Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 September 1942, but in 1941 Europeans on the island felt still untouched by war, lulled into security by the belief that Singapore was impregnable from the sea. However, the Planning Chief of Imperial Army Headquarters in Tokyo had realised a successful invasion could come from the north, down the Malay peninsula... Requests from less naive members of the allied forces for more men, arms and equipment were not filled. Authorities were unwilling to reveal to the civilian population the true situation. And so through accident or miscalculation, Singapore...

Drawing on material that had only just been released when this book was originally published in 1981, this book provides a graphic account of the war which, to all intents and purposes, was fought on Australian soil against Australian people a war which came to the very door of Australia itself.

When the Japanese landed at Rabaul on 23 January 1942 it was the start of one of the fiercest campaigns of the war. On that day, with only a handful of badly trained troops, led by inexperienced officers, Australia faced its most serious threat yet.

It was to be a campaign with all...

On Wednesday 18 February 1942 the Japanese air force bombed Darwin. Whilst this fact is well known, very few people know exactly what happened. Timothy Hall was the first writer to be given acess to all the official reports of the time and as a result he has been able to reveal exactly what happened on that dreadful day a day which Sir Paul Hasluck (17^th Governor-General of Australia) later described as a day of national shame . The sequence of events in Darwin that day certainly did not reflect the military honour that the War Cabinet wanted people to believe. On the contrary,...