The Occupation Of Japan: The Rhetoric And The Reality Of Anglo Australasian Relations, 1939 1952 by George Davies

The Occupation Of Japan: The Rhetoric And The Reality Of Anglo Australasian Relations, 1939 1952 Reviews

• 
  Lisa

  Sounds dull, doesn't it?
  But it's not.
  I borrowed this book because I was hoping it would shed some light on why the Japanese Occupation and transition to democracy apparently went smoothly, while the Iraq adventure, clearly, has not. However, the introduction, about the prosecution of the war, which I had planned to skip, turned out to be so interesting that I read it (1/3 of the book) in a single evening.
  Australia was keen to assert its role as an independent nation in WW2 and was alert to the slightest implication that she was being treated as a colony. Under Fadden, Curtin and then Chifley, with Foreign Minister Evatt, they repeatedly demanded the right to control Australian troops, insisted that they be deployed as an undivided unit, and made a grand fuss about representation at the Yalta & Potsdam Conferences. That Britain was fighting for her survival and needed to deploy troops as needed seems not to have been considered; that meeting Australian demands would have set a precedent for all the other Commonwealth nations which would have been absurd seems to have cut no ice at all. Churchill was undoubtedly arrogant, and there was the weight of foolish and disastrous decision-making in WW1 to be overcome, but the Allies must have become very tired of Australia yapping at their heels like a terrier.
  When it came to the Pacific War, things got worse, culminating in Curtin's famous speech orientating Australia to look for help to the USA. But the implication is that Britain just abandoned Singapore out of caprice, arrogance and incompetence, and while there may have been all three, there were also precious few resources left to spare. Was it unreasonable for Britain to have considered Australia expendable, if it were too stretched militarily and financially, to take on Japan?
  Of course, as we all know now, Japan had no plans to invade Australia and Churchill rightly scoffed at the idea. But the struggle for PNG and our Malaysian and Indonesian neighbours must been a bit rattling to say the least, and the bombing of Darwin, while intended only to knock out the allied fleet and airforce, only confirmed Australian fears.
  What did the Americans think? The book doesn't tell us.
  Other things I found surprising: in the chapter called 'The Parties Principal' Davies compares the relative contributions of the Allies, in support of his argument that Australia should have had more of a say in the (political) spoils of war. They punched well above their weight...
  I wrote pages about this book in my journal. It really is very good reading for anyone interested in the role of smaller nations when the big players are moving the chess pieces around the globe.