Hitler's Lost Spy (22 page)

Yamamoto passed his plan on to General Tomoyuki Yamashita (the ‘Tiger of Malaya') whose army had defeated the British in Malaya and Singapore. Yamashita believed the plan was feasible.

The historian David Bergamini, in his book,
Japan's
Imperial Conspiracy
, describes the essence of the strategy:

Despite the vastness of Australian distances, he (Yamashita) felt that it would be feasible to land a division almost immediately at Darwin and thrust hard and fast down the north-south railroad and road links toward Adelaide and Melbourne on the south coast. Later, he proposed, a second division could be put ashore on the east coast to leapfrog its way from port to port down toward Sydney.

Ultimately, the Yamamoto plan was quietly rejected by Hirohito. Bergamini states the reasons for this rejection:

… a Japanese force would have to depend entirely on supplies from the rear. The Japanese merchant fleet was already taxed to the utmost without taking on new assignments. Also, if the United States became alarmed and poured Flying Fortresses into Sydney, it would be difficult to maintain air superiority. On the Australian badlands Japanese columns would be fearfully vulnerable to long-range, high-level air attack.

And the Japanese Commander-in-Chief arbitrates:

On reviewing the arguments of both sides, Hirohito decided that the invasion of Australia could be postponed until after the conquest of Burma. In terms of global strategy and of dividing the world with Hitler, an advance toward India and the Middle East took precedence over the capture of Australasian land's end.

Hirohito may have ordered the postponement of the Australian invasion, but that was all – just a limited postponement. The Japanese campaign to occupy New Guinea and the islands in the immediate region was expected to serve two important purposes – to defeat the American naval forces in the South West Pacific, i.e. to finish what was commenced at Pearl Harbor, and to be positioned to invade Australia when circumstances allowed.

While the Yamamoto invasion plan was rejected, it was nevertheless highly significant in the question of Japan's intentions for Australia. Yamamoto was the Japanese navy's head of operations, and undoubtedly knew the broad plan for the Pacific conquests. He
had
to know this in order to contribute to the navy's essential role in Japan's war aims. Had Australia not figured in this strategy, it is highly unlikely he would have considered the operation, and even less likely that he would have interfered with the army's plans by involving General Yamashita who, after capturing Singapore, was elevated to super-hero status in Japan.

In April 1943, while undertaking a tour of inspection near Bougainville, Yamamoto was killed in an American aerial ambush.

Offering more than a hint as to the Japanese political intentions for Australia were speeches by Prime Minister Tojo to the Diet in January and February 1942. As Japanese troops stormed down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore, Tojo announced that should Australia resist, it will be ‘crushed'. This did not represent a ‘plan', but the meaning was clear.

Four months later, Yamamoto raised the Australian strategy again in plans to be implemented immediately following a Japanese victory in what would later be known as The Battle of Midway – one of the great decisive battles in World War II. For the Japanese, this historic naval encounter was to be a launching pad of major proportions. The American author, Edwin P

Hoyt, in his book
Japan's War – The Great Pacific Conflict,
has quoted from the Japanese historian Agawa Hiroyuki's biography of Yamamoto,
The Reluctant
Admiral:

The Midway plan encompassed only the occupation of Midway and the Aleutian Islands. But Admiral Yamamoto's plans were far more grandiose. Midway would be taken in June. Afterwards the battleships of the Combined Fleet would return to Japan, but the cruisers and carriers and destroyers would go to Truk
¹⁸
, to prepare for the July capture of New Caledonia and the Fiji Islands. Admiral Nagumo's carrier striking force, no longer inhibited by the sunk American fleet, would strike Sydney, Melbourne and other south-east coast Australian cities. Then the naval forces would reassemble at Truk and prepare  
for the invasion of Johnston Island and the Hawaiian
Islands in August.

It is evident that the Japanese invasion of Australia was subject only to timing and resource availability. It may well have been that a formally approved plan did not exist, but had Guadalcanal and New Guinea fallen, and the Battle of the Coral Sea been lost, Yamamoto's proposals would have been surveyed by Hirohito and his advisors in a very different manner.

Matsuoka's Faux Pas

Not all the Japanese gusto for invading Australia was reserved for the period during the military successes following Pearl Harbor. Hints at Japan's greater ambitions had been expressed in various ways since the war with China began in 1937.

On 25 February 1941, in the midst of Major Hashida's spy trip around Australia, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, stated in an address to the Diet:

While it is difficult to conduct political affairs according to advocated ideals, I believe that the white race must cede Oceania to the Asiatics.

In the context of Japan's sphere of immediate interest, ‘Oceania' clearly meant Australia and New Zealand. The following day the Japanese Consul in Sydney was asked for a clarification of Matsuoka's statement. He replied there had been a ‘mistranslation'. 
There was, however, very little to mistranslate from. It was clear that Australia, one way or another, was scheduled to enter Japan's empire.

4: The Race War

In a warped parallel to Hitler's code of racial ‘superiority', the doctrines of the day in Japan alleged the Japanese people possessed a racial, cultural and spiritual supremacy over anyone else, including the Germans. 
This was fundamental to the principles contained in the national ideology. The racial pre-eminence factor was accepted in Japan without question or debate, with the exception of those educated with transnational experiences. In fighting the Americans, this ‘advantage' 
would be translated into a unified Japanese fighting force of far greater quality than could be mustered by the fragmented mixed-race opposition.

