Australia prepared a secret plan to repel a Japanese invasion Page 1 of 4

THE AUSTRALIAN

Australia prepared a secret plan to repel a Japanese invasion

MARK DAY THE AUSTRALIAN 12:00AM May 18, 2017

It is May 1942 and Australia is in peril like never before. Malaya, Singapore, Java and Timor have fallen to the unstoppable Japanese; Darwin
and Broome have been bombed; US general Douglas Macarthur has fled The Philippines; the Japanese fleet is steaming south to the Coral
Sea; and Japanese mini-submarines are preparing to wreak havoc in Sydney Harbour.

Invasion seems imminent. Will they come by sea and leapfrog their way down the east coast, using our fleet of fishing and recreational

populated southeast corner of Australia 75 years ago when invasion appeared imminent.
A 1943 royal commission called to inquire into the truth of the allegations, made by firebrand Labor
MHR Eddie Ward, found no evidence of an official policy but the royal commission report was not Edward Harold Fulcher Swain, the NSW Commissioner for
sufficient to quell rumours or a public belief that the government had been prepared to abandon the Forests from 1935-48. Picture:Supplied.
north and west of the continent to the Japanese.
Allied supreme commander Macarthur added to this belief when he referred to “the Brisbane Line” in a 1943 press conference.
The documents Rosen uncovered make it clear that governments, state and federal, were preparing a scorched-earth policy to deny invaders
any form of assistance after landing. These plans were to be applied to an arc from Maryborough in Queensland to Portland in Victoria.
This shifts the reputed Brisbane Line a little north but leaves no doubt about officials’ willingness to abandon areas considered too difficult to
defend.
The scorched-earth preparations were developed and outlined by Edward Harold Fulcher Swain, the NSW commissioner for forests from
1935 to 1948. They consist of several papers, each delving deeper into detailed plans, prepared for the NSW government. It is unclear
whether these documents ever had the status of official policy. Certainly, in March 1942, the army was given power to carry out a scorched-
earth policy in Australia by amendments to national security regulations. A Sydney Morning Herald report on March 10 said “plans to ensure
nothing of use to the enemy is left for him if he invades Australia are rapidly being completed”.
On July 30, 1942, the war cabinet issued a formal directive to guide planning for the total denial of resources to invaders, but whether this
was based on Swain’s plans is not recorded.
Through his writing Swain cuts a larger-the-life figure. Queensland historian Peter Holzworth, who has written a biography of Swain, says he
“had an ego as big as the Melbourne Cricket Ground” as well as “a massive chip on his shoulder about politicians and academics — which he
was not”.
“He loved a stoush,” Holzworth says. “He picked fights with anyone who disagreed with him. He was also a very good writer.”
From today’s perspective, Swain’s writing seems more than a little over the top. Official
bureaucratese was not for him; rather, he adopts a style of dogmatic urgency more akin to a Biggles
book than a government report. Sometimes it reads like a breathless script for a Walter Winchell
radio report — “We can expect only the unexpected! As at Pearl Harbor! As at Penang! As at
Singapore!” — with abundant exclamation marks, underlined sentences and capital letters for
emphasis. There’s also a whiff of Waltzing Matilda — a determination not to be caught and
enslaved by the enemy echoed in the swagman’s vow “You’ll never catch me alive, said he …”
It is compelling reading — all the more so when the context of the times is taken into account.
The first half of 1942 was when Australia faced its greatest peril. Most of our fighting men were
overseas when Japanese forces delivered a sudden and shattering blow at Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941, bringing the US into the war. In quick succession, Malaya fell to the Japanese invaders,
British garrisons in Hong Kong and North Borneo surrendered and Rabaul in New Britain was
seized.
The war was on our doorstep when, on January 24, 1942, the Australian war cabinet discussed what-
ifs in the event of a Japanese invasion. Army minister Frank Forde ordered military commanders to
implement a scorched-earth policy if local forces were forced to withdraw.
Three days later Swain submitted his first outlines of a scorched-earth proposal to NSW premier
In 1942 a Japanese invasion was thought to be very likely.
William McKell. It is probable other departments and other states followed a similar procedure. Picture: Supplied.

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Australia prepared a secret plan to repel a Japanese invasion Page 2 of 4

February 1942 was the most uncertain month of the war. Australian and Dutch troops were captured in Ambon in Indonesia, bombs fell on
Rabaul, and on February 15 Allied forces, including 15,000 Australian troops, surrendered in Singapore.
The next day, prime minister John Curtin referred to the coming “Battle of Australia” and the scorched-earth subcommittee of the NSW State
War Effort Co-ordination Committee under the chairmanship of Swain met in Sydney.
On February 19 the same fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor launched air raids on Darwin, with an official death toll of 243. It was probably
much higher, but the government downplayed news of the attack, fearing the truth would spark panic.
Invasion fears grew during the following months as Broome and Townsville were bombed, Java fell and Japanese minisubs shelled Sydney’s
harbourside suburbs and sank a ferry at Circular Quay, killing 21.
The Battle of the Coral Sea, 75 years ago this month, prevented a Japanese landing at Port Moresby, slightly easing the threat of invasion. It
receded further in June when the US crippled the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway, but it would be a full year later, in June 1943, before
Curtin was prepared to declare that Australia was no longer at risk of invasion.
In this respect Swain’s documents are a frightening record of what didn’t happen — but could have if fortunes had favoured the Japanese.

