War's End
How did the War Affect Aborigines and Islanders?
Keywords:
Aboriginal and Islander populations, State ‘Protection’ Acts, government reserves and mission stations, white prejudiceAbstract
In the 20 years before the Second World War the frontier war dragged to a close in remote parts of north Australia with the 1926 Daly River massacre and the 1928 Coniston massacre. There was a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population, giving rise to the idea of the ‘dying race’ which had found policy expression in the State ‘Protection’ Acts. Aboriginal and Islander labour was exploited under scandalous rates of pay and conditions in the struggling north Australian beef industry and the pearling industry. In south east Australia, Aborigines endured repressive white control on government reserves and mission stations described by some historians as being little better than prison farms. A largely ineffectual Aboriginal political movement with a myriad of organisations, none of which had a pan-Aboriginal identity, struggled to make headway against white prejudice. Finally, in 1939, John McEwen's ‘assimilation policy’ was introduced and, though doomed to failure, it at least recognised that Aborigines had a place in Australia in the long term.
References
Rowley, C.D., The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Sydney: Penguin, 1972) 337.
ibid. 339.
Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, End of an Era: Aboriginal Labour in the Northern Territory (Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1987). However, this book examines only one aspect of the changes wrought by the Second World War on Aboriginal society, that relating to employment conditions in the Northern Territory.
Alan Powell, Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982) 217.
Australian Archives (hereinafter AA), A659, item 40/1/858. Letter, William Cooper to John McEwen, dated 3 January 1939.
ibid. Letter, William Cooper to the Prime Minister, 3 December 1939.
ibid.
Markus, Andrew (ed), ‘Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League (Melbourne: Monash Publications in History: 2, 1986) 86. See also p. 97 in which Cooper, writing to the Premier of NSW asks ‘We are not an enemy people, and we are not in Nazi concentration camps. Why should we then be treated as though we were?’
AA, MP431/1, item 929/19/1162. Letter, M. Sawtell, Chairman, Committee for Aboriginal Citizenship, to R.G. Menzies, Prime Minister, 21 October 1939.
AA, A431, item 49/822. Letter, A.P.A. Burdeu, Honorary Secretary, Aborigines' Uplift Society to the Prime Minister, 30 June 1940.
AA, A659, item 40/1/1555. Resolution of the Aborigines' Progressive Association put to Senator Foll, 8 January 1940.
AA, A431, item 49/822. Letter, RSL to the Prime Minister, 12 December 1940. See also AA, MP508, item 275/750/1310; letter Acting Honorary Secretary, Newcastle district Council of sub-branches of the RSL to W.M. Hughes, undated.
AA, A431, item 49/822.
ibid. Letter, Parliamentary draftsman to the Secretary, Department of the Interior, 24 February 1941.
ibid.
Gavin Long, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, The Final Campaigns, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Appendix 7. The precise number who served overseas was calculated as 557,799. The number to serve overseas in the First World War had been a little over 300,000.
AA A431, item 46/1357. Letter, Victorian Branch of the Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia, to the Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, 17 April 1946. Other State Executives also supported this resolution.
Australian National Library, RSL records, MS6609, item 3851C; Torres Strait SubBranch - formation 1951. Letter, Deputy Protector of Islanders, Thursday Island, to State President, Queensland, 27 April 1951.
AA, A518, item RM112/1. See letter, General Secretary of the Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia, Melbourne Branch, to the Minister for Territories, July 1951, seeking to have waived the requirement for Aboriginal exservicemen to obtain exemption from the Aboriginals' Act to attend RSL functions, and letter, General Secretary of the League to the Prime Minister seeking full citizenship for Aboriginal ex-servicemen, September 1951. Also see Australian National Library, RSL records, MS6609, item 4797C; Aboriginal Ex-servicemen - Citizenship rights 1962. On 21 December 1961 the National Secretary of the RSL wrote to Prime Minister Menzies asking that Aboriginal ex-servicemen be given full citizen's rights without the necessity of applying for an exemption certificate. The Secretary argued that ‘our simple belief is that as they were advanced enough to share the dangers of active service they are, by the same token, sufficiently advanced to cope with the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship'.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 November 1942. This passage with some minor changes is also quoted in Margaret Ann Franklin, Black and White Australians, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1976, p. 129, where Franklin attributes it to an airman's letