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Dear Mr Opinion,

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You wrote to Foxy :

« The Japanese tried to capture Australia in the early days of the Pacific War because Australia was part of the British Commonwealth which was at war with its Axis allies. So similarly its only to be expected that China would attack the allies of the US »
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The Japanese were certainly on the warpath, Mr Opinion, and may well have envied the wide-open spaces of Australia, more than 20 times the land area of Japan, with a population of just over 7 million compared to Japan’s 105 million in 1941.

However, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the US did not want to enter the second world war. That attack triggered Franklin Roosevelt, the US president, and John Curtin, the Australian prime minister, to declare war on Japan the following day, 8 December 1941.

Australia had entered the second world war on 3 September 1939, the date on which France and the UK declared war on Germany – not because Australia was a member of the British Commonwealth, but because it was still, de jure and de facto, a colony of the UK, albeit “a quasi-self-governing colony” up until 3 March 1986 when the Australia Act came into force.

As a result of the Australia Act, all that remains of our colonial status is our colonial constitution of 1901 which has never been replaced and our head of state, the British Crown. Because of that, Australia remains, of course, a Constitutional Monarchy.

Our prime minister, Robert Menzies declared on 3 September 1939 :

« Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement »

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(Continued …)

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(Continued …)

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Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed on a “Germany first” war strategy which Churchill concealed from John Curtin who was our prime minister in 1941. Churchill was obsessed with defeating Germany and was prepared to abandon Australia to the Japanese if they wanted it.

To ease Curtin's concern for Australia's safety, and resist the withdrawal of our military forces from Britain, North Africa, and the Middle East, Churchill assured Curtin that a British fleet would be dispatched to save us if there was a Japanese invasion. That was a lie. Churchill had no intention of sending a British fleet to save Australia.

When Curtin sought a response to his pleas for British military assistance to defend Australia against Japanese invasion, and mentioned the extent of the military assistance that Australia had provided to Britain in its struggle with Germany, Winston Churchill made it very clear that no British military support would be provided for the defence of Australia.

On February 19, 1942, Darwin was attacked by two Japanese air raids. They were led by Mitsuo Fuchida, the same Japanese commander who had bombed Pearl Harbour 10 weeks earlier. The attacks killed 250 people and injured 300 to 400.

A total of 188 planes attacked Darwin’s port and harbour, destroying 20 military aircraft and eight ships. The National Archives of Australia state that most of the city’s military and civil infrastructure was also blown to smithereens in what’s popularly known as “Australia’s Pearl Harbour”.

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Dear Banjo Paterson,

So why are you giving us this cut & paste account taken from some Google site?

Hi Mr O, BP has given an historically accurate account of events at that time. What I will add, is that 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies, The founder of the Liberal Party, had proposed the "Brisbane Line", should Japan invade Australia from the north. According to Menzies Australia should offer no resistance until the Japanese had reached a point on the map just north of Brisbane. Since Menzies was of the same mind as Churchill, he opposed the return of Australian troops to defend Australia. I'm not sure what defence against the Japanese Menzies had in mind, possibly old women with broomsticks. Menzies of course would have been puffed up and safe in England as part of the British War Cabinet.

Mr O, should the Chinese invade Australia maybe good old Scum O' could take a leaf out of the Menzies book, and propose the "Hobart Line".
Just a small point, although the British Commonwealth was formed in name back in 1931, many including the likes of Menzies seen Australia as nothing more than an appendage of the British Empire.

Usual rubbish from Mr O..."The Japanese tried to capture Australia in the early days of the Pacific War"

Japan never intended to capture Australia. They had neither the manpower, equipment of need to do so. It was briefly considered by some people with the Japanese navy but the proposal was squashed by the army who considered it 'gibberish' (rather appropriate given that Mr O believes it).

Instead the initial plan was to isolate Australia from its allies by controlling all the sea routes between Australia and the US. This would have effectively neutralised Australia as a potential threat. That's why the victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea was so important in saving Australia.

While debunking myth... there is no (as in zero, nada, nix) evidence that Menzies or any other government every proposed a Brisbane Line. The claim was an election ploy cooked up by a few ALP ministers based on a complete misunderstanding of the actual strategic proposals. A royal commission looked into the issue and found no evidence for the myth. That people like Paul still believe it shows just how easily some people are fooled if they really really want to be.

Since I've broken my rule about ignoring Mr O's idiotic claims, perhaps just this once, I'll make some points.

Mr O thinks its legitimate to calculate the number of this or that ethnic group in Sydney and/or Australia by strolling around various locales and counting. He also thinks that data from The Asutralian Bureau of Statistics can be ignored as second-hand data!! A certifiable moron, indeed.

But if Mr O thinks this is in any way valid, he'll need to admit that things are improving in regards to Chinese numbers, since in 2015 he was saying 2 in 3 people he saw were Chinese but now its only 1 in 2. I wonder if he's up to understanding which is the higher proportion?

Mr O claims to have 4 degrees. Now I know that the Australian education system is in a poor state, but I can't beleive that even as bad as it is, it would give even one degree to a moron who thinks that strolling around Chatswood counting heads is preferable to accessing ABS data. Indeed I'd doubt they'd even let such a dill out of kindergarten.

Hilariously one of the degrees O. claims is Environment Sociology which relies heavily on developing and accessing data via survey and statistics. But poor Mr O is clearly incapable of understanding, let alone, doing any of that.

The poor fool has created from thin air his claimed credentials in order to puff up a clearly deficient ego. He's incapable of developing, let alone maintaining any argument, so relies on faked expertise to try to win where intellect fails him.

I'll now go back to ignoring the fool