I think The Australian is running a campaign. Quick on the heels of Stephen Barton’s Kokoda Track minimalism, now we have another hitherto unknown author, Bob Wurth, attacking John Curtin as an appeaser. It would be worth reading his book to see if the documents he cites can bear the interpretation he places on them, but it’s also pretty clear that what Curtin was trying to do was to prevent Japan from entering the war. Certainly, senior Cabinet secretaries within FDR’s administration, in the lead up to Pearl Harbour, were still exploring the possibility of dialogue with Japanese factions who opposed or who were lukewarm to the prospect of entering the war. It’s pretty rich, as Wurth does, to make Curtin bear the responsibility for Menzies’ acts while the latter was still PM, and it’s worth noting this bit from the article:
Curtin girded the government to prepare for the possibility of war with Japan at a time when Australia’s attention was firmly fixed on helping Britain. On February 14, 1941, the advisory war council heard reports that raised the spectre of Australia being abandoned by the great powers and being forced to fight a holding war with Japan.
The British believed that the capacity of the Japanese “should not be over-stated”. But Curtin demanded that Australia be put on a war footing.
As John Quiggin observes, it’s difficult not to be suspicious that when the name of Alexander Downer crops up again and again in such revisionist articles, that what’s going on is partisan re-writing of history to serve present party advantage rather than a disinterested search for truth.
This campaign is being run under the auspices of Chris Mitchell, whose main achievement as editor of the Courier-Mail was to bring the paper into disrepute over the claim that Manning Clark had been awarded the Order of Lenin Medal. One piece of “evidence” offered for this claim was the testimony of a former friend of Clark’s who claimed to have seen him wearing the medal in daylight at 8pm on a May Day in Canberra.
It looks like Proverbs 26:11 and 2 Peter 2:22 redux.
The article isn’t quite as one-sided as the headline suggests – or maybe the facts don’t support the simple “Curtin was an appeaser” line too well; for example the ending:
How did Kawai come out of the war? He became a pacifist and was ostracised in wartime Japan for his love of Curtin and Australia. Soon after the war he was appointed vice-minister for foreign affairs. He devoted his life to Curtin and trade with Australia as head of the powerful Japan-Australia Society.
Kawai’s son Masumi told me that it was Curtin who forever changed his father’s life. If anything, Curtin’s reputation as war leader is enhanced by the revelations of his dealings with Kawai.
A case of Oz editorial staff force fitting Wurth’s argument into their own agenda perhaps?
Ironically, Paul, at the time Mitchell ran the bizarre Manning Clark was a spy campaign, I thought he’d completely discredited himself as far as his editorial future went. Bad call!
OTOH, Wurth notes this, which I believe really grates on Downer et al, and drives a lot of this anti-Curtin rubbish along.
“Prime minister Menzies was, of course, the worst appeaser of all. The warnings about Australia’s danger issued by Fadden and Curtin were undermined by Menzies in London.
“I do not believe in the inevitability of a conflict in the Pacific,” he said. “There is no difficulty which is not capable of being resolved by frankness.”
My grandparents werent really labor voters, but they worshipped Curtin. I suspect many of that age group did. Just cop it sweet, Downer: the Australian generally chuck you lot out at the first sign of real problems. They’re goodtime conservatives.
Wisely too – with yer AWBs and their Pig Iron scandals. You just cant trust a Tory when there’s a quick resource buck going, they’ll sell you straight down the river.
thats “the Australian *people* generally chuck you lot out….” – not the paper, which is quite the opposiite!
Dammit! I get too excited by this stuff.
Mark, are you sure you’re not getting overexcited about this? Wurth’s thesis sounds quite fair and his source material appears to bring something quite new into the history. In the history wars, nuance gets lost. Menzies is painted on the left as the arch-appeaser and Curtin as the clear-eyed hero. Some exploratory pre-Pearl Harbour appeasement does not lessen Curtin’s later achievements, any more than it does FDR who was conducting negotiations of his own. I think you’re shooting the messenger before even listening to what he has to say.
I don’t think any of the Allied powers would have baulked at the idea of a settlement with Japan at this juncture, at least not until they started attacking western possessions in ‘41. Who would want to fight a war on two fronts if they could avoid it? And of the western powers in the region, Australia certainly had the most to lose.
Lefty, one of my uncles, who served in the army in the Middle East and in New Guinea during WW2, was a rabid Liberal who loathed the Labor Party, but of Curtin he spoke only with reverence. For him Curtin could do no wrong and was simply a great man, far above whatever political beliefs and prejudices my uncle had and far above any Liberal leader, including Menzies, that he admired.
Ah, your uncle had ’sand in the boots’, as they said, Greg. One of my grandfathers was the same, and the other, who like most, exclusively served in the festering malarial conditions of PNG, was a bit jealous of him. Although his description of the battle of El Alamein (# 2), wher he was wounded, made it sound like hell on earth.
Anyway, speaking of appeasement: see this. Truly appalling. Readers should bear in mind that its actually unlawful for DIMIA and the Minister to refuse to make a decision under our Migration Act.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/canberra-accused-of-blocking-png-visa-bid/2006/04/27/1145861488299.html
The history argy bargy continues in today’s Australian. Hal G.P. Colebatch steps into the ring.
H. G. P. Colebatch is another battle-scarred veteran of the heroic campaign of posthumous libel against Manning Clark, having attempted to have an article depicting Clark as an anti-semite published in Quadrant, only to be rebuffed by then Quadrant editor Robert Manne, who is Jewish and has written extensively and expertly on anti-semitism.
What’s the point of saying Curtin was “approaching treason” and then to say he “was no traitor”?
These guys are nuts.
