The civilian story

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Darwin by 1941 was a fortress town. From the point of view of an enemy, Darwin had an offensive capacity as a base for attack, as well as a defensive capacity as the first line of resistance on the Australian mainland. As events were soon to show, while Darwin was well prepared for enemy attack in some respects, it was not well prepared for the kind of attack which the Japanese actually mounted – that is, an attack by aircraft which were overwhelmingly superior both in numbers and technology.

Despite the certainty of war with Japan, from September 1939 both national attention and scarce resources were diverted to Australia's support for Britain's struggle against Germany. Aircraft and airmen which might have been used in Darwin were sent to Britain, soldiers were sent to the Middle East, and ridiculous limits were placed on local training in order to conserve ammunition.

Men of the anti aircraft batteries in Darwin could not get permission to use enough ammunition in training to calculate how to set their fuses for correct height. Anti aircraft ammunition behaved differently in the hot humid Darwin weather and needed to be specially tested and set for the climate. This was not permitted, with the result that during the first raids the batteries could not get the range of the Japanese attackers.

The Japanese, in the meantime, had been getting valuable experience which meant that by February 1942 their men and machines were efficient and battle hardened. They also had the confidence which comes to warriors after a string of easy victories.

The Japanese blitzkrieg through Asia after Pearl Harbour confirmed the awful certainty that it would not be long before Darwin was in the front line. With this in prospect, the Australian Government decided that all non-essential civilians would have to be evacuated from Darwin, urgently.

There were then 1,066 civilian women and 969 children in Darwin. By Christmas more than half of them had been evacuated by ship. More left in the New Year, and by 18 February 1942 over two thousand people had gone south by ship, road, or air. Most of them had little notice of their enforced departure, and had to leave precious personal possessions for the looting and expropriation which occurred after the first air raids.

These evacuation arrangements applied to non-Aboriginal civilians. Most Darwin Aborigines were sent across the harbour from Darwin to Delissaville. Others in coastal areas had, as early as 1940, been rounded up and taken inland to pastoral stations or control camps where their labour could be used for the war effort. Many never returned to their own country.

Others were allowed to stay on coastal missions, while some part Aborigines were sent to Balaclava in South Australia for the duration of the war, or to church homes in Sydney. Their forced journeys south could only be described as an exodus by refugees forced to flee from their own land.

From January 1942 the Japanese were harassing shipping in nearby waters, and on 20 January Australian mine-sweepers sank a Japanese submarine near Melville Island. On the last day of January, and in the first days of February, airmen who had been forced to flee Ambon and Timor arrived back in Darwin and spoke at first hand of the Japanese advance. They were laughed at when they warned Darwin people to dig more and deeper slit trenches. Then, on 10 February, Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew over Darwin from Ambon.

Despite all that had happened and was clearly going to happen, Darwin was still the "curious, lukewarm sort of place" described by Banjo Paterson in 1898. People went about their lives, and went about trying their best to enjoy themselves, trying to ignore the Japanese monsoon which was gathering strength, not far to the north.

But, on 19 February 1942, Darwin suddenly became much more than lukewarm. Japanese bombs ended the old days and old ways, forever.