Darwin’s buried chapter revealed
AUSTRALIA: One of the last surviving World War II Darwin bombing veterans remembers the day war came to Australia’s backyard on the wings of 188 Japanese planes a lifetime ago.
At the 75th anniversary memorial yesterday, South Australian Mervyn Ey listened as air raid sirens rang out to mark the moment bombs were already raining destruction down on the city.
The alarm came too late threequarters of a century ago, when the then 20-year-old private and the rest of the undermanned Allied defence forces were surprise.
’’There wasn’t any warning . . . there were planes going everywhere and explosions everywhere. We were absolutely shocked by the force of it.’’
Japan’s deadly campaign brought a distant war to home soil, and the Northern Territory had become the frontline. The assault was more savage than Pearl Harbour; more bombs fell on Darwin, more civilians were killed, and more ships were sunk.
Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove paid tribute to the 88 sailors killed on the USS Peary in Darwin Harbour – the American Navy’s greatest loss of life in Australian waters.
Ey can still picture smoke billowing from the ship wreckages, and men burning to death in the fiery, oily water. The 96-year-old said the government downplayed the scale of the devastation and it has remained a buried chapter in Australia’s history.
‘‘The people hadn’t been told the whole truth about what happened . . . they didn’t want to scare the public,’’ he said.
He’s among 29 Diggers who made the pilgrimage back to ground zero to make sure the horror of war won’t be forgotten.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten joined dignitaries from Japan and the US at the commemorative service.
Military historian Tom Lewis’ new book, The Empire Strikes South – Japan’s Air War Against Northern Australia 1942-45, reveals new information about the war.
He said that contrary to enduring claims there had been 64 raids in the Northern Territory, his research of Japanese war records found 77, while 208 enemy combat flights were carried out in northern Australia. The Darwin area took the brunt of the attacks, with the first in February and the last on November 12, 1943.
In between, there were scores of strikes on airstrips strung along the Stuart Highway, Batchelor, Adelaide River, Katherine and on Milingimbi in Arnhem Land.
Small towns along the West Australian coast – Broome (where many died when flying boats with women and children evacuated from Java were sitting ducks as the Zeroes arrived), Derby, Port Hedland, Onslow and Wyndham, sustained a handful of raids.
Lewis said that for years Australians hardly knew a thing about the Japanese attacks.
‘‘If the government wanted to keep quiet about the bombings to avoid citizen panic, after the war people just wanted to forget and get on with their lives.
‘‘The first hint that something bigger had happened in Darwin was Douglas Lockwood’s book Australia’s Pearl Harbour: Darwin 1942 in 1965. We’ve been filling in the gaps since.’’ – Fairfax, AAP