1942
By 15 February 1942, Singapore was at cracking point. Heavy Japanese shelling and bombing began at daylight, aimed at the defended parts of the town. The British artillery batteries and anti-aircraft gunners were active, bringing down three Japanese planes. But that did not deter the attackers. The planes kept dropping their bombs. The enemy artillery inched closer and fired more than ever. The hospitals at St Andrew’s Cathedral, the Cathay Building and Tanglin Road were hammered. The Japanese were demonstrating to the cornered British commander Lieutenant General Arthur Percival that non-combatants were being targeted. They sent planes to bomb a battery located 300 metres away from the cathedral. Two bombs landed in its grounds.
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By early afternoon, after the devastation at the cathedral, Percival realised his fight for Singapore was over. A deputation of British military and civilian leaders approached the Japanese front line along the Bukit Timah Road.
The commander of the Japanese invading forces, General Yamashita, revelling in his moment of glory, sent a message back that Percival himself would have to make the surrender. Forcing the top British commander into the picture, literally, also ensured maximum humiliation for the vanquished and a lowering of the Allies’ morale.
Such subjugation had been rare in Britain’s 400 years as the most powerful nation in the world. It was unusual on such a scale, where 70,000 British Empire prisoners would be taken. Yamashita, with his keen sense of history and his own place in it, viewed this moment as the transfer from one imperial power to another.
Japan’s acquisition of Singapore added to its euphoric and frenetic run of territorial acquisitions over the preceding weeks: Hong Kong, Rabaul and Malaya. The Japanese had also occupied Manchuria, about 30 per cent of the east of China, Korea, French Indochina and Thailand. This year they planned to gain control of Burma, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and New Guinea. Australia was now very much in their thinking and plans – particularly for some of the key planners and battle commanders in the Japanese fleet command.
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The fall of Singapore was the most traumatic incident in Australia’s history since Federation. There was now panic across the nation, with a real sense of threat from a Japanese invasion. It had a direct impact on recruitment, and Savige’s new 3rd Division filled up so rapidly that there were many thousands in reserve. He was appalled that the Japanese had taken Singapore, especially when so many of his mates in 8th Division were now incarcerated in Changi Prison, but it certainly gave him an extra means of motivating his largely youthful, easily distracted force.
‘They began listening a little more to my words,’ Savige noted later, ‘knowing that I had faced so many enemies on so many fronts. My words were not necessarily pearls of wisdom, but there was more attention, more queries. Suddenly the chances of them being in a war and not [mock] battle exercises in the countryside of northern Victoria, were real.’1
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On 19 February, a few days after the fall of Singapore, the members of 3rd Division, and just about every other Australian, were galvanised by a Japanese attack on Darwin. It was a huge shock to the nation and confirmed its worst fears.
The Japanese used four aircraft carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, carrying hundreds of armed bombers, for the Darwin onslaught. The carriers were escorted by the battleships Hiei and Kirishima; two heavy cruisers, Tone and Chikuma; the light cruiser Abukuma; and nine destroyers. It was the same armada used to attack Pearl Harbor, apart from having two fewer aircraft carriers.
The Japanese fleet as such would not be engaged. The strength of the assault would come again from the air.
At 8.45 a.m., with the weather fine, Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo launched the first wave of 188 aircraft led by Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. It comprised 36 Zero fighters, 71 dive bombers and 81 high-level bombers. All the pilots were primed for action; their main aims were to attack major installations, oil storage tanks and the 46 ships packed into Darwin’s port.2
Those watching this awesome display thought one fly-over might end it. But the Japanese mission was to make the airfield, if not Darwin itself, inoperable and irreparable. There was no real sense of any civilian buildings such as hospitals being spared in the first wave. The destruction of one airfield by the second wave of bombers was frightening and clinical. This approach was reminiscent of the Japanese pulverising of Singapore. They were making a point: if you do not submit to us, we will kill all of you, military and civilian alike.
The Japanese also bombarded Dili in Timor, with two destroyers off the coast on the night of 19 February. Then they went one better than the attack on Darwin and landed 4000 troops a few kilometres to Dili’s west. About 1000 Japanese soldiers prevented any retreat from the city. Two thousand enemy troops attacked the aerodrome where the Allied force – one Australian company and 600 Dutch (Indonesian) troops – were camped. After a fight, the Australians destroyed the aerodrome with pre-set mines and escaped the town.
