Lavender Bay, Sydney, very early 1900s. (Wikimedia Commons)
During the first four decades of the twentieth century, Australia and Japan, two nations of the periphery of Asia, both acted as if they were located in different regions of the world. Australia, an underpopulated landmass, maintained an immigration policy that excluded Asians. Japan, an Asian nation, was mirroring the behavior of the Western imperial powers, much to the dismay of its neighbors. Both countries would have been more logically positioned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Australia and Japan had been allies during the First World War. The Ibuki, a Japanese battlecruiser, had escorted Australian troops to the European theater. Japan had become an important market for Australian agricultural and mining exports. Relations were generally good. There were innumerable reasons for Australia and Japan to avoid confrontation and war.
As tensions in Asia rose in the years prior to the Asia-Pacific War, suspicions within Australia grew, both for potential espionage by members of the Japanese diaspora and of collaboration by Australian sympathizers. Australia ultimately avoided a land invasion, so would-be sympathizers had no chance to show their hand, but suspicions survived into the postwar years.
Loyalty: Australians, Japanese and Espionage on the Eve of the Pacific War, the latest offering from acclaimed Australian writer Nick Hordern, addresses the extent to which the Japanese engaged in espionage and whether a fifth column of Australian collaborators actually existed.
Starting Anew
The Australian landmass was settled by the British in the late eighteenth century. It received immigrants from much of the world, including Japan. The Japanese found a niche in the pearl cultivation industry in northern Australia. After Australia federated in 1901, it promptly passed legislation banning the immigration of colored peoples. The Japanese population stagnated and then diminished.
By 1901, the Japanese had largely completed their transition to a modern industrial and imperial power. In 1902, they allied with the British and thus became an Australian ally as well.
Accordingly, concludes Hordern, "the Japanese were anomalies in Federated Australia." As Asians, they were to be "excluded", but "were selectively welcomed because of their economic contribution." They were a "threat" because of their "expansionist tendencies" and yet "allies under a treaty which was the cornerstone of British strategy in the Pacific."
When war finally came, the Japanese population of Australia, a mere 1869 individuals in all, was interned en masse. Germans and Italians were interned selectively, partly because there were so many more of them and partly because there was no German or Italian equivalent of "all Japanese are spies." This mantra has a clear racial foundation, but in Hordern's view, there was a contributing factor of a more innocent variety.
Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the starting point of Japan's modernization program, Japan sent its most gifted on fact-finding missions to the West. Their aim was to observe and record all of the possible relevance. Hordern asserts that this culture of incessant curiosity was still highly conspicuous in the prewar years. In truth, it remains quite evident today.
Gathering Information That All Can Source
Had Loyalty been a work of fiction, it would have contained a riveting anecdote of attempted Japanese espionage and Australian efforts to counter it. Hordern's ultimate conclusion, however, is that the "evidence for actual treason in Australia during World War IIーwith the notable exception of that concerning the Australians who spied for the Soviet Unionーis vanishingly small."
The book lacks the dramatic anecdotes that many may assume it possesses. There were, however, two cases of Japanese military officers attracting serious attention as they traveled widely within Australia.
The first was Major Sano, in 1912. The second, far more significantly, was Major Hashida in the early months of 1941. In June of 1940, Japan entered into the Tripartite with Germany and Italy, two nations with whom Britain and Australia were at war.
Hashida's tour was comprehensively shadowed by Australian counter-intelligence agencies. Both Sano and Hashida, however, had merely collected open-source intelligence: the maps and documents that could be readily bought from a bookshop or a roadside gasoline station. Hordern's account of Hashida's trek is an entertaining read, but there is no sting in the tail.
Australia Grasps at the Diplomatic Branch
However, the question of why Hashida, a military officer allied with nations with which Australia was at war, was even allowed into Australia is of considerable significance. Despite federating from a collection of British colonies into the Australian nation in 1901, Australia had always been represented in Japan by the British. It had no ambassador.
In November 1940, Sir John Latham took up a position in Tokyo that was effectively ambassadorial level. The presence of Hashida in Australia, therefore, was a delicate matter. The Australian military wanted him gone, but the government could not afford to create a diplomatic issue in the initial months of Latham's posting.
Both the First and Second World Wars were pivotal in Australia's transition towards genuine independence from Britain. Latham's appointment can be seen in this context as an attempt by Australia to avoid being dragged into a mess created by others. He departed Japan in August 1941 as part of the broad evacuation of non-essential personnel that occurred Asia-wide.
Successful Scare Campaigns
Hordern is particularly skilled at weaving an extensive list of characters into a narrative. Other Japanese whose stories are detailed include dry cleaners in suburban Sydney, consular officials, employees of Japanese trading houses, and pearl divers. All wound up in internment. Their presumed Australian collaborators were largely identified by affiliation. They were businessmen and political conservatives who had much to lose with the onset of war.
The whispers and suspicions regarding collaborators had serious political implications. In the 1943 Australian federal election, the left-wing political party exploited these prevailing perceptions by accusing the conservatives of being willing to cede the top half of the country to Japan, a betrayal that became known as "the Brisbane line." The conservatives returned the favor in 1954 by exploiting a famous Soviet spy-defection drama to label the left-wing party as soft on communism.
In the postwar era, a narrative developed that a fifth column of potential collaborators had indeed existed in Australia. In the absence of any hard evidence, it was assumed that since fifth columns had been evident in so many of the war's invaded countries and territories, the same must surely have been true for Australia. Loyalty: Australians, Japanese and Espionage on the Eve of the Pacific War is thereby an essentially revisionist book, as it comprehensively debunks the idea that a fifth column existed.
A Friendship Interrupted
While the issue of suspected collaboration by Australians was topical in the decades after the war, one suspects that contemporary Australia is largely unconcerned. Loyalty, therefore, is in that sense more relevant for historians. But the book has strong contemporary relevance by providing context for the mutually beneficial Japan-Australia relationship, which has been key to both nations throughout the postwar era and continues to flourish today.
Hordern makes clear that Japan and Australia had a vibrant prewar partnership, with Australian exports to Japan being second only to Great Britain. Despite the significant hindrance of Australia's whites-only immigration policy, Australia and Japan formed a natural partnership.
Accordingly, a principal takeaway from Loyalty: Australians, Japanese and Espionage on the Eve of the Pacific War, is that the strong Japan-Australian relationship is not the postwar construct that most assume it to be. It is a partnership that has thrived for as long as Australia has been a nation, but one that was rudely interrupted by a regrettable war.
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Author: Paul de Vries
