It involved privileges and possibilities but obligations and responsibilities as well. While the Allies were seeking to restrict their losses, the Japanese were planning their next success. Australian troops were recalled from Europe. The MV Neptuna exploded at the wharf causing massive damage. Casualties on these ships, the Isidro and the Florence D, included 14 men from the In Darwin itself, the wharf was badly damaged and the police station, police barracks, post office (killing nine employees) and Administrator’s office were all destroyed. From 1940 onwards, a camp of army tents grew at the foot of Anzac and Spencer Hills. The aircraft had taken off from four aircraft carriers in the Timor Sea. Wendy was five years old at the time. The onslaught ended with a final raid on 12 November 1943.” In all, the northern towns of “Broome, Wyndham, Derby, Katherine, Horn Island, Townsville, Mossman, Port Hedland, Noonamah, Exmouth Gulf, Onslow, Drysdale River Mission, Coomalie Creek” and Darwin were subjected to ninety-seven attacks.In researching his book, Grose said he was “astonished by how little Australians know of the succession of bloody battles fought under their skies”. Independence can also mean, at times, isolation. Large numbers of army nurses and enlisted women served in military hospitals and camps throughout the Territory. Rather, Japan's aim was to seize the raw materials and economic resources of south-east Asia, and to secure a defensible perimeter around the region to defend its gains from the counter-attacks which would follow.Darwin was a major Allied base. They sank eight of the 47 ships in the harbour, including the motor vessel Neptuna. In 1957 the President of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Dr C.H. He singles out the Admin-istrator of the Northern Territory, Aubrey Abbott, and Wing Commander Sturt Griffith, the Commanding Officer at the RAAF base, for special criticism.
During January and February 1942, Australia's northern port of Darwin was becoming increasingly important to the Allied war effort in the South-West Pacific region. For the first time in six months, the Japanese had been stopped where they least expected—at sea. The political response was cautious: the Australian people could not be told either about the extent of the destruction or the conduct of their fellow citizens.
Unveiling a commemorative plaque in 1955, the Territories Minister, Paul Hasluck, described the bombing of Darwin “not as an anniversary of national glory but one of shame. Although the Japanese failed to destroy all of the US Navy’s battleships and aircraft carriers in the early morning raid on Hawaii, within three weeks the Pacific war front was less than 1600 kilometres from Darwin.The speed of the Japanese push southward through South-East Asia and the Pacific was unparalleled in modern history. But the Japanese decision not to invade Australia did not mean the continent would be spared.War came to the Australian mainland when Darwin was attacked by a large detachment of Japanese carrier-borne aircraft on the morning of February 19, 1942. But if the dates on which nations usually celebrate national days are meant to relate specifically to nationhood and the importance attached to independence and self-determination, there would seem to be a strong case for establishing February 19—the bombing of Darwin—as Australia’s national day. The raids cost the attackers no more than ten aircraft.The two raids killed about 250 people in and around Darwin. Later research has revised this figure upwards. While men did abscond and loot in the chaotic days following the attacks, the stories have become folkloric. In the final analysis, only Canberra could be relied upon to protect Australian assets and to promote the national interest. The following day news reports put the death toll at 17, but word of the raids on Darwin was never suppressed, not least because it supported the Curtin government's desire to mobilize Australians into working, fighting or saving by frightening them about what could happen.The Lowe Royal Commission investigated the raids in 1942, with some hearings held in the ruins of the town. As the first raid began, staff ran to a trench constructed at the rear of their building. It had occupied Indo-China and Thailand in 1941. The celebration of “Australia Day” has not always attracted the attention it now receives, let alone prompted discussion of the most suitable date. In a review in the Grose is not the first to write about the bombing of Darwin. It is important to recognise that the very first attack on Australia as a nation cost the lives of representatives of that nation.Most of the names of those killed in Darwin on that day are in fact not recorded here on this Roll of Honour. There were many significant events leading up to the Bombing in Darwin in 1942.