mgpcpastor's blog

Here are links to two posts which deal with the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin which occurs this Sunday.
Sandy Grant at The Briefing:

…the bombing of Darwin, during World War II. It began 9:58am, 19 February, 70 years ago, in 1942. For the first time, the effects of a war which had raged mainly on the other side of the world – albeit at the cost of thousands of Australian soldiers’ lives – were felt on home soil. Arguably it was the most dreadful emergency of our history.
It was widely feared then that the Japanese planned to invade Australia, though it seems more likely to historians now that Darwin was attacked for its wider strategic defence value (as a port and airfield staging post for the war in South East Asia).
Today, most Australians know next to nothing of these events, perhaps because Darwin’s population then was much tinier. Details were also kept from the great bulk of Australians down south, presumably for morale’s sake.

Grant provides the following historical data:

• The attack was led by the same Japanese commander who led the original Pearl Harbor attack a few weeks earlier.

• The first raid that day involved 188 planes. Overall that day, there was a greater tonnage of bombs dropped than was dropped on the first Pearl Harbor attacks. Likewise, it sank (8 or 9) and damaged (15?) ships; that’s more Allied shipping (but much less tonnage) than the first Pearl Harbor attack.

• The attack caused wide panic and at least 243 deaths. About half the remaining civilian population of Darwin (and some military personnel) fled south in the ensuing chaos and fear.

• Attacks continued until November 1943, with Darwin bombed 64 times, and other towns in northern Australia bombed 33 times – from Townsville (in Queensland) through to Broome and Port Hedland (in Western Australia).

Read the entire post at The Briefing.

Rob Duncanson offers an additional post which draws attention to the date as yet another aspect of the shared history of North Australia and East Timor. Here’s an excerpt:

Sunday 19th February marks the 70th anniversary of the Bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces. It is good that we should remember this significant day in our nation’s history, and the 250 people who lost their lives at that time.
A visit to the Adelaide River War cemetery 100km south of Darwin is a confronting reminder of the reality of the war in our homeland.
A less well known fact is that on that same day, 19th February 1942 Japanese forces landed in Portuguese Timor. (Now known as Timor Leste). There was a battle which lasted from 20th to 22nd February, and from then a force of 15,000 Japanese soldiers occupied the country. They were constantly frustrated throughout 1942 by the courageous guerrilla warfare tactics of the Australian 2/2nd Independent Company, and undertook many reprisal raids upon Timorese villages when they suspected that help had been given to the Australians.
Debate will continue over what actually happened and what should have happened in this Portuguese colony which was “neutral”, but it is undeniable that many Timorese made great sacrifices to care for Australian troops. The statistics are shocking.

Read the whole post at Bondia Timor Leste.