WHAT WAS THE BATTLE FOR AUSTRALIA 1942-43?

Text and Web-site by James Bowen. Last updated 22 January 2010.

"The fall of Singapore can only be described as Australia’s Dunkirk…The fall of Dunkirk initiated the Battle for Britain. The fall of Singapore opens the Battle for Australia."

The Honourable John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia, (press release dated 16 February 1942).

Senshi Sosho, the official Japanese history of the Pacific War 1941-45, provides the following evidence of Japan's hostile plans for Australia in 1942:

"The pressing issue of strengthening policies was discussed at the Imperial Headquarters-Government Liaison Conference on 10 January 1942...With regards to Australia (including New Zealand), the following was determined:

Proceed with the Southern Operations, all the while blockading supply from Britain and the United States and strengthening the
pressure on Australia, ultimately with the aim to force Australia to be freed from the shackles of Britain and the United States."

Extract from Senshi Sosho courtesy of the Australian War Memorial and the Australia Japan Research Project.

Japan brings death and destruction to the tranquil beauty of Sydney Harbour. The Australian Navy barracks ship,
HMAS Kuttabul lies on the bed of Sydney Harbour after a Japanese midget submarine attack in 1942.

Origin of the modern concept of a Battle for Australia

In 2008, the Rudd Government initiated formal observance of Battle for Australia Day on the first Wednesday of September of each year. When the RSL* took the initiative in 1998 to commemorate a Battle for Australia, it was viewed in the historical context of a massive struggle throughout 1942 to defeat Japan's strategic planning to isolate and control Australia by means of a master plan known as Operation FS. Since the RSL acted in 1998, it has become apparent that other versions of a Battle for Australia are being promoted. These other versions include a battle that lasts until Japan's surrender in 1945; a battle that fails to link Coral Sea, Kokoda and Guadalcanal as components of a Japanese strategic master plan to control Australia (and of course, Operation FS was such a plan); and a battle that makes no reference to the critical role that was to be played by Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal in isolating Australia from American help. In regard to Guadalcanal, it is important for Australians to remember that HMAS Canberra was lost in the Guadalcanal campaign in August 1942. The formal observance of Battle for Australia Day on the first Wednesday of September of each year as a day of national commemoration suggests to me a need for those who support commemoration of the Battle for Australia to endeavour to be consistent in defining its concept and scope. I feel that this consistency may be assisted by me explaining how the RSL came to approve commemoration of a Battle for Australia and what it saw as the rationale for such a commemoration.

* RSL is an abbreviation for Australia's largest veterans' organization The Returned & Services League of Australia.

The term Battle for Australia was first used by Australia's wartime Prime Minister John Curtin in the press release above to describe the impending massive struggle to defend Australia against Japanese military aggression. The modern concept of a Battle for Australia owes its origin to a private letter dated 24 July 1997 that I wrote to the National President of the Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL), Major General W. B. Digger James, AC, MBE, MC. I was then Honorary Counsel and a State Executive member of the Victorian RSL.

We were aware from research by the distinguished Japan scholar and historian Professor Henry Frei* that the major Japanese offensive against Australia that began with the Battle of the Coral Sea (7-8 May 1942) had two purposes. The first was to sever Australia's lines of communication with the United States, and thereby, deny the Americans access to Australia as a base from which they could launch a counter-offensive against Japan. The second purpose was to deny American support to Australia and place intense military pressure on Australia to surrender to Japan. At the time of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Australia had already ignored two demands for its surrender made by Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo in the Diet (Japanese parliament) in January and February 1942. See Frei at page 172. A detailed treatment of Imperial Japan's hostile plans for Australia can be found in the chapters commencing "The Japanese planned to compel Australia's surrender in 1942".

* Author of the definitive work on Japan's hostile plans for Australia in 1942 "Japan's Southward Advance and Australia" (1991) Melbourne University Press.

