Australian War Memorial

Australian War Memorial - AJRP

Australian and Japanese attitudes to the war

This site seeks to explore aspects of Australian and Japanese attitudes to the Pacific War using archival material held by the Australian War Memorial. The site is divided into three sections, one Australian and two Japanese. The Australian section looks at the attitudes of Australian servicemen from the Second World War towards the Japanese through the words of the veterans themselves. It is based upon transcripts of interviews carried out with Second World War Australian veterans during the late 1980s. The original interviews make up part of the Keith Murdoch sound archive and remain available to researchers at the Australian War Memorial. While it makes no claims to being comprehensive this section provides an interesting sample of Australian attitudes and is organised into six main themes; Pre-war perceptions of the Japanese; Japanese fighting ability; impact of Japanese atrocities; treatment of Japanese prisoners of war; the use of the atomic bomb; and post-war attitudes towards the Japanese.

The Japanese sections each deal with an individual account of the war in New Guinea from a Japanese perspective, albeit two very different Japanese perspectives. The excerpts taken from diary of TAMURA Yoshikazu give us an insight into the life of the ordinary Japanese soldier. We follow him over an eight month period from April to December 1943 when it is presumed he was killed in action. During this time we read of his hopes and feelings, of life in the jungle, and his thoughts on war and death. The original diary has only recently been deposited with the Australian War Memorial and can be found under the accession number PR02035.

By contrast "Southern Cross" is an account of the operations of the Japanese 18th Army in New Guinea as told by its former Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel YOSHIHARA Kane. Here the emphasis is on describing the 'big picture' of the Japanese war effort in New Guinea. As well as military operations Kane makes a number of detailed observations on the relationship with the local New Guinean and Papuan peoples, as well as the fauna and flora and general nature of the country. Nonetheless the bulk of his work is taken up with the task of recording the 18th Army's performance over three years of warfare and it is fascinating to see how the Japanese high command viewed the same situations and events in comparison to their better documented and more widely known Australian and American counterparts.

AWM 303581
The Australian hospital ship Manunda at anchor in Darwin harbour, where it was deliberately bombed by Japanese aircraft during the first raid on the city on 19 February 1942. Four months later in Milne Bay the Japanese cruiser Tenryu focussed its searchlights on the Manunda but otherwise left it untouched while attacking other Allied shipping in the bay. Acts like the latter led some Australians who witnessed them to question their stereotypes of Japanese behaviour.

Links to related sections of the AJRP website:

Attitudes to the war:

Australian attitudes to the Japanese
The diary of TAMURA Yoshikazu.
Southern Cross, the account of the New Guinea campaigns by YOSHIHARA Kane.

Japanese language essays:

Richard Reid, War for the Empire: Malaya and Singapore, Dec 1941 to Feb 1942
Richard Reid, Japanese advance: Papua New Guinea, Dec 1941 to Jan 1943
Richard Reid, Australia under attack, 1942 to 1943
Richard Reid, Japanese retreat: New Guinea, Borneo and the South West Pacific, Jan 1943 to Aug 1945
Richard Reid, In captivity: Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese, Feb 1942 to Aug 1945
Richard Reid, In captivity: Japanese prisoners of war and civilian internees in Australia, 1943 to 1946
Richard Reid, Victory and defeat, Aug 1945 to Sep 1946
TANAKA Hiromi, About AWM 82 captured Japanese documents

Japanese language seminar papers:

CHIDA Takeshi, Japanese research on the occupation of post-war Japan by British and Commonwealth forces: new developments and contemporary source problems
Mark Johnston, "Yet theyr'e just as human as we are": Australian attitudes to the Japanese in the South-West Pacific
KONDO Shinji, The compilation of the Japanese Official History of the war in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
TANAKA Hiromi, Self-sufficiency in Rabaul
TANAKA Hiromi, The Pacific War and New Guinea
TANAKA Hiromi, Japanese military historical sources after the war: a brief survey
UTSUMI Aiko, The Japanese army and its prisoners: relevant documents and bureaucratic institutions

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