Self promoters like you are part of the problem in our communities, not part of the solution.
Rainier,
Ok then, what is the solution ?

Very interesting summary of what promises to be a very good book, which I will certainly pick up. However, the article seems to pose a question, but then not really answer it. Why have these events been presented to the public by succesive generations in a way that does not accord with the historical record? Quite clearly, one reasonable inference to make is that this is all tied up to the ANZUS "alliance" with the US. This "alliance" is one of the sacred pillars of Australian politics, largely unquestioned amongst the political class, and this pillar can only stand with the manufacturing of public support.

By October 1941 the joint grand deception (let's call it Operation Rising Sun) was fully in place.

Menzies could now walk the plank.

Menzies did, fortunately just a matter of weeks before the loss of HMAS Sydney on what is now known to have been the night of 19/20 November 1941. That event may well have posed both an immediate threat to the objective of Operation Rising Sun, and to the necessarily sustained secrecy that had to surround it, if that loss was to ever be thoroughly investigated.

The Mushroom People that had been promptly installed in government in Canberra upon Menzies' resignation little knew that the political manna they had received at the hands of Pig Iron Bob was to be shortly blessed by the Son of Heaven himself, Emperor Hiro Hito of Japan. In the mean time, newness to government and the perplexing loss of the Sydney kept the Mushroom People, good patriots almost all, well and truly occupied.

The battle, for Australia, had now been going on for over two years. Just a few more weeks and the serious peril for Australia would be over. Once Japan had attacked Pearl Harbour and Malaya, a favourable outcome to the real battle for Australia that had started on 3 September 1939 would be virtually assured. There would still be a price to pay, but enough had been standing ready from the outset, if required, to pay it.

Operation Rising Sun 1940-1941. Charade and deception. Menzies and Churchill at war.

In Britain the Cinque Ports had been kept secure to the King.

In Australia, the reins of government had had to be left in the hands of the, in a sense, unelected Mushroom People. Those who had long fostered the development of the Mushroom People's Party, and stood behind it in the shadows, saw the opportunity of having their factota in government as an absolute godsend. While the Australian people focussed upon WW2, those grey eminences could pursue their own legislative and constitutional agenda risk free, with an excuse, if challenged, of 'exigencies of war'.

It appears the German High Command had had certain British maritime codes since at least February 1941, when they had been captured during the interception in the Atlantic ocean of the British freighter Afric Star, out of Buenos Aires, by the German raider Kormoran. Those codes had been yielding consistently accurate intelligence, of a sort especially useful for Germany's ally since September 1940, Japan.

By November 1941 Kapitan Theodor Detmers of the Kormoran may well have been advised of the likely movements of HMAS Sydney and ordered to position his ship where the Sydney would believably soon 'come across' him. Detmers would in such circumstance have been very well prepared for an encounter with a British warship, an encounter he would normally have been under standing orders to avoid. Perhaps Detmers had one, or a number of aces, in addition to the one constituted by foreknowledge, up his sleeve for such an encounter. Some Japanese 'Long Lance' torpedoes from the then recent Kulmerland replenishment, for example. The Kormoran's schnellboot already deployed, for another.

The Captain of HMAS Sydney may well have been under orders to display apparent complacency and no expectation of coming upon a German raider in that part of the Indian ocean where he in fact encountered the disguised Kormoran on the afternoon of 19 November 1941, in order to help maintain German confidence that there was as yet no British suspicion that those 'captured' codes had been compromised. 645 Australian men may well have paid the ultimate price for their obedience to lawful orders that evening, but not in vain. Sydney had turned up right where and when the Germans had every right, by virtue of their code intercepts, to have expected her to. The British evidently, to the German view, didn't yet suspect a thing. It was worth the risk of the loss of the Kormoran to confirm that.

HMAS Sydney and her entire crew - a 'facilitation' payment in advance for a succesful climax to operation Rising Sun, but not the last Australia would have to make by any means. Lest we forget.

Since Australia's Prime Minister has seen fit to endorse the re-writing of history so as to memorialise a battle that never actually happened on the date claimed, and in the process diminished the honour due to many Australian servicemen and women who served elsewhere than in the New Guinea campaign, it has made necessary this telling of the likely true story. Its time.

An old piece of satirical verse from those perilous times comes to mind as a lead-in to an easily remembered outline summary of events. I have added (with apologies to the original author) the two verses that follow the first. Joseph P. Kennedy was US Ambassador to Britain in 1940.

Joe, Joe, Kennedy, Kennedy,
went to the Court of St James,
where he was frequently seen with the King and the Queen,
at cricket, and other games.
Said Joe, Joe, Kennedy, Kennedy,
Before Britain went to war,
swapping stories with Dukes or tories
is what God made me for.
But when the bombs began to fall
all over London town,
Said Joe, Joe, "I must go."
Britain had let him down.

Now Joe, Joe, Kennedy, Kennedy,
(Who'd been to the Court of St James)
Could hardly really complain
that his hoped-for next job, arming up his own mob,
Was something he should disdain.
For if truth but be known, (its direct from the Throne),
Hiro Hito nor Tojo qualified for the mojo:
that was all down to Winston, and Bob!

So Ted, Ted, Kennedy, Kennedy,
US Senator, (MA? Is that Maine?)
Before youse all ban us, and get rid of ANZUS,
Please give us a chance to explain.
A trick in the trenches we learned from the Frenchies
was if troops all stood back, or failed to attack,
you just shelled your bloody own lines!
(and didn't it work half a treat!)
But though it was loud, youse Yanks can be proud,
(Yes, you and your Dad, and the rest of your crowd)
Nudged by Winston and Bob, you pulled off the job,
and made the world safe for our times.

The thing that Prime Minister Curtin could not tell the US in 1942 was that Australia had been fully complicit in securing the entry of Japan into the war. That may well have been disastrous then, or in the immediate aftermath of the war, for entire British Commonwealth-US relations.

Curtin could not tell what he did not know.

Robert Gordon Menzies, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, one time Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, probably kept that knowledge from Curtin in Australia's interest, and carried the secret of Britain's grand deception to the grave.

So what of Pearl Harbour? What of that Day of Infamy?

All true Samurai velly velly solly. Necessity of war. Many true Samurai do Bushido for that. Man for man, blood for blood. On Montevideo Maru and other ships in South China Sea. Most legletable. So velly, velly sad.

Apologies? Lets all abort 'em!
Let's parody old poems instead.
Let's listen to Banjo, post-mortem
Raise glasses, and toast our war dead.

Let's hear from his poem 'The Pearl Diver'
Warnings for times then ahead.

Banjo! The Scribe, the Recorder.
(Yes, we all learned at his hand)
On the beach of another pearl harbour,
sat, as he wrote, on the sand.

At Broome Banjo wrote for us buggers,
including the bloke here called Bob.
'tween tides in '02 'midst the luggers,
and did, well, a very good job.

Learned from Joe Nagasaki, Bushido:
the military mind of Japan;
how to to goad, and to bait, and confuse it,
and when to lay out your trump hand.

To know that your chances were Buckley's,
unless you had won beforehand.

Researcher's Note.

Just as in the time of the Emperor Nasi Goreng there had been too many rabbits in China, so too in 1941 there were too many Japanese soldiers in China. Australia did something about that, though it did take three and a half years. It was probably in everyone's best interests, Japan's included.

Regards,

Daniel, on Bigpond Broadband