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Some reflections in Australiaon the fiftieth anniversary ofthe outbreak of the secondworld warOhe Shinobu aa Social History Faculty of Humanities , IbarakiUniversityPublished online: 03 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Ohe Shinobu (1989) Some reflections in Australia on the fiftiethanniversary of the outbreak of the second world war, Japanese Studies, 9:4, 46-52,DOI: 10.1080/10371398908522038

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10371398908522038

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SOME REFLECTIONS IN AUSTRALIA ON THEFIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE

OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Ohe ShinobuProfessor of Social History

Faculty of HuaanitiesIbaraki University

I was in Adelaide on the first of September 1989. As tothe significance of the date, most Japanese would have littleto recall. It was the fiftieth anniversary of an incidentwhich was recognized in Japan as happening far away. On thefirst of September 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland. Onthe third of September, Great Britain and France declared waragainst Germany, and Europe was plunged into the Second WorldWar.

contrary to the belief of most Japanese, the SecondWorld War commenced not on the eighth of December 1941 but onthe third of September 1939. In preparation for the fiftiethanniversary, newspapers and television had begun a series ofspecial articles and programmes on the war. It was in themidst of this media coverage that I arrived in Australia.

The first thing which caught my eye was' a four-pagespecial issue of the ~' a Melbourne newspaper, entitled"The War: 50 years on" (~' 28 August 1989). The front­page story was an article with the headline, "Halting theJapanese Juggernaut". As a Japanese, it seemed a littlestrange to me at first to see Japan in a front-page articleof a special issue on the fiftieth anniversary of Septemberthe third, 1989, and not December the eighth, 1941. However,when I read the article I understood the reason. I alsopartly understood why Australia showed a strong response tothe issue of the war responsibility of the Tenno (emperor)regarding the Second World War, as well as """"E1lereason whydeep-rooted anti-Japanese feelings have persisted inAustralia for a long time.

Australia has shown, as a member of the Commonwealth, aloyalty toward Great Britain in its post-war history, aloyalty which is excessive. Despite its small population,Australia has a history of providing armed forces when it wasasked to do so by Great Britain: in the Boer War attackingSouth Africa; at the beginning of the twentieth century inthe First World War; and later in the Second world War. Italso dispatched troops to the Korean and Vietnam Wars for theU.S.A. It was only with defeat in the Vietnam War that analmost revolutionary change in policy and awareness began toemerge, with Australia breaking away from Europe and Americato act as a member of Asia. This has been a recent change,however, of no more than the past twenty years.

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The sacrifice ANZACs made in the First World War wasenormous. 'Gallipoli' is the symbol of the First World Warfor Australians. It was the equivalent of 'Ryojun' (PortArthur) for the Japanese in the Russo:-Japanese War. Thesiege of Port Arthur lasted for six months. Fifteen thousandpeople were sacrificed to conquer the fortress of PortArthur, and the word "nikudan" (human bullets) was coinedduring the battle.

During the First World War, Winston Churchill, thenMinister of the Navy of Great Britain and later PrimeMinister during the Second World War, planned an operation toblock the Dardanelles Strait in order to defeat the Germanally, Turkey. The plan was made to break the deadlock on theWestern Front. Gallipoli was the fortress at the mouth ofthe Dardanelles Strait connecting the Black Sea to theMediterranean Sea. It was planned as an offensive operationof forceful landing at Gallipoli.

The Commanding Officer of the invading army was Lt.General Ian Hamilton of Great Britain. He had earlier beenthe military observer sent from England during the Russo­Japanese War, when Great Britain was an ally of Japan. Hewrote a book, the Japanese title of which is Nichiro sensokansenki (A record/account of the Russo-Japanese war).Hamil ton experienced the new machine-gun technology on thebattlefields of the Russo-Japanese War and realized that thenineteenth-century style of warfare was a thing of the past.He knew that there would be little possibility of success inthe forced operation at Gallipoli. As military commanderreceiving orders, however, he directed the landing of theelite ANZAC troops in the face of the enemy. It was anextremely reckless operation to land on the rocky beachagainst an enemy guarded by a robust fortress equipped withmodern arms. The result was even more tragic than the siegeat Port Arthur.

Being unable to advance against the counter-attack ofthe Turkish Army, and not able to retreat to the sea, theoperation turned out to be a crushing defeat, ending with anescape by ship and with enormous human sacrifice. Churchillresigned as Minister of the Navy, bearing responsibility forthe defeat, and Hamilton was expelled from active service.

I went to the War Memorial in Canberra in February 1988.Even after the Second World War, the exhibition remainscentred around the battle of Gallipoli. The portraits ofcommanding officers who directed the ANZACs in the battle ofGallipoli were exhibited~ but there was no portrait ofHamilton, who was appointed as the supreme commander by GreatBritain. I was struck by the absence.