Sydney’s Turramurra Guerilla Force train for a Japanese

invasion. Picture: Supplied

His scorched-earth code was meant to “prevent the enemy living on the country, using our property against us; to force him to use his own
precious shipping; to deplete his country of supplies; to sustain and maintain his own armies; to attack him through fire and destruction; to
obstruct and impede him and dislodge his foothold; to slow his advance; to leave him nothing to loot and remove to his own country and to
deny him everything in our country.”
Swain’s first report to McKell spelled out the threat: “No part of our coast can be regarded as immune from bombings, shelling or actual
landings,” he says. “The invasion method will most likely be initial infiltration at many points, using our own fishing boats and launches to
swarm up and down the coast, projecting spearheads through ascertained lines of weakness, spreading through the forests, scattering points of
entry like sparks in a bushfire, advancing by looting, creating confusion and stampede, using our own people against us, converging on the
core of resistance in the industrial concentrations of our cities.
“Our answer must be to counter every inch of the way with the entire population mobilised as one army. We must delay, delay and DELAY
— knowing that help will come. No Australian must fall into enemy hands and there must be neither water, food, nor supply in this country
for the Japanese.”
Swain describes the Japanese war machine as based on “massacre, torture, ransom, pillaging and vice”, designed to make the occupied
country pay for the upkeep of its army. He warns Australia may face a truly torrid time because “the Japanese will not forget the White
Australia policy”.
“We know that civil populations will be enslaved to manufacture munitions for the slaughter of our own kith and kin. Only raw realism can
energise us to the realism of total war. It is just plain Horror and Murder. And as we expect no mercy, let us as civilians, even though
unarmed, slaughter the ‘yellow dwarfs’ with our own ‘tooth and claw’ in our own familiar forests.”
Swain weighs the options of citizens staying put or evacuating in the event of an invasion, then dismisses them both in favour of his concept
of “organised military-civil defence-in-depth, in which the civil population becomes part of our war organisation with a MASTER PLAN for
Total Citizen Collaboration in Total War”.
“The Germans had 10 years to work out such a plan,” he says. “The Japanese have had since 1915. We have a day or a week, or a month
perhaps …”
Swain recounts a security test in Britain in 1942 when two British security police donned German
uniforms and spoke in German or broken English: “They mixed with the London public without the
slightest obstruction, obtained important information from an RAF officer, borrowed cigarettes from
a civilian and had tea in the best German manner at a popular cafe and were never challenged.
“This war is the Plain Citizen’s business,” he says. “These are the Plain Citizen’s orders for the rural
coast of NSW:
“Every citizen will at once complete air raid precautions, blackout and anti-shatter his windows,
provide himself with a bomb shovel, rake, water receptacles; provide his own air raid shelter or slit
trench.
“Every citizen will parcel his personal valuables, documents (birth and marriage certificates, deeds,
scrip etc), maps and luxury goods and lodge them in a place of safety inland …
“Every citizen will arrange for the early transfer to relatives or friends in safe places of infirm
members of his family, or of young children …
“Every citizen will have half-packed and ready for any emergency a week’s provisions as follows: a
quarter pound of tea, half a pound of sugar, 1lb slab chocolate, 3 x 8oz tins beef, 2lb rice, 1 large
Bovril, petrol lighter and small supply of petrol, 1 pkt APC powders, small bottle iodine, small roll
adhesive plaster, 1 x 2 in bandage, 1 heavy blanket or rug, 1 small plate, knife, fork and spoon, mug, Maps from Sue Rosen's Scorched Earth book. Picture:
1 quart billycan, tin opener with corkscrew, brush, comb and small mirror, shaving gear, toothbrush Supplied.
and paste, small cake soap, face washer or towel, spare socks or stockings, homemade water bottle;
and to provide himself with a haversack or swag. (Women to wear strong low-heeled shoes and bush attire.)
“Every citizen shall make two identification discs with full name, occupation, religion, age and address … Every citizen will arrange to turn
on the tap of his water tanks and puncture the tank and spoil his well before leaving …
“Every citizen will get busy at once — that is his first battle station and war duty.

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“And every citizen, having arranged these things, will get his swag and tools, water bag or water bottle, bill, identity disc and ration cards
ready to march in an emergency in a Civil Collaboration Column.”
Swain envisages these columns disappearing into the Australian bush, wreaking guerilla warfare on invaders. He describes how civilians
would escape by using bush tracks, nominating as an example, an eight-day walking route from Grafton to Glen Innes.
He outlines how airstrips could be carved out of the bush, with metre-high tree stumps left near the perimeter as barriers against tanks.
He says citizens could “trip” tanks by spearing crowbars in to their tracks from their doorways as they pass; use sharpened ironbark sticks as
a substitute for bayonets, make molotov cocktails or hand grenades, blow up tractors by inserting a stick of gelignite into the sump and use
bushfires as an attacking weapon. “We must out-trick the enemy’s tricks,” he says.
Rosen reveals Swain’s scorched-earth plans in forensic detail. It is a dreadful scenario — one that we must be eternally grateful never had to
be put into action. It would have amounted to the undoing of 1½ centuries of hard labour and construction by Australian settlers, but Swain
had no remorse.
“We can’t mix Peace and War!” he writes. “Scorched Earth requires ruthless resolution and aggression. We are at Total War! We can build
again — and better — when we have thrown the last Japanese into the Pacific.”
Scorched Earth, Australia’s Secret Plan for Total War, by Sue Rosen (Allen & Unwin, $32.99), will be published on May 24.

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