Japanese planning before Pearl Harbor to seize Australia's New Guinea Territories

The First Operational Stage of Japan's campaign of military conquest in the Pacific began with the surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet naval base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and had initially been intended to halt short of the island of New Guinea. The islands of New Britain and New Ireland in Australia's Territory of New Guinea League Mandate* were included in the First Operational Stage at the behest of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue who was commander of the 4th Fleet, or South Seas Force, based at Truk in Japan's Caroline Islands League Mandate*. Admiral Inoue was responsible for absorbing and defeating an expected American counter-offensive against the Japanese-held Marshall and Caroline island groups, but he warned the Navy General Staff of the grave danger that Japan would face if the Americans were allowed to establish bases in Australia and its New Guinea Territories for their inevitable counter-offensive. New Britain, the largest island in the Territory of New Guinea, contained a fine port called Rabaul. Inoue pointed out to the admirals that Truk, Japan's main naval base in the Central Pacific, was only 1,120 kilometres (700 miles) from Rabaul. In Australian-American hands, Rabaul could be used by American B-17 heavy bombers to reach and bomb Truk. Inoue warned that to leave New Guinea and the nearby British Solomon Islands in Australian and British hands would involve a serious risk of the Americans outflanking Japan's eastern defensive perimeter anchored on the Marshall group of islands. Inoue urged an offensive against Australia and the British Solomons (including Guadalcanal) to counter this danger. The warnings made sense to the Japanese admirals, and Imperial General Headquarters agreed with Inoue that the two largest islands of Australia's Territory of New Guinea (New Britain and New Ireland) should be added to his list of Pacific Ocean targets in the First Operational Stage that already included Guam and Wake islands in the northern Pacific, and Britain's Gilbert Islands chain in the South Pacific. Once removed from Australian control, the Japanese intended that Rabaul would become their major base in the South-West Pacific. For a detailed treatment of this Japanese planning affecting Australia, see the chapter "Before Pearl Harbor, Japan targets Australia's New Guinea Territories".
* Australia and Japan were given responsibility to administer these former German colonies by the League of Nations at the end of World War I.

Vice Admiral Inoue persuades Navy General Staff of the need for Japan to capture Port Moresby and the British Solomons

Although he had only been authorised to capture the islands of New Britain and New Ireland in Australia's New Guinea League Mandate in the First Operational Stage, Vice Admiral Inoue appreciated that a major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain would be vulnerable to attack by Allied bombers based at Lae and Salamaua on the northern New Guinea mainland, at Port Moresby on the southern coast of the Australian Territory of Papua, and on islands comprising the British Solomon Islands chain (including Tulagi and Guadalcanal). Inoue urged Navy General Staff to extend Japan's southern defensive perimeter by capturing Port Moresby in Australia's Territory of Papua and Tulagi in the British Solomon Islands.

Although not widely known at the present time, Australia exercised full sovereignty over its Territory of Papua in 1942. Papua was never a League of Nations Mandate. It had been transferred by Britain to Australian ownership in 1906. A hostile landing of Japanese troops in Papua would constitute an invasion of Australia under international law.

Inoue's argument for the capture of Australia's Port Moresby was greatly strengthened by the quick Australian response to the capture of Rabaul on 23 January 1942. The Royal Australian Air Force immediately began to bomb Japanese shipping and installations at Rabaul from airstrips at Port Moresby, Lae, and Salamaua. On 29 January 1942, Japan's Navy General Staff responded positively to Vice Admiral Inoue's arguments by ordering the Commander in Chief of Japan's Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, to capture Lae, Salamaua, and Port Moresby on the New Guinea mainland, and Tulagi island in the British Solomon Islands chain. A detailed treatment of this Japanese planning for invasion of Australia can be found in the chapter "Before Pearl Harbor, Japan targets Australia's New Guinea Territories".

Japanese planning to pressure Australia into surrender to Japan in 1942

To counter the perceived threat from Australia as an American ally in 1942, the admirals of Japan's Navy General Staff and Navy Ministry had resolved as early as December 1941 that key areas of the northern Australian mainland should be occupied in order to deny the Americans access to Australia as a base and to isolate Australia from American and British aid. To invade and occupy those key areas of the Australian mainland, the Japanese Navy required army troops and the admirals requested three Japanese Army divisions for that purpose.

The generals of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, and the Prime Minister of Japan, General Hideki Tojo, appreciated that Australia posed a serious threat to Japan while it remained an ally of the United States. The generals were willing to provide troops to seize and occupy Australia's two New Guinea Territories in 1942 but they believed invasion and occupation of the vast Australian mainland would place an impossible logistical burden on the Japanese Army at that time. When the Japanese Navy requested troops for an invasion of northern coastal areas of the Australian mainland at a meeting of the Army and Navy Sections of Japan's Imperial General Headquarters on 4 March 1942, the generals refused. They felt that their army resources had already been heavily overextended by Japan's rapid and massive territorial conquests, and that the Japanese Army needed time to consolidate its territorial gains. The generals had a different but equally sinister plan for bringing Australia under Japanese control.