The battle of Gallipoli played an important role notonly for the ANZACs, but in the whole history of the FirstWorld War. The war history Gallipoli is also translated and

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publish~d in Japan. However, the Kokoda Trail in the SecondWorld War, which is equivalent to the battle of Gallipoli inthe First World War, is hardly known to the Japanese. Infact, it was not until I read the recent ~ article that Irealized that the significance of Kokoda is the proof thatthe Second World War for Australia began not on the eighth ofDecember 1941 but on the third of September 1939.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Australiasent many troops to North Africa and the Middle East inresponse to Great Britain's requirements. In the autumn of1941, the Australian army on the North African front wasdesperately trying to defend Tobruk, which it had occupiedafter expelling the Italian army. This time the battle wasagainst Rommel's troops, which began the Libyan rescueoperation. Incidentally, the song 'Lili Marlene', which waswidely sung during the war both by the Germans and theAllies, was first brought to the North African front byRommel's troops and sung by them every night. British andAustralian soldiers confronting the German army heard themsing and made up their own lyrics - a story I learnt from thenewspaper article.

Apart from this, Australia had sent an army corps to theMiddle East. wi th the increase of tension in the Far East,Great Britain had requested Australia to send an armydivision to defend Singapore, which left the Australians withalmost no ground defence force for their own country. Suchwas the position in Australia on the eighth of December 1941when Japan attacked Kokoda. It was a foul attack which theAustralians expected even less than the Americans hadexpected Pearl Harbor. On the fifth of January 1942, GreatBritain requested Australia to divert the First AustralianArmy Corps to strengthen the defence of the Malay Peninsulaand the Australian government agreed. Of course, thediversion of the corps was too late to defend the MalayPeninsula.

The treatment Australia received from the Japanese armywas inhumane. On the twelfth of February 1942, off the coastof Sumatra, the Japanese army sank a ship which went alongthe coast fully loaded with Malayan refugees. Sixty-fiveAustralian nurses were on board and some of them were able toland on Banka Island. The Japanese army on the Islandordered those people to go back into the sea and shot themwhen they were waist-deep in the water, killing all exceptone nurse, Vivian Bulwinkle, who survived. This incidentregistered the cruelty of the Japanese army deep in the mindsof Australians.

The battle of the Coral Sea, which lasted from thefourth to the eighth of May 1942, was the first battlebetween aircraft carrier fleets in the war history of theworld. Although the Japanese navy won the battle in terms ofminor tactics, the battle caused the abandonment of the

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planned landing operation at Port Moresby and thus caused asignificant alteration to the operational plans of theJapanese army. In terms of long-term strategy, therefore, itmeant the first defeat of the Japanese army. On the twenty­first of July, the Japanese army landed close to Buna in EastNew Guinea in order to study the possibility of invasion ofMoresby by land. That was the first of the tragic battles inNew Guinea for the Japanese army.

In August, a reckless operation began, for which theconceited and arbitrary decision of a single staff officer atthe Imperial Headquarters was responsible. The plan was toinvade Moresby, first by going through the jungle, which didnot even have a road fo r supply, and then by c rossi ng theOwen Stanley Ranges, which are more than 4,000 metres high.The commencement of the Moresby invasion operation coincidedwith the landing on Guadalcanal Island by the American army,which was the beginning of the counter-offensive operationleast expected by the Japanese army. The Japanese army inthe Rabaul district was expending all its strength on therecovery operation on Guadalcanal Island and could not assistthe Moresby invasion operation. The Moresby invasion corpscrossed the Owen Stanley Range at the Kokoda Trail with fewsupplies, managing to advance to within 50 kilometres ofMoresby. From this place they could see the lights of thetown at night. But that was the limit of their supply. TheJapanese army reached the lowest ebb of its fightingstrength, stopped the operation and began to retreat.

On the twenty-eighth of September, the Australian armylaunched a counte r-at tack at Kokoda. The ba t tIe became adecisive turning-point in the battle for New Guinea. Theretreating Japanese army was finally cornered at Buna andannihilated. The Moresby invasion army was a detached troopled by a lieutenant, the strength of which was less than thatof a division. Thus the battle of Guadalcanal Island, whichrolled back the tide of the war in the Paci fi c, began wi ththe total defeat of a small Japanese troop in the face of thecounter-landing attack. The strategic meaning of theincident was far greater than the scale of the actual battle.

The Japanese army poured more and more men into NewGuinea, becoming sucked into a war of attrition. It fell ina state of exhaustion, losing well over one hundred thousandlives (mostly by starvation). Thus, the Japanese army usedall its fighting power for a fruitless battle which had lostits strategic meaning. Even the name of the battle ofKokoda, however, is hardly remembered in Japan. This isbecause the failure of the Moresby invasion operation hasbeen attributed to the fact that it was a reckless andsuicidal operation by the Japanese army, rather than to theresistance by the Australian army. However, Kokoda has adifferent meaning for Australians.

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Australia at that time had sent its forces to variousplaces at the request of Britain, and was virtually withoutany force which it could use for the defence of Australia.In response to the Japanese attack on Moresby, the gateway toAustralia, hastily-mobilised forces were put together andsent into battle, inadequately trained and equipped.

The Australian army had the capacity to engage theattacking Japanese army only by guerilla warfare tactics.The loss of the Moresby airport would have led to the loss ofthe whole of Australian New Guinea, and would have meant thatcontrol of the skies over the whole Coral Sea passed toJapan. It really was a defensive battle of life-or-deathimportance for Australia.

