“Exaggerated propaganda has been heard in respect to evacuation of coastal areas. The Chronicle, realising the seriousness of assertions which are not founded on fact, investigated these, and has now received official information which places the matter of evacuation in its correct perspective. Voluntary evacuation of women and children from the coastal area is suggested by the Government. Those who have friends and relatives in the western districts who would be willing to receive them are advised to leave the coastal areas at once.

“It is pointed out that compulsory evacuation may come into force in the near future, and in that case evacuees will have no choice but to go where they are sent. Wardens have been authorised to make a house to house canvass in the near future, to take a census of all people living in their respective divisions. The information is required for evacuation purposes.” {30-1-1942, p.9}

As the initial alarm faded, and Committees advised that the air raid shelters at their schools had been dug, many coastal schools reopened on 20th February 1942 and most were again functioning by the beginning of March. But school attendances were low, and staff shortages resulted from teachers enlisting in the armed forces. To cope with these shortages, many schools operated staggered hours, the junior pupils attending from 8.00 a.m. to 12 noon, and older pupils from 12.30 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. 

To assist local people in identifying enemy aircraft, the Nambour Chronicle printed a series of aircraft silhouettes, which it exhorted its readers to "retain for future reference". {30-1-1942, p.3} {6-2-1942, p.3} {13-2-1942, p.8}

 The first Japanese bombs hit Darwin on 19th February 1942, in the first of over 60 air raids. The attack on Pearl Harbour is well known, but few realise that the air raid on Darwin ten weeks later, by the same Japanese carrier-borne squadrons and led by the same man, was just as serious and damaging. The Darwin attack saw more bombs fall, a similar number of ships sunk, and more civilian lives lost. With a callous lack of any sense of decency or humanity, the Japs targeted the Darwin Hospital and the Hospital Ship H.M.A.H.S. Manunda. (See footnote.)

Image courtesy Sunshine Coast Libraries  {20-2-1942, p.9}

On 22nd March 1942, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Melbourne after his dramatic escape from the invading Japanese in the Philippines. His purpose was to establish and command a General Headquarters, South-west Pacific Area (GHQ SWPA). A few days later the American Fleet arrived off the New South Wales coast and a school holiday was declared on the 29th March to celebrate their arrival. But the Japanese fleet composed of two groups was still heading south.

The first group was an invasion fleet that hoped to occupy Rabaul in New Britain, Port Moresby in Papua-New Guinea, the Solomon Islands including Guadalcanal, the New Hebrides, Fiji and Noumea in New Caledonia. There they would build bases from which to attack Australia, their prime target. Their plan was as follows: A group consisting of a seaplane tender supported by two light cruisers, three gunboats and a minelayer would establish an air base at Deboyne Island in the Louisiade Archipelago. A landing group of eleven transports filled with soldiers, and a number of small supply ships escorted by a light cruiser and six destroyers, was to assault Port Moresby. A covering force for this invasion consisted of the light carrier Shoho, four heavy cruisers, a destroyer and a tanker. A landing group of one troopship with a seaplane carrier, a minelayer and some smaller vessels, escorted by two destroyers, would occupy Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

The second group was to be a carrier strike force consisting of the fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, two heavy cruisers and six destroyers and a tanker. They would operate in the Coral Sea to destroy any Allied force attempting to interfere with the invasion of the South Pacific islands, and to block any American ships from coming to Australia's aid. A force of seven submarines would provide distant reconnaissance and attack any opposing forces. Once the island bases were secure, airfields and docks would be constructed and military forces would be built up in preparation for the invasion of northern Australia, starting with the coastal areas of Queensland.

As soon as the Jap plans were deciphered by Allied code-breakers, and Australian coast-watchers on the threatened islands reported enemy ships coming south towards the Coral Sea, the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia and the light cruiser HMAS Hobart rushed north to intercept them. The American Task Force 17 (the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown plus three heavy cruisers, six destroyers and an oiler), and the Task Force 11 (the carrier USS Lexington, two heavy cruisers and seven destroyers) headed to the Coral Sea. There they linked up with the Australian ships, and soon the cruiser USS Chicago and the destroyer USS Perkins joined them from Noumea. Meanwhile, the Jap fleet was approaching.

