75th Anniversary of VP
VICTORY in the PACIFIC (VP) 75th ANNIVERSARY 15/8/2020 – A SIGNIFICANT DAY for LOCALS
The following has been taken from ABC News: What was Australia's role in the Victory in the Pacific? website and "Passages of Time", Cairns Post.
Victory in the Pacific Day (VP Day) commemorates Japan’s acceptance of the Allied demand for unconditional surrender and, for Australians, the end of World War II.
Australia became a key strategic partner to the United States, which entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7th, 1941.
Geographically isolated, faced with a seemingly unstoppable enemy with Great Britain apparently unable to lend much effective help, and with most of its forces on the other side of the world, Australians had faced an uncertain future.
Those fears were further fuelled with the fall of Singapore, which had been regarded as an impregnable fortress by the British, and the capture of 15,000 men, almost the entire Australian 8th Division.
The bombing of Darwin and a submarine attack in Sydney Harbour had brought the war directly to Australia in a way that newsreels and newspapers had not.
The War in the Pacific was the first time in Australia's history that people felt directly threatened by an external aggressor.
Australia played a major role fighting Japan throughout various Pacific nations and the Cairns region turned into a major defence site.
On the Atherton Tablelands during WWII
In late November 1942 General Blamey ordered a survey of the Atherton Tableland with the intention of developing facilities for a rehabilitation and training area for Australian troops recently returned from the Middle East. Known as the ‘Atherton Project’, the scheme had three key purposes–recuperate troops in a cooler climate while engaged in jungle warfare training; provide suitable hospitalisation for malaria and tropical disease cases; and locate personnel and maintenance installations close to the New Guinea frontline with access to railway and port facilities. From December 1942 the headquarters of the Australian Army in north Queensland transferred from Townsville to the Atherton Tableland with the main administrative base established around the town of Atherton and the nearby settlement of Tolga. A huge schedule of construction work commenced in January 1943 involving the building of tent encampments, hutments, stores, bakeries, mess kitchens, entertainment halls, hospitals, sewage plants, army farms and a war cemetery.
Units of the Australian 6th and 7th Divisions arrived on the Tableland in January 1943 and began establishing tent encampments around the settlements of Wongabel, Wondecla and Ravenshoe. The 9th Division returned to Australia from the Middle East during February and the following month moved into camps around Kairi, Tinaroo and Danbulla. Jungle warfare training took place in rainforest country near Tully Falls, Longland Gap, Mount Bartle Frere and on Rainy Mountain in the Kuranda Range.
Following the capture of Buna and the end of the Kokoda campaign, Australian operations on the north coast of New Guinea continued with the advance towards Salamaua, the capture of Lae, the subsequent advance up the Markham and Ramu River valleys, the landing at Finschhafen, and the taking of Sattelberg. Cairns replaced Townsville during 1943 as the main port of embarkation for Australian troops engaged in the New Guinea campaigns. Amphibious landing exercises were carried out in Trinity Inlet and on the northern beaches. With the departures for Borneo in March and May 1945 of the 7th Division for the capture of Balikpapan, and the 9th Division for landings at Brunei and Tarakan, army activity on the Atherton Tableland scaled down until the war’s end in August. Even before the Japanese surrender many units had begun returning to their home states. However, in some cases it was several years before the last units were finally sent south and disbanded.
https://www.ww2places.qld.gov.au/theservices/theaustralianarmy/#atherton_tableland
Also check out
https://www.rslqld.org/Whats-On/VP75 for events to commemorate this momentous time for Cairns 75 years ago.
https://online.clickview.com.au/libraries/categories/21955019/videos/18708746/the-tablelands-railways-line-jungle-secrets - A fantastic video, focused upon the Kuranda Railway, has an excellent segment concerning WWII. Within the video, from 21:45 to 31:20, the Atherton Tablelands WWII site is clearly explained.
Contributed by Margaret Marton
Humanities Teacher
