First I must thank the author for further exposing the hidden truth of australian politics.
Secondly I want to ask ' individual' to please get yourself an education in austalian white/aboriginal history " henry reynolds"
is a good place to start.
Your comments about your work related experience do not carry any weight in the light of history of the last 200 years, there are those that have succumbed to the 'anglo capitalistic greed society's' ways in all countries infected with 'white english speaking anglo saxon christian disease'
I think you could do better to educate yourself, with respect.
Cheers Neil

Further to the subject of Pearl Harbour dealt with in my previous post, for those who may still be in doubt, last night as I lay sleeping, these words (perhaps from old Banjo?) came to me.

Now Winston, in late 1940 (November eleven's precise),
With the Imperial Japanese Navy, had duly held a discourse.
In mute Esperanto, at night, at Taranto,
showed just what could be done, in due course.

Now meet the Australian component of the real Samurai of 7 December 1941.

On parade is a ghostly contingent of veterans of operation Rising Sun, all of whom had volunteered for service with their eyes wide open, but had, as a necessity of the grand strategy of war, along with very many more of their British and Indian army comrades in arms (140,000 or so, not counting the poor innocent Dutch), been deployed with their eyes wired shut. They can now proudly march off into history with the crucial significance of their service in the real Battle for Australia 1939-1945 better understood.

Behind the Brunswick Salvation Army Citadel Band (enlisted en masse in the band of the 2/22nd Battalion AIF, perishing en masse as POWs upon the sinking of the Montevideo Maru on 1 July 1942) the parade is led by men in the white uniforms of the senior Service, the 645 strong crew of HMAS Sydney, in two columns flanking a smaller formation in a somewhat different naval uniform as if the subject of a guard of honour: the crew of HK Kormoran, faithful bearers and testers of the code for all this Bushido.

After them come the 14,000 or so men of the 8th Division AIF, followed by other supporting troops and detachments that served in the region, nigh on a quarter of Australia's front line combat strength in 1941, that had to be deliberately thrown to the wolves. Every here and there, except in the Sydney contingent, are strange gaps in the ranks: they represent men still living. You can still talk to some of them.

To be continued.

Continued from above.

In honour of their service at places like Gemas (the Sungei Gemencheh bridge), Parit Sulong, Singapore, Hellfire Pass, the River Kwai, and the coal mines of Japan, the ghostly band is playing that old hallmark march, 'Colonel Bogey'. To the possible chagrin of the band, the diggers are all singing the words that go to that tune.

"Bullsh!t was all the band could play,
Bullsh!t, they played it night and day....."

The music and singing is momentarily drowned out by the roar of a ghostly low-flying RAAF Catalina flown by F/O Bedell and his crew. Appropriately enough, as Australians, they were to be the very first casualties as operation Rising Sun reached its climax and Japan opened hostilities on 7 December 1941 with attacks at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, and Kota Bahru, Malaya.

The parade slowly disappears into the distance.

Let's give them all three cheers.

Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

The old Australian saying is, "bullsh!t baffles brains". It certainly did in 1940 and 1941.

A Footnote for Today

An interesting observation has recently been made by Koichi Kaizawa, 60, an official at the Biratori Ainu Culture Preservation Association in Japan. (Presumably the otherwise seemingly off-topic posters in this thread will know that the Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan.) His observation was: "....I think it's a good thing Japan lost WW2. If Japan had won, so many others would have lost their language and culture." (See article 'Rebirth of a nation', Sun Herald 20 July 2008, pp 48-49.)

So what should all the real samurai of this 'revisionist' history have said with respect to their efforts? Sorry?

Even Daniel, on Bigpond Broadband, knows better than that.

Just shows many are influenced by slogans and buzzwords ('invasion'), I suppose, to think the article had anything to do with the suppression of indigenous cultures in Australia. I wonder if those posters would have preferred shoguns?

Well, Peter Stanley, you're the historian. I given you my take on it. All you've got to do now is document it.

Obviously we need to cut to the chase immediately and answer the biggest question of all...will there be a public holiday declared. If not, I can't see any benefit at all....

Peter

Thank you for your article.

Yes, Japan did not intend invading Australia after early 1942, but then again Germany did not intend invading the UK after September 1940. Both Germany and Japan had other theatres to get involved in, but both had an interest in neutralising, as much as possible, the military threat that the places that they chose not to invade would have against them.

Both Australia and Britain were invaded in WW2, of course: By North Americans in both cases. In Britain it was the situation that England was to be defended to the last Canadian... Then of course the USA entered the war and in both the UK it was over paid, over-sexed and over here.

At least the Americans didn't intend to stay permanently.

As Sean Brawley has pointed out only two countries made a profit out of WW2, one was Argentina, the other Australia: feeding US forces in the Pacific - no bad thing.

This is not to dismiss Australian sacrifice in WW2, much of it sacrifice on the altar of high command stupidity. But such is what wars are made of: military staff fighting the last last war, whilst the boots are being ground into the soil of today's battlefields.

Construction of the Tocumwal air base, claimed to have been the largest such base in the southern hemisphere, commenced on 19 February 1942, the day the Japanese first bombed Darwin, expressly for the US Army Air Corps. One would expect, since it was built expressly for USAAC requirements, that US strategic assessments would have figured significantly, if not overwhelmingly, in deciding its location.

A careful consideration of its location would indicate that it was a preparation against Japanese naval raids directed against SE Australian coastal targets, rather than against an expectation of invasion from the north. Its position, effectively just out of carrier-borne aicraft range from the Tasman, Bass Strait, or the Southern Ocean, is indicative of an expectation that the concentration of resources that it represented was not seen as likely to have been threatened by any overland approach. Stated more precisely, that there was assessed to exist no invasion threat.

Since the construction of the base was undertaken by the Australian government, one would expect that government to have known, before commencement, that such was the threat assessment made by the only significant contributor to Australian defence then available, the US forces. It would have been blatantly obvious, even at that early stage, that war in the SW Pacific was going to be, and remain, primarily influenced by naval strategic and logistic considerations.

Even with the Japanese holding Rabaul, all of the naval support facilities in Australia were a hell of a long way from anywhere except New Zealand, even for the Japanese. Sustained raids, or spot invasions, would have been a logistical nightmare even without the intervention of air power. Had such nevertheless been sustained, the Japanese would have remained threatened, or threatenable, at the end of this very long supply chain, from NZ. So the invasion bill, for the Japanese, could only keep rising. Bases too far! Spread too thin! And of what use against the US, which would in that unlikely envisioned invasion scenario have remained throughout Japan's major concern.

In January 1942, the Australian government knew 'he' wasn't heading far south.