Free Kokoda by Peter Fitzsimons

its scenes back to
    Australia gives one the most extraordinary feeling of helplessness,’ he grated in his rather clipped military tones. ‘You are like—here in this country—a lot of gazelles grazing in a dell on the edge of the jungle, while the beasts of prey are working up towards you, apparently unseen, unnoticed. And it is the law of the jungle that they spring upon you, merciless… ’ 15

BATTLE STATIONS
     
     
The Japanese warriors—the samurai—had always lived to die. Their maxim was to expect death every day and to comport themselves in a fashion to be ready for it. That was also the way in which the Japanese soldiers lived in this new army, and it explains why the Japanese had the attitude they did towards dying in battle and taking or being taken prisoner. There was no place in the Japanese military code for prisoners. If you won, you were victorious. If you lost, you were dead. It was as simple, and as cruel as that…
Edwin P. Hoyt, Warlord—Tojo Against The World 16
It is now generally agreed that the Australian defence policy between the wars and until the fall of Singapore was at the best, naively optimistic, and at the worst… close to treason.
Professor David Horner, Crisis of Command 17
     
    As Sunday mornings went, it was a typically quiet one at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941. Many of the regular residents were just getting ready to head off to church, and many military personnel were trying to shake off hangovers from the previous night’s carousing when, almost as one, they turned to the northwest to the noise of a sudden massed droning. What was that?
    It was the Japanese…
    Bombers. Torpedo planes. Escorting fighters. Two hundred in all, coming their way from a secretly assembled pod of six aircraft carriers, some 250 miles to the north of Hawaii. Japanese intelligence had predicted that most of America’s Pacific Fleet would have returned to Pearl Harbor for weekend leave and, sure enough, there they were! Just before 8.00 a.m. the Japanese arrived above the American airfields and harbour and—on the direct orders of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo—unleashed hundreds of tons of bombs. (And this, despite the fact that at that very moment Japanese diplomats were in Washington, ostensibly to discuss peace.)
    While the Japanese bombers and torpedo planes were busily sending the many occupants of the US Navy dock’s ‘Battleship Row’ to the harbour bottom, the escort fighters were not busy at all. Simply put, so complete had been the surprise of the attack that barely one American plane was able to scramble in response before it was quickly shot out of the skies. When the first wave of Japanese planes had completed their work, they were quickly replaced by a new wave which unleashed its own thunder, and so on. Less than two hours after the first bombs hit, the sky cleared of Japanese planes, though the smoke from the destruction they had wrought would still be there four days later. The pride of the American Pacific Fleet—including seven battleships, three cruisers, two destroyers and four support vessels—lay on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. No fewer than 188 planes were wiped out, two thousand American military personnel were killed, over one thousand were wounded, and many military buildings were reduced to rubble.
    One small blessing for the Americans, at least, was that the US Navy’s three aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet had been out of the Harbor at the time of the attack and had therefore been spared, which would shortly prove to be of great significance.
    Not for nothing would President Roosevelt quickly declare 7 December ‘as a day that will live in infamy’, in the process of declaring war on Japan. Prior to the bombing, the Americans simply had not wanted to become involved in this World War—now, there was no question. For his part, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo addressed his own people in a national radio broadcast to make them aware that the war would