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Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 15, 2011 9:36 am

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... rld-War-II

Interesting film clip showing Betty G4M bombers in flight and bombing northern Australia at Darwin.

Many people forget about how far the Japense extended their reach beside attacking Pearl Harbour. I do wonder what modern day classes in Japan teach about the WW2 attacks on Australia....

Phil

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 15, 2011 12:57 pm

I do wonder what modern day classes in Japan teach about the WW2 attacks on Australia....

As I understand it, WW2 is NOT taught in modern-day Japanese schools in ANY context.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:23 pm

Pathfinder wrote:I do wonder what modern day classes in Japan teach about the WW2 attacks on Australia....

As I understand it, WW2 is NOT taught in modern-day Japanese schools in ANY context.


It is taught.. but it is highly 'modified'.

I have queried a friend of mine in Japan. I'll post what he has to say about what is being taught when I receive a reply.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:38 pm

I do not know what is "taught" there but I do understand that preceptions of the war vary across a wide spectrum. They have "liberal" and "conservative"-equivalents just like us.

We had a young Japanese visitor a few years ago and fell into a conversation about WWII. I asked him if the Japanese held the Emporer accountable for the war. His answer was "50-50" meaning that opinions were widely and about evenly split.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 15, 2011 8:35 pm

A friend taught engish in Japan, and she talked with the history teacher, who told her that they teach that Japan was exerting their natural rights in the Pacific when the West decided to invade Japanese territories (that is, the places they'd overrun) and committed horrible attrocities upon the poor, innocent Japanese masters. And the use of nukes on Japan were as much a war crime as the hollocaust was.
I got sick to my stomach when I heard that.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:57 am

The following is a conversation in an airplane from Vancouver to Tokyo Narita.   The subject was a 19 year old high school graduate girl returning home from a few months study of English in Calgary.
 
I      "Do you know Japan fought a big war ?"
She:"Yes I know that was the second WW"
I      "That's right.   Do you know who was the enemy?"
She:"China"
I:     " Yes, but anybody else?"
She after a moment's hesitation "Maybe Russia"
I:     "Well, the biggest enemy was USA"
She: "Is that true?   I thought USA is the friendliest country in the world!"
 
This episode may illustrate the state of education in Japan.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Mon Jul 18, 2011 1:51 pm

^^^Meh. I probably could ask an American 19 y.o. girl the same questions and get the same answers. Or similarly disconcerting answers about...the Revolutionary War, the Trail of Tears, Civil Rights, Vietnam, or any number of things. My guess is 19 y.o. girls now care about history as much as girls did when I was 19. Which is not all that much.

But enough with the thread digressions...nice film find!

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Tue Jul 19, 2011 7:59 am

bit like me asking the 20 year old waitress in Aunt Ruby's cafe in Mena, Arkansas if she knew where Australia was. Her reply; "isn't that where they made that old movie 'The Sound Of Music'......[sorry dear that wasAustria...]

she sure was purdy though - straight out of a Lil' Abner strip...

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Tue Jul 19, 2011 12:59 pm

cool footage,How many of these guys do you think survived the war? remember the Japanese also invaded the Aleutian islands which were/are US territory. do they teach this too?

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Tue Jul 19, 2011 2:38 pm

How many of these guys do you think survived the war?


I have always thought that it would make an interesting study to take the pilots who were part of the Pearl Harbor attack and follow them through the war to determine what percentage of surviving pilots survived milestone engagements and dates.

Nearly 10% (29/354) of the pilots were lost in the attack itself, and a few more lost bombing Midway a few days later. How many of these pilots did not survive Coral Sea, Midway, the Guadalcanal battles? What percentage was lost by the end of 1941? 1942? 1943?

Such a study would in microcosm provide an illustration of the attrition that ultimately destroyed the Japanese naval aviation. What I have read of some of those who survived the war was that the lucky ones were those who were injured and withdrawn from combat duty (such as Fuchida, who was injured at Midway and thus survived the war).

