Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

That was quite a speech by the member for Melbourne Ports, who was chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade in the previous government. He certainly showed that he knows his history. Well done. Good speech.

Another war historian of eloquence is Dr Ian Grant from my electorate of the Riverina. He is also the foundation principal of the Riverina Anglican College in Wagga Wagga, and he gave the keynote address at the 70th Victory in the Pacific commemorative service, held in the Victory Memorial Gardens at Wagga Wagga on 15 August. It was a splendid speech. In it, he noted:

The commemoration of VJ Day—

Victory in Japan Day—

is quite different from the Armistice in November 1918 or V E Day—

Victory in Europe Day—

in May 1945.

He told a crowd of about 90 people:

The unconditional surrender of the Japanese on 15 August was rightly celebrated because it meant the death sentences for the men and women who had become prisoners of war were commuted. The Sandakan massacre was the first of half a dozen mass executions that were being organised for prisoners in Ambon, East Borneo, Java, Sumatra and in Singapore.

The Allied High Command knew of the plans to massacre the POWs. They believed, that if there were an attempt to liberate the POWs in one of the camps then all the major other ones needed to be attacked at once, or the massacres would commence.

I continue to read from Dr Grant's fine speech. He said:

While this made military sense, it led to the agonising decision not to send forces to rescue the men from Sandakan as they were being marched to Ranau. There is evidence of at least two US and Australian commando patrols witnessing the forced march but unable to intervene for fear of sparking off mass executions of POWs in other places. For me, the most arresting section of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra is the individual photograph of the men on their forced march who perished over those few weeks. For almost seven decades there was an accepted historical version of the events that led to Japan's surrender. This was that the Japanese Government recognised there was no reasonable hope for victory and faced an unparalleled holocaust from the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the last five years, a new interpretation has emerged which suggests that it was not the bombs that formed the Japanese surrender but the Soviet declaration of war. This interpretation raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence that has been the foundation stone of military strategy in the post war period.

In 2012 Dr Grant visited Japan with TRAC, The Riverina Anglican College, and visited Hiroshima and the Peace Museum that has been built in that city. He spoke of this in his speech:

Because we were a school group there was an educational speaker who addressed this. This turned out to be a 74 year old woman who had been near the railway station at Hiroshima as an eight year old, and was able to give a personal account of her experience. There are no winners in war. As I listened to her account of her physical burns and later of being ostracised as a potential wife by Japanese mothers for fear of nuclear contamination, I could still see the faces of the men from the Riverina who were murdered by the Japanese army. What struck me was the relatively small area that was obliterated. The devastated area was three kilometres by three kilometres. Our speaker was four kilometres from the epicentre and survived.

He concluded his remarks in that very fine speech by talking of what needed to be done post war and of our understanding, concept and perspective post 1945:

Clearly we must revise our understanding and, with that, revise the narrative of the post war story. The traditional interpretation retains a strong hold over many people's thinking, especially in the US. The explanation that the bombs played the vital role is emotionally convenient and satisfying. Japan fought hard but faced with new terror weapons capitulated because of the terrifying impact of atomic weaponry. Thus Japanese honour is saved at a single stroke and the ability to blame the loss of the war on the atomic bombs sweeps away all the mistakes and misjudgements of the disastrous war under the rug. The bomb becomes a perfect excuse for having lost the war. No need to apportion blame; no court of inquiry need to be held. Japan's leaders were able to claim they had done their best. Certainly being able to re-case Japan as a victimised nation suffering under the horrors of nuclear radiation helped to affect or mask many of the morally repugnant things that Japan's military had done.

Similarly, the story that tens of thousands of US servicemen were not sacrificed because of US technological advances is a satisfying story but it is an unjust conclusion. Japan had been militarily beaten. The Australian soldiers fighting in 1945 in Bougainville, New Britain and Borneo were not a sideshow to an unknown new weapon but were playing a vital role in making the Japanese understand that they were defeated on the conventional battlefield. To raise the impact of the atomic bomb is to undercut the necessity for ongoing assault on the Japanese military position.

What difference to our understanding does the knowledge that it was Russian intervention and not the bombs that led directly to the Japanese surrender? What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has framed the world's thinking about nuclear weapons. The sheer horror of the destruction and the lingering poison of radioactivity has become the driver for the weapons to be seen as end-game weapons. The idea that more nuclear weapons actually deter your enemies from attending has become even more popular. The reality is that no nation has ever surrendered because of the levelling of population centres—Churchill didn't, Hitler didn't and Tojo didn't. The US wouldn't even if a city was destroyed. If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact then what is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons? In the 21st century they are far more likely to accidentally explode than be deployed.

A final thought is that for forty years, Russia was seen as our primary enemy. In reality the Soviets' decision to honour their agreement with the Allies was the prime reason 14,000 Australian POWs came home.

