Historical Source Material

Reading

Professor David Horner: "Defending Australia in 1942", article published in "The Pacific War 1942" issue of War & Society (May, 1993) University of New South Wales/ Australian Defence Force Academy.
Professor Horner is a distinguished Australian military historian and internationally recognised authority on the Pacific War 1941-45.

Professor Henry P. Frei: "Japan's Southward Advance and Australia", (1991) Melbourne University Press.
This is the definitive account of Japan's hostile plans to isolate Australia from American support in 1942 and force its surrender to Japan.

Dr. David Day: "The Politics of War", (2003) HarperCollins.

Douglas Lockwood: "Australia's Pearl Harbor - Darwin 1942"

Professor Herbert P. Bix, "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan", (2000) HarperCollins, New York.

Professor J. J. Stephan: "Hawaii under the Rising Sun", (1984) University of Hawaii Press.

Mitsuo Fuchida & Masatake Okumiya: "Midway -The Battle that doomed Japan" * (1955) United States Navy Institute. See especially Chapter 3 "Debate on future Stategy".
* This book has to be read with caution. The naval officer authors have been shown to have embroidered their accounts of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway. See especially, "Shattered Sword" by Parshall and Tully (2006).

Viewing

"Road to Tokyo"

This splendid ABC DVD covers primarily the last year of Australia's involvement in the Pacific War that ended with Japan's surrender in 1945 in response to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It covers the battlefronts, the politics of Australia's war, the home front, and the horrors inflicted by the Japanese on Australian prisoners of war. Excellent commentaries are provided by two distingushed Australian historians, Professor David Horner and Dr Michael McKernan.

Web-sites:

Australian War Memorial at: http://www.awm.gov.au/

The archives are extensive, but accessibility to the collections needs to be improved.

"When War came to Australia" at: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~darwin42/

Australia-Japan Research Project at:

http://www.awm.gov.au:8000/ajrp/ajrp2.nsf/Web-Pages/Homepage?OpenDocument

"North Queensland at War" at http://northqueenslandatwar.com/htdocs/

This web-site deals with World War 2 maritime history in northern Queensland (Australia) and the South West Pacific.

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