Japan's Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and his generals believed that severing Australia's lifeline to the United States, together with an intensified blockade and psychological warfare, would act as a Japanese noose to "throttle Australia into submission" to Japan. This Japanese strategic war plan directed against Australia and the United States had been given the code reference "Operation FS" (also known as "FS Operation"). See Frei at page 172. Senshi Sosho, the official Japanese history of the Pacific War, makes it clear that the Japanese pressure on Australia was intended to force submission to Japan:

"Proceed with the Southern Operations, all the while blockading supply from Britain and the United States and strengthening the pressure on Australia, ultimately with the aim to force Australia to be freed from the shackles of Britain and the United States." See second quote above under title.

Professor Frei tells us that, after its anticipated surrender to Japan in 1942, General Tojo was planning to incorporate Australia as a puppet state into Japan's compliant political bloc called the New Order in Greater East Asia and its equally compliant economic bloc called The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. For more information about these Japanese plans for Australia in 1942, see the chapter: "Japan's hostile plans for Australia after surrender?".

By 7 March 1942, the Japanese Navy and Army had agreed that severing Australia's lifeline to the United States (Operation FS) and pressuring Australia into full submission to Japan were more important objectives than the invasion and occupation of coastal areas of the northern Australian mainland that the Navy had earlier proposed. At the Imperial General Headquarters Liaison Conference on 7 March 1942, the Navy General Staff and Navy Ministry agreed to their limited invasion proposal being deferred in favour of the Army's preferred Operation FS. Planning for an invasion of the Australian mainland was not dropped at this Liaison Conference. It was agreed that planning for invasion of the Australian mainland would be referred back to Navy and Army headquarters for further study. It is important to note that the Japanese generals did not rule out their support for an invasion by force if Australia did not surrender as they expected when the Japanese noose was tightened.

On 15 March 1942, with Emperor Hirohito's approval, Japan's Imperial General Headquarters formally resolved to implement Operation FS by extending Japan's southern defensive perimeter from Port Moresby in the Australian Territory of Papua to Fiji and Samoa in the South Pacific. Port Moresby, Fiji, and the islands between them (the British Solomon Islands, including Guadalcanal, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia), would be heavily fortified by Japan and equipped with forward air and naval bases. The waters between each island fortress in this chain would be guarded by the Japanese Navy. A tightly enforced Japanese blockade would sever Australia's lifeline to the United States and prevent military support (including troops, munitions, equipment, oil, metals, and rubber) reaching Australia from the United States and Britain. A detailed treatment of Imperial Japan's hostile plans for Australia can be found in the chapters commencing "The Japanese planned to compel Australia's surrender in 1942".

Operation FS would be anchored on Port Moresby which belonged to Australia in 1942. The capture of Port Moresby was of vital importance to Imperial Japan's military leaders. Port Moresby was situated on the southern coast of the Australian Territory of Papua and separated from the Australian mainland by a 500 kilometre stretch of the Coral Sea. Its capture would deny the Allies a forward base from which to launch air attacks on Japan's newly acquired military bases in the Australian Territory of New Guinea League Mandate, and in particular, the major Japanese base at Rabaul. With the whole of the island of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands under Japanese control, Japan could establish forward air and naval bases on these captured territories from which it could strike deeply into the Australian mainland and intercept military support for Australia from the United States. Port Moresby would also provide Japan with a springboard for an invasion of the Australian mainland when that became feasible. The first attempt by Japan to capture Port Moresby by means of a powerful seaborne invasion force (Operation MO) took place in the first week of May 1942. This first Japanese attempt to control Australia was frustrated by a joint United States and Australian naval task force at the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Operation FS was Japan's top strategic priority in the Pacific until the Doolittle carrier raid on Japan (18 April 1942) caused equal strategic priority to be given to the total destruction of the US Pacific Fleet. When the Japanese Navy attempted to capture America's Midway islands and suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Midway (3-5 June 1942), including the loss of four of Japan's best fleet aircraft carriers, the Japanese lost their naval supremacy over the United States Pacific Fleet. Lacking the ability to project naval power as far across the Pacific as Fiji and Samoa, Operation FS was cancelled on 11 July 1942. However, the strategic objectives behind Operation FS were not cancelled, and Senshi Sosho records that, despite cancellation of Operation FS, at Imperial General Headquarters:

"There were great expectations for the proposal that the FS Operation would be undertaken after December 1942."
See: Army operations in the South Pacific area: Papua campaigns, 1942–1943, at Chapter 3.

