‘Australian men of the better sort are resentful of the loose behaviour of many Australian women, whose husbands are serving abroad…In particular they do not like the way Americans “paw” them and embrace them in public. Australians of other types are annoyed when Australian girls refuse their company, but soon afterwards are seen to accept the advances of the first Americans that offer’
—From an inquiry into the street fighting between Australian and American troops in Queensland
The ‘yellow hordes’ of government propaganda—the ghastly, buck-toothed beasts that were about ‘to rape your sister, your mother or your grandmother’1—did not intrude on the Melbourne Cup in 1942. The crowd, at 35,942, was a third of the norm. But they weren’t going to let the war diminish their delight in seeing the four-year-old Colonus win, at 33 to 1. The social Cup-goers, though fewer in number, were determined to deny the proximity of the Japanese and relive the usual gala event, as young women swanned amidst the neatly uniformed American troops, whose square-jawed smiles filled their society magazines.
At the Sydney Rugby League Grand Final two months earlier, in September 1942, 26,000 people watched Canterbury-Bankstown beat St George 11–9. Meanwhile, the Japanese army stood at Ioribaiwa and gazed upon the Coral Sea. The Australian people seemed to revel in the oblique threat of invasion. None knew the actual state of the men in the Owen Stanleys; the full truth had not impinged on the civilians’ frivolity. Professor Clunies-Ross earlier observed on his return from London: ‘Australians on the whole are distinctly complacent about the war. They congratulate themselves on having a record crowd at the Melbourne Cup; they resist petrol rationing, the control of civilian spending—anything, in fact, that interferes with the ordinary life of the community. They are…too interested in political faction fights and industrial disputes and strikes to realise that their country is in danger.’2
In condemning their ‘astounding complacency’ in a broadcast on 10 November 1941, Blamey more bluntly told Australians: ‘You are leading a carnival life. But if you do not take your part you’ll find your homes overwhelmed as were the homes of people in France and Belgium.’
Blamey had ‘a most extraordinary feeling of what you might call helplessness’, on his return from the Middle East.3 He likened the people to ‘a lot of gazelles grazing in a dell near the edge of a jungle, while the beasts of prey are working up towards you, apparently unseen, unnoticed. And it is the law of the jungle that they spring upon you, merciless.’4 It was vintage Blamey. He even scoffed at the ‘deplorable crowds’ turning out to watch football. Sports commentators were jolted from their daze. This was tantamount to blasphemy in sports-mad Australia. Could the nation really be at risk?
Nor did the war crack that great mirror of the national mood, the letters pages, to any great degree. In late July 1942, with the Japanese at Gona, a lively debate erupted in the Telegraph’s letters pages over the battle of the sexes. The issue was women’s rights. Louise Ashley, of Rose Bay, observed: ‘To flourish figurative rolling-pins will rouse resentment in men. For all their pious pre-marital resolutions, they remain dictators at heart, and so they must be assailed through the heart rather than the head.’5
Deep within the Sydney Morning Herald, at the time of Miss Ashley’s letter, there appeared a one-paragraph news brief about a speech by the Japanese Premier, General Tojo: ‘Australia,’ Tojo declared, ‘is now completely isolated and is hopelessly awaiting reinforcements from America. If she persists in her useless resistance, there is no need to reiterate that the Japanese will show no mercy in crushing her.’6
Just how true were these snapshots of a nation of sports-loving lotus-eaters? During 1942, the crisis year, many Australians evacuated the cities and headed for the hills. A rush of ‘some thousands’ from Sydney fled to the Blue Mountains, Bowral, Mittagong and Bathurst, according to contemporary reports.7 When a submarine shelled the eastern suburbs of Woollahra, Bellevue Hill, Rose Bay and Bondi in June, many home owners sold their harbour-side properties at knockdown prices and fled west. A want of fortitude met the attack on Darwin in February 1942: government ministers were seen to run about ‘like a lot of startled chooks’; the people of Darwin fled their homes, some heading as far as Adelaide; and ‘looting and desertions’ were commonplace.8
The evacuation of northern Australia began on 8 March: some 10,000 to 14,000 civilians abandoned their homes in Townsville and Cairns.* Lex McAulay was one of three children from Innisfail, south of Cairns, who was evacuated along with thousands. He recalls husbands sending instructions to their wives about what to do, where to go: ‘Go to aunt Edna’s place, go inland!’9
Elsewhere, Australians built air raid shelters in their backyards; others hatched elaborate plans to escape the rape and pillage of the invader. Thousands went bush, a few terrified souls committed suicide.10