The battle began on the morning of 7th May, 1942 and was the first important sea battle fought by carriers using only their planes, armed with shells, torpedoes and bombs. None of the ships shot at or even sighted an enemy ship. The Shoho was sunk quite early on, and the Americans lost the USS Lexington. Other smaller ships also were destroyed. Fortunately, we won the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Japanese were turned back. It was their first defeat at sea, and would soon be followed by another defeat at the Battle of Midway, but the war continued to escalate. Darwin was bombed again and again, and in June 1942 the area of Queensland north of Rockhampton was declared a war zone. In late July, Townsville was bombed, but no serious damage was done.

On 18th April 1942, MacArthur was formally appointed Supreme Commander of the South-west Pacific Area. On 20th July, he moved from Melbourne to Brisbane and set up his General Headquarters in the AMP Building on the corner of Queen and Edward Streets in the heart of the city. A communications centre was installed in the basement. One of his intelligence groups, Central Bureau Intelligence, was also relocated to Brisbane, establishing its headquarters at a large private residence in the palatial suburb of Ascot, near the new American airfield at Eagle Farm.

Battered Japanese midget submarine believed to be M-14, raised from the floor of Sydney Harbour on 1st June 1942.

The war now reached its height. On 31st May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines penetrated  Sydney Harbour and sank the ferry Kuttabul with the loss of 19 lives. All three midget submarines were destroyed, two being sunk in the harbour and the third sinking five kilometres out at sea off Mona Vale Beach on Sydney's North Shore. None of the Japanese crews survived. On 13th March 1943, the Japanese Submarine I-6 laid nine magnetic mines, including six German TMC mines, across the shipping channel in Moreton Bay, near the mouth of the Brisbane River. They were apparently targeting U.S. submarines that were based at New Farm's Capricorn Wharf. Subsequently, a German mine was washed up at Surfers' Paradise, and another on Sunshine Beach. (The latter is now displayed in a Memorial Park at Tewantin.)

On 16th March 1943, General MacArthur gave a press conference at his Brisbane headquarters, where he mentioned the so-called 'Brisbane Line' policy, which had been devised and presented to the previous Menzies Government by Lieutenant General Sir Iven Giffard Mackay, General Officer Commanding in Charge, Home Forces of Australia from 1941 to 1942. This policy, which was supposed to be a state secret but was rumoured about, effectively handed over to the Japanese all of Australia north of a line joining Brisbane and Perth, with the Darling River as part of the 'Line'.

MacArthur stated that he supported Prime Minister John Curtin's decision that the 'Brisbane Line' was completely unacceptable, and that the Japanese had to be turned back before they reached the Australian mainland. The Japs already had a large base at Buna in New Guinea, and it was plain that they intended to cross the island on the Kokoda Track over the rugged Owen Stanley Ranges to Port Moresby, an ideal staging post for an invasion of Australia. MacArthur knew that they had to be stopped on the mountainous, misty and jungle-covered tracks where the small but courageous Australian forces could operate most effectively.

The Japanese forces made their way south-west along the Kokoda Track, but determined fighting by Australian militia, and then our regular troops, halted them and then forced them into retreat, back to the northern coast. That was the first military defeat for the Japanese and the end of their expansion south, and in fact was the beginning of the end of their imperial aspirations.

H.M.A.H.S. Centaur
Photograph courtesy John Oxley Library  

In a shocking and disgraceful act of infamy, the Australian hospital ship H.M.A.H.S. Centaur (above) was torpedoed at 4:10 am on 14th May 1943 by a Jap submarine 30 kilometres east of the southern tip of Moreton Island, less than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Nambour. Hit in a fuel oil tank, the ship erupted in flames at once and sank within three minutes. Of the 332 people on board, only 64 survived. Of the twelve Army Nurses working on the ship, only one, Sister Ellen Savage, was saved. 

