19 February 1942: two hundred and forty planes from Japanese aircraft carriers – the same group that had attacked Pearl Harbour earlier – attacked the town of Darwin in the north of Australia, in the first attack ever made on the nation.
Darwin streetscape after the raid
Darwin was and is the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, and was unready for the attack. The two raids dropped more bombs than in the Pearl Harbour raid and the damage was extensive: eleven ships (Australian and American warships, merchant vessels, a hospital ship), thirty planes, port facilities, oil storage, civic buildings and homes. Over 240 people, both military and civilian, died in the attacks; that included 91 Americans. The town was evacuated.
Timor to the north-west, Australia to the south-east
The effect on Australia’s collective psyche was deep. The young nation had always been apprehensive about its geographic isolation in the world and fearful of what it perceived as Asian hordes to its north. One news report of the time described the raids as an “attack by the yellow men.”
Defensive preparations were stepped up across the big country: bomb shelters were dug, air-raid practice intensified, and windows in cities thousands of miles to the south were blacked out at night. Fear of invasion was great, though there is no hard evidence of the Japanese wishing to occupy Australia, at least until they had conquered Asia and the Pacific. However, the precautions taken were far from unrealistic: later, Japanese midget submarines penetrated Sydney harbour, a naval vessel was sunk there and a suburb was shelled.
In the sparsely-populated north of the country, they were hit a lot more, as the Nippon forces occupied Timor, Ambon and elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies, from where they could launch air raids. Darwin was attacked another 63 times within two years, and other northern coastal towns were also raided.
USS Peary ablaze.
One of the American naval vessels stationed in Darwin for anti-submission missions, the destroyer USS Houston, was lucky to have embarked just a few days before the first raid. Alas, its was already doomed to meet its fate in the battle of Sunda Strait at the top end of Java.
Today the event was commemorated in Darwin as it is every year. US servicemen were represented and a Japanese envoy was present (Japan needs American & Australian support in the Pacific region). Japan has previously apologised for the attack.
ASIA PACIFIC FOCUS 