Curtin beat the austerity drum until people wearied of the Government’s doom mongering. The constant refrain of self-sacrifice inoculated elements of the nation against the reality, and apathy set in; others appreciated the sincerity with which Curtin sought to organise ‘a non-military people for the purposes of complete war’. It necessitated ‘a revolution in the lives of the people,’ the Australian leader warned.11
The Prime Minister invoked terrifying images to rouse the masses, most memorably in his speech to mark the third anniversary of the outbreak of war in Europe:
If we do not strip ourselves to save our country, then the enemy will do it with a ruthless efficiency and with a maximum of misery that can have a counterpart only in the imagination. Consider our fate should he be victorious! What will we have then?…Today Port Moresby and Darwin are the Singapores of Australia. If those two places fall, then, inevitably, we are faced with a bloody struggle on our soil when we will be forced to fight grimly, city by city, village by village, until our fair land may become a blackened ruin…’12
The Government’s austerity drive intruded upon every corner of life. Australians were asked to eschew ‘every selfish, comfortable habit, every luxurious impulse, every act, word or deed that retards the victory march’.13 Christmas holidays were reduced to three days, from the usual week or so. The unions protested (many workers resigned, took the normal holidays and then reapplied for their jobs). Evatt chastised them for their selfishness—the fighting forces needed every ounce of materials that may be produced, he said. That meant less consumption, and shorter holidays.14
Boats were impounded, rifles impressed, supplies of hand tools were frozen. Cigarettes were limited to military canteens—and satirists joked about a strange rare substance called tobacco.
Military phrases peppered civilian language: mates spoke nervously, or mock-seriously, of ‘infiltration’, ‘guerrilla tactics’, ‘scorched earth’, ‘ack-ack’, ‘strafing’, and so on.15 People got fed up with hearing ‘war effort’, ‘unity’, ‘new order’ and ‘liberty’ on the radio.16
Clothing restrictions were announced on 27 July, as part of the ‘Fashions for Victory’ campaign. A no-frills wardrobe awaited men and women. Double-breasted suits, waistcoats, cuffs or other fancy accessories were outlawed. When John Dedman, Minister for War Organisation, posed in one of the new suits, the nation howled with laughter. ‘It was an unattractive advertisement,’ observed Paul Hasluck.17
Dedman became the unfortunate face of the Government’s austerity drive, which acquired the name ‘Dedmanism’. Dedmanism reached a high-water mark at Christmas 1942, when he banned advertising. ‘Dedman kills Father Christmas’ ran the headlines.
Dedmanism imposed fifteen prohibitions on women’s fashion. Evening wear, cloaks, fur coats, dinner gowns, and children’s party frocks were among the items banned. Many luxury goods ceased to exist. In this category the Government placed lawnmowers, as well as fur coats and jewellery—though not wedding rings.
Silk stockings were a noticeable casualty of Dedmanism. Young women evaded the restrictions by painting their legs and pencilling a seam down their calves.18 An elastic shortage meant the banning of bloomers; swimsuits were, of course, outlawed. Celebrities and ‘bright young things’ had a dreadful time: editors were asked not to publish glamorous photos of wealthy party-goers.
Most alarmingly, sport was restricted. A ban on mid-week sport, with horse racing—the Melbourne Cup excepted—limited to Saturday afternoons, provoked uproar. ‘The government had touched upon a sacred subject,’ noted Hasluck.19 This was tantamount to closing Lourdes to pilgrims, or introducing a no-wash zone in the Ganges.
Sport, observed one social commentator, was the yardstick by which men and women were judged.20 Not to entertain an obsession with sport—any sport—seemed unAustralian and somehow redolent of a worrying character flaw. Dedmanism had gone too far, and there were universal appeals for commonsense.
Many Australians—by no means a majority—reacted against this strange new culture of modesty and restraint. The ‘orgy of betting’ continued. SP bookmakers flourished. On the first ‘raceless Saturday’—4 October 1942—the secretary of the Timber Workers’ Union (John Curtin’s old union) warned that restrictions on sport and racing would impair the morale of the people.21
Meanwhile, loud protests met the decision to cut drinking hours to a mere seven a day. The alcoholic content of beer was reduced. People responded by drinking in a more concentrated manner. ‘Drunkenness in public places continued to be a common feature of Australian city life throughout the war,’ Paul Hasluck wearily concluded.22
Parties flourished in the hedonistic atmosphere. Melbourne streets were teeming with crowds ‘from dawn till midnight’.23 It was ‘dance, dance, dance all the time’, remembered Elaine Hope, an ambulance driver in Sydney.24 If this was the end of the world, Australians were going out with a bang.
Of course, not everyone indulged, and hundreds of thousands quietly sacrificed pleasure and toiled away for the war effort: working for veterans’ charities, hospitals, and in factories. Women thronged the assembly lines. But a very substantial number of people ignored the Government, and carried on guzzling beer and petrol, placing bets and seeking pleasure with cheerful abandon. Perhaps their selfish sanguinity may be seen as strength: the careless indifference of a people who felt they knew better than their political masters.
People simply became inured to the shrill encomiums to self-denial. The Government had protested too much, insisted Eleanor Dark, an Australian novelist: ‘We are being lectured, scolded, bullied, alarmed and even taunted about it.’ She feared the emergence of ‘a morbid and hypochondriac interest’ in self-sacrifice among the powers that were.25
In fairness to Curtin, the Government’s measures appealed to restraint and responsibility, not total self-abnegation; few activities or enjoyments were banned outright. The Prime Minister was in the lonely position of comprehending precisely the implications of total war with Japan.
Visually the war transformed the cities. A brownout introduced in December 1941 plunged the nation in brownness for eighteen months. In order to conserve coal and power, display advertising and late night shopping were prohibited, and daylight saving introduced.
Disused windows and doors were bricked over or sandbagged; councils dumped heaps of sand in public places for residents to use against incendiary bombs. Car headlights were masked, and windows draped. Air raid shelters were built in public parks; householders dug their own slit trenches in their backyards with picks and shovels. Barbed-wire rolls appeared on the beaches. Cars—not yet a source of mass mania—were seen less and less, with the petrol ration cut by 20 per cent. Air raid guidelines warned people not to crowd in doorways to watch dogfights (should they occur overhead).
Ghost towns proliferated, as did signless cities. Signboards, place names and street names were removed; even harmless tourist names such as Lyre Bird Glen in the Blue Mountains were pulled down. Households were told to destroy their roadmaps lest they assist the conqueror. Presumably many people got lost.
Total war transformed the economy. The Treasurer, Ben Chifley, launching the austerity campaign in his budget speech on 3 September, warned, ‘the spending of every shilling must be avoided wherever possible’.26 No capital could be sold or invested without government permission; profits were to be pegged at 4 per cent on capital, and those in excess to be taken in tax or passed on to consumers—so much for the unions’ claim that capitalist profiteers were driving the war.
Farmers were dismayed to learn of their scorched-earth policy. Rural newspapers offered lists of what they were required to kill and wreck should the Japanese invade. One imagines few hardened station owners taking this seriously. Yet cows and sheep joined the people heading south: drovers herded 80,000 head of cattle distances of more than a thousand miles during 1942.27
Australians had no experience of total war, and many simply refused to recognise the threat. Union leaders sledgehammered the workers into believing they were victims of a capitalist plot. Strikes soared, as pay and conditions deteriorated. Almost six million working days were lost due to strikes during World War II; 4,462,925 were lost in New South Wales alone, due to that state’s high proportion of civil servants and coalminers.28 While the number of lost working days fell during 1942, the number of industrial disputes doubled on the previous year.29
Wharf workers struck at critical times. Troops bound for Port Moresby sometimes had to load their own ships because Australian dockers were on strike. At Hamilton Wharf in Brisbane, finding no one to load the supplies and ammunition on board, the disgusted commander of the 2/1st Battalion shouted, ‘We’ll load the bloody thing ourselves.’30
Communists and ‘irresponsibles’ fanned the flames of union action. They blamed the war on the capitalist bogey and employers. Their madder conspiracy theories did not dent every worker’s sense of duty to the fighting men, and many honourably resisted the order to strike.
For an old socialist, Curtin might have been expected to sympathise with union claims. Instead he showed robust good sense, and shut down any argument that compromised the war effort. Strikers, drunkards, bright young things—anyone who refused to accept the sacrifice—were ‘not true citizens of the Commonwealth’.31 ‘I ask you,’ he said to the Australian people on 19 August, ‘to…think about [the troops] a little more and think about ourselves a little less.’32 Curtin himself gave everything, assuming ‘the whole weight of care of a nation at war’.
