Hitler's Lost Spy (21 page)

Jean had made the recollection and I knew she was right. After Jack Clancy this was my first living link with Annette who had almost vanished unheard of into an historical void, and the sense of realism of her story jumped to a new high. Later I told Jean why I was interested in Renee Laval, telling her she was a German spy. ‘NO' replied Jean with a look of amazement. I am sure she did not believe me.

Hitler's lost spy had been remembered by one who 
was
there, but not as a spy. She was recalled as the nice lady on the radio with a large audience who discussed women's fashions – and I preferred to leave it that way.

The Invasion Debate

In his book
Was there a Battle for Australia?
(2006), the former Australian War Memorial historian, Dr Peter Stanley, has written:

The attack-on-Australia option was dead by the end of January 1942, before the fall of Singapore.

The meaning of the statement could not be clearer, but not everyone interested in the question of Japanese wartime intentions toward Australia agrees with Dr Stanley. It remains one of the enduring debates from the Pacific War, and the divided opinion revolves around the word ‘plan'
.
What precisely is meant by a ‘plan', and how is the word defined in the context of a proposed Japanese invasion in 1942?

The foundation of Dr Stanley's statement rests on the reasoning that a Japanese plan for the invasion of Australia, formally constructed and appropriately authorised, has never been located. But this is a very narrow perspective when allowing for the huge and exceptionally complex Japanese military undertaking in the Pacific and Southeast Asia following the attack on Pearl Harbor. We will see that Dr Stanley's definitive statement is very fragile, and it ignores evidence that pushes the invasion question well away from the apparent inability to locate relevant archival material.

A careful appraisal of Dr Stanley's statement reveals a conclusion that is very curious, even astonishing. An extension of this wording would read:

There was not any plan for the Japanese to invade Australia after January 1942. We cannot locate any hard evidence, so therefore there was not a plan.

There is a lapse of reasoning here. A ship
may
have sunk in a particular area and searchers cannot find the wreck. According to the logic of Dr Stanley's statement, the ship didn't sink. This serious flaw in historical evaluation can be readily validated by the available contradicting and overwhelming evidence. It will be seen that Dr Stanley's assertion should be more akin to:

There is not any confirmed written archival evidence supporting the Emperor's authorisation for a Japanese plan to invade Australia. Without this approval, the invasion question requires an in-depth consideration of all other known factors to obtain a balanced view on this subject.

A component of the invasion debate is caught up in the totality of the Australia–Japan relationship prior to World War II. The war, of course, transformed this relationship, but while the bombing of Darwin and Broome, the submarine raid on Sydney Harbour and the shelling of Newcastle are all well documented, the question of Japan's broader military intentions towards Australia remains controversial.

To the invasion question there has now been added a previously unexplored element – a single unheralded incident that was barely noticed at the time – Annette Wagner's aerial photographic excursion to Newcastle. 
Knowing the motives of her mission presents a new instalment in the question of the Japanese intention for the southern continent.

Hashida's Diary Giveaway

In addition to the military facts Major Hashida accumulated during his extensive Australian visit, his agenda included instructions to commence the exodus of Japanese civilians from Australia. Hirohito's decision to go to war with the West had been delicately and subtly passed down to his army and navy chiefs, and it was time for planning the return to Japan of embassy and trading company staff and their families. Hashida's diary noted:

21/2/40 A great number of Japanese women and children will depart on the 21st by the ‘SUWA MARU' to Japan. Only Mitsui's stand firm.

We may only guess at why Mitsui was not completely cooperative on the ‘return' issue, but it appears most other trading firms complied. Had Military Intelligence previously speculated on the one-way movement of Japanese civilians, (and it would have), the capture of Hashida's diary confirmed that Japan was destined, in the short term, for a war beyond Asia's boundaries – a conflict that would necessarily include Australia.

Japan's Strike South

Before examining the invasion debate further, we need to briefly review Japan's naval expansion and Pacific territorial aspirations in the years between World War I and World War II. This was kick-started when the Japanese navy occupied the German Pacific territories (the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline island groups), following the commencement of hostilities in 1914.

The mandate from the League of Nations would transform the potential of Japanese naval influence in the Pacific with the addition of the vast ocean territory now under its control. Previously developed theoretical plans for war with the West, and a naval confrontation with the United States in particular, were dusted off and the new Pacific advantage became a cornerstone in the strategy for the future expected victory over the United States Pacific fleet.

Contrary to the League's demand that the previously German-controlled islands of the South West Pacific remain open, Japan effectively halted foreign visitors and the world remained oblivious to the military expansion on the islands. This designed exclusion had been specifically banned under the mandate, but limiting the shipping in the islands to Japanese vessels ensured that all passengers could be vetted and controlled prior to leaving the shipping ports of origin in Japan.

One American to beat the odds on reaching the islands was the writer Willard Price. By the mid-1930s no Westerner had been granted permission to visit the mandated islands since the Japanese occupation began in 1914. Through some minor trickery of his own, Price managed to land on several of the islands, and although incessantly accompanied by authorities, noted military preparations underway that were strictly prohibited by the League of Nations. In his book detailing the journey (
Japan's Islands of Mystery,
published in 1944), Price noted the reason for Australia's apprehension following the Japanese absorption of the Micronesian islands:

Micronesia extended the Japanese arm to the equator. It placed the Japanese fingers within easy reach of the Philippines, New Guinea, Borneo, Java and even Australia … The southern limit of the Japanese Mandate was shown to be the equator – 
and the northern limit of the Australian Mandate was
also the equator. Along that line, for some 1,400 
miles, Australian and Japanese sovereignty met
¹⁷
.

