'1942, Australia’s greatest peril'

The few historians insisting that the Japanese invasion threat to Australia in early 1942 was merely a “myth” and a recent product of wartime Australian fears of Japan must elevate the debate by researching Japanese sources about the invasion menace.

Dr Peter Stanley in his On Line Opinion article (posted August 6, 2008), trots down familiar paths to denounce those who disagree with him as “revisionist veterans” and “nationalist partisans”. Dr Stanley has got his history wrong. His views are anti-Curtin and pro-British and he has used acerbic words as a substitute for intellectual discussion on the issue since 2002.

My book 1942, Australia’s greatest peril, just out, puts forwards evidence that the Japanese threat to invade Australia in the first few months of 1942 was both genuine and imminent. I table the documents which indicate that invasion was debated most seriously within the Combined Fleet and Naval General Staff of the Imperial Navy and that the naval proposal was put forward for adoption officially, often, and in the most strenuous manner to the Imperial Army.

In the foreword to my book 1942, historian David Day writes that my book provides “… a new and important perspective to the ongoing debate”. But what does this perspective comprise?

If this debate is to move on from bluster and silly notions of “myths” to a more historically rigorous discussion, we should all put our evidence on the table.

In truth there were many senior Imperial Navy officers arguing in favour of an invasion of Australia at some stage during 1942 and this very debate and their proposals represented a substantial menace to Australia. At the time the nation was in a state of great unpreparedness in early 1942 with our armed services largely overseas and with thousands of troops in Australia were drilling with broomsticks, as I detail in my earlier book Saving Australia (Lothian). Australian, British and US intelligence appreciations all pointed to the possibility of at least “limited” or “partial” invasions of Australia, frequently referring to Darwin.

Here are some of the Imperial Navy officers who supported or proposed the invasion of Australia, as listed in 1942:

The commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; his chief of staff Admiral Matome Ugaki; the commander-in-chief of Japan’s second fleet, who led the southern invasion operations including the invasion of Malaya, Admiral Nobutake Kondo; the commander of the Japanese fourth fleet Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue; the commander of the second carrier division, Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi; the head of the bureau of naval affairs within Naval General Staff Admiral Takasumi Oka; and many powerful naval war planners, including the chief of the operations section of Naval General Staff, Baron captain (later rear admiral) Sadatoshi Tomioka.

According to war historian Hiromi Tanaka, who teaches today at Japan’s National Defense Academy:

… there were so many high ranking officers, including those in the Navy General Staff, who were arguing about attacking Australia. Also in the Combined Fleet. Arguing about attacking and invading Australia. It wasn’t just the initiative of junior officers involved in this talk …

But what was the logic in invading Australia? Primarily, these officers wanted to prevent the US from using Australia as a base for offensives, as indeed occurred. But logic, I learned in four research trips to Japan, didn’t always come into it, as Professor Tanaka in Tokyo pointed out:

You must understand that the Imperial Japanese Navy was such an irresponsible organisation; they never wanted to take responsibility, but after the [Australian] takeover, they would have withdrawn, and left the rest to the army, saying the rest was an army responsibility.

The weight of evidence showing that invasion of Australia was seriously contemplated is considerable. It is in Japan’s official war history Senshi Sosho, minutes of meetings between the Navy and the Army, in memoirs and diaries of Japanese officers, in official interviews and post-war interrogations conducted with participants, and in the writings of historians, both Japanese and Western. A quick selection from an extensive list of history books:

• Admiral Yamamoto’s biographer, Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, (Kodansha): “It was the first - the attack on Australia - that was most enthusiastically advocated by the operations division of the Naval General Staff.”
• Yamamoto’s air commander Mitsuo Fuchida, in Midway (US Naval Institute): “Following the easy conquest of the Bismarcks in January, the most aggressive proponents of the Australia-first concept started advocating outright occupation of key areas in Australia.”
• Pulitzer Prize winning author John Toland in The Rising Sun (Penguin): “The Navy envisaged invasion of Australia itself with five Army divisions.”
• Australian war historian Gavin Long, The Six Years War (The Australian War Memorial & the Australian Govt Publishing Service): “And soon naval leaders were advocating two more ambitious ventures: invasion of Australia and a thrust towards Hawaii.”

Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the commander in chief Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, had his chief of staff Admiral Matome Ugaki examine Japan’s “second stage” offensives. Initially Yamamoto insisted that Japan must follow through by aggressive action in all directions to keep the Americans off balance and allow Japan to expand the new perimeter until Washington sued for peace.

Yamamoto told Ugaki, according to the war history series Senshi sosho, that he had three targets in mind: India, Australia and Hawaii. Of the three Yamamoto counted Hawaii as the most important, because of the strategic threat the Pacific base and it’s as yet untouched carrier fleet. Australia was included in Yamamoto’s initial invasion plans, according to John J. Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun (University of Hawaii Press), because the commander-in-chief wanted a bold strategy which he called happo yabure, or “strike on all sides”.

After much study, Ugaki, in late January and early February, came down favour capturing Australia’s north, among other landings. Ugaki’s operational planners in Combined Fleet embraced invading northern Australia, along with other strategic points. They submitted a plan to Navy General Staff a list of priorities which included the comment: “Port Darwin must be taken.”