Prime Minister Curtin said, “I am confident that this deed will shock the conscience of the whole civilised world, and demonstrate to any who may have had any lingering doubts the unscrupulous and barbarous methods by which the Japanese conduct warfare.”

The location of the sunken ship was unknown for 66 years, until it was found on 20th December 2009. In the first few days of 2010, a submersible fitted with cameras obtained the first clear pictures of the wreck, the number '47' on the bow, the green stripe and red crosses still being clearly visible. A commemorative plaque including the names of all the victims was placed on the deck.   

The Australian Army set up big camps in our district, with some thousands of soldiers undergoing advanced training. It was a common thing for local landholders to have military vehicles and personnel swarming over their properties, fighting mock battles and staging various other training exercises. The Nambour Show Pavilion and the Mapleton Public Hall were used as command posts.

A view from Moffatt Headland, Caloundra, looking over Moffatt Beach and the mouth of Tooway Lake to the large military camp on Battery Hill. The camp was on a low hill behind Dicky Beach and Currimundi. The Buderim plateau is on the horizon at right. Click  here  for aerial photographs taken of the area in 1958, when traces of the military camp were still in existence.

Soldiers from the Fifth Field Horse Artillery Regiment are seen firing two Mark 2 eighteen pound guns as part of a practice shoot from Battery Hill, Caloundra, 29th May 1940. During such practices, the shells were supposed to fall far out at sea, but many short rounds fell in the sand dunes between Dicky Beach and Currimundi Lake. Such dangerous ordnance was commonly found there in the 1950s to the 1970s, when the area was first being built upon. Some turned up when the Currimundi State School was under construction in 1976. The occasional unexploded shell is still dug up there to the present day.

An A.I.F. squad of soldiers led by a Corporal, guarding the northern side of the Tooway Lake bridge, Moffatt Beach, Caloundra, near the entrance to the Northern Command military camp at Battery Hill.

Australian Infantry soldiers marching near Caloundra in 1940. Some of these men were sent to the Middle East and some to Malaya during World War II, not long after this photograph was taken. The soldiers are in khaki uniforms with long bayonets attached to their webbing belts. They hold .303 rifles in their left hands and all wear steel helmets.

Soldiers from the Battery Hill camp march down to Dicky Beach for a swim.

Soldiers patrol King's Beach, Caloundra while others enjoy a surf during World War II.

John and Allan Slack outside Chadwick Chambers in Nambour, 1941.

School children, members of the Junior Red Cross, Women's voluntary war units, scout groups and local residents were among those assembled as a United States Naval Squadron paraded along Nambour's Currie Street in 1941, led by the local Salvation Army Band. The sailors marched from Mitchell Street to this point, Station Square, where a crowd of some five and a half thousand people gathered as the Chairman of Maroochy Shire, R. H. Whalley, extended an official welcome. Note the Union and U.S. flags flying, and the loudspeaker car in the foreground..
Photographs courtesy Sunshine Coast Libraries

On the afternoon of Tuesday, 26th October 1943, a number of Army tanks proceeded into Nambour, where their arrival caused no small amount of excitement and interest. Their visit was organised by the Nambour and District Patriotic Committee as part of a fund-raising effort for the 4th Liberty Loan Rally. Described by the Nambour Chronicle as 'huge, moving fortresses', they waited at the southern end of Currie Street until a large crowd had gathered, and then lumbered up to Station Square where they parked outside the Maroochy Shire Hall. There the Band had assembled, and played marches and musical selections until 8 pm, when a concert inside the Shire Hall began. The program included performances by famous artists from Brisbane's Cremorne Theatre, among them the 'Californian Songbird' Evie Hayes, a magician and a violinist. Extremely popular was the comedian Will Mahoney whose outstanding act included playing musical numbers by tap dancing on a specially made xylophone.  {29-10-1943, p.2} 

For the next 21 months, MacArthur's Allied armed forces gradually drove the Japanese back from Australia, and they were made to retreat, island by island, back to whence they had come. Between February and June 1945, the Allied invasions of the small Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and then Okinawa resulted in very heavy casualties, particularly on the Japanese side, where brave, fanatical soldiers gave up their pointless 'banzai' charges and holed up in caves where they fought to the death, often against flame-throwers and hand grenades. Their families would be told that they "died gloriously on the field of honour for the Emperor ", but in reality they threw their lives away in the maggot-infested, putrid mud of battlefields strewn with part-buried corpses and parts of corpses. Only a small percentage would considering surrendering. It was obvious that an Allied invasion of the home islands of Japan would result in catastrophic loss of life of at least a million Americans, and possibly tens of millions of Japanese, so a decision was taken to utilise the newly-developed atomic bomb on a Japanese city in order to bring the war to a speedy end and minimise further loss of life.

Hiroshima was struck on 6th August, but Allied peace proposals received no response from the Japanese government. Nagasaki received its 'rain of ruin from the air' (President Truman's words) three days later. Even this did not force a surrender, but when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan that same week, the Emperor instructed his people to "endure the unavoidable and suffer what is unsufferable". This brought the war to an abrupt end, the Japanese surrendering unconditionally within a matter of days. General MacArthur accepted their official surrender aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2nd September 1945. He said, "Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always."

On 23rd January 1945, the Maroochy Shire Council accepted a tender of ₤260 by the Moffatt Construction Company for the demolition and removal of the two concrete air raid shelters in Nambour. The removal of the one in the middle of Currie Street near the Commonwealth Bank was particularly pressing, as it presented a hazard to traffic.  {26-1-1945, p.1}

The Nambour and District Patriotic Committee held its final settling-up meeting on 5th December 1947. After all financial commitments were finalised, there was a credit balance of ₤162 which was donated to the Nambour branch of the Legacy Club. In winding up the Committee, the President, Mr S. Baildon stated that 450 service personnel had benefited by the repatriation grant from the Committee, and about 300 service certificates had been distributed. Repatriation grants had absorbed ₤1200, and ₤10 each was given to the next-of-kin of members of the forces who had made the supreme sacrifice.  {12-12-1947, p.7}

Footnotes:

1:  R.S.S.I.L.A. -- The Returned Sailors' and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia. The League's  formation was first discussed in June 1916 and the first conference was held in September of that year. Delegates from Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania attended. In March 1917, New South Wales joined the League, and in March 1918 Western Australia was admitted, making it a national body.  In November 1940 the League's name was changed to the

R.S.S.A.I.L.A. -- The Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia.  In October 1965 this was shortened to the

R.S.L. -- The Returned Services League of Australia.  In September 1983 this was changed to the Returned Services League of Australia Limited, and in September 1990 to the Returned & Services League of Australia.

The explosion of an oil storage tank and clouds of smoke from other tanks, hit during the first Japanese air raid on Australia's mainland, at Darwin on 19th February 1942. In the foreground is the Bathurst Class corvette HMAS Deloraine, which escaped damage..
Photograph copyright Australian War Memorial

2:  Darwin was a battle Australia has largely forgotten, yet the Japanese attack on 19th February 1942 was the first wartime assault on Australian soil. The Japanese struck with the same carrier-borne force that devastated Pearl Harbour only ten weeks earlier. Four aircraft carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū and Sōryū) sent their aircraft from a position in the Timor Sea. Darwin's air raid was worse than Pearl Harbour's in some ways - more bombs fell, more civilians were killed, and a similar number of ships were sunk. At Pearl, however, many more servicemen, particularly sailors, lost their lives, particularly on the USS Arizona, which exploded violently and sank when a bomb detonated in a magazine, killing 1177 officers and crewmen. .

The Darwin raid led to possibly the worst death toll from any event in Australia. There were two attacks on the day, two hours apart. The first was delivered by 188 fighters and bombers, and the second by 54 land-based heavy bombers. The Japanese planes strafed and bombed three hospitals, flattened shops, offices and the police barracks, shattered the Post Office and communications centre, wrecked Government House, and left the harbour and airfields burning and ruined. Eight ships were sunk and 20 planes destroyed on the ground. Three flying boats were wrecked. Anti-aircraft fire shot down seven Japanese planes.