During these decades, the Pacific islands faded into the geopolitical background, though they were littered with the war’s still deadly refuse. Throughout the postwar era, the 1951 ANZUS Treaty served as the basis for the US and Australian relationship. The war with Japan finally ended with the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. He declared “ Australia looks to America” as its only hope against invasion. In the wake of the Pacific-wide attacks of December 7 and 8, Curtin recognised Australia’s grave defence vulnerabilities premised on deeply flawed British imperial plans. The first of nearly 1 million who rotated through Australia (then with a population of 7 million) began arriving in December 1941. The arrival of American troops reversed Australia’s desperate situation. These fears were realised with attacks in Sydney Harbour in May and Newcastle in June 1942. Darwin was bombed for the first time on February 19, killing more than 230 people and destroying infrastructure.īombing raids across northern Australia followed, as did acute fears of Japanese submarine attacks along the industrial and heavily populated east coast. Three days later, the war came to Australia’s mainland. The war in the Pacific: fighting the good fight, or something else New Guinea was then attacked on February 16. Prime Minister John Curtin described this event as “ Australia’s Dunkirk”, leaving it wide open to invasion. Singapore fell in a matter of days, on February 15 1942. After the December 7 and 8 attacks, Australians were told that halting Japan’s southward expansion “ all depends on Singapore”. Japan’s opening attacks triggered a cascading crisis of events.
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