New Japanese strategic plans directed against Australia following the defeat at Midway

After the disastrous naval defeat at Midway, Japan's Imperial General Headquarters believed that Japan's top strategic priority in the Pacific must be to sever Australia's lifeline to the United States and deny the United States access to Australia as the springboard for a counter-offensive. The cancellation of the ambitious Operation FS was not intended to reduce the pressure on Australia to surrender to Japan. Less ambitious plans than Operation FS were developed to achieve those objects. The Japanese Navy General Staff authorized Operation SN to strengthen Japan's outer defensive perimeter by constructing advanced airbases at key strategic locations in Australia's Territory of Papua, including the Louisiade Islands (off the eastern tip of Papua), and the British Solomon Islands to the east of New Guinea*. On 13 June 1942, Navy General Staff authorised construction of an airbase on the northern coast of Guadalcanal.

* See Richard B. Frank's magisterial work "Guadalcanal" (Random House, 1990) in the chapter ""Strategy, Command and the Solomons".

The capture of Port Moresby and Guadalcanal were to be the initial stages of revised Japanese strategic operations against Australia that no longer extended further east than the British Solomons. The capture of Port Moresby and Guadalcanal would enable the Japanese to intensify dramatically their existing blockade of Australia. Longer range air bombing of the Australian mainland could be undertaken from Port Moresby, increased submarine attacks on Australian coastal cities and shipping could be launched from Port Moresby, and Japanese medium bombers based on Guadalcanal could strike more effectively at Australia's vital shipping lifeline to the United States.

Recognising that the Japanese Navy had been seriously weakened by the Midway defeat, and that a seaborne attack on Port Moresby was no longer feasible, Imperial General Headquarters suspended Operation MO and assigned the capture of Port Moresby to Japan's 17th Army with the Navy adopting only a supportive role. A cursory study of the topography between the northern coast of the Australian Territory of Papua and Port Moresby (the RI Operation Study) persuaded the Japanese high command that Port Moresby could be captured by an overland attack using a track across the rugged Owen Stanley Range. Operation MO was reinstated as an overland attack on Port Moresby using the Kokoda Track.

Australia was invaded by Japan on 21 July 1942

Implementation of an overland attack on Port Moresby would lead to an invasion of Australia when Japanese troops landed at Buna and Gona on the northern coast of Papua on 21 July 1942. As mentioned above, Papua was at that time sovereign Australian territory* and the Kokoda Campaign would be fought entirely on Australian soil. This invasion ended when the Japanese were defeated in Papua on 22 January 1943 after six months of some of the bloodiest and most difficult land fighting of the Pacific War. Australia lost 2,165 troops killed and 3,533 wounded. The United States lost 671 troops killed and 2,172 wounded. The heroism of heavily outnumbered young Australian soldiers on the Kokoda Track and at Milne Bay saved Australia from invasion and a grave Japanese threat to the mainland.
* Britain transferred full ownership of Papua to Australia in 1906. Papua achieved independence from Australia in 1975, and combined with the former New Guinea League Mandate to form Papua New Guinea.

Control of access to Australia considered vital strategic aims by the Americans and Japanese in 1942

The US Navy strategy in the South-West Pacific in 1942 was primarily directed to preventing the Japanese occupying Australia, its New Guinea mainland territories, and the British Solomon Islands (including Guadalcanal) in order to preserve them as bases from which the United States and Australia could launch counter-offensives against Japan.** Control of access to Australia was considered vital by both the Japanese and Americans in 1942, and both were determined to prevent the enemy gaining that access.** The Battle of the Coral Sea was initiated by the Japanese in early May 1942 to gain control of Australia by implementing Operation FS. The Kokoda Campaign was initiated by the Japanese in July 1942 to seize Port Moresby and gain control of Australia by implementing the revised Operation FS, now known as Operation MO. On 7 August 1942, the US Navy initiated the Guadalcanal Campaign to block Japanese control of the British Solomon Islands which would threaten American lines of communication with Australia.
** Richard B. Frank provides an excellent account of US Navy and Japanese Navy South Pacific strategies in 1942 in his magisterial work Guadalcanal, (1990) Random House at pages 1-32.

The choice of "Battle for Australia" to describe the bloody struggle to deny Japan control of Australia

Major General James and I chose to use the term "Battle for Australia" to describe the clash of strategic war aims that produced Coral Sea, Kokoda, and Guadalcanal. That descriptive term was also used in deference to Australia’s wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, who first used the term "Battle for Australia" in reference to the expected struggle for survival facing Australia after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. See the chapter "He was coming South - to compel Australia's surrender to Japan".