The 15 August VP Day 70th commemorations in Wagga Wagga were moving. Former serviceman Steve Trood, a former regular member of the Australian Army, collected sand from the very beach where Japan signed its surrender in 1945. He collected this while tracing the 105-kilometre Sandakan death march just last year. He sprinkled that over the beautiful monument in the Victory Memorial Gardens. Six Australians survived that dreadful Sandakan death march from the POW camp to Ranau as World War II came to a close. Mr Trood, one of more than 20 Australians to complete last year's trek, organised by RSL Life Care and Soldier On, addressed the crowd at Wagga Wagga before he sprinkled the sand that he brought home from Labuan Island over the beautiful memorial. That was followed by the TRAC Principal, Dr Grant, making a keynote address. After that, Wagga Wagga RSL Sub Branch President Kevin Kerr led The Ode, and the sound of bagpipes, splendidly played by Bob Scott, closed the milestone service.

On 2 September we had another very significant ceremony, the Battle for Australia ceremony, at which we heard the newly elected RSL President, John Gray, deliver a keynote address. We also heard the national anthem sung by OJ Rushton. I mention OJ Rushton because she conducted the RSL Rural Commemorative Youth Choir on Saturday, when the Kangaroo March stepped off from Wagga Wagga, but I will talk a little bit about that in a moment. In Mr Gray's speech, he said:

Australian forces were involved in World War II from the declaration of war on 3 September 1939. The early years saw the Navy in action on all oceans, the Army fighting in the Middle East, in Greece, Crete and Syria, and the Air Force supporting those Army operations and also operating from bases in Britain. On 7-8 December 1941 the Japanese entered the war by attacking American, British Commonwealth and Dutch forces in South-East Asia and in the Pacific. The Battle for Australia had begun.

…   …   …

In January 1943 the Japanese, having failed to capture Port Moresby, determined to render it useless as a base for allied operations by intensive bombing. To make their bombing more effective they set out to capture the airfield at Wau, which was much closer to Port Moresby than the base at Lae that they had been using. This was forestalled by flying in an Australian force in Dakota transport aircraft. In March 1943, a Japanese convoy of ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to their forces on the north coast of Papua New Guinea was almost totally destroyed by Australian and American aircraft in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. The Japanese no longer held the initiative. Hard fighting followed for another two and a half years in New Guinea, the northern Solomons, the Pacific islands and the East Indies, now Indonesia. Coordinated with allied strikes closer to Japan, this culminated in the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945.

As Mr Gray pointed out, the battle for Australia had been won. It had been a hard-fought battle.

Mr Gray succeeded John Keyes as the Wagga Wagga RSL club president. John Keyes' great uncle, Sidney Keyes, was an original Kangaroo. I appreciate that this debate is about World War II and not World War I and that this speech is about the 70th commemoration of VP Day, but it was a very colourful, significant and historic ceremony on Saturday morning when we had the Kangaroo march—which is coming to a town near you over the next weeks—as the longest recruitment march in World War I was re-enacted. John Keyes' great uncle, Sidney, was wounded in action three times. He was a private in the 13th Battalion. He finally fell on the Western Front on 1 March 1918. He was a spirited young man who answered his country's call in its time of need and paid the ultimate sacrifice, like so many of them in World War II. OJ Rushton led the choir in a beautiful rendition of a song that she composed herself called Young and Free. It is a song for the ages. It is a song that could commemorate World War II, World War I or, indeed, any action that Australia has fought in. It is a wonderful song and was sung beautifully by the Youth Choir. I am sure it will be heard many more times as the Kangaroo march journeys from Wagga Wagga all the way to Campbelltown, its ultimate destination.

I will conclude with some comments about World War II and what followed. The book, Snowy: The people behind the power, by Siobhan McHugh, sums up what transpired after World War II concluded. The construction of the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme between 1949 and 1974 still ranks as one of the world's greatest engineering feats. For Australia, it marked a passage from the old world to the new and became a monument to multiculturalism along the way. Two-thirds of the scheme's 100,000 workers were immigrants, newly arrived from more than 40 countries in war-weary Europe. The Snowy was to provide them with hope and with an opportunity to rebuild shattered lives and to try to forget the devastation and animosities of war. Mutual suspicions between new and old Australians gave way to cautious acceptance, and the disparate workforce became a skilled and united team which set world records in hard rock drilling and earthmoving in an environment of extraordinary racial and industrial harmony—all taking place in the Riverina. The mateship was not without cost. The work was dangerous, and the accidents claimed the lives of over 100 people. The Snowy gave us a hydroelectric scheme and an irrigation scheme second to none anywhere in the world. It just goes to show what Australia can do and what new Australians can do when they put their minds to it and when given the opportunity. Certainly that was one of the great monumental projects that followed World War II.

We have learnt a lot from the devastation of World War II—1939 to 1945. Let's hope that the world never descends into that horror again.

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