The Town That Forgave
QUOTE
A FEW years ago I visited Darwin in Australia’s Northern
Territory. There I learned that it had suffered greatly in the
Second World War when the Japanese mounted the largest single
foreign attack on Australia. This will be familiar to those who have
seen the 2008 film Australia but I had not. Today being VJ
Day, I thought it would be a good opportunity to recount the attack
and its aftermath for those, like me, who did not know about it.
In early 1942 the Japanese were working their way south through
the Pacific. As the most northerly town of any size in Australia,
Darwin had great strategic importance with its air base and large
natural harbour, and it became obvious that the town could be a
target to prevent it being used to help defend the Dutch East Indies
(now Indonesia). In the two months after Pearl Harbor in December
1941, most of the 5,800 inhabitants were evacuated, leaving 2,000
civilians.
Although the danger was recognised, Darwin was only lightly
defended. There was a grand total of 18 anti-aircraft guns but the
crews had received little training due to ammunition shortages.
There was no radar. Civil defence was almost non-existent – a few
slit trenches had been dug.
On February 19, 1942, only a few days after the fall of Singapore
and the day after the last evacuation flight, the harbour was
unusually busy. A convoy of ships carrying Australian and American
troops and supplies had returned to port the previous day after an
attack by Japanese aircraft and submarines as it attempted to reach
Timor. There were 65 ships at anchor, mainly clustered together. At
the airbase, although the operational RAAF squadrons were overseas,
ten USAF Curtiss P40 Kittyhawks were passing through en route for
Java. (A few accounts use the name Warhawk but I think that was a
later version which came into service soon after.)
By 8.45am 188 Japanese planes had taken off from four aircraft
carriers which had been at Pearl Harbor.* They were led by Commander
Mitsuo Fuchida, who had also commanded the first wave of attackers
during the raid on Pearl Harbor. **
At 9.15am John Gribble, a lookout on Melville Island, about 50
miles north of Darwin, radioed that a large number of aircraft were
flying toward the town. At 9.35am Father John McGrath of the Sacred
Heart mission on neighbouring Bathurst Island sent a radio message
to Darwin that an ‘unusually large formation’ of aircraft were
flying south. The RAAF officers assumed that the watchers were
seeing the ten USAF Kittyhawks, which had aborted their mission to
Java and had turned back towards Darwin, so no alarm was sounded.
The first planes of the strike force arrived over Darwin at
9.58am. Nine of the ten US Kittyhawks were approaching the airfield
as the Japanese Zeros flew in and were shot down immediately, with
four pilots killed. The airbase was bombed and strafed, so it was
left to the anti-aircraft batteries to try to defend the town.
Although they kept up a continuous barrage, only one Japanese
aeroplane was shot down.
The main target was Darwin’s harbour. Within minutes the US
destroyer Peary (88 lives lost) and the large US transport Meigs had
been sunk. The Australian ship Neptuna, formerly a
passenger vessel, was loaded with explosives, and blew up. Six
merchant ships were sunk. Seventy dock workers were on a pier, and
when it was hit dozens were blown into the water only to have to
swim through burning oil. At least 22 died.
When the Japanese planes were sighted at 9.58am, the alarm was
belatedly sounded. At the Post Office, telegraph supervisor Archie
Halls was testing the circuit to Adelaide when he tapped out, ‘The
Japs have found us and their bombs are falling like hailstones. I’m
getting out of here, see you later’, followed by the laugh signal,
three dashes and a dot. He and the rest of the staff of the Post
Office, all of whom had volunteered to remain in Darwin, took cover
in a slit trench in the garden of the postmaster’s residence. The
others were Hurtle Bald, the postmaster, his wife Alice, their
daughter Iris, telephonists Emily Young, Jennie Stasinowsky and
sisters Eileen and Jean Mullen, postal clerk Arthur Wellington and
telegraph mechanic Walter Rowling. A 26-year-old telephone mechanic,
Reginald Rattley, tried to shelter with the postmaster’s group but
the trench was crammed. As he ran towards the beach a bomb blast
lifted him bodily on to the sand where he landed safely. The slit
trench took a direct hit, killing all ten occupants. ***
The raid lasted about 30 minutes and the all-clear was sounded at
10.40. But at 11.58 a second wave of 54 Japanese high-altitude heavy
bombers flew in from land bases in the Dutch East Indies.
This time the airfield was the main target. The Japanese force
separated into two groups flying at 18,000ft. One attacked from the
south-west while the other approached from the north-east, dropping
their bombs simultaneously on the airstrip with its easily targeted,
un-camouflaged aircraft. The raiders then turned and made a second
attack on the base. The Australian anti-aircraft gunners were unable
to shoot down or damage any of the high-flying Japanese aircraft.
The remaining Kittyhawk was destroyed with 13 other planes, bringing
the total of Allied aircraft losses to 23. The attack lasted between
20 and 25 minutes.
The death toll for the day has never been certain. It is
officially estimated at around 300, with unofficial estimates at
1,000 or more, and between 250 and 400 were injured. Total Japanese
losses may have been as few as five aircraft and three crew.
Darwin was attacked a further 63 times between March 4, 1942 and
November 12, 1943 – you can still see bullet holes in garden
railings and metal doors from the strafing – but never again on the
scale of the first day. The objective was achieved and the town was
greatly diminished as a supply base from which Allied forces could
launch counter-attacks.
