Australia's Pacific War: Challenging a National Myth

by Tom O'Lincoln

War is such a nightmare. It's hard to believe any war can retain a positive aura for decades. Yet the vast conflict in the Pacific is a shibboleth for Australian politics to this day. Politicians in particular use its appeal to legitimize modern wars. Tom O'Lincoln's books questions every aspect of this syndrome. He argues that the Pacific War was an imperialist one on both sides, that the west cannot claim the high moral ground, and that wartime Australia was riven with class and other social conflicts. His aim is to challenge an Australian national myth.

Genres: History

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Tom O'Lincoln (August 27, 1947 − October 12, 2023) was an American Marxist historian, author and one of the founders of the International Socialist Tendency in Australia.

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australia's Pacific War challenges much of the nationalist mythology surrounding Australia's participation in World War 2. Australia did not intervene in the interests of democracy, or as a plucky island nation acting in its own self defence. Its aims were the preservation of Western (primarily British) hegemony in the Pacific Region against a rising Imperialist Japan threatening its colonial interests in China, Indochina and the East Indies.

The first chapter briefly explains the underlying dynamics motivating Australian imperialism in the pacific. The later chapters look at isolated, but important, cases of popular resistance against the war effort - among workers (particularly women workers drawn into war industries) and soldiers. Debates in 'official politics', the ALP and the unions, are touched on at key points. The Communist Party is only very briefly discussed.

Much of the book cites reports, recounts and memoirs, that reveal the vicious anti-Japanese racism designed and propagated by the Australian state to justify and mobilise its war effort. That racism was acted upon to horrific effect. But Tom O'Lincoln is able to reveal moments where ordinary workers and soldiers, question or reject these narratives that are forced on them - seeing glimpses of a common interest and common humanity. The only thing that can prevent wars like this one repeating again is a mass socialist party, with reach and depth, that has at its heart these exact politics of international solidarity and unconditional anti-imperialism.