As a graduate historian, with a special focus on Japanese history and the Pacific War, it fell to me to define the concept and scope of a Battle for Australia, and to write a paper that justified commemoration of a Battle for Australia in 1942. At private meetings during 1997, Major General James and I defined the concept of a Battle for Australia that placed the great battles of 1942, including Battle of the Coral Sea, the Kokoda Campaign, and the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the context of a bloody struggle to prevent the Japanese achieving their strategic aims of controlling Australia and preventing the United States aiding Australia and using Australia as a base for launching a counter-offensive against the Japanese military advance. We were aware that the Americans were determined to protect their access to Australia in 1942, even at the risk of their precious fleet carriers, and that the Japanese were equally determined to deny their enemy that access to Australia. In defining the scope of the Battle for Australia, we were assisted by discussion with the internationally respected Australian military historian, Dr David Horner (now Professor Horner). Despite its crucial role in turning the tide of the Pacific War against the Japanese, the Battle of Midway was not included in the Battle for Australia because it was a diversion from implementing "Operation FS" produced by the Doolittle Raid on Japan on 18 April 1942.

We felt that a national commemoration in the first week of September of each year was desirable to honour the service and sacrifices of those who defended Australia at its time of greatest peril. We wanted the commemoration to include schoolchildren and the countries that aided the defence of Australia in 1942, and these features were incorporated in our proposal to commemorate a Battle for Australia. These features would also be incorporated into the Order of Service for the first commemoration of the Battle for Australia held at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne in September 1999.

It was agreed that the Battle for Australia should cover the initial landing of Japanese invasion troops at Rabaul in the Australian Territory of New Guinea League Mandate on 23 January 1942 and end with the Battle of the Bismark Sea, 2-5 March 1943. The rationale for defining the scope of the Battle for Australia in this way was that Japan was on the offensive against Australia from 23 January 1942 until its defeat in the Battle of the Bismark Sea on 5 March 1943.

When Major General James and I were satisfied that we had defined appropriately the concept and scope of a Battle for Australia, and provided the justification for commemorating that battle, I wrote the paper that proposed commemoration of a Battle for Australia in 1942 and submitted it to Mr Bruce Ruxton, AM, OBE, President of the Victorian Branch of the RSL. The proposal was endorsed and strongly supported by Mr Ruxton who took it to the National Congress of the RSL in 1998 where it was approved that the first Wednesday in September of each year be set aside for commemoration of a Battle for Australia. The paper approved by the RSL provided the foundation for national commemoration of a Battle for Australia.

This history of the Battle for Australia was published online in 2001 and had reached almost 100 pages of text and images by September 2002 when the 60th anniversary of the Battle for Australia was commemorated. At the behest of history teachers, who wanted the Battle for Australia placed in the context of World War II and an explanation of Japan's extreme militarism that produced the Pacific War, this history was expanded to about 600 pages. It now includes a history of Japan from 1185 AD.

Challenges to the concept of a Battle for Australia have been shown to lack credible historical foundation

It is necessary to mention that the historical concept of a Battle for Australia in 1942 has not gone entirely unchallenged. There has been denial from some quarters that there was any Japanese planning at high military levels to invade Australia in 1942 and denial that any invasion of Australia actually occurred in 1942. Although these challenges were not supported by references to credible historical evidence, they achieved some recognition in those sections of the media that thrive on controversy rather than fact. It appears to have escaped the notice of those raising these challenges that the whole of the Kokoda Campaign was fought on Australian soil to expel Japanese invaders. See paragraph above headed "Australia was invaded by Japan on 21 July 1942". Planning at Japan's Imperial General Headquarters for the invasion of Australia that led to the Kokoda Campaign is covered above in the paragraphs beginning "Japanese planning before Pearl Harbor to seize Australia's New Guinea Territories".

It has also been suggested that Australia was not under grave threat from Japanese military aggression in 1942 and that nothing occurred in 1942 that could justify the description Battle for Australia. These suggestions have not been supported by reference to recognised historical authority, and it appears that those who made these suggestions have either not read (or understood) the official Japanese history of the Pacific War Senshi Sosho (see quote above under chapter title), or the published research by leading Japan scholars and historians, such as Professor Henry Frei and Professor John J. Stephan. A detailed refutation of these suggestions by reference to historical authority can be found in the chapters commencing "The Japanese planned to compel Australia's surrender in 1942".

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