… any large scale evacuation at the present time will be ill-advised and contrary to the best interests of the country.
– Town Clerk’s Office, Sydney, February 1942
The Allies did not consider Australia at risk, The British Admiralty appearing under the impression Japan was too involved with China to be a threat. Churchill advised the Australian War Cabinet as late as August 1940, that in the event of a Japanese invasion of Australia, ‘… we would then cut our losses in the Mediterranean and sacrifice every interest, except only the defence and feeding of this Island, on which all depends, and would proceed in good time to your aid …’
Geoffrey Brooke in his book, Singapore’s Dunkirk, says on page seven: When Churchill was on his way to meet Roosevelt at Placentia Bay in August 1941 and was asked whether he thought the Japanese would attack Malaya, he replied, ‘No I don’t think so. And if they do, they will find they have bitten off more than they could chew’.
Australian civilians had their invasion fears fuelled by obvious signs of war as they went about their daily lives. Refugees arrived constantly. In December 1941, five hundred women were hastily evacuated from Salamaua, leaving half prepared Christmas cakes and puddings in their kitchens. They arrived in a very distressed state in Cairns to tell their stories.
On Friday, 13 March, 1942, Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, issued the following statement: In view of the present unsettled state and the problems of food supply, all persons not normally resident in Ceylon, who are not employed on essential war work, must arrange to leave as soon as passages are available. This includes the wives and children of naval, air force and military personnel, also non-Ceylonese women residents with young children. Gillian Branagan was one of these children, evacuated twice:
My sister was evacuated from Canonbury hospital, Darling Point to Fairbridge Farm, Molong. My mother and I took a house there for a year and visited the farm on weekends in a horse-drawn sulky. I think it was 1941. This was a steep learning curve for my mother as we’d come from Ceylon where she’d had servants.
In New South Wales, pressure was put on the authorities.
HON WJ McKELL
PREMIER NEW SOUTH WALES
CANBERRA
RESPONDING TO REQUISITION HAVE CONVENED
PUBLIC MEETING TOWN HALL EIGHT O CLOCK
THURSDAY NIGHT FIFTH INSTANT STOP MY
OPINION IMPERATIVE PREMIER OR HIS ACCREDITED
REPRESENTATIVE ATTEND TO BE FIRST SPEAKER TO
EXPLAIN STATE PLAN EVACUATION ALLAY PUBLIC
UNREST MANIFEST STOP EXPLANATION IN BROAD
PRINCIPLES GOVERNMENTS PROPOSALS ESSENTIAL
FOR PRESERVATION PUBLIC MORALE OWING
TO ABSENCE OF INFORMATION OF AUTHENTIC
CHARACTER ANY EXISTENT CONSIDERED
PLAN STOP
CRICK
LORD MAYOR SYDNEY - WIRE SENT 4/2/42
This meeting was largely in response to a letter from The Teachers’ Federation, who were continually vocal about evacuation and the continuing education of displaced children. On 29 January, 1942, they had sent the following to Stanley Crick, the Lord Mayor of Sydney:
Dear Sir,
We the following citizens of this city request you to call a public meeting on Thursday February 5,1942, at 8 pm for the purpose of considering the question of evacuation of civilians from vulnerable areas, yours faithfully … The following signatures included The Federation President and 16 administrative members and 18 signatures from Phillip Street, (probably lawyers).
The bureaucrats appeared bereft of ideas about evacuation, but nervous about the situation, as is shown by the telegram above, a speedy request (29 January was a Thursday) to the citizen’s demands.
From the Town Clerk’s Office, Sydney, February 1942:
‘… any large scale evacuation at the present time will be ill-advised and contrary to the best interests of the country.’
‘Let us, too,’ ran the editorial in the Riverina Advertiser on Friday, 30 January, 1942, ‘direct a little constructive criticism … against those who have charge of evacuation arrangements, or lack of them. By this time, the state government in close cooperation with the Federation authorities should have had everything in readiness, all arrangements complete for a smooth, quick evacuation of women and children inland and others away from the coastal areas. But is there any such plan? There is not. If anything happened tomorrow, I can visualise the disorder, chaos and panic which would result. No-one knows where to go, how to get there or what to do.’
Meanwhile, all over Australia, small groups of people went into action. ‘Following on recent activities in connection with the proposed evacuation scheme of soldier’s wives and children to this district,’ writes the Murrumburrah Signal, we have to report that the 2/lst Pioneer Battalion Comforts Fund committee have new finalised arrangements for the taking over of the Carrington and Doncaster Hotels at Harden, and the Commercial Hotel at Murrumburrah. Mrs. O’Malley Wood (President) together with several members of her committee arrived in Harden on Wednesday morning and a small number of evacuees were accommodated the same afternoon. A further party of approximately 170 evacuees will arrive today (Friday) and during next week an additional 200 will be accommodated. The evacuees will bring all their personal belongings, bed linen, blankets, and cutlery. Families will be kept together as far as possible. The rooms at the Carrington Hotel will be turned into dormitories for boys. The cooking will be done by the mothers on a roster system under the supervision of two head cooks. The evacuees will have their own entrance to the hotel, which will carry on its bar business as usual’.
