CHAPTER 15

Revenge of Pearl Harbor

At home with only me, Mum just wears a dressing gown and slippers. ‘I like to feel comfortable,’ she says. I even see her brushing her false teeth. I reckon I’m the only person in the world who knows she has dentures, let alone seen them. But when she goes out, she dresses to the nines. She gets me dressed first, which means a sponge bath with the little kettle of boiling water and some rigorous scrubbing around my ears and neck. Mum believes if the neck and ears are clean, all is well.

I stand and watch while she puts on her face. She’s just wearing her slip because she doesn’t want to get make-up on her costume. I’m standing because there is nowhere to sit. I can’t sit on the bed because Mum has already made it and now it’s made, sitting on it would mess up the carefully smoothed cover. ‘Don’t fidget,’ she tells me as she applies the lipstick. ‘For goodness’ sake, keep still,’ she says as she admires herself in the mirror.

Eventually we’re ready. Mum has her hat and gloves and bag that match her high heels and we’re on our way. She tries to make it sound like fun. Perhaps she genuinely wants me to enjoy it, but I am so cowed by her admonitions to be good and stop distracting her that all I expect is trouble.

We head off down Appleby Crescent for the tram at Melville Road. It’s opposite the big school where I will go next year if they’ll let me start aged four but soon to be five. Mum has her fingers crossed. ‘It’ll be such a relief to get you out from under my feet.’

On the tram she notices a smudge on my cheek, and wetting the corner of my handkerchief with her spit, she proceeds to rub it off. It burns and it feels like she is rubbing my cheek off. I’m squirming and Mum is saying, ‘Keep still for God’s sake,’ and a bloke across the aisle goodnaturedly asks if she wants a hand. ‘No, thank you,’ she says, wishing to maintain the image of the grand lady while quietly warning me, ‘You’re going to get it if you don’t keep still.’

I know we’ve hardly got any money and there is nothing we really need in town. We’ll just have a look at the shops, and see what is going on. In town there are so many men in uniforms who whistle at Mum but she pretends to be aloof. Strange men ask me what my sister’s name is.

There is a huge crowd in Swanston Street listening to a beautiful woman’s voice ringing out singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. This really is the war. People are crying. A man tells us the singer is Strella Wilson and when he lifts me up for a minute, I see she’s singing from the back of a truck. There is silence when she finishes, then an almighty roar. The next day’s paper tells us that 50,000 people witnessed her lunchtime concert.

***

Roma, who works in a city bookstore, tells us an alert forced all the office workers and shoppers that day into crowded basement air raid shelters. Grandpa said it was probably just a drill, but Roma wasn’t so sure. ‘All the stories I’ve heard about the London blitz came back to me when we huddled in the shelter,’ she said.

When Prime Minister Curtin announced early in May, 1942 that clothes rationing would begin in a fortnight, he didn’t realise he’d instigated what became known as ‘The Battle of Bourke Street’. It was busier than Christmas Eve as shoppers began panic buying. ‘They were like a lot of wild animals,’ the Women’s Weekly reported. Curtin was preaching austerity. ‘The darning needle is a weapon of war,’ he said. But these shoppers were women of means who had just come from the bank. According to one newspaper, ‘They quarrelled and fought like an undisciplined army out to sack the city. Few men ventured into the fray.’ The shoppers wanted silk stockings, household linen, hardware, china, paints, wireless sets, electrical goods and cutlery. Anything they could get their hands on. We saw a photo in the Herald of pigs fighting over a trough and beside it a picture of people battling to get into a store. ‘What would the Herald know?’ Aunty Roma said. ‘The paper is printed on the back of Myer’s advertisements.’

***

In the first week of May as MacArthur considered strategic plans to combat a Jap landing in Australia, the famous Battle of the Coral Sea was unfolding in the waters off Australia and New Guinea. Grandpa had been monitoring the wireless and told us all about it. The Jap invasion fleet heading for New Guinea expected to seize Port Moresby and isolate Australia.

We were about to be invaded.

But the Japs were met by the US carriers Lexington and Yorktown. A ferocious and decisive battle ensued – the first carrier versus carrier battle in history. The US lost the Lexington and the Yorktown was severely damaged. ‘The Yanks were bloody lucky the Japs didn’t realise the damage and retreated,’ Grandpa said. It gave the Yanks a famous victory, but the same week, US forces on Corregidor were forced to surrender and hospitals throughout Australia were filled with wounded. It got even scarier when Japanese aircraft brazenly flew over Sydney Harbour and 10 days later, did it again.

Despite this, Laurie and I were excited. We might be bombed any day but we could hardly wait. All our games were about the war with lots of shooting noises. We were good at machine guns, and could do great bomb noises too. We were ready for the real thing. I wore my new tin hat at all times. Then we heard three midget Jap submarines had entered Sydney Harbour. The Women’s Weekly called it Submarine Sunday and quoted one woman as saying: ‘I put on my best corsets and prayed.’

One sub fired two torpedoes and sank the converted ferry, HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 men. Another Jap sub was sunk and when it was dredged from the bottom of the harbour it contained the bodies of four sailors. We were amazed when they were given a military funeral and their ashes returned to Japan. ‘Why are we being so magnanimous?’ Mum wanted to know, using a favourite big word. The authorities explained their concern for the 22,000 Australians in Jap POW camps.

Grandpa reckoned what happened next was the turning point of the war in the Pacific. In 1942 between June 4 and 6, the US navy staged an outstanding victory off Midway Island in the Central Pacific. Incredibly, the Americans sank four Jap aircraft carriers and effectively revenged Pearl Harbor. The Americans lost the Yorktown and ports throughout northern Australia were clogged with damaged allied ships from the battle.

The balance of power might have changed, but we were still fearful. A couple of days later Sydney and Newcastle were shelled and invasion seemed imminent. Waterfront property prices fell as the wealthy moved inland.