On Apr 25, 4:59 pm, kangarooistan <perama...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Talks at the Memorial
"Was there a Battle for Australia?"
Australian War Memorial Anniversary Oration by Dr Peter Stanley, 10
November 2006
>
> For Australia, 1942 was the year of greatest losses, a year of crises
> confronted and overcome. It was a year in which war briefly touched
> Australia=92s shores. What does this mean for the way we remember 1942?
>
> It suggests that we should at least question whether there was a
> =93Battle for Australia=94, or ask if there was, what did it involve?1
>
> There was a phrase in vogue in museum circles a few years ago, that
> museums are =93safe places for unsafe ideas=94. My scepticism the
reality
> of the Battle for Australia would certainly be regarded as unsafe.
> When I=92ve spoken or written in this vein several times over the past
> few years I=92ve been abused as unpatriotic or even =93un-
> Australian=94 (whatever that means). My citizen****p (dating from 1971)
> has been called into question =96 one persistent critic habitually
> refers to me as =93English-born=94 =96 and the Memorial=92s Director has
b=
een
> urged to sack me. These are representations that he=92s felt able to
> resist =96 so far.
>
> If criticising the Battle for Australia is an unsafe idea, I=92m glad
> that the Memorial offers an op****tunity to discuss it in a rational
> manner. While there won=92t be op****tunities for debate this evening, I
> hope that you=92ll contact me by letter or e-mail to express your
> reactions.
>
> I offer reflections on a phrase which over the past decade has assumed
> a growing significance in the ways Australians remember the Second
> World War. Indeed, I=92d argue that the new idea of the =93Battle for
> Australia=94 is the most significant single development in Australia=92s
> understanding of that war since the publication of the official
> histories between the 1950s and the 1970s.
>
> The idea that there was a Battle for Australia has perhaps captured
> the popular imagination. It=92s an idea which few historians have
> endorsed, but which thousands of Australians have embraced. For that
> reason, I have decided to take the idea of a =93Battle for Australia=94
> seriously as a basis for considering our past. I want to use this
> address to consider its validity for Australia=92s remembrance of the
> Second World War. As you=92ll hear, it has a place in our thinking about
> this war: but not, perhaps, as an all-embracing event that can be
> justified historically.
>
> Those who adva nce this idea argue that from the outbreak of war with
> Japan Australia was the objective of the Japanese advance, and that
> 1942 saw a series of crucial campaigns that resulted in the defeat of
> this thrust. In some versions of the battle it is seen as continuing
> up to the Japanese surrender.
>
> The point of the Pacific war, they imply, was that Australia was in
> danger of attack or conquest, and that the significance of the
> campaigns in the south-west Pacific was that they prevented such a
> calamity.
>
> This idea of a Battle for Australia is both attractive and
> superficially plausible. It is dramatic. It seems to explain a series
> of campaigns to Australia=92s north. It seems to give purpose to the
> bombing of Darwin, the submarine raid on Sydney and the submarine
> offensives off the east coast: even the Papuan campaign can be
> stretched to fit the rubric of the =93battle that saved Australia=94.
>
> The growing awareness of the im****tance of the mobilisation of
> Australian civilians =96 men, women and children =96their motivation to
> work for the war effort and their contributions as individuals and in
> communities, all fits easily into a view that places Australia at the
> centre of events.
>
> Above all, a Battle for Australia nourishes Australians=92 pride in
> surmounting what was truly the greatest crisis the nation has faced.
> These are all reasons to subscribe to this interpretation. But first,
> I want to look at where this new idea has come from and suggest why it
> has arisen in the form it has.
>
The idea of organising the events of 1942 around the idea of a
=93Battle
for Australia=94 is quite a new one,
> in wartime propaganda. In turn it seems to have come from a speech
> delivered by Prime Minister John Curtin on 16 February 1942. In an
> echo of Churchill=92s speech of June 1940 foreseeing that the fall of
> France would open a =93Battle of Britain=94, Curtin said that =93The
fall =
of
> Singa****e opens the battle for Australia".2 The phrase was used in a
> few booklets produced by the Department of Information, but it did not
> appear even in the booklet While You Were Away, produced in 1945 to
> inform liberated prisoners of war what had occurred at home.3
>
> Curtin=92s phrase did not resonate with those first charged with
> do***enting Australia=92s part in the Second World War. It appears just
> once in Paul Hasluck=92s official history The Government and the People,
> but not at all in Gavin Long=92s Six Years War or indeed in any general
> history of Australia published until the mid-1990s. There is no battle
> honour =93Battle for Australia=94 on any regimental colour, ****p=92s
crest=
> or unit plaque. The phrase - even the idea =96 disappeared. The first
> time it appeared in print in a work of significance was in the late
> John Robertson=92s Australia at War 1939-1945, published in 1981.4 But
> he used it as a striking opening line to his chapter on the collapse
> of the so-called Malay Barrier. He did not endorse the idea of such a
> battle having happened.
