John Curtin was an Australian politician who served as the 14th prime minister of Australia from 1941 until his death in 1945. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), having been most notable for leading the country through the majority of World War II, including all but the last few weeks of the war in the Pacific. Curtin's leadership skills and personal character were acclaimed by his political contemporaries and he is frequently ranked as one of Australia's greatest prime ministers and political leaders.
The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast Pacific Ocean theater, the South West Pacific theater, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Soviet–Japanese War.
The 8th Division was an infantry division of the Australian Army, formed during World War II as part of the all-volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force. The 8th Division was raised from volunteers for overseas service from July 1940 onwards. Consisting of three infantry brigades, the intention had been to deploy the division to the Middle East to join the other Australian divisions, but as war with Japan loomed in 1941, the division was divided into four separate forces, which were deployed in different parts of the Asia-Pacific region. All of these formations were destroyed as fighting forces by the end of February 1942 during the fighting for Singapore, and in Rabaul, Ambon, and Timor. Most members of the division became prisoners of war, waiting until the war ended in late 1945 to be liberated. One in three died in captivity.
The fall of Singapore, also known as the Battle of Singapore, took place in the South–East Asian theatre of the Pacific War. The Japanese Empire captured the British stronghold of Singapore, with fighting lasting from 8 to 15 February 1942. Singapore was the foremost British military base and economic port in South–East Asia and had been of great importance to British interwar defence strategy. The capture of Singapore resulted in the largest British surrender in its history.
The "Brisbane Line" was a defence proposal supposedly formulated during World War II to concede the northern portion of the Australian continent in the event of an invasion by the Japanese. Although a plan to prioritise defence in the vital industrial regions between Brisbane and Melbourne in the event of invasion had been proposed in February 1942, it was rejected by Labor Prime Minister John Curtin and the Australian War Cabinet. An incomplete understanding of this proposal and other planned responses to invasion led Labor minister Eddie Ward to publicly allege that the previous government had planned to abandon most of northern Australia to the Japanese.
The Malayan campaign, referred to by Japanese sources as the Malay Operation, was a military campaign fought by Allied and Axis forces in Malaya, from 8 December 1941 – 15 February 1942 during the Second World War. It was dominated by land battles between British Commonwealth army units and the Imperial Japanese Army, with minor skirmishes at the beginning of the campaign between British Commonwealth and Royal Thai Police. The Japanese had air and naval supremacy from the opening days of the campaign. For the British, Indian, Australian, and Malayan forces defending the colony, the campaign was a total disaster.
The Borneo campaign or Second Battle of Borneo was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area during World War II to liberate Japanese-held British Borneo and Dutch Borneo. Designated collectively as Operation Oboe, a series of amphibious assaults between 1 May and 21 July 1945 were conducted by the Australian I Corps, under Lieutenant-General Leslie Morshead, against Imperial Japanese forces who had been occupying the island since late 1941 – early 1942. The main Japanese formation on the island was the Thirty-Seventh Army under Lieutenant-General Masao Baba, while the naval garrison was commanded by Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada. The Australian ground forces were supported by US and other Allied air and naval forces, with the US providing the bulk of the shipping and logistic support necessary to conduct the operation. The campaign was initially planned to involve six stages, but eventually landings were undertaken at four locations: Tarakan, Labuan, North Borneo and Balikpapan. Guerilla operations were also carried out by Dayak tribesmen and small numbers of Allied personnel in the interior of the island. While major combat operations were concluded by mid-July, localised fighting continued throughout Borneo until the end of the war in August. Initially intended to secure vital airfields and port facilities to support future operations, preparatory bombardment resulted in heavy damage to the island's infrastructure, including its oil production facilities. As a result, the strategic benefits the Allies gained from the campaign were negligible.
In early 1942, elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) proposed an invasion of mainland Australia. This proposal was opposed by the Imperial Japanese Army and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who regarded it as being unfeasible, given Australia's geography and the strength of the Allied defences. Instead, the Japanese military adopted a strategy of isolating mainland Australia from the United States by advancing through the South Pacific. This offensive was abandoned following the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in May and June 1942, and all subsequent Japanese operations in the vicinity of Australia were undertaken to slow the advance of Allied forces.
