Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

To hap's inference, if not for the US, Japan would have invaded, occupied
and subjugated Australia, i agree, hap, says it while experts widely disagree.

Re my comment: "How would Australia be? .. over time? .. not much different i'd say" ..
i just let the other slide .. was thinking even if the Japanese had, now some 68 years later,
they would have been long gone and Australia would probably be not much different than it is now.

Anyway, there is much in here, with different views on the Japanese plans, desires, intentions, capability, all that,
of the Japanese .. chuckle .. it's easy reading, so good for a non-historian like me .. lol .. some of the images ..



Mamoru Shigemitsu, wartime foreign minister ..

..

..

Excerpt .... Shigemitsu, when talking about attacking Darwin, is clearly not referring
merely to bombing attacks. As he himself points out, at the time of this war planning, Darwin had
already been bombed twice. The first devestating bombing attack on Darwin was February 15, 1942.

Possible army advance on Australia - Japanese expert

While some Australian historians are dismissive of any serious thought being given by Japan to an invasion of Australia, a
senior history professor at Japan’s National Defense Academy at Yokosuka, Professor Hiromi Tanaka, in his writings and lectures,
has readily acknowledged that there were those in both the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy in 1942 who were keen to invade Australia.
............



excerpt .. 'No capacity to threaten Australia'

Bullard (pictured)



wrote: "We now know that Japan at the time had neither the capacity to seriously threaten
Australia's long-term freedom nor the intenion to occupy and subjugate the Australian people.

"Instead, Japanese Imperial headquarters adopted a policy to consolidate its new territories in anticipation
of the expected Allied counter-attacks in the region. To this end, Japanese planners decided to thwart the build up
for these attacks by implementing a blockade of the main supply route between the United States and Australia.

"This involved the invasion and occupation of Fiji, Samoa, and New
Caledonia in the Pacific in what the Japanese called the FS Operation."

Bullard's summary is substantially correct, although it and similar views which have been
emanating from the Australian War Memorialfor almost a decade tend to under-estimate the
level of the debate and the seriousness of the threat to Australia from Japan in 1942. ...




Togo: limited power, no Navy control.

http://www.1942.com.au/images/shigemitsuatsurrender.jpg
[Foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu in top hat at front
with the Japanese surrender party aboard the USS Missouri
on Tokyo Bay in 1945.]






Australian War Memorial.


Above: Japan’s second phase operations between February and April 1942, according to this chart on display in the extreme
nationalist Yasukuni Shrine Museum in Tokyo. The blue dotted line around northern Australia refers 'invasion manoeuvres,
or operations'. The heading in English is the Museum's. The line encircling the whole of Australia is a shipping route.

Know thy enemy; an essay .... roughly 1/4 way down ..

http://www.1942.com.au/invading-australia-myth.html

Categorical statements such as, hap's, where experts disagree, hits the humerus. It hurts. But is still humorous.