American, British and Japanese navies were restricted by proportion. The decision by Hirohito in 1934 not to renew this treaty was the signal for a massive naval expansion, a prerequisite for war with the West.
By the close of 1937 Japanese militarism in China had callously exposed to the world its aggression and viciousness. Fears in Australia were intensified and defence planning was stepped up.
Campaigning for the Emperor
From 1930, when Japan was undecided as to which path its aggression would take (Siberia had been a serious option), significant effort was injected into marketing propaganda within nations of interest. The Manchurian invasion in 1931 and later the open invasion of China were accompanied by international propaganda campaigns – even the atrocities committed at Nanking were imaginary, said the Japanese. After all, their objective in Asia was peace and goodwill. Government officials could make these statements, but support of such propaganda was vital in avoiding an unwanted conflict with the West – until, that is, Japan launched the Pearl Harbor attack.
Disseminating Japanese propaganda in Australia was the responsibility of consular officials who sought and nurtured suitable outlets. Included in these were journalists, Chambers of Commerce, compliant or corrupt individuals, businesses and, more alarmingly, politicians and their close associates.
The noted historian, Barbara Winter, portrays in her book, The Most Dangerous Man in Australia, the disturbing degree of Japanese penetration into New South Wales politics in the early 1930s.
In June 1940, Vice-Consul Kenichi Otabe told Kenneth Easton Cook, a deep-cover intelligence agent, that some politicians were not above accepting bribes … and Joseph Lamaro, State Attorney-General in the Lang government, had a ‘back door entrance’ to the Japanese community, including the Consulate. Military Intelligence phone taps showed that Lamaro was a friend of Sleeman. Indeed, through Sleeman, several of Lang’s colleagues in government were tainted with Japanese influence and money.
John Sleeman was a scheming businessman who freely embarked upon, among other dubious activities, underhand services on behalf of the Japanese Consulate in Sydney. He was ‘corruptly close’ to Labor Party identities Jack Lang and Eddie Ward.
Whatever the extent of dodgy relationships between the Japanese and Australian politics of the era, one unpleasant certainty derives from it. Beneath the intrigues of the politicians were layers of people, with various motives, who contributed assistance to an enemy-in-waiting.
Participating in one of these ‘layers’ was a businessman turned soldier, William John Scott. In his misguided understanding of Japanese intentions, Scott diligently supported the Japanese government line through organisations such as the Australia–Japan Society. The big danger with Scott was his appointment into the Military Intelligence service until he was transferred into a regular army unit. In an ironic twist, reports exist in Annette Wagner’s Military Intelligence file that were signed off by Scott, as well as other memoranda which were initialled by him.
There is a suggestion that Scott drifted to the Japanese through his known dread of Communism – but if so, it was an empty argument. He clearly lacked the necessary understanding to perceive the difference between dealing with a real enemy and matching political wits with a Communist system the free world could live with.
As the large Japanese naval task force commenced its historic route across the Pacific towards the Hawai an Islands in November 1941, intelligence agents observed smoke pouring from the chimneys of the Japanese Consulate in Sydney. They noted the unseasonal smoke, but the reason would have eluded them. The purpose, however, would not have escaped the attention of Captain Eric Nave, an Australian naval intelligence officer, who had broken the Japanese consular code known as J-19. He had decoded a message from Tokyo to the Japanese Consulate in Melbourne, received on 19 November 1941, referring to ‘the pressure of the international situation’. The message advised that should pre-arranged weather reports be issued during Japanese news broadcasts, codes and documents were to be destroyed. The Sydney consulate had received the weather reports, and acted accordingly.
As the Japanese armada slipped out of its secret pre-arranged moorings, Hirohito’s fateful decision was locked in, and in the true Samurai tradition of surprising the enemy to gain the initial advantage, he had ordered his navy to destroy Pearl Harbor.
Annette’s Imperial Flight
The subject of Japan’s intent toward Australia in the Pacific War now has a new initiative – Annette’s flight for the Emperor. By inserting her contribution into the formula of probabilities, a loop is closed. The result is clearer. Australia was destined for Japanese occupation – but only when the war situation allowed.
FOOTNOTES
17 An American journalist, Willard Price lived in Japan from 1933 to 1938, working as a newspaper and magazine correspondent. His journey through the mandated islands drew Japanese suspicion that he was spying for the United States, and in 1999 he acknowledged that this was correct. It is not known if Price’s motive was solely patriotic or whether he was on the US military’s payroll.
18 The huge lagoon at Truk in the Caroline Islands sheltered the Japanese navy’s largest base in the region.
19 ‘We’ and ‘Our’ refer to Hirohito personally.