Individual, in the preceding post raises an interesting point in saying "No-one can say with certainty what the truth is as no-one alive today has witnessed those early days." Granted that comment is tangential in its context to the subject of this thread, 'Understanding the Invasion Myth', but it brings to mind a possible means by which more light may be shed upon this subject.

Peter Stanley, in his paper "He's (not) Coming South: the invasion that wasn't" (See: http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:TCdzzBjgp6gJ:www.awm.gov.au/events/conference/2002/stanley_paper.pdf+%22He%27s+(not)+Coming+South%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au ),makes reference to the Committee on National Morale and the "mysterious Alf Conlon", its chairman, also the head of the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Conlon

The lawyer, John Kerr (subsequently to be knighted and serve as Governor-General), was involved with Conlon's work. Afterwards, that directorate morphed into the Australian School of Pacific Administration. Sir David Hay, one time Administrator of the Territory of Papua New Guinea, served in New Guinea during WW2. He had earlier served as Intelligence Officer in the 2/6th Battalion, AIF. His being a contemporary of John Kerr and association with post-war PNG administration pre-independence would indicate his likely possession of background information relevant to this period of history.

Sir David Hay was alive in 2005. I have not seen any subsequent reports of his death. He would be 92 on 10 November this year. If he has not already done so, Peter Stanley could well elicit potentially useful background information relevant to the invasion myth, should Sir David be willing and able to talk.

He might also gain insights into other matters of national historic interest in the process.

Forrest Gumpp,
I have in my possession a copy of a hand-written report by a British marine who stated that he & his men shot six Aborigines because they clearly recognised them as the perpetrators of an attack several weeks earlier. In another copy of a hand-written paper a surgeon refers to the very same incident that the six were shot with delight by a Police Magistrate.
Who do we believe ?
I have personally witnessed incidents (luckily of not serious a nature) which were then described by a higher ranking individual who had not even been there & yet was given all credibility to this incident & I was portrayed as not knowing anything.
That is why I am very, very cautious at believing anything recorded for a well-paying client.
I know of one author who wrote the story of an indigenous community & that book did not receive a favourable review by the Australian Aboriginal Studies Press for the afore-mentioned reason.

This is part of a myth that has grown out of Australians need to believe Australia played a larger role in the outcome of WW2 than we did. The truth is that Australia's forces generally fought well in the theatres of war they served, but these were generally fought in operations which were outside the major theatres of the war (especially from 1943 to 1945 when MacArthur left the Australian army to keep an eye on Japanese garrisons cut off from supplies).
Kokoda has become part of this myth. This myth is that part time militia were the last line of Australia's defences and defeated a large and up to that point invincible Japanese army that would occupy Port Moresby and then attack Australia. It was therefore these few soldiers who saved Australia. The truth is that the Japanese forces on the Kokoda Track were exhausted and could have gone no further than Port MOresby. They had no shipping and the Japanese forces in New Guinea on the Kokoda track were too small to have done much more.
The truth is that the Pacific war was won by the American Navy. The Battle of Coral Sea (which prevented an earlier occupation of Port Moresby) and much more importantly, the Battle of Midway in which the US navy destroyed the Japanese Navy's offensive capabilities and air arm before the events on the Kokoda Track took place. Guadacanal was more important than Kokoda but doesn't receive the attention because it was won by US marines.

Anthony P: "The truth is that the Pacific war was won by the American Navy."

Not in question Anthony P! That was exactly what Winston and Bob were orchestrating in their sooling of the Japanese onto the Yanks! From the opposite side, this was exactly what Isoruku Yamamoto strove to warn his Emperor about, not to attempt to challenge US power in the Pacific. But other, more skilfully misinformed, Japanese voices prevailed.

There is an old saying, with resperct to the war in the SW Pacific, that the Yanks were our allies but not our friends in that theatre; that didn't say the half of it! At the conclusion of WW1, at the peace conferences, President Woodrow Wilson of the US took it upon himself to propose the offer of the former German colonial territory, New Guinea, to Japan! (The Germans had been thrown out of New Guinea by Australian forces in 1914 in one of the first and most succesful actions of that war on the part of British Imperial forces.)

Australian forces had suffered an 87% casualty rate in WW1 fighting mainly Germans. More Australians had died fighting in that war than Yanks. And here we had a US President proposing to hand off a territory on our doorstep that had been won by Australian arms to a nation that had merely provided convoy escort support during WW1. In an apocryphal exchange during the Peace Conferences, Woodrow Wilson is claimed to have asked Billie Hughes, the Australian PM, whether " in the face of the entire civilized world, Australia stood alone against the award of the former German territories in New Guinea to Japan", Hughes is said to have fiddled momentarily with his hearing aid, and then said, "Yes, that's about it, Mr President!"

Billie Hughes was still a member of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1942.

There may have been a concern within the Commonwealth Parliament that if Australia didn't turf the Japanese out pronto, any early peace settlement with terms decided mainly by the Yanks might see the Japanese retain New Guinea.

Further indication that the Federal government knew by around September 1942 at the latest that there was no Japanese invasion threat is given in a clause of each of the Commonwealth Powers bills submitted to the State Parliaments.

Under the heading 'Duration of Act', Clause 4. stated "This Act, ......., and shall continue in force for a period ending at the expiration of five years after Australia ceases to be engaged in hostilities in the present war; ....". (The text of these bills is reproduced in the Commonwealth of Australia Year Book 1942-43, at pages 63-64.)

Hardly a wording that betrays any lack of confidence, as at around September 1942, as to what the outcome of the war was going to be!

What that wording does betray is political opportunism of the most blatant kind, smokescreened behind understandable but misinformed public fear of invasion, taking advantage of a believable preparedness of the public to accept the wholesale setting aside of the Constitution that was at the heart of the legislation, as a neccessary exigency of war.

It is not hard to understand why, today, an Australian government that is believably heir-presumptive to such opportunistic evaders of the Constitution would try to thicken the fog of a past war by inventing a battle that never actually took place in order to somehow bask in the reflected glory of it. In the process it has dishonoured the heroism and sacrifice of both all who fought in the New Guinea theatre in the sincere belief that Australia was under direct threat of invasion, and all other Australians who served elsewhere during WW2.

To be fair, if the Commonwealth government in 1942 had sat back with apparent equanimity and just let the Yanks effectively defend Australia on their own, such a posture may have had a negative effect upon US public opinion with respect to the prosecution of the war and the terms upon which the war would be ended. Someone may have smelled a rat at a time when it may have mattered.

Nothing excuses the attack upon the Constitution, though.

Of course the Japanese didn't have the battle plan to invade Australia.
But that was their intention. Why sweep down to Papua New Guinea and stop there? They would have to have supply lines and build up their forces before invading Australia. Why take on the Kokoda Track to Port Moresby if they were not going for the biggest prize of Australia.??
No, No, Peter Stanley, don't rewrite history just to sell a book.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Go and walk the Kokoda Track and then I may listen to you.

I'll never buy that book.
Bevleecross.