The only Japanese force to land in Australia during World War II was a reconnaissance party that landed in the Kimberley region of Western Australia on the 19th of January 1944 to investigate reports that the Allies were building large bases in the region.
With an escort of cruisers and destroyers the first Japanese landing, of 809 SNLP and 362 NP, took place between Waga Waga and Wandula on the northern coast of Milne Bay on the night of 25 August 1942. This was seven kilometres east of where they intended to land, a fact that had important consequences.
About two thirds agreed that Japan had planned to invade Australia in 1942. Around three quarters tended to agree that the Kokoda campaign had saved Australia from invasion and that the Brisbane Line strategy actually entailed abandoning northern Australia to the Japanese.
The US naval victory at the battle of Midway, in early June 1942, removed the Japan's capability to invade Australia by destroying its main aircraft carriers. This made it safe for Australia to begin to transfer military power to fight the Japanese in Australian Papua and New Guinea.
The two Japanese air raids were the first, and largest, of more than 100 air raids against Australia during 1942–1943. The event happened just four days after the Fall of Singapore, when a combined Commonwealth force surrendered to the Japanese, the largest surrender in British history.
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.
Between February 1942 and November 1943, during the Pacific War of World War II, the Australian mainland, domestic airspace, offshore islands, and coastal shipping were attacked at least 111 times by aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force and Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.
1957: Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke said to the people of Australia: "It is my official duty, and my personal desire, to express to you and through you to the people of Australia, our heartfelt sorrow for what occurred in the war."
Often called 'Australia's Pearl Harbour', the bombing of Darwin by aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy began on 19 February 1942, killing more than 230 people and destroying ships, buildings and infrastructure.
If successful, Operation FS would achieve two strategic objectives for the Japanese: First, it would critically isolate Australia, whose northern coast was only a few hundred miles from Port Moresby. This could have forced Australia to withdraw from the war, or in the worst case, even suffer partial invasion.
During World War II, some members of the United States military mutilated dead Japanese service personnel in the Pacific theater. The mutilation of Japanese service personnel included the taking of body parts as "war souvenirs" and "war trophies".
If ever an image could be said to sum up the Australian attitude to the Japanese at the very end of the Second World War, then the photograph of Lieutenant Colonel Murray Robson, commander of the 2/31st Battalion, accepting the Japanese surrender at Bandjermasin is it.
The Australia–Japan partnership is our closest and most mature in Asia, and is fundamentally important to both countries' strategic and economic interests. The relationship is underpinned by a shared commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law, as well as common approaches to international security.
The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect.
Food found in the bags of dead Australian soldiers was a special treat for the starving men, and some of them went even further, resorting to acts of cannibalism. The number of men who died of starvation was increasing. They were not only fighting the enemy, but also fighting for personal survival.
Of the 22,376 Australian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, some 8,031 died while in captivity. After the end of the war, War Crimes Trials were held to investigate reports of atrocities, massacres and other causes of death.
Despite those casualties, it's safe to say that the Aussies lost the Great Emu War.
In February 1942, an invasion of the Australian continent appeared imminent. Just ten weeks after Japan's whirlwind invasion of South-East Asia, Australia itself became the target of air and sea attacks.
Learn about the February 19, 1942, Japanese bombing of the Australian city of Darwin, Northern Territory, and Australia's involvement in World War II.
Japanese plans
In early March 1942, the Japanese had debated what to do now that Japan had so easily gained her objectives. The Navy wanted to invade Australia and deny the country as a base to either America or Britain. The Army felt it did not have the strength to invade and fully occupy so vast a continent.
During the Second World War, people of Japanese origin were interned in Australia as 'enemy aliens'. National Archives holds alien registration and internment records from this time period. Most Japanese internees were deported at the end of the Second World War.
China's ambassador to Australia says Canberra should be wary of its relationship with Japan, reminding them that Japanese troops attacked Australia during World War II and could do the same again.
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.
Over 22,000 Australian servicemen and almost forty nurses were captured by the Japanese. Most were captured early in 1942 when Japanese forces captured Malaya, Singapore, New Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies. Hundreds of Australian civilians were also interned.
By the end of the war the AIF had gained a reputation as a well-trained and highly effective military force, enduring more than two years of costly fighting on the Western Front before playing a significant role in the final Allied victory in 1918, albeit as a smaller part of the wider British Empire war effort.