The mandate from the League of Nations – judged aggressively by the Japanese as being a free transfer of sovereignty – became the first phase of the planning for the islands, the acquisition. The second phase was the economic exploitation process, which would produce an immigration outlet as well as food resources for Japan, with little regard for the native populations already on the islands. This was to be accomplished by the government 
encouraging migration 
from 
the 
overcrowded Japanese home islands to the Pacific colonies. The third phase was the covert building of military infrastructure – roads, port facilities and airstrips 
– and finally the complete militarisation of the islands. 
Japan's springboard for aggression against the West, gifted to them by Germany's offensive in World War I and subsequently confirmed by a weak League of Nations, would then be complete.

But was Japan's future aggression in the Pacific to include occupying continental Australia? Historians have unsuccessfully searched records for definitive documentary evidence to cast light on the question. 
Without the hard evidence of authorised and written corroboration, the Stanley argument has emerged that Japanese invasion plans for Australia did not exist.

There are, however, commanding instances in this discussion which cannot be ignored. Together, they create an entirely different manifesto from which the invasion debate may be measured – and seriously redefined.

1: Removing the Evidence

Immediately following Japan's surrender, and before the arrival of American forces, there was a mass destruction of pre-war and wartime documents. Any written evidence attaching to the Emperor and members of the royal family was a priority for disposal. Protecting the major war criminals was a further urgency. The Japanese had witnessed the legal developments in the future prosecution of German war criminals, so very little written evidence of military importance awaited the American arrival. It is possible, perhaps likely, that Japanese plans for Australia were included in the destruction.

2: Japan's Destiny Re-affirmed – Australia in Plan B

The initial Japanese plan for aggression and occupation following Pearl Harbor probably did not include Australia. But because an array of factors can distort the accuracy of military projections, it is likely that the timing of an invasion of Australia would have been subject to the state of the Japanese army and naval forces following the completion of the initial military objective, which included Papua New Guinea. Port Moresby would serve as the focal point from which the invasion would be planned and military and naval forces dispatched.

Japan's global military aspirations are often neglected under the weight of post-War politics and the new world of strategic alliances. The fall of Singapore on 15 
February 1942 established a triumphant mood in Japan of almost hysterical proportions. Courtney Browne, biographer of Japan's wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, wrote in his book,
Tojo – The Last Banzai:

It did seem, as Toshikazu Kase (a senior foreign
affairs official) observed, that in an incredibly short time since Japan had gone to war, the Swastika of Nazi Germany and the Rising Sun of Japan were destined to meet in the Persian Gulf. And Australia and New Zealand were to accept the inevitable. No reliance, Tojo told them, could be placed on the
British or Americans for protection.

As for a Japanese landing in Australia, Browne noted:

‘The Supreme Command was divided between the army and navy,' Tojo admitted after the war, ‘and they would not work in unison.' Originally the plan had been to carry out combined operations for landing troops in northern Australia. This was now dropped because of the refusal of the army high command to provide the necessary number of divisions.

Courtney Browne states clearly that Tojo admitted after the war there
was
a plan to invade Australia, and the only inhibition was the army's belief that adequate forces for the operation could not be made available
at that time.

The formal document encompassing the details was probably destroyed as in 1 above.

Another Tojo quotation from Browne assesses the Japanese invasion during a speech to the Diet (Japanese parliament) on 27 May 1942. Tojo was referring to the Battle of the Coral Sea fought three weeks earlier.

It had, he said, ‘led to the disappearance of the naval forces defending Australia', which was now ‘the 
“orphan of the Pacific”, helplessly awaiting
Japanese attack'.

Tojo's speech was undermined by the important fact that the Japanese had lost the Battle of the Coral Sea, not won it, but it confirmed Japan's intention to invade Australia.

3: The Yamamoto Plan

To accept the argument that Japan did not have an invasion plan for Australia necessitates the insertion of 
‘official' or ‘authorised' before ‘invasion'. There were probably numerous invasion plans for Australia circulating around the Imperial Headquarters inside the Emperor's palace in Tokyo, but none received approval from Hirohito, who authorised all major military operations.

One of these proposals deserves mention.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the fleet commander of the Japanese navy, and his leadership prestige went well beyond his iconic status in Japan. His naval planning for the Pearl Harbor attack, by necessity, was accompanied by subsidiary preparations for Japanese naval operations following the attack.

Yamamoto knew the ‘bigger picture' campaigns to be commenced following Pearl Harbor. He understood the 
‘Grand Plan' of Japan's future aggression. He knew Australia was ear-marked for invasion – at some future date. But he also understood, more than most Japanese, the industrial capacity of the United States, and he was conscious of the need to avoid a prolonged conflict with a nation whose military productive capabilities significantly exceeded that of Japan.

Yamamoto's strategy for an invasion of Australia emerged in February 1942 following the initial successes of the Japanese army's southern push, well ahead of schedule. To invade Australia now, the Japanese would benefit by controlling the entire western Pacific rim. This would present the Americans with the loss of critical bases and staging areas. With Australia occupied, the Japanese would instal a southern defensive perimeter with air bases from the East Indies, through New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. The tactical disadvantage to United States forces could therefore be enormous, and Australia's contribution in the war against Japan would cease to exist. The reasoning behind advocating a Japanese occupation of Australia made military common sense.