5: Mapping the Invasion

All military invasions require maps, and the Japanese possessed what was needed for the invasion of Australia prior to the commencement of hostilities at Pearl Harbor. An example is a detailed 1938 military map of Darwin referred to by Robert Clancy (author's brother) in his book
Maps that Shaped Australia
:

The Japanese had amassed extensive information on Australia which included Australian military maps overprinted in Japanese. The Darwin map was obtained covertly and reprinted with Japanese characters. 
It contained important artillery 
correction data relevant to the protection of the port.

Included in the Japanese collection of Australian maps was a series of aerial photographs detailing the port of Newcastle, obtained in April 1939.

Japan's New Continental Colony – Australia

Accompanying Japan's military conquests was the seemingly innocent but convenient political propaganda of ‘Asia for the Asians'. What was left unsaid by the Japanese invaders was just which Asians would benefit from the policy and who would be subjugated. Also left unsaid was the future of Western influences in Asia, which were earmarked for extinction. To allow Australia and New Zealand to exist undisturbed at the base of the new Japanese empire was inconceivable. Allowing these two countries to remain independent would be contrary to the spirit of the principles the leaders of Japan deemed to comprise the national destiny.

Whether it was to be sooner or later, Australians and New Zealanders would have suffered the same fate as others under Japanese control.

Following the successful military occupation of Australia, the population would be subjected to some form of Japanese administration – initially by the military. Kennosuke Sato was a man who knew a great deal about Australia and was expected, by sources familiar with his role in Japanese militarism during the 1930s, to be appointed the civilian administrator of the southern continental flank of the new Japanese empire.

Sato had received a western education in the United States, England and Germany. He was a feature writer for a Japanese newspaper, and also wrote several books on contemporary Japan and the West. He travelled to Australia in 1935 and remained for five months collecting facts and figures for an ‘information book'. He also cultivated associations with several politicians and business leaders while adding his influence to organisations positioned to offer moral support for past and future Japanese aggression.

Sato's wartime activities were linked to the brutal interrogation of captured Australian army and air force officers as he unsuccessfully actioned his task of grooming individuals for serving in the management of the proposed Japanese occupation and administration following Australia's capitulation.

The following extract is from an article titled ‘The Jap who Expected to Govern Australia' in the 2 January 1946 
edition of the Melbourne
Herald.

Why is Ken Sato, who was to have been Japanese administrator of Australia, at large and not under arrest as a war criminal? That is what Australian officers who suffered at his instigation now chiefly want to know about him.

Sato told Denis Warner, in a despatch to the Herald yesterday from Osaka, that Australia's surrender was expected to follow the projected landing in Queensland, the capture of Brisbane and Sydney, and the thrust towards Melbourne.

This was, according to Sato, the Japanese project for early 1942. It was deferred when the invasion fleet was halted at Rabaul while the Japanese secured their new lines of communication …

This is another version of the same theme in the invasion debate. According to Sato, Australia was scheduled for Japanese occupation, but precisely how and when only depended on suitable military circumstances.

Peter Stanley's statement that ‘no plan' existed, taken to a literal extreme, is probably correct – but it is very misleading. His mistake has been to omit the reality that had the conditions
suited
the Japanese, there
would
have been an invasion. Only the uncertainties of military risk and priorities in other areas of conflict interfered with the opportunity for a finalised and emperor-approved 
‘plan'.

It is undeniable that invading Australia was an issue raised several times by people senior enough to have proposals considered at the highest level. These proposals were rejected on the basis of doubts as to immediate success. They were not rejected for any other reason.

Renovating History – The Cost of Compliance

How did the ‘no plan' historians get it wrong? The answer is in the immediate post-war period when the wartime emperor was sanitised by both the occupying Americans
and
the Japanese – for totally different reasons, but with the same outcome.

The decision not to place Emperor Hirohito on trial for war crimes had its origins in both the need to ‘leave something' for Japan's long-suffering and downtrodden population, and the changed international order following World War II. The American fear of a popular uprising should Hirohito be treated as a criminal also weighed heavily on the decision. So the Emperor was now transformed into a man who stoically endured the indignities of having military thugs coerce him into signing documents approving Japan's military ventures and the suppression of the Southeast Asian people. This is a convenient standpoint that is far from the truth, but dovetails in well for the historical faint-hearted.

The evidence supporting the Emperor's supposed concerns in the growth of his country's militarism is highly subjective. We do not know if such reports were genuine or later issued and ‘diarised' to protect Hirohito from wartime responsibilities. So we should ignore all these doubtful ‘recollections' and assess Hirohito not on what he supposedly said, but only on his actions.

Under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, terminated in 1945, the emperor was invested with enormous power. The first chapter of the constitution is devoted to the emperor, referred to as ‘The Tenno', or deity in the Shinto religion. The emperor was a ‘heavenly sovereign', a god, so much so that the common people were forbidden to look upon his physical being.

Article III of the Constitution states, ‘The Tenno is sacred and inviolable', i.e. the emperor is a living god beyond censure or fault.

The emperor's association with the armed forces is expressed in three articles:

Article XI – The Tenno has the supreme command of the Army and Navy.

Article XII – The Tenno determines the organisation and peace standing of the Army and Navy.

Article XIII – The Tenno declares war, makes peace, and concludes treaties.

This was the approval basis on which Japan, until its defeat in 1945, conducted its military operations. It was necessary for the emperor, an all -powerful living god, to authorise actions by the armed forces on foreign soil, and to prepare the army and navy for future undertakings, which he did.

Considering the above, what corrective actions did Hirohito undertake in 1931 when his army undertook military incursions in Manchuria? None. What did he do to halt the Japanese invasion of northern China in 1937?