The heightening sense of danger stirred the human libido. A potent mixture of sexual attraction and a sense of fear saw many Australian women fall into the arms of American servicemen. A number had husbands or boyfriends at the front—provoking fury among Australian men.
Women who experienced the war tend to remember the Americans, 90,000 of whom were based in Australia during 1942 (their combat units did not move to New Guinea until late that year).33 They were seen as handsome, charming, well-paid soldiers in neatly pressed uniforms. The Australian men, in contrast, seemed slovenly in their baggy shorts and slouch hats, and they were markedly less well paid.
The Americans were ‘attentive’ to Australian women, said one woman, modestly. Olga Masters recalled a group of ‘very smart, very handsome’ Americans passing her, one of whom said, ‘Excuse me, but you’re beautiful.’ Never had she been so openly complimented, she said. On the other hand, Vera Harding of Newcastle slapped one American soldier who ‘didn’t know what “no” meant’.34
There were huge brawls between the Australian and American troops. Street fights and stabbings erupted in Townsville, Brisbane and Melbourne in November. The ‘girl’ question was a major cause, concluded an inquiry into street fighting:
Australian [men] of the better sort are resentful of the loose behaviour of many Australian women, whose husbands are serving abroad, with American Service men…In particular they do not like the way Americans ‘paw’ them and embrace them in public. Australians of other types are annoyed when Australian girls refuse their company, but soon afterwards are seen to accept the advances of the first Americans that offer.35
There were other motives for fights. Americans got special treatment in hotels, shops and cafes; Americans were better paid. Mobs of Australians sometimes went after them; fifteen attacked two Americans for no other reason than a refusal to hand over money. On Thanksgiving Day, 26 November, several hundred men went on a rampage; one Australian soldier was killed and at least sixteen wounded, in the ‘Battle of Brisbane’.36
At the front, Japanese propaganda leaflets crudely exploited Australian troops’ concerns about their wives and girlfriends back home. One depicted an American soldier having sex with an Australian girl, with the caption, ‘Take your sweet time at the front, Aussie. I got my hands full right now with your sweet tootsie at home.’37
The Australian press was reliably jingoistic and colourfully apocalyptic. ‘War has ceased merely to be on Australia’s doorstep,’ wrote Ek Dum of The Bulletin on 11 March. ‘It is on the mat reaching for the knocker.’38 The Government launched a propaganda campaign to incite hatred of the Japanese, which fitted snugly into the Daily Telegraph’s existing editorial policy. It was a pointless exercise, which did not reflect well on Curtin. In one of his most dignified and courageous speeches, Menzies lambasted the Government’s ‘use of hatred as an instrument of war’, and it is worth quoting at length:
The last advertisement I saw ended by announcing, apropos of the Japanese, that ‘We always did despise them anyhow.’ Now, if I may take that last observation first, it does seem to me to be fantastically foolish and dangerous. It is, in my opinion, poor policy to try to persuade people to despise the Japanese…
Their courage is admitted; their skill is much greater than we thought; their resource and ingenuity and capacity for devising novel means of warfare have been at times staggering…
To despise such people is absurd. Such an attitude is merely of a piece with the constant underestimation of our enemies, which has been one of our great handicaps in this war…we are not dealing with a contemptible enemy whom a second-rate effort will serve to overthrow, but with a tremendously powerful enemy whom we will have to go at full stretch to defeat…
But this is only one aspect of the problem. The real thing that troubles me about this campaign is that it appears to proceed from a belief, no doubt quite honestly held, that the cultivation of the spirit of hatred among our own people is a proper instrument of war policy…
We all—and very naturally at a time like this—have our moments of burning hatred. But the real question is whether we should glorify such a natural human reaction into something which ought to be cultivated and made a sort of chronic state of mind.
It is conceded the world over that the Australian soldier is a good fighter. But I have never heard it suggested that he was a good or persistent hater. He has very frequently respected his enemy though he has fought him, and fought to kill.
Do we want to change him, or are these campaigns directed to the civilian? Is it thought that Australian civilians are so lacking in the true spirit of citizenship that they need to be filled artificially with a spirit of hatred before they will do their duty to themselves and to those who are fighting for them?
It is an offence to an honest citizen to imagine that the cold, evil and repulsive spirit of racial hatred must be substituted for honest and brave indignation if his greatest effort is to be obtained.39
What of the Japanese civilian?
