Yesterday marked the Anniversary of the Bombing of Darwin by the Japanese in World War 2. Until recently with the production of Australia (starring Richard Saunders, famous Australian Skeptic) many Australians were probably oblivious to the fact that Darwin had more bombs dropped on it than Pearl Harbour, or even that Darwin was bombed at all.
It’s not surprising really, I have lived all my life in the Northern Territory but it was only when I went to study in Darwin that I learned this hidden part of our history.
How can such a momentous event have been removed from our cultural consciousness? Wartime censorship essentially. Due in part to its relative remoteness and communication technology the Australian government was able to chill knowledge of the event until such time that it was no longer significant. The problem was of course that it extended far beyond the time necessary and has resulted in a missing piece of our history.
Though of course it does not fit into the glorious, heroic myth that we have created of Australians at War (don’t get me wrong here, I appreciate our soldiers past and present – we just seem to be fixated on Gallipoli), we essetially got beaten to a pulp in Darwin.
Could such an event be censored today? Probably not, but I am sure, concidering the current filtering debarcle that the Government would want to be able to.
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Sean- got any good links about that- I'd like to find out more
Here is where I wish I hadkept some of my university texts and assignments.
I did read a bit of WWII history of Australia, and I know that at that point of time, Australia was quite adamant that the Japs would actually take down Australia in one clean sweep, given the long coastline of northern australia and its close proximity to Southeast Asia, especially after Singapore had fallen into Japanese hands.
There probably was a reason why the Darwin bombings were censured. Perhaps the govt then did not want to cause pandemonium amongst the public in general.
Beast FCD
I'd like to find out more too! I've studied history so I know a bit about the wars, but this is the first time I've heard about the bombing of Darwin.
There is no shame here, if you ask me. Singapore, as a last bastion of the British Far East Empire, fell after mere weeks after the Japs landed in the Malay Peninsula.
Beast FCD
I hope it did not come across that way. Darwin was hoplessly ill equipped to deal with the onslaught, from memory you could count the number of defensive aircraft we had on 2 hands, ground based machine guns did not exceed 20mm.
Two requests, better get my butt into gear
National Archive link is here http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-...
Darwin City has the following http://www.darcity.nt.gov.au/aboutdarwin/history/...
Thanks Sean! Got some good reading material to keep me occupied for a while.
No problems. If you ae in the area there are still WW2 bunkers on some of the beaches, and there is a military museum at East Point which conatains two huge gun batteries
Singapore at that time had a number of Bristol British era aircraft, nicknamed "flying beer cans", 300,000 British and a mixed assortment of local militia and still fell to the japs who were actually outnumbered. General Yamashita admitted after the invasion that he bluffed General Mc Author into surrendering.
If you want to talk about shame, the British should take a larger portion of it. They lost despite having superior forces.
Beast FCD
Thank you
There was some interesting info on this on the TV the other night. By all accounts the bombing of Darwin was bigger than the bombing of Pearl Harbour!!
Oddly if the government of the day had let the general populace know about it it may have galvanised them into a bigger effort to defeat the Japanese.
It was on television? I should really get myself watching television again, I always miss the interesting stuff and when I do happen to turn on the TV there's nothing good on.
Since I'm not too aware of Australian television, which channel are these type of documentaries usually on?
Thanks for this interesting bit of history. I'll have to read up on this, as it was clearly a major event. Today, even if a government wanted to censor information like this, for good reasons, it would probably be impossible to do so. Instead of hiding it, they'd have to spin it.
Good point Chappy, about the spin.
Your welcome