The official Darwin casualty figures were 243 killed and more than 300 wounded in the two raids. Those were the figures regurgitated by historians and academics who later sifted through government documents. But on-the-spot anecdotes told a grimmer story that had the death toll climb to more than 1000.
One priest, Padre Richards, scoffed at the official number. ‘Two hundred and forty-three?’ he said. ‘I buried more than that myself.’ He believed the rumoured army intelligence figure of 1100 was about right.3
Soldiers and police were detailed to do the grisly work of cleaning up and removing bodies, which were rapidly decaying in Darwin’s debilitating heat. The remains of the dead were buried in mass graves at Mindil Beach, close to the city centre. Others involved claimed the number of people killed in the attacks was four or five times higher than the Federal Government tally released. Eight Australian, American and British ships were sunk in the harbour. The destroyer USS Peary lost most personnel: 91 sailors. More than 40 wharfies were killed.4
While the nation was left uninformed of the extent of the damage, the government had been given a shocking foretaste of what would happen everywhere if Australia were left undefended, disorganised and poorly equipped. It would be helpless against a highly organised, determined and ruthless war machine, which was being fed on victory after victory in every country it invaded.
The Japanese kept on attacking Darwin, and other towns in Australia’s north. They had not stopped marauding throughout the region.
Savige’s intelligence contacts informed him of the scope of the destruction, which he kept secret. But he now had the ammunition with which to galvanise his division, for there was a real sense that they could soon be in the fray.
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Australia was now vulnerable, with only newly trained soldiers to defend it. The Americans were coming into the country, but not yet with combat troops. Two of Australia’s fighting divisions were unavailable: one – the 9th – was stuck in battles in North Africa, and the other – the 8th – had been captured by the Japanese. That left two – 6th and 7th Divisions – that could return to aid the new troops.
Curtin ordered them home, but Churchill wanted them to fight the Japanese in Burma. This led to a communication battle between the two leaders, with Churchill enlisting the help of US President Roosevelt in an attempt to persuade Curtin to divert the divisions to Burma.
Curtin, shaky under this enormous pressure, still managed to remain resolute in his desire to see 6th and 7th Divisions on Australian shores. It was first a matter of defence, and second, an issue of sovereign independence. Curtin bluffed Churchill in what became known as the ‘battle of the cables’ over the weekend of 21 and 22 February. The war-hardened fighting men of the two divisions were not diverted to Burma.
Curtin’s steadfast commitment seemed immediately justified when Timor, northeast of Australia, fell to the Japanese on 23 February. His decision was reinforced a few days later when the Japanese attacked Burma’s capital, Rangoon, and the British force there prepared to retreat into the city’s jungle surrounds. Had any of the Australians troops been sent to Rangoon they would have walked into a disastrous and unwinnable situation.
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On 8 March 1942, the Japanese 15th Army exhibited their superiority in the air, on the seas and on the ground by taking control of Rangoon. The same day, the remaining Australian, British and Dutch forces on Java surrendered to Japanese divisions. Among them were 3000 Australians from the advance units of 7th Division that had travelled on SS Orcades to Batavia. These soldiers became POWs known as D Force, under the Command of Lieutenant Colonel Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop. They were sent to Changi. Later they would join survivors of HMAS Perth – sunk by the Japanese in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait on 1 March – and thousands of POWs from 8th Division in the labour camps of Thailand and Burma.
The Japanese were aiming to build a rail and road system to keep supply lines open from Singapore, Malaya and Thailand into Burma. Surprisingly quick mastery of the Dutch, British, Australian and American forces in the region had given the Japanese an unexpected bonus. Tens of thousands of extra slaves could be employed, without concern for whether they lived or died, in building the supply network and on other projects in Japan, Thailand, Burma, Malaya and Singapore.
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8 March 1942 also marked the start of the Japanese Operation SR to occupy the Salamaua–Lae area on the northern coast of New Guinea, just southeast of the island of New Britain. This would provide access to New Guinea’s lucrative goldfields and the major town of Wau, which had an airstrip. It would give them a base from which to bomb and strafe Port Moresby in the south prior to an infantry invasion. Moresby was an important air base, Papua’s administrative centre, and a strategic port from which Japan could easily attack Australia’s north and east coasts.
Operation SR was a simple campaign on paper given the close proximity of the Japanese base of Rabaul, on New Britain, to the New Guinea northern coast, but the Allies had received intelligence about the Japanese plans and were determined to make it a tough landing and invasion. Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) radio station staff and a small detachment of New Guinea Volunteer Rifles demolished key infrastructure throughout the Salamaua–Lae area. Then they withdrew into the hills inland towards Mubo. The Allied Pacific Command, at Blamey’s instigation, ordered the joint US–Australian fleet to counter any enemy moves.
