ABSTRACT
The people in Darwin were neither prepared for an attack that was inevitable, nor brave when it came. A hundred Japanese armed with frying pans, and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officer said disgustedly when it was over, could have occupied Australia that day. There was ample reason for the War Cabinet at the time to suppress the truth about the raids and the way that the Australian servicemen had behaved. Their main concern was to boost Australian morale, not depress it. On the broad canvas of the war in the Pacific, still less the war being waged in Europe and elsewhere, the attacks on Darwin and later on the Northern Territory and Western Australia were hardly more than a single stroke of the brush. But these attacks were of vital importance, not only to those exposed to them, but to all the people of Australia.