Which a reviewer would pick up in a refereeing process, Kim. This guys need need the Oz for exposure, because their stufff is so poor, it wouldnt make Deakin Law Review.
Which begs the qustion: why sponsor such low standards , Oz?
The editorial in the Oz goes after Robert Fisk as well today. I didn’t see Lateline so have no idea of Fisk was ‘florid and rambling’ but here is the transcription.
If I get a chance tonight I post a bit from Fisk’s book regarding when he was attacked by Afghan refugees. While the Oz gleefully mock’s Fisk statements at the time context is always important.
Thanks Paul. I wasn’t aware of the history of Colebatch.
Shaun, Colebatch is just about the most over-the-top Howard barracker and leftie-hater in Australia’s intellectual Right – and his eminence in this regard is certainly not due to the flatness of the surrounding terrain.
P.S. He is also a prolific writer of crap poetry for Quadrant.
P.S.S. He is not to be confused with the former UNSW policy analyst Hal Colebatch.
So Curtin was friends with a Japanese diplomat before & after the war. Here endeth the facts. To pad out a book you’d need to spin fast and hard, but I won’t be forking out for it.
Sounds like a non-event to me. Any warning by Curtin in February 1941 on the basis of idle chat with his mate Tatsuo would not have altered any of the facts of the war as it happened – Pearl Harbour Singapore, Kokoda, Lae, the Burma Railway, Sandakan – all would have rolled out exactly as they happened. Besides, Menzies may not have recalled the conversation, may not have had it brought to his attention, not read the briefings etc.
Yes, Curtin was naive about Japan, and those who champion rather than defend him do gloss over his appeal to the US on explicitly racist grounds. However, had he perceived the threat in 1941 as clearly as his defenders may have wished it is unlikely that he could have turned around the combined weight of the “experts” who regarded Singapore as impregnable and the Japanese as hopelessly bandly-legged and night-blind.
Curtin did what he could under difficult circumstances, he made some mistakes but was a great Prime Minister for a’ that, and to hell with anyone who can’t admit that.
Paul Norton: Are you making an implication that Manning Clark did NOT have more allegiance to the Soviet Union than to Australia? (A rather novel thought to be sure)
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned prevailing attitudes in Australia prior to 8th December 1941 (yes, 8th this side of the Dateline)?
As a kid in the late ‘forties, I had heard grown-ups talking about how the Japanese were our allies in the Great War; how Mr This and Mrs That said the Japanese were doing a mighty fine job in China keeping all those troublesome Chinese wretches in their place.
And then, when the Japanese attacked, how Mrs So-and-so quickly hid her fine Japanese crockery then drummed up a door-to-door witchhunt for anyone who kept enemy stuff in their house; how poor Mrs Whats-it thought the Japanese were among the most civilized people in the world only to have them kill her son.
Before too many pour scorn on Curtin as an appeaser ….. take a good hard look at attitudes among Australia’s failed elite; you’ll have to go to oral history though; I suppose a lot of written stuff went into lighting up stoves right around Australia before Christmas 1941.
I’m surprised at the rush to misinterpret my piece in The Australian of
April 27.
Do I attack John Curtin?
Is it my fault if people, including a foreign minister, want to use my findings to put their own point of view? I have spent five years in Japan and Australia researching and assembling a lot of new information, especially from the Japanese side, on the pre-war and wartime relationship between Japan and Australia. I will be addressing this at the Curtin University on May 12.
In my book “Saving Australia, Curtin’s secret peace with Japan”, just coming out by Lothian Books, I do state that John Curtin was an appeaser up until to about mid 1941. They nearly all were! I also state that Curtin was among the first to recognise what Japan was up to and that the Opposition Leader led the Advisory War Council – and indeed the Government – in facing up to the critical threat from Japan.
That didn’t stop Curtin as Opposition Leader from talking with Tatsuo Kawai, first Japanese minister to Australia, and even discussing an arrangement concerning iron ore to keep the peace between the two countries. Clearly the arrnagement did not last long as Japanese expansionism continued. But Curtin wisely left left the door open to further discussion with Kawai, even when he became Prime Minister in October 1941.
One writer suggests that it will be interesting “to see if the documents he (Wurth) cites can bear the interpretation he places on them.” Exactly! I welcome that and the debate that might follow. At least then the participants will have all material that I have gathered at their disposal and will be in a position to make considered judgments on Curtin and Kawai and indeed, interpretations.
In the book I have tried to tell it like it was. I discovered a pattern of behaviour by Doc Evatt, for instance, that led me to the conclusion that he unwittingly compromised Australia’s national security in 1941 and in 1942. I certainly had no idea of that before researching the story.
If anyone thinks that this book is an attempt to destroy the Curtin legacy, then I very much doubt that they have read the thing.
Bob Wurth, http://www.savingaustralia.com
Interesting points, Bob. The same treatment is consistently meted out to Sam Huntington, despite the fact that few people who weigh in on the subject actually understand what the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis is really about.
Everybody assumes that a political/historical point of view must be coming from somewhere on the political spectrum, and therefore is an attack on the “other side”. They are not interested in unpacking any deviant data and revising narratives accordingly, because it might destroy their ideological preconceptions.
that may be true, but Huntington’s thesis is still an analytical sieve. Not only did it lack explanatory power before 9/11 (arguably still does), many of the premises don’t stand scrutiny. Huntington’s book is very convincing out of context, but read a good book or two on world history and he stands revealed as a political scientist masquerading as a historian.
For a much sounder analysis of post-Cold War ethnic and cultural conflict, see Mary Kaldor’s ‘New and Old Wars’
Bob I have just started reading your book.
I have been researching the Japanese, Australian exchange of internees for nearly 6 years.
Mr Takeuchi, did he speak English and do you know of his back ground?