The RAAF’s 32 Squadron from Port Moresby bombed the landing force, but failed to stop the barges from disgorging Japanese troops. Four US B-17s from Garbutt airfield, Townsville, were called in to help out. One had engine trouble. The other three ran into heavy cloud and almost zero visibility – often a hazard in the region – and could not find the landing beach.
This failure meant that the US Navy patrolling the area was notified. Two US aircraft carriers, Yorktown and Lexington, went into action on 10 March. They were supported by eight B-17s from Townsville, and another eight Hudson bombers from Port Moresby. These 16 Allied planes hammered the Japanese fleet, sinking three transports and damaging several other ships.
It did not stop the Japanese from coming despite the damage sustained. They began the construction of a forward air base at Lae and also occupied Salamaua.
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As the Japanese continued their rampage, Savige stepped up the toughening of his charges. In April, a brigadier rang him to discuss trains to bring all the division together at Bonegilla.
‘We don’t need them,’ Savige said. ‘We’ll do it on our own little feet.’
The soldiers walked the 160 kilometres, and were told by Savige, who marched with them, to ‘get used to it. It is your future.’5
At this time, US General Douglas MacArthur, at Curtin’s instigation, was made Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, usurping the role that Blamey thought should have been his. Savige later remembered Blamey was bitter at the time, but willing to accept his role as Commander in Chief of Land Forces, subordinate to MacArthur. Meanwhile the Japanese moved into Bougainville, with their eyes still firmly set on Port Moresby.
Japan’s decision to attack the Australian mainland and attempt to take the entire country was in the balance throughout February, March and April. General Yamashita had a plan to take control of Australia, aware that now the Americans were in the Pacific War the large southern land would make a fine base from which the Allies could counter-attack.
But Yamashita’s achievement in taking Singapore and his further ambitions were too much for prime minister and army chief General Tojo. He cut Yamashita from the nation’s military plans and eventually exiled him to a garrison in Manchuria, which meant that the most effective Japanese general had been removed from the war.
Under Tojo’s plan, occupation of Australia would come after the Japanese had defeated the US and secured the entire Southeast Asian region. Australia would provide minerals, food and more slave labour for Japan’s many proposed construction projects.
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In those early, vital months of 1942, the bulk of Australian 6th Division was still in the Middle East; the 9th was fighting in Tobruk and the 8th was imprisoned in Changi. The uncaptured remains of Tubby Allen’s 7th Division had returned to Australia, but the division had to be refitted and rebuilt to full strength. The American military personnel currently engaged in the war were air force and administration, not infantry troops. In effect, Savige’s untried, not-quite-ready body of 30,000 men, mainly teenagers, would form one of two divisions on the first line of the defence of Australia.
The 3rd Division was ordered north to New South Wales and Brisbane. Savige was charged with organising the defence of the area between the Brisbane and Clarence Rivers and 65 kilometres south. Blamey also told him to make his men fit for war.
Within weeks of returning to Australia, Tubby Allen’s 7th Division formed the main defence line 110 kilometres north of Brisbane. Savige and Allen had formed a strong bond, especially after fighting in such good combination at the Battle of Damour against the French. But these 60,000 soldiers, half of them untried, would find hardened Japanese forces, which had created so much havoc in China and Southeast Asia, a tough proposition.
However, large numbers of US soldiers began to arrive in March and April. The US force would be on the way to a million men in Australia by the end of 1942.
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In April the Japanese Navy’s main focus was on the Midway Island US military base in the Pacific, but in the meantime it moved with a smaller yet significant force to cut Australia off from US supplies by occupying Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia. It was also aiming to take Port Moresby by 10 May 1942. If Moresby then Midway fell, Australia would be at its most vulnerable point.
Yet the Americans and the Australians had enough intelligence from US naval code-breakers to learn of the Japanese plans for the islands and Moresby. By 8 May, after five days of skirmishing and battles, the Americans, with the Australians in solid support, had stopped the enemy from landing a force in Port Moresby and the Solomon Islands, in what became known as the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Japan’s sustained, efficient and brutal onslaught in the region had received a shock setback. Just when Allied morale was at a low ebb, the imperial warrior army had been shown to be less than invincible.