‘Moree will give a warm welcome to as many families as the town can accommodate,’ said a Mr Cavanagh. ‘Many of the mothers I have interviewed have to complete their affairs before they can leave Sydney, but it is expected that family groups will be sent from the city all next week. Half a dozen families left on yesterday’s train.’
The Editorial in the Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 December, 1941 was entitled, ‘If the children must go away’. It ran in part, ‘When the mothers of England had to send their children into the country for safety, a sigh of sympathy ran round the globe. The going away of the children was the greatest heartache of all, and Australian mothers, as they sang their children to sleep, thanked God they had been spared that. Now they are facing the same heartache themselves. From many of the danger points, parents have already sent their youngsters to relatives or friends in safer districts. In several states, authorities are finalising their plans to evacuate youngsters from threatened areas. Some mothers have been able to go with their children … these are the lucky ones. The others face as sad a parting as life can hold.’ The article called on parents to steel themselves if the authorities demand evacuation.
In New South Wales, there was a flurry of activity, most of which seems to have been a delegation process. The Federal government delegated to the state governments, who delegated to councils. Councils consulted with bodies like the National Emergency Services and further delegated tasks and held meetings. In the metropolitan area, it was decided rest, emergency, feeding centres and local depots for food, clothing and general supplies, would be set up and a central control would survey the population to determine how many may need to be evacuated and which houses could be requisitioned for bomb victims or those fleeing danger spots. Evacuation registers were set up with cards for each household. Looking through the cards for western Sydney, which requested full names, gender, age, religion, occupation and state of health, a picture of overcrowding and poor health emerges along with unwillingness to open their doors. ‘No spare floor space,’ was often scribbled on the cards.
In Sydney, armbands and windscreen stickers, red with ‘EV’ stenciled in black were made available to authorised personnel. The President, Mayor, and Town Clerk said they all wanted one.
Cigarette cards dwindled and died because of paper supplies. Just prior to the war, children collected many with war themes. Besides the different ships, tanks, weapons, and regiments, there were civilian themes: Choosing your Refuge Room, Rendering Your Refuge Room Gas-Proof, Making a Door Gas-Proof, Window Protection, Window Protection Against Blast, Types of Splinter-Proof Wall, Protecting Your Windows - A Sandbag Defence, Equipping your Refuge Room, Equipping Your Refuge Room, A Garden Dug-Out, Incendiary Bomb and its Effect, Incendiary Bomb Cooling Down, and so on.
A partial blackout, called by some a brownout was ordered by the government in New South Wales from July to December 1941. Advertising and floodlights were banned, shop windows and display boards darkened. Outside lights were forbidden on homes and wardens tapped on doors and windows at telltale chinks of light. There were no night time sports fixtures. Older Australians knew pasting strips of brown paper across glass helped in a bomb blast. Cars crept along with slatted and hooded headlights, white stripes painted along their sides. No maps or forecasts were given. The Land urged its readers to use a rainfall registration chart for 1942, provided free for its readers, because of the Government’s decision to restrict the publication of weather information and rainfall details. Restrictions on weather information were taken for security reasons after the outbreak of war with Japan, because it could aid the enemy. Farmers could keep their own record for farming purposes.
School children bought War Savings Certificates and Treasury notes from five shillings upwards. You could not ignore the signs of war, picking your way through sandbagged public buildings, riding on camouflaged buses, and seeing coastline gun batteries and observation posts. You dug your own backyard shelter.
Bev Kingston and her family remained staunchly behind as their friends and neighbours left:
We sat it out in Manly, me and Mum under the dining room table, Mum said there were too many spiders in the air raid shelter.
Cliffs and beautiful beaches had a menacing air, with rolls of barbed wire and anti-tank devices, a large metal gate pulled back daily to allow people onto the beach. Some parents were frightened of mines and would not let their children on beaches.
Kate Riseley, Archivist, Shore School, North Sydney:
One of the boys who was evacuated, Jim Creer, was on weekend leave one time and was staying at a hotel in North Sydney. That night he had to evacuate the hotel because it was struck by bullets from a Japanese submarine!
