why was the war in the pacific the begining "the gravest hour for australians"? in terms of our history?

Answer 1

by the time in April of 42 that the Japanese had conquered Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines,......and bombed Darwin to ruins......Australia was in it deep. The Australian Army was in North Africa, fighting the Italians an Germans as part of the Empire....the US Navy was reeling from its defeat at Pearl Harbor and there wasn't much left for defense. It was being planned that what forces Australia had would retreat to the "Brisbane Line" giving up all the North to the expected Japanese invasion.

Then two things happened. Douglas MacArthur arrived by PT boat from the ruins of the Philippines. Commanding little more than the number of men within the sound of his voice he, the vain aristocratic ego maniacal General who was probably the greatest strategist in history, and your leftist populist liberal Prime Minister put some spine ne into everyone; Mac decided to defend "Australia in New Guinea", by first holding Port Morseby and then sending his one regiment of Australians and one of Americans over the Owen Stanley Mountains......10,000 foot high peaks in jungle untouched by man since the Dawn of Creation.....a campaign that would have left Hannibal breathless in admiration..... to attack the Japanese on the North Coast.

The second prong of the Japanese attack was to capture islands, set up air bases, and then get as far as New Caledonia or even Samoa and cut Australia's links with the US . This plan worked till they ran into the US Marines and the US and RAN Navies at a place called Guadalcanal.

For 6 months it was touch and go. A few thousand men a few 20 year old cruisers, and the sacrifice of 4 of the 5 US aircraft carriers in the Pacific ( the one that was left was named Enterprise) held the line...but just barely.

James Michtener wrote a lot of only fair books.....his first one" Tales of the South Pacific" ( not to be confused with the musical it was made into) is absolutely brilliant in depicting just how near run a thing it was.....

Answer 2

Japan attacked the U.S. pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, and Australia suddenly found itself living the nightmare which had troubled it for half a century - a war with Japan. It was, John Curtin who claimed, "the gravest hour in our history" adding, in the solemn style which we can see in some of his earliest surviving letters, "I ask every Australian, man and woman, to go about their allotted tasks with full vigour and courage." At the same time as it attacked Pearl Harbour, Japan attacked the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, and Malaya, and pressed south towards the Netherlands East Indies and Australia by land and sea. Two months later, Japan completed the conquest of Malaya and invaded Singapore, forcing the surrender of the 17,000 surviving troops of the Australian Eighth Division - one quarter of Australia's battle trained soldiers.