Proposed Japanese invasion of Australia during World War II

This proposal was opposed by the Imperial Japanese Army and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who regarded it as being unfeasible, given Australia's geography and the strength of the Allied defences.

Former Australian War Memorial principal historian Dr Peter Stanley states that the Japanese "army dismissed the idea as 'gibberish', knowing that troops sent further south would weaken Japan in China and in Manchuria against a Soviet threat.

Not only did the Japanese army condemn the plan, but the Navy General Staff also deprecated it, unable to spare the million tonnes of shipping the invasion would have consumed.

[3][4] Japan's success in the early months of the Pacific War led elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy to propose invading Australia.

In December 1941 the Navy proposed including an invasion of Northern Australia as one of Japan's "stage two" war objectives after South-East Asia was conquered.

This proposal was most strongly pushed by Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka, the head of the Navy General Staff's Planning section, on the grounds that the United States was likely to use Australia as a base to launch a counter-offensive in the South-West Pacific.

[12] The Army also rejected the Navy's proposal of limiting an invasion of Australia to securing enclaves in the north of the country as being unrealistic given the likely Allied counter-offensives against these positions.

Due to its experience in China the Army believed that any invasion of Australia would have to involve an attempt to conquer the entire Australian continent, something which was beyond Japan's abilities.

On 6 February the Navy Ministry formally proposed a plan in which eastern Australia would be invaded at the same time other Japanese forces captured Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia, and this was again rejected by the Army.

Matsu Kikan ("Pine Tree"), a joint army-navy intelligence unit, landed to assess reports that the Allies had begun to build major new bases on the northernmost coast of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, facing the Timor Sea.

[23] An officer involved with the mission reportedly returned to Japan shortly afterward, where he suggested landing 200 Japanese convicts in Australia, to launch a guerrilla campaign.

It is now work or fight as we have never worked or fought before ... On what we do now depends everything we may like to do when this bloody test has been survived.Former Head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia Dr Peter Stanley has been critical of the oft-repeated, widespread myth that Japan intended to invade Australia, commenting "the invasion myth helps justify the parochial view Australians took of their war effort.

"[2] The 1984 alternate history novel The Bush Soldiers by John Hooker depicts a successful Japanese invasion of Australia and the last-ditch resistance effort made by a handful of Australian and British troops.

The 2001 alternate history essay collection Rising Sun Victorious edited by Peter G. Tsouras has a chapter Samurai Down Under by John H. Gill that posits a briefly-successful Japanese invasion of the Queensland coast at Cape York, Cairns and Townsville.

An Australian propaganda poster from 1942 referring to the threat of Japanese invasion. This poster was criticised for being alarmist when it was released and was banned by the Queensland Government . [ 1 ]
Japanese advances in the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia areas during the first five months of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The proposed offensive on Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia is depicted in the lower right corner.