Naval General Staff soon agreed with Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet. Admiral Nobutake Kondo, commander of the attack force on Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, was a former chief of staff of the Combined Fleet. He prepared a proposal for Yamamoto. Kondo saw Japan as having two planning options: one was an operation to take India and the other, an operation to capture Australia.

The Australia operation … could be regarded as part of our main operation against America and also would have a rich chance of taking hold of American task forces.

Vice admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, a moderate, was the commander of the Japanese Fourth Fleet. Inoue and his staff officers aboard the cruiser Kashima called for Japanese expansion in the Solomons-New Guinea area, as the necessary first steps required for landings on the Australian mainland.

Another admiral’s plan came to light during table manoeuvres aboard Yamamoto’s flagship, the Yamato, anchored on the Inland Sea. It came from a close confidant of Yamamoto, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the Second Carrier Division.

Between February 20 and 23 Yamaguchi distributed copies of a blueprint invasion plan proposing widespread invasions across the Indian and Pacific oceans starting from May 1942. There would be an invasion of Ceylon in May. During June and July 1942 landings would be made on Fiji, Samoa, New Caledonia, New Zealand and northern Australia.

But Yamamoto now was becoming interested in a new plan to take the atolls of Midway to draw out the US Pacific fleet for a decisive battle. Midway would be a precursor to an invasion of Hawaii, and, if successful, would have meant follow-up invasions of Australia, New Zealand and adjacent islands.

General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who had captured Singapore, was imprisoned near Manila, awaiting trial as a war criminal in 1945, when he spoke of his wartime plans for invading Australia, to quote author John Deane Potter:

He said that after he had taken Singapore, he wanted to discuss with Tojo a plan for the invasion of Australia … Tojo turned down the plan, making the excuse of lengthened supply lines, which would be precarious and open to enemy attack …

Yamashita’s plan to conquer Australia was practically identical with his successful campaign in Malaya. He intended to land on each side of the major Australian cities and cut them off, first making a series of dummy landings to draw off the pitifully few Australian troops.

“With even Sydney and Brisbane in my hands, it would have been comparatively simply to subdue Australia. I would never visualise occupying it entirely. It was too large. With its coastline, anyone can always land there exactly as he wants” ... Yamashita said.

The influential hard-liner, Admiral Takasumi Oka, head of the bureau of naval affairs within Naval General Staff in Tokyo, vehemently disagreed with Army plans to maintain a defensive stance:

[We] need to actively move our forces to Australia and Hawaii, annihilate our enemies’ marine military force, and decimate our enemies’ bases for counterattack … it is vital that we procure resources within the co-prosperity sphere and ensure that they are not taken by our enemies …

Bitter debate continued about Australia between the Army and the Navy. The Army’s chief of staff General Hajime Sugiyama, who took minutes of vital planning meetings in March 1942, summarised:

Put simply, the Navy argued for an aggressive offensive that included attacking Australia, whereas the Army outright opposed attacking Australia, stating that the focus ought to be on firmly establishing the situation so that Japan will be unbeatable in the long-term.

General Sugiyama when referring to “attacking Australia” was in fact speaking about invasion because at the time of writing, Darwin was already being bombed from the air.

After the war, awaiting trial for war crimes, ex-Prime Minister Hideki Tojo said Japan never had plans to invade Australia. But Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, an uncle to the Empress Nagako, tells a much different story in his memoirs. Higashikuni, a member of the Supreme War Council, wanted Japan to quit while ahead. He told Tojo after the initial successes that Singapore would soon fall and Japan should start peace overtures, adding: “We must end this war without further delay.” According to Higashikuni, Tojo was defiant, replying:

I think we will have few problems occupying not only Java and Sumatra but also Australia if things go on like this. We shouldn’t think about peace at this time.

The critical debate about the invasion of Australia took place between late January and mid March 1942. During this period the Imperial army and navy were in constant disagreement. In time the Japanese Imperial Army gained the upper hand in the invasion debate about Australia, although the Navy refused to abandon the idea, considering it for some time merely to be shelved.

But as a compromise in the debate, the Imperial Army agreed to more easily achievable and realistic goals, including the invasion of the Australian base of Port Moresby. Prime Minister Tojo, General Sugiyama and Admiral Nagano put a compromise solution to Emperor Hirohito on March 13.

The Army allowed inclusion in the text of a “temporary invasion of Darwin” as a future option to demonstrate “positive warfare”. But the “temporary invasion of Darwin” proposal had so many tough Army conditions attached, including the need for major victories elsewhere, that of itself it would not lead to invasion of Australia’s north.

As I state in 1942, Australia’s greatest peril, Japan’s devastating losses in the Battle of Midway significantly helped to secure Australia’s safety, along with battles at Kokoda and Milne Bay, among others, but the threat had been very real. As David Horner, professor of Australian defence history, speaking at a Canberra seminar in 2002 about the period January to March 1942, said:

The events of 1942 presented the Australian government and its military high command with greater challenges than at any time since Federation. For the first and only time since white settlement Australia faced the prospect of a foreign invasion.