The average Japanese civilian had little idea of the conditions under which their front-line warriors were fighting. New Guinea, Papua, Guam, Rabaul…were so many exotic islands. The starving, disease-racked troops in the Owen Stanleys would have been unrecognisable to a nation weaned on the myth of martial supremacy. Even so, they were aware of the severe food shortages, and the harshness of military life, and drew their own conclusions.
The Spartans would have found much to admire in the stoicism, self-denial and utter lack of civil rights of the Japanese people during World War II. Most Japanese people unquestioningly obeyed their political masters. But there were dissenting voices, and to describe Tojo’s Japan as a grim military dictatorship overlooks the existence of a vocal, if ineffectual, political opposition.
The Government awarded itself the powers to set prices, ban strikes, confiscate property, seize newspapers, impose new laws at will, and do many other things under the Civilian Mobilisation Law of 1941. Article 31 ominously added, ‘anyone who violates the mobilization law will be punished by fines of up to 50,000 Yen and penal servitude of up to 10 years’.40
The vast majority willingly hunkered down to a long period of extreme austerity. Nowhere was this better and more entertainingly demonstrated than by the nationwide competition to find the most perfect example of ‘curtailed living’. The winning entries provided a unique snapshot of civilian Japan: ‘I have curtailed living as much as possible,’ wrote one young female finalist in Kishiwada City. In her household, orange peel had replaced sweets, fish guts were applied as fertiliser, and wild mugwort used to ward off colds and clear the bowel. She preferred walks in the mountains to shopping—‘the fine air of the fields is free’—and proudly salvaged a pair of discarded boots as an umbrella holder. ‘I should like to wipe the word “throw away” from the earth,’ she said.
The judges were impressed: ‘Discovery of a person like you gives a feeling that the future will be bright for Japan.’
Sugiara Toshiro, a father in Nagoya City, introduced a regime of dawn exercise for his family who, he thought, tended to oversleep. He was disgusted at himself for not rising until 7.30 a.m., which was clearly out of sympathy with the troops at the front line: ‘Henceforth the family will rise at half past six sharp. All must join in callisthenics before the radio. If by any chance one does not join in, he goes without a meal. This was the iron rule adopted for the family. It would be a calamity for me as head of the house to be first to miss a meal.’
The judges read this ‘with a faint smile’, but praised Sugiara’s regimen.
Farming communities stretched their rice rations to the limit. One tenant farmer had heard of soldiers gnawing tree roots while fighting in Guadalcanal, and duly introduced a fixed daily ration of 11/4 pints rice for his family of five. Another farmer wrote that he’d strictly curtailed the rice consumption for his family of eight, which greatly impressed the Government’s judges: ‘This piece of writing is a fine example which all persons, particularly farmers, will wish to read.’
The better off Japanese were similarly restrained. Yoshiko Kuwada, the wife of a landowner, reduced her ‘two maids to one’, stopped using sugar, and ate only home-produced food. Her husband, she said, a touch optimistically, had ‘cut out sake and tobacco altogether’, while her daughter now made her own clothes.
The judges were delighted: ‘Housewives of landowners are usually indifferent to economics,’ they noted. ‘Your resolution to abandon your former way of life…is most commendable. If people from all walks of life have a spirit like yours, the home front of Japan is in excellent shape.’
One typical household each night would empty their wallets and put all the spare coins into a bamboo tube. If any of them indulged in some lazy activity, they had to put more money down the tube, as a ‘punishment tax’. ‘When I simply had to go to the movies I dropped a fine of 50 sen into the bamboo,’ said one child. Though an excellent entry, the judges regretted they were unable to publish it due to a lack of paper.41
But perhaps the most abstemious Japanese civilian was the exemplary Yamashita of Nagasaki, who felt the Government’s slogan ‘Until Victory I Shall Desire Nothing’ deeply inadequate. He said it should be revised to, ‘I Shall Desire Nothing At All Times’. After the defeat of America and Britain, Japan’s ‘100,000,000 leaders of Greater East Asia’ should desire nothing further, he suggested.
Not everyone in Japan shared these curtailed lives, of course. The cities had all the usual distractions. Returning troops were disgusted to find men queuing up for sake, rampant shoppers, and women ‘primping themselves like dolls’, as one wrote.42
*Japanese propaganda exploited these fears. On 3 March, a Japanese radio broadcaster thanked the Americans for laying on hot water at the Queen’s Hotel in Townsville, and for building a new aerodrome and headquarters: ‘We will soon be using them…’ It also correctly anticipated the arrival in Townsville of troops from Melbourne (see Horner, Crisis of Command).