Australia entered World War II on 3 September 1939, following the government's acceptance of the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Nazi Germany. Australia later entered into a state of war with other members of the Axis powers, including the Kingdom of Italy on 11 June 1940, and the Empire of Japan on 9 December 1941. By the end of the war, almost a million Australians had served in the armed forces, whose military units fought primarily in the European theatre, North African campaign, and the South West Pacific theatre. In addition, Australia came under direct attack for the first time in its post-colonial history. Its casualties from enemy action during the war were 27,073 killed and 23,477 wounded. Many more suffered from tropical disease, hunger, and harsh conditions in captivity; of the 21,467 Australian prisoners taken by the Japanese, only 14,000 survived.
The history of Australia from 1901 to 1945 begins with the federation of the six colonies to create the Commonwealth of Australia. The young nation joined Britain in the First World War, suffered through the Great Depression in Australia as part of the global Great Depression and again joined Britain in the Second World War against Nazi Germany in 1939. Imperial Japan launched air raids and submarine raids against Australian cities during the Pacific War.
The following events occurred in December 1941:
Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan was a captain in the British Indian Army who was supposedly convicted of treason, after spying for Japan during the Battle of Malaya of World War II. Heenan was executed by his wardens while in custody during the Battle of Singapore. With the defeat of the British imminent, Heenan had mocked the guards, saying he would soon be free, while they would be the prisoners. In response, British military police shot him and dumped his body into the harbour.
The Allied leaders of World War II listed below comprise the important political and military figures who fought for or supported the Allies during World War II. Engaged in total war, they had to adapt to new types of modern warfare, on the military, psychological and economic fronts.
The Bukit Batok Memorial is located on top of the tranquil Bukit Batok Hill upon which once stood two war memorials built by Australian POWs to commemorate the war dead of the Japanese and the Allies who fought during the decisive Battle of Bukit Timah in Singapore during the Second World War. The two memorials were destroyed after the war and only the road and stairs that used to lead to them mark its legacy today.
The Battle of Kranji was the second stage of the Empire of Japan's plan for the invasion of Singapore during the Second World War. On 9 February 1942 the Imperial Japanese Army assaulted the north-western front of Singapore, capital of the Straits Settlements.
Although most Australian civilians lived far from the front line, the Australian home front during World War II played a significant role in the Allied victory and led to permanent changes to Australian society.
Peter Alan Stanley is an Australian historian and research professor at the University of New South Wales in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. He was Head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia from 2007–13. Between 1980 and 2007 he was an historian and sometime exhibition curator at the Australian War Memorial, including as head of the Historical Research Section and Principal Historian from 1987. He has written eight books about Australia and the Great War since 2005, and was a joint winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2011.
When the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939 at the start of World War II, it controlled to varying degrees numerous crown colonies, protectorates, and India. It also maintained unique political ties to four of the five independent Dominions—Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand—as co-members of the then "British Commonwealth". In 1939 the British Empire and the Commonwealth together comprised a global power, with direct or de facto political and economic control of 25% of the world's population, and of 30% of its land mass.
The Australian Army was the largest service in the Australian military during World War II. Prior to the outbreak of war the Australian Army was split into the small full-time Permanent Military Forces (PMF) and the larger part-time Militia. Following the outbreak of war on the 3rd of September 1939, 11 days later, on 14 September 1939 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that 40,000 members of the Militia would be called up for training and a 20,000-strong expeditionary force, designated the Second Australian Imperial Force, would be formed for overseas service. Meanwhile, conscription was introduced in October 1939 to keep the Militia at strength as its members volunteered for the AIF. The Australian Army subsequently made an important contribution to the Allied campaigns in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa fighting the Germans, Italians and Vichy French during 1940 and 1941, and later in the jungles of the South West Pacific Area fighting the Japanese between late 1941 and 1945. Following the Japanese surrender Australian Army units were deployed as occupation forces across the South West Pacific. Meanwhile, the Army contributed troops to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan from 1946.
The Curtin government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister John Curtin. It was made up of members of the Australian Labor Party in the Australian Parliament from 1941 to 1945.
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