Modern History (TASC Level 3)

Page 11 of 11

World War 2 (1939-1945) - The Pacific

On 7 December 1941, the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbour.  At the same time their army launched assaults on Malaya, Hong Kong and the Philippines; from there the Japanese armies swept across southeast Asia at an alarming rate.  When Singapore fell in February 1942 Australia lost an entire Australian division.  The Pacific War developed into a conflict primarily fought by aircraft carriers, and by infantry in jungles and on Pacific Islands.

Grant, R 2008, World War II: the events and their impact on real people, Dorling Kindersley, London.

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Aboriginal Service
Aliens in Australia
Bombing of Broome
Bombing of Darwin
Coral Sea
Fall of Singapore
Hiroshima
Kokoda
Midway
Nagasaki
Pearl Harbour
Philippines
Prisoners of War
Role of Women in War
Sydney Harbour

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On the shelves

Library catalogue

The Library catalogue is a powerful searching tool. Use a basic keyword search to get quickly to some of the resources you will find on the shelves on World War II. Use keyword searching to help locate particular topics or aspects of the war. Please note: This search will give you all the countries that participated in the Pacific campaigns in World War 2, not just Australia.

Collection highlights

From the series Australians in the Pacific War, 1944-1945

eBooks

Britannica eStax

Reference resources

General encyclopedia

  • The World Book

Subject encyclopedia

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From the Department of Veterans Affairs

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ClickView

Web Resources

Australia

To access newspapers of the time, that reported the Pacific campaign, visit the National Library of Australia's TROVE

Japan

United States

  • MacArthur Memorial. The MacArthur Memorial is a museum and research center dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the life of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. The Memorial also pays tribute to the millions of men and women who served with General MacArthur in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.
  • War in the Pacific - U.S. History

Aboriginal Service

Despite discrimination and exclusion, thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have served in the Australian Defence Forces since the 1860s and possibly earlier through every major conflict including World War II.

AIATSIS, 2021

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Aliens in Australia

During World War I and World War II, Australia held both prisoners of war and internees. Prisoners of war were captured members of enemy military forces, or those who had surrendered.

Internees were mostly ‘enemy aliens’ from countries at war with Australia. Most were civilian men, but some women and children were also interned. Internees were held in camps around Australia, often in remote locations. People were interned based solely on their nationality, even if they had done no wrong.

NAA, 2021

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Bombing of Broome

On Tuesday 3rd March 1942 the tranquillity of Broome was shattered when Japanese Zero fighters attacked targets on the Broome airstrip and adjacent Roebuck Bay.

Prime, M W 2007, Broome's one day war, Broome Historical Society, Broome.

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Bombing of Darwin

The first ever attack on Australia by a foreign power occurred at Darwin on 19th February 1942. The town was bombed in broad daylight by members of the Japanese Carrier Task Force which had been engaged at Pearl Harbor two months earlier.

Lockwood, D 2005, Australia under attack, New Holland, Frenchs Forest, NSW.

Library resources

Collection highlight

  • Forrest, P & Forrest, S 2001, Federation frontline: a people's history of World War II in the Northern Territory, Centenary of Federation Northern Territory, Darwin.
  • Lockwood, D 2005, Australia under attack, New Holland, Frenchs Forest, NSW.

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Coral Sea

This four-day World War II skirmish in May 1942 marked the first air-sea battle in history. The Japanese were seeking to control the Coral Sea with an invasion of Port Moresby in southeast New Guinea, but were intercepted by Allied forces. Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher commanded the American task forces, which included two large aircraft carries and other ships, and a British-led cruiser force mounted surface opposition.

There were a number of missed opportunities as the carrier airmen learned their trade. Air strikes from both sides either missed targets or found them only after using up their ordnance. The American carrier Lexington came under heavy fire, with the loss of 216 crewmen.

Battle of Coral Sea, 2009, History.com, viewed May 17, 2018.

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Fall of Singapore

Before December 1941 the Second World War was fought mainly by the great European powers and soldiers from their respective empires. Japan’s entry into the war changed the situation dramatically. The Malayan Campaign, including the fall of Singapore, led to the capture of more Australians than in any campaign before or since.

DVA, 2021

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Hiroshima

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. This resulted in the death of 100,000 men, women and children. Many hundreds of thousands more died of their terrible injuries later, or slowly perished from radiation-related sickness.

'There was nothing I could do to help in this hell on earth, so I simply clasped both hands together tightly in front of may face and made my way out of Hiroshima ...'

Flight Navigator Takehiko Ena, a Kamikaze pilot who returned home through the atom-bombed city after his plane ditched into the sea.

Ham, P, 2011, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, HarperCollins, Sydney.

