image-1 = images/pearlharbour.jpg
title-1 = Pearl Harbour
description-1 = Pearl Harbor is a US naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. Just before 8am on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan and the war in the Pacific had begun USS Arizona (BB-39) sunk and burning furiously, 7 December 1941. Her forward magazines had exploded when she was hit by a Japanese bomb. At left, men on the stern of USS Tennessee (BB-43) are playing fire hoses on the water to force burning oil away from their ship Official US Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
status-1 = 1
image-2 = images/malaya.jpg
title-2 = Japanese Invasion of Malaya
description-2 = The attack on Pearl Harbor was preceded by one hour by the Japanese invasion of the Malay peninsula. That operation was the first step in a drive to take Indonesia's oil fields after the US imposed an oil embargo on Japan. In terms of the number of people involved in the Malay offensive was far larger than the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the Invasion on the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese forces advanced towards Singapore.
status-2 = 1
image-3 = images/vampire.jpg
title-3 = First involvement of Australian forces
description-3 = The RAAF became the first service to see action in the Pacific when Australian aircraft shadowing the Japanese invasion convoy bound for Malaya were fired at on 6 December 1941. Australian units participated in the unsuccessful Commonwealth attempts to defeat the Japanese landings, with RAAF aircraft attacking the beachheads and Vampire accompanying the British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse during their failed attempt to attack the Japanese invasion fleet. HMAS Vampire was present for the sinking of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse on 10 December 1941. She would later be sunk herself off Ceylon in April 1942.
status-3 = 1
image-4 = images/lahore_2.jpg
title-4 = Japanese advance towards Singapore
description-4 = Australian anti-tank gunners overlooking the Johor Causeway between Singapore and Malaya in February 1942 The 8th Division and its attached Indian Army units were assigned responsibility for the defence of Johor in the south of Malaya and did not see action until mid-January 1942, when Japanese spearheads first reached the state. The division's first engagement was the Battle of Muar, in which the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army was able to outflank the Commonwealth positions due to Bennett misdeploying the forces under his command so that the weak Indian 45th Brigade was assigned the crucial coastal sector and the stronger Australian brigades were deployed in less threatened areas. While the Commonwealth forces in Johore achieved a number of local victories, they were unable to do more than slow the Japanese advance and suffered heavy casualties. After being outmanoeuvred by the Japanese, the remaining Commonwealth units withdrew to Singapore on the night of 30–31 January.
status-4 = 1
image-5 = images/singapore_2.jpg
title-5 = Singapore attacked
description-5 = Smoke billows from bombed buildings on Kallang airfield after a Japanese air raid, February 1942. Following the withdrawal to Singapore the 8th Division was deployed to defend the island's north-west coast. Due to the casualties suffered in Johore most of the division's units were at half-strength. The commander of the Singapore fortress, Lieutenant General Arthur Ernest Percival, believed that the Japanese would land on the north-east coast of the island and deployed the near full-strength British 18th Division to defend this sector. The Japanese landing on 8 February took part in the Australian sector, however, and the 8th Division was forced from its positions after just two days of heavy fighting. The division was also unable to turn back the Japanese landing at Kranji and withdrew to the centre of the island.
status-5 = 1
image-6 = images/singapore_surrender_2.jpg
title-6 = Fall of Singapore
description-6 = Lieutenant-General Percival and his party carry the Union flag on their way to surrender Singapore to the Japanese. Left to right: Major Cyril Wild (carrying white flag) interpreter; Brigadier T. K. Newbigging (carrying the Union flag) Chief Administrative Officer, Malaya Command; Lieutenant-Colonel Ichiji Sugita; Brigadier K. S. Torrance, Brigadier General Staff Malaya Command; Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding, Malaya Command. Image Imperial war Museum After further fighting in which the Commonwealth forces were pushed into a narrow perimeter around the urban area of Singapore, Percival surrendered his forces on 15 February. Following the surrender, 14,972 Australians were taken prisoner, though some escaped on ships. These escapees included Major General Bennett, who was found by two post-war inquiries to have been unjustified in leaving his command. The loss of almost a quarter of Australia's overseas soldiers, and the failure of the Singapore Strategy that had permitted it to accept the sending of the AIF to aid Britain, stunned the country.
status-6 = 1
image-7 = images/singapore_3.jpg
title-7 = Fall of Singapore
description-7 = Allied soldiers are captured by the Japanese Imperial Army in Singapore in 1942. Image wikimedia commons Many Australians captured during the fall of Singapore were to spend the rest of the war as prisoners of war held under brutal conditions by their Japanese captors many of them would not see their freedom again.
status-7 = 1
image-8 = images/changi_prison.jpg
title-8 = Changi Prison
description-8 = Allied prisoners lie in a corridor and look out of cell doorways in Changi Prison, c. 1945. The POWs were forced to march to Changi despite many being sick and wounded and without food or water rations with many not making the march to what would become their prison camp.
status-8 = 1
image-9 = images/changi.jpg
title-9 = Changi hunger
description-9 = Prisoners of war at Changi, photographed by George Aspinall. Image source: Tim Bowden Prisoners were given minimal rations of rice and forced into harsh work for long hours in stifling heat causing many to die of malnutrition, exhaustion and disease.
status-9 = 1
image-10 = images/death_marches.jpg
title-10 = labour marches
description-10 = POWs carry railway sleepers in Burma, around 40km south of Thanbyuzayat, c. 1943. Australian War Memorial/P00406.026 In round figures, 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in camps in Timor, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Ambon, Hainan, Borneo, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Burma and Manchuria. Three-and-a-half-years later, only 14,000 were still alive. The Australians died mostly through malnutrition, preventable tropical diseases, random acts of brutality by prison guards and the stresses of slave labour projects. In Sandakan 2,000 Australians and 500 British troops were marched into the jungle and slaughtered. Only six soldiers survived, after breaking away into the jungle and being cared for by local people. It was the single biggest atrocity committed by the Imperial Japanese Army against the Allies in World War II.
status-10 = 1
image-11 = images/darwin1.jpg
title-11 = Bombing of Darwin
description-11 = The war reached our shir when in the lead-up to the Japanese invasion of Java, a force of 242 carrier and land-based aircraft attacked Darwin on 19 February 1942. At the time Darwin was an important base for Allied warships and a staging point for shipping supplies and reinforcements into the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese attack was successful, and resulted in the deaths of 235 military personnel and civilians, many of whom were non-Australian Allied seamen, and heavy damage to RAAF Base Darwin and the town's port facilities. The explosion of the MV Neptuna and clouds of smoke from oil storage tanks, hit during the first Japanese air raid on Australia's mainland, at Darwin on 19 February 1942. In the foreground is HMAS Deloraine, which escaped damage.
status-11 = 1
image-12 = images/mini_subs.jpg
title-12 = Sydney attacked
description-12 = In late May and early June 1942, during World War II, submarines belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy made a series of attacks on the cities of Sydney and Newcastle in NSW. On the night of 31 May – 1 June, three Ko-hyoteki Class midget submarines, each with a two-member crew, entered Sydney Harbour, avoided the partially constructed Sydney Harbour anti-submarine boom net, and attempted to sink Allied warships. Two of the midget submarines were detected and attacked before they could successfully engage any Allied vessels, and the crews scuttled their submarines and killed themselves.
status-12 = 1
image-13 = images/Geraldton_exercise_1942_028696.jpg
title-13 = Build up
description-13 = After the fall of Singapore the Australian government and many Australians feared that Japan would invade the Australian mainland. Australia was ill-prepared to counter such an attack as the RAAF lacked modern aircraft and the RAN was too small and unbalanced to counter the Imperial Japanese Navy. Additionally, the Army, although large, contained many inexperienced units and lacked mobility. In response to this threat most of the AIF was brought back from the Middle East and the government appealed to the US for assistance.
status-13 = 1
image-14 = images/TG173_and_HMAS_Australia_under_attack_Coral_Sea.jpg
title-14 = Battle of the Coral Sea
description-14 = HMAS Australia (centre) and TG17.3 under air attack on 7 May. The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces from the US and Australia, taking place in the Pacific theatre of World War II. The battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another. In an attempt to strengthen their defensive position in the south Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the south-eastern Solomon Islands).
status-14 = 1
image-15 = images/Australian_troops_at_Milne_Bay.jpg
title-15 = Papuan campaign
description-15 = Australian troops plough through the mud at Milne Bay, New Guinea, shortly after the unsuccessful Japanese invasion attempt. After the Battle of the Coral Sea frustrated the Japanese plan to capture Port Morseby via an amphibious landing, the Japanese attempted to capture the town by landing the South Seas Force at Buna on the north coast of Papua and advancing overland using the Kokoda Track to cross the rugged Owen Stanley Range. The Kokoda Track campaign began on 22 July, when the Japanese began their advance, opposed by an ill-prepared CMF brigade designated 'Maroubra Force'.
status-15 = 1
image-16 = images/buna.jpg
title-16 = Buna
description-16 = Australian-manned General Stuart M3 Light Tanks bust Japanese pillboxes in the final assault on Buna. Members of D Company, 2/12th Battalion, await the order to move forward after the tank has finished its task. Crouching nearest the tank is Company Sergeant Major McCominski, and in the foreground Private M Daniels.
status-16 = 1
image-17 = images/Kokoda_retreat_AWM_013288.jpg
title-17 = Kokoda Track
description-17 = The Kokoda Track campaign was part of the Pacific war of World War II. The campaign consisted of a series of battles fought between July and November 1942 in what was then the Australian Territory of Papua. It was primarily a land battle, between the Japanese South Seas Detachment under Major General Tomitarō Horii and Australian and Papuan land forces under command of New Guinea Force. The Japanese objective was to seize Port Moresby by an overland advance from the north coast, following the Kokoda Track over the mountains of the Owen Stanley Range, as part of a strategy to isolate Australia from the US.
status-17 = 1
image-18 = images/The_Fuzzy_Wuzzy_Angels.jpg
title-18 = Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels
description-18 = Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was the name given by Australian soldiers to Papua New Guinean war carriers who, during World War II, were recruited to bring supplies up to the front and carry injured Australian troops down the Kokoda Track during the Kokoda Campaign.
status-18 = 1
image-19 = images/Australian_soldiers_civilians_Labuan.jpg
title-19 = Australians on the offensive
description-19 = Australian soldiers and local civilians on Labuan Island, Borneo. The soldier on the right is armed with a US M1 Carbine, which was not normally issued to Australian soldiers. After stopping the Japanese in Papua, Australians were to continue to serve in pushing the Japanese back island by island towards the Japanese home islands, as well as clearing left over troops from islands such as Borneo.
status-19 = 1
image-20 = images/ww2_15.jpg
title-20 = Victory in the Pacific
description-20 = A crowd of Australian civilians and servicemen celebrate victory in the Pacific in a street in Queensland. The war ended with the Japanese surrender after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first time war was brought to Australia's shores.
status-20 = 1