It is this understanding on the Australian side whichled to Kokoda being given a status equivalent to that ofGallipoli in the First World War. The different view of theKokoda battle taken by the Japanese and the Australian sidesshows how the evaluation of facts in history depends on one'ssubjective position.

I discussed this problem with one young historian whowas born in Australia and who is a graduate of a universityin Australia. His generation took a slightly different view,seeing in the reappraisal of the significance of the WorldWar Two Battle of New Guinea a reflection of Australiannationalism in the process of distancing itself from Europeand America. Recently, according to him, whatever one maysay about the Kokoda Battle, a view is emerging that sees thefighting of the Australian army in New Guinea from 1943 ascompletely meaningless.

As a matter of fact, criticism of the United States troman Australian patriotic perspective can be seen in severalplaces in the ~ special supplement on the war. The ~ sawthe Kokoda battle as the turning-point in the subsequentbattle for New Guinea, and recognised that there were 'a fewpeople' who refer to the attacks on Wewak, Bougainville andRabaul, after strategic importance shifted to the west, as an'unnecessary war'.

General Gordon Bennett, commander of the AustralianEighth Army, which had to surrender after scarcely anyopportunity to fight at Singapore, in accordance with thesurrender order from General percival, Commander of theBritish Army there, escaped from Singapore in contraventionof the surrender order and returned to Australia. Thearticle notes of him that 'although he proved to havevaluable knowledge of Japanese military tactics he was notgiven any subsequent command position. Ironically it was notlong after this that American General Douglas MacArthurescaped from the Philippines and was acclaimed as a hero'.

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Elsewhere in the article it says that the 'AmericanGeneral MacArthur, beaten by the Japanese in the Philippines,arrived in Melbourne to become Supreme Commander, South-westPacific Area. Under him Blamey was to command all alliedland forces. The Australian-US Alliance was uncomfortable,unequal and often unfair'.

It is undeniable that this lack of rapport with theunited States developed as a reflection of Australian­American relations during the vietnam War. As a sign ofpost-World war Two distancing from Britain, the setting asideof 'God Save The Queen' as a national anthem and the adoptionof the new anthem 'Advance Australia Fair' showed both thestrengthening of Australian patriotism and the strengtheningof reliance on the United States in the Cold War context ofbeing forced to choose one side or the other. However, inthis ironic and contemptuous appraisal of MacArthur on theoccasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of theWar, there is a very clear indication that the Australiawhich sent its army away to defeat in Vietnam is movingbeyond its Cold War dependence on the United States.

It appears that Australia, after the Battle of NewGuinea, departed from the excessive faithfulness to Britainwhich it had maintained between the outbreak of the SecondWorld War and the fall of Singapore, moving to an uneasy,unequal, and occasionally unjust alliance with America,represented by MacArthur. Under this new alliance, Australiasent troops to America's war in Korea and an army toAmerica's vietnam War. Now, however, Australia is graduallylooking for a path independent of both Britain and the UnitedStates, and has begun to walk on its own two feet.

The problem facing Australia today is whether this pathshould follow the Australian patriotic line, learning fromexper i ence the bi t te r lessons of hi story, or should move inan internationalist direction, with a consciousness of itselfas a member of the new Asia, or should choose a compromisepath in the belief that both can co-exist.

Last year's fiftieth anniversary of the War's outbreak,following the previous year's Bicentennial (explained inJapan as the 200th anniversary of the founding of the countrybut actually the 200th anniversary of white settlement),showed clearly the national contradiction facing Australiatoday. whether Kokoda is to be seen as the symbol ofAustralian patriotism or a historical transition-point fromexcessive loyalty to Britain to a dependence on the unitedStates which lasted until the Vietnam War is not just aproblem in the history of the Second World War but a problemwhich can be resolved by examining the historical processfrom the Battle of Kokoda via the Korean War to the vietnamWar.

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Today Australia is becoming a multiracial, multiculturalcountry, a country which has positively accepted vietnameserefugees. Japan, on the other h~nd, having taken theopportunity of the Korean War to recover from the economicdestitution caused by defeat in the Second World War, andhaving become a great economic power, surpassing the Uni tedStates by taking advantage of the Vietnam War, remainedsealed in a cold War-frozen 'peace in a refrigerator',earnestly pursuing a course of mono-racialism and culturalisolationism based on a military structure whose axis is theJapan-US relationship.

In articles in Australian newspapers are to be foundvoices which point to these tendencies in Japan and whichraise doubts about the future of Japanese economicprospe ri ty. I agree wi th such voi ce s. The Japan whi ch usedto rule Korea as a colony and for that reason has a largeKorean population within its territory but does not recognizethe usual rights as citizens of these Koreans-in-Japancannot implement principles of multiplicity and universalitybased on mutual struggle between equals and marked by acultural creativity full of vitality. This is becausewithout such creativity the social energy to support economicdevelopment cannot be maintained.

(Translated by Gavan McCormack andShoko Yoneyama)

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