THE AUTHOR INITIATES A NATIONAL BATTLE FOR AUSTRALIA COMMEMORATION
The opportunity to write a history of the Japanese attack on Australia in 1942
The author had studied German and Japanese history in senior school and at the University of Queensland, and retirement offered not only the prospect of more time with his wife but also an opportunity to indulge a life-long love of history by writing an account of the Japanese attack on Australia in 1942. The choice of that topic was prompted partly by the focus of the author's academic historical studies as a student, and partly by the discovery that many young Australians were completely unaware that Japan had attacked Australia in 1942. The author's intention was to make such a history broadly available by publishing it on the internet.
The author lays a wreath
on behalf of the RSL, Australia's largest veterans' organisation, at the first
Battle
for Australia Commemoration at the Shrine of Remembrance at Melbourne on 5 September
1998.
In 1997, the author proposes national commemoration of the Battle for Australia
As fate would have it, the author was approached in retirement to become an honorary consultant on public policy issues to the Victorian Branch of the Returned and Services League (RSL), Australia's largest veterans' organisation. In 1997, while serving as Honorary Counsel to the Victorian RSL, the author initiated a proposal for national commemoration of what Prime Minister John Curtin described as the Battle for Australia when Japan attacked Australia in 1942. The author's proposal was supported by the RSL National President, Major General W. B. Digger James, AC, MBE, MC and the State President, Mr Bruce Ruxton, AM, OBE. At the 1998 RSL National Congress, the author's proposal for national commemoration of the Battle for Australia in September of each year was adopted as RSL policy. Speaking at the same Congress, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable John Howard, MP, announced his government's support for national commemoration of the Battle for Australia.
Creation of the Battle for Australia and Pacific War Web-sites
In May 2001, the author was approached by the Federal Department of Veterans' Affairs and invited to consider placing the historical material that he had written on the Battle for Australia on an internet web-site so that it would be available in 2002 to the public, and especially schoolchildren, during 60th anniversary commemorations of the Battle for Australia. Although having no experience in web-site creation, the author agreed to do so, and in this way, the Battle for Australia and Pacific War Web-sites came into existence.