>
But in the mid-1990s the idea was resurrected, though the exact
origins of what I=92ll call the Battle for Australia movement are for
the moment obscure. Recently Andrew McKay and Ryoko Adachi offered an
> account of its origins in their exploration of Australia and Japan=92s
> wartime memories, Shadows of War. They suggest that it was conceived
> in 1996 by the Victorian President of the Air Force Association, Wing
> Commander Reginald Yardley, and was fostered in schools by a former
> Chief Executive Officer of the History Teachers=92 Association of
> Victoria, Dr Jacqualine Hollingworth. Over the years Reg Yardley had
> laid many wreaths on Battle of Britain Day when in 1996 =96
> significantly, the year after the great year of =93Australia
Remembers=94
> =96 he realised that no one seemed to remember a Battle for Australia.
> =93And there was a Battle for Australia=94, he emphasised in an
interview,=
> =93we damned near lost it and yet nobody knows anything about it =85"5
He
> thought of the =93battle=94 as spanning the period from the invasion of
> New Britain in January 1942 to the battle of the Bismarck Sea in March
> 1943.
>
> James Bowen=92s unofficial Battle for Australia website describes his
> own role in persuading the Returned and Services League to commemorate
> a Battle for Australia. He credits the then national and Victorian
> state presidents of the RSL, =93Digger=94 James and Bruce Ruxton, with
> recognising the value of his idea in 1997.6
>
Either way, by 1998 a national Battle for Australia Council existed.
> Its aim was to =93enhance community knowledge and understanding of
> Australian and Allied actions in the war against Japan from 1941 to
> 1945=94. It is interesting to note the expansion of the date range, to
> encompass the entire Pacific war. The National Council lobbied to
> establish the first Wednesday in September as Battle for Australia
> Day, and now ceremonies are held in several states, marking the
> anniversary of the battle of Milne Bay, the symbolic first Allied
> victory against the Japanese in 1942.
>
> The Council=92s lobbying has since been joined by several private
> efforts, notably James Bowen=92s website, which engages in energetic
> advocacy and robust critique of those who might offer a contrary view.
> Mr Bowen has since parted company with the national Council. The
> Memorial=92s Director and myself have been singled out for criticism
> because we have disagreed with Bowen=92s interpretation of this period.
> We have been accused of being =93revisionists=94, used as a term of
abuse:=
> no less than thirty-five times in the course of his website=92s
> denunciation. You can judge my views on their merits: to call Steve
> Gower a =93revisionist=94 is simply ludicrous. Bowen=92s website offers
an=
> aggressively positive view of the events of 1942, a simple and
> colourful saga of threat, crisis and salvation. The essence of Mr
> Bowen=92s case seems to be that by offering a different version of 1942
> I must be demeaning those who died, that by disagreeing with political
> leaders (on both sides of politics) I am disrespectful, and by
> differing with Mr Bowen I must be wrong.
>
> Though notably more moderate, the Battle for Australia Council=92s view
> of 1942 connects several episodes into a single narrative. It presents
> the defence of Singa****e, the conquest of the Netherlands Indies, the
> battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, the Papuan and Solomons
> campaigns, and the campaigns that secured Allied victory into a single
> epic story. We might regard this saga as forming a =93collective
story=94,=
> a story valued or heeded by an entity, such as a nation. The term is
> used by the clear-thinking and plain-speaking historian Inga
> Clendinnen in her recent Quarterly Essay, =93The history question: who
> owns the past?=948
>
http://www.awm.gov.au/events/talks/oration2006.asp
>
> worth reading the entire article IMHO , it exposes why Howard is
> ramping up the public ready for WW3 , for Israel and USA
>
> kanga
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
There has NEVER been any REAL threat to Australia
over 100,000 dumb aussies got tricked into dying for Israel
WW1 was a war for oil and Israel
WW3 will/ is also
Sooner or later western taxpayers will bleed to death and finally wake
up
www.costofwar.com
Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine will ALL be like Vietnam ,a
bloodthirsty massacre , for no net gain
BUT this time western taxpayers MUST pay , through the petrol pump ,
for every drop of Muslim blood ever spilt
kanga
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
|