The newspapers were full of fifth column activity. September 1945, Adelaide News:
Japanese plans to land troops in Australia may have been based on information sent by a Japanese spy who before the war stayed at a Brisbane hotel. That is the opinion of some of Australia’s best secret service agents. The Jap’s spying tour through Queensland became known to the secret service because of the astuteness of a chambermaid at the hotel in which the Jap stayed. The chambermaid had been cleaning the spy’s room when she overturned a big case. It was unlocked and from it spilled hundreds of pictures. She glanced at a few of the markings, and phoned what was then the equivalent of the war time security service. A detective made quick plans and before the Jap had returned to his room that night photographic copies had been taken of all his documents and pictures. Landing spots important among these were his surveys and notes on the Iron Range area of Cape York Peninsula. Landing spots, routes, water supplies, and other facilities were noted. When the Allied fleets beat back the Japanese naval force in the Coral Sea battle of 1942, the Japanese were only 150 miles off this stretch.
New York Federal agents made two raids near New York, in March 1942, breaking a spy ring, directing Axis submarines to ships along the North Atlantic coast. They arrested 52 residents of a German seaman’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey, seizing short-wave radios and wireless transmission sets. A Federal Bureau of Investigation official said, ‘We regard the Hoboken round-up as one of the most important yet made.’ Civilians became familiar with the demands of rationing, butter and household linen from 6 June, 1943, meat from 17 January, 1944, clothing ration card May 1942. Tea was in short supply.
We ate well in the country, but it was not good in the cities. I remember when I started nursing in 1949; we still had rationing for butter, sugar and tea. I had to give my ration book to the hospital and mother was annoyed because I spent a day and a half at home and she didn’t have my coupons.
In between the war effort and air raid drills, people sat around kitchen tables in the blackout, planning how to protect their children. ‘Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on,’ was said reassuringly while they made plans to evacuate and so began a most remarkable and widespread voluntary evacuation phenomenon, which in all states below the Brisbane Line came from the people with little official help or guidance apart from a belated offers from the government of lists of what to take and free railway tickets.
By June 1940, the Britain stood alone against Germany. Menzies called for an ‘all in war effort’ and with the support of Curtin, amended the National Security Act, extending government powers to tax, acquire property, control businesses and the labour force and allow for conscription of men for the ‘defence of Australia’.
The Japanese advanced relentlessly up the Malay Peninsula, with most able bodied Australian men overseas. In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the South-West Pacific. Australia looked to America for defence.
The RMS Queen Mary became known as the ‘Grey Ghost’ during the war. Her departure from Sydney was supposed to be secret. (Keeping the whereabouts of a ship over 80,000 tons, laden with troops would be a bit of a challenge). These were the brave young boys going to fight for the Empire, truth and justice. However, women waving goodbye walked back to empty houses, painfully aware that their men were not at home to defend them.
The NSW government’s position towards civilians was succinctly expressed by John Curtin, March 14, 1942: ‘Out of every ten men in Australia four are wholly engaged in war as members of the fighting forces or making the munitions and equipment to fight with. The other six, besides feeding and clothing the whole ten and their families, have to produce the food and wool and metals which Britain needs for her very existence.’ Australia’s industrial and human resources had become wholly focused on supporting the allies with money, armaments, troops, wool, skins and meat.
The NSW Premier, Mr McKell:
Australia’s war efforts had been based on the assumption that battles would be fought far from her own territory. The pick of the fighting men were sent overseas and industrially Australia had concentrated on organising a vast machine which would equip not only her own troops but other Empire forces. Only the very little that could be spared was diverted to building up air and civil defence organisations at home.
In Germany, on Thursday, 3 June, 1943 in Das Reich, a sad dirge ran:
Under the plan, not only people whose homes have been destroyed will be shifted, but practically the entire civilian population except armament workers. Civilians in Westphalia will be moved gradually to Bavaria, and residents of Berlin will be sent to Pomerania, East Prussia, and the provinces of Brandenburg. Preparations are already nearly completed for evacuating all school children from Duisburg. Eighteen thousand children have left Hamburg.
Curtin’s government made it clear to Churchill, in a series of secret cables that the 6th, 7th and 9th Divisions, sent to the Middle East under the Menzies government must return home for the defence of Australia. First home was the 6th Division. The 7th was all back by May 1942, the 9th by May 1943. A group of Australian Women’s Army Service wrote home about the reassuring sight of the Queen Mary, the Aquitania, the Isle de France and the Empress of Bermuda bringing the 9th Division home, as they were walking to Bellevue Hill on a rest day from Victoria Barracks. As the men came on shore, the Australian Women’s Weekly ran stories of emotional reunions between wives and husbands, sweethearts, fathers, mothers and sons, sons and daughters. It didn’t matter what shape the men were in as long as the family was together again.