***
After the second raid on February 19, 1942, RAAF men of 2
Squadron found a young black-and-white kelpie (an Australian breed
of sheepdog) under the wreckage of a mess hut at the airbase. He had
a broken front leg, so they took him to the field hospital. The
medical officer said he could not treat a patient without a name and
number so the dog became ‘Gunner 0000’ and had his leg set. Leading
Aircraftman Percy Westcott assumed ownership of him. A couple of
weeks later, on March 4, Gunner became inexplicably agitated. After
20 minutes a formation of Japanese raiders appeared above Darwin.
After several similar episodes it became clear that Gunner’s acute
hearing could detect enemy planes long before the radar, and his
behaviour was officially taken as a signal to sound an air raid
warning. Amazingly, the dog was able to distinguish between Japanese
and Allied aircraft and never raised a false alarm.
Gunner became a mascot for 2 Squadron, sleeping under Westcott’s
bunk and going up with the pilots during practice take-offs and
landings. When Westcott was posted to Melbourne 18 months later,
Gunner stayed in Darwin with the RAAF butcher. There is no record of
the rest of his life.
***
There was a surprising sequel after the war. Seven large wrecks
remained in Darwin Harbour, constituting a hazard to shipping and
port development, so in 1959 salvage companies around the world were
invited to tender for the clearance work. The contract was
controversially awarded to a Japanese firm owned by Ryuugo Fujita.
There was some hostility from other parts of Australia, but Darwin
had long had ties with Japan, the port being used by Japanese
pearling boats and some Japanese living in the town, so there was
little resentment.
The team of 120 workers were not permitted on Australian soil so
soon after World War II, so as their first task they raised the fore
and aft sections of the oddly named tanker British Motorist,
welded them together, and built a village of living accommodation on
the deck. Even this was an improvement on life in devastated Japan.
A few years ago Fujita’s son Senichiro told NT News: ‘It
was a real shock for the salvage crew to come from Japan, which was
still rebuilding from the war and where most people lived pretty
much in poverty.’ When his father drank cola for the first time, he
thought:
‘How can it be that there is something so delicious?’
Fujita, a Buddhist, was said to have seen the project as a
self-imposed unofficial war reparation. His firm accepted no
payment, only selling the salvaged materials. On his one day off a
week he would go to the cinema, exercise in the park or have a few
drinks in town. He was soon accepted by locals and often received
invitations to parties or events from politicians, businessmen and
families who became friends for life. The hard work of the salvage
team earned the respect of Darwin residents, who would have picnics
on the beach while watching the operation. In time the workers were
allowed on to the shore, and there were joint sporting events and
fishing trips.
During the two-year project (there
are some interesting pictures here), the foundation stone was
laid for the Darwin Memorial Uniting Church, commemorating those who
lost their lives during the war. Fujita commissioned his team to
craft 77 bronze crosses from wreckage and donated them to the church
as a symbol of reconciliation.
The number 77 was worked out with the pastor and referenced
Matthew 18:21-22: ‘Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft
shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven
times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times:
but, Until seventy times seven.’ Most of the crosses are set into
the ends of the pews. Fujita attended the opening of the church in
1960.
A propeller blade from Meigs was placed on his
gravestone in Japan. (I have not been able to discover when he
died.) His family later gave it to the Darwin Memorial Uniting
Church and it was relocated there in 2017.
PS: Darwin is not the luckiest town.
It was devastated by cyclones in 1897 and 1937, and at Christmas
1974 Cyclone Tracy destroyed 80 per cent of its homes and killed 71.
In an echo of the 1942 attack, the town was poorly prepared –
residents had been warned of a cyclone ten days earlier but it
passed to the west, and so they discounted the warnings about Tracy.
Here is one of many films on YouTube about the disaster. Darwin has
been rebuilt using stringent new building codes that were developed
as a result of Tracy.
`
*All four carriers were sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942
with a total loss of 1,481 lives.
** After the war, Mitsuo Fuchida became a Christian evangelist
and travelled through the United States and Europe giving talks
entitled ‘From Pearl Harbor To Calvary’.
*** The Northern Territory Parliament now stands on the site. Set
into the floor is a plaque which reads: ‘On 19 February 1942 an
enemy bomb fell here and killed ten people.’
UNQUOTE
It happened, it is remembered. This article puts flesh on the bones.
Darwin
ex Wiki Darwin
is the
capital city of the
Northern Territory, Australia. With an estimated population of 147,255
as of 2019, the city contains the majority of the residents of the sparsely
populated Northern Territory.[8]
It is the smallest, wettest, and most northerly of the Australian capital
cities and serves as the
Top End's
regional centre.
The Darwin region, like much of the Top End, experiences a
tropical climate with a wet and dry season. A period known locally as
"the build up" leading up to Darwin's wet season sees temperature and
humidity increase. Darwin's wet season typically arrives in late November to
early December and brings with it heavy monsoonal downpours, spectacular
lightning displays, and increased cyclone activity.[9]
During the dry season, the city has clear skies and mild sea breezes from
the harbour.
The greater Darwin area is the ancestral home of the
Larrakia people. On 9 September 1839,
HMS Beagle
sailed into Darwin Harbour during its survey of the area.
John Clements Wickham named the region "Port Darwin" in honour of their
former shipmate
Charles Darwin, who had sailed with them on the
ship's previous voyage. The settlement there became the town of
Palmerston in 1869, but it was renamed Darwin in 1911.[10]
The city has been almost entirely rebuilt four times, following devastation
caused by the 1897 cyclone, the 1937 cyclone,
Japanese air raids during World War II, and
Cyclone Tracy in 1974.[11][12]