The law of averages would suggest that very few of the Shokaku or Zhukaku pilots at Pearl Harbor would have survived all the later engagements of their carriers. The Midway survivors may have been more lucky, as some were likely rotated to land or training duty. Judging from Willmott's and Parshall and Tully's works, my guess is that the individual pilot histories are available.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:08 pm

I couldn’t stand the movie and changed channels very early into it, but I remember when the movie, “Australia” came out, several people who’d seen it at my office asked me if it was fiction that the Japanese attacked the Australian mainland as none of them had ever heard of that. I have to give them some credit, as it’s not something you hear much about or see in the history books here in the US. I found this link that talks about the air raids on the mainland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_ ... E2%80%9343 People today can’t understand how terrified the Australians must have been of an invasion. Just like invading the US, it was never really something that would have happened, but there was no way for the Allies to have known that at the time.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Wed Jul 20, 2011 5:37 am

interesting cockpit footage, run of the mill going to target, eating rations, getting ready to bomb the target etc.

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 22, 2011 3:08 am

I managed to sit through "Australia." It's more of an epic chick-flick, and the Japanese bombing isn't a major part of the film. It was portrayed as more of a Pearl Harbor style raid, with single-engine aircraft making low-level attacks and strafing runs (I don't think they recycled any TTT footage, but it's been a couple years since I saw it, and I found it a rather forgettable film.)

SN

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 22, 2011 6:59 am

the330thbg wrote:She: "Is that true?   I thought USA is the friendliest country in the world!"
 
This episode may illustrate the state of education in Japan.

I think that's funnier than you may realise... :lol:
p51 wrote:People today can’t understand how terrified the Australians must have been of an invasion. Just like invading the US, it was never really something that would have happened, but there was no way for the Allies to have known that at the time.

It's an interesting comparison. It's pretty certain the Japanese never had plans to invade Australia for real, but they were a lot closer to mainland Australia than they ever got to the lower 48, and the attacks on the North of Australia were real and were on the mainland of the country. There were misleading 'clues' to Japans intent to invade Australia, such as occupation money printed, and maps and contingency plans, but they have less hysteric explanations.

However those attacks would equate to Canadians getting bombed on Ellesmere Island, or some of the more remote parts of Alaska for Americans, as most Australians are in the lower south-east crescent of the country between Brisbane and Adelaide. The attack on Sydney was a real strike at the heart of Australia's war machine, but a tiny one.

At the time the attacks on Darwin (Australia's most battered city!) were horrific for the people there, essentially a defenceless city (as they were in Broome) but the Darwin attacks were censored at the time, which is another reason why even today some Australians otherwise well educated don't know about them as much as irrelevances like Gallipoli where we are still getting echoes of the jingoist propaganda of that time.

Of course the civil and military directors of the US and Australia in W.W.II both wanted to ensure genuine fear of invasion by the enemy to keep people's eye on the ball (both countries were comparatively complacent about the risk of foreign attack) - a legitimate enough need, albeit one that's led to some pretty silly beliefs strongly held to this day based on the W.W.II era internal propaganda.
Steve Nelson wrote:I managed to sit through "Australia." ... I found it a rather forgettable film.)

Not surprising - it was basically a tourism advert pretending to be a history costume drama. Such guaranteed anodyne pap-for-the-masses comes stamped 'Avoid', IMHO. ;)

Regards,

Re: Australia under attack WW2 film by Japanese

Fri Jul 22, 2011 9:44 am

I believe that Australia the country was actually attacked by Japanese bombers on around fifty different occasions, which is pretty amazing, Can you confirm this please James?

The other air attack that the exact same task force which had hit Pearl Harbor made that no-one seems to know about is Ceylon. They hit Colombo and Trincamolee, home of the Royal Navy eastern fleet, on the 25th of April 1942 and did a lot of damage. Due to the fact the Japanese could reach them so eaily the fleet was withdrawn from there and for the next couple of years was based in East Africa, but they returned to Ceylon about 1944 I believe. They contunued the fight with the Japanese all that time of course, just the port and HQ and everything was in Africa instead of Ceylon and the ships had further to travel.

How many here had actually heard of the Trincamolee and Colombo attacks by the Japanese fleet?
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