In the early years of World War II, there was a widespread belief that Australia was rife with Japanese spies, and that many Australians were betraying their country by helping them. A re-examination of the extensive archival records shows that this belief was baseless.
On the eve of the Pacific War, Australians were beset by fears of the ‘Fifth Column’, a vast conspiracy lurking within the country, ready to betray it to its enemies. Initially this concern focused on supposed agents of the Axis allies Germany and Italy, but when Tokyo
joined the Axis in September 1940, old fears about Japan came to the fore and after Pearl Harbor they exploded. It was believed that the Japanese were planning to invade Australia, and that in preparation for their attack, Japanese spies and Australian traitors were carrying out widespread espionage and subversion. This book tells the stories of some of the Japanese suspected of spying and some of the Australians suspected of helping them.
The Australian counter-intelligence establishment charged with defeating this Fifth Column was made up of men who, because of their background and experience, were fixated by the notion of the enemy within. They shared the widespread belief that Asia and Asians posed a dire threat to a White Australia. Many of them had memories of (and some of them had been key players in) the political conflict of the early 1930s, during which far-right movements, with the support of big business, had come forward to combat the (chimerical) threat of an uprising by the militant left.
So this book also examines what happens when an establishment such as this, convinced of its privileged insight, acquires wide-ranging powers over their fellow citizens. In World War II, the result was an inquisition, rooted in pre-conceived prejudice and fuelled with false information.
Overwhelmingly, the people investigated by the authorities had done nothing for which they could be tried under the law. So in order to assess whether someone represented a security risk, the authorities resorted to subjective judgements about whether someone was ‘pro-British’ or ‘anti-British’, ‘pro- Japanese’ or ‘anti-Japanese’. To be judged pro-Japanese it implied not just a political but a racial betrayal, and if you were a woman, it implied sexual betrayal as well.