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  • Hersey, J 1946, Hiroshima, Penguin Modern Classics, London. John Hersey wrote his book only one year after the bombing of Hiroshima. Told through accounts of six men and women who survived against the odds stacked against them. Forty years later he returned to Japan to discover how these same six people had struggled with the catastrophe and often with crippling disease. The result is a devastating picture of the long-term affects of one very small bomb. [Book cover]
  • Hersey, J 1946, Hiroshima, Penguin Special 1946, London. On the 70th anniversary Penguin reissued this 'this classic piece of journalism ... a defining moment of the nuclear age.'
  • Ham, P 2011, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, HarperCollins, Sydney. Paul Ham used diaries, contemporary accounts and official papers to give a gripping account of the events that led to the bombing, and the harrowing testimony to their destructive power. Through the eyes of 80 survivors, he reminds us that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were full of ordinary people - who without warning, became the world's first atomic casualties.
  • Ham, P, ed, Edwards, D, trans 2013, Yoko's diary: the life of a young girl in Hiroshima during WWII, HarperCollins, Sydney. In her diary, Yoko provides an account of that time - when conditions were so poor that children as young as twelve were forced to work in industry; when fierce battles raged in the Pacific, and children like Yoke believed victory was near.
  • Rummel, J 1992, Robert Oppenheimer: dark prince, Facts on File, New York. This book chronicles the life and work of the man who spearheaded the Manhattan Project - one of the most controversial scientific enterprises of the 20th century - which led to the development of the atomic bomb.

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Kokoda

The battle fought along the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea against the Japanese between July and November 1942 was one of the most significant in our history. Never before, or since, have the land forces of a determined enemy come so close to our shores.

Reid, R 2014, Kokoda 1942, Department of Veterans' Affairs, Canberra.

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From the series Australians in the Pacific War

Collection highlight

  • Happell, C 2008, The Bone man of Kokoda: the extraordinary story of Kokichi Nishimura and the Kokoda Track, Pan Macmillan, Sydney.

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Audio Visual

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Midway

The Battle of Midway was an epic clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Navy’s decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) and its successful defense of the major base located at Midway Island dashed Japan’s hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific.

History, 2021

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Nagasaki

On 9th August 1945, a second atomic bomb was dropped. The target this time was Nagasaki. Somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000 lives were lost.

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Many of our books on Hiroshima will also have sections or chapters devoted to Nagasaki. Two of these are:

Collection highlight

The following book, published in 2015, is said to do for "Nagasaki what John Hersey did for Hiroshima: (J. W. Dower)

  • Southard, S 2015, Nagasaki: life after nuclear war, Viking, New York

Web resources

Pearl Harbour

On the morning of 7 December 1941, 183 aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbour on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The intention was to cause as much damage as possible to the US Pacific Fleet , before it could respond to other Japanese operations in the Pacific. They bombed hangers and aircraft on the island's airfields, while at the same time launching torpedoes against US warships moored in the harbour.

A second attack on the same morning by another 170 Japanese aircraft resulted in the loss or damage of 18 warships, 188 aircraft destroyed and 2,403 American servicemen and women killed.

Crucially all three of the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbour during the attack and so escaped damage. The were to prove vital in the coming Pacific Campaign.

Kerrison, A 2018, 'What happened at Pearl Harbour', Imperial War Museum.

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From Britannica eStax

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Philippines

During the Second World War, the single deadliest day for the Australian Forces occurred on 01 July 1942, when more than one fiftieth of all Australian Service Personnel killed during the 2173 days that Australia was at war lost their lives off the northwestern coast of the Philippines.

Australian Embassy, The Philippines, 2021

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Prisoners of War

For months during 1943, men near naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific they struggled, died, survived with a little help from their mates. Their experiences became a defining feature of the war.

Forbes, C 2005, Hellfire: the story of Australia, Japan and the Prisoners of War, Macmillan, Sydney.

This is just one example of the extreme conditions faces by Australian Prisoners of War in the Pacific.

Library resources

Resources on Australian men and women held in Japanese POW camps.

On the shelves

Collection highlights

You may also be interested in this book about the 1500 civilians captured by the Japanese. They spent the war interned in harsh, prison-like camps throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

  • Twomey, C 2007, Australia's forgotten prisoners: civilians interned by the Japanese in World War Two, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Victoria.

eReserve

From the Department of Veterans Affairs

Official publication

  • Nippon very sorry - many men must die: Submission to the United Nations Commission of Human Rights (ESOSOC Resolution 1503) Donated to St Patrick's College, 16th April 1999, by National Malaya and Borneo Veterans Association.

Fiction

  • Flanagan, R 2013, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Vintage Books, Sydney. Twelve years in the writing, The Narrow Road is a culmination of themes and ideas that Richard Flanagan had long wanted to write about. His father, Archie, was one of Dunlop's Thousand, "that now near-mythical group" as Flanagan describes them, who manned the Thai-Burma death railway.

Web resources

Role of Women in War

The history of Australian women in times of war is as vital as the history of Australian men in the same circumstances. Australian women have been involved in a range of conflicts in locations across the world, often experiencing the same challenging conditions as the men who served as well. The home front in Australia has seen women live with changing circumstances as they have adapted to the effects of war, at a personal level and across communities large and small.

Department of Veterans' Affairs 2020, Australian women in war: investigating the experiences and changing roles of Australian women in war and peace operations 1899-today, DVA, Canberra.

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Sydney Harbour

On the night of 31 May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. The subsequent attack literally brought World War II to the doorstep of our biggest city. For the first time many Australians, modern war was suddenly something that didn't just happen to someone else. While the submarine attack may not have been of major importance tactically, the psychological effect on Australia was critical.

Jenkins, D 2002, Hitting home: the Japanese attack on Sydney 1942, Random House Australia, Milsons Point, NSW.

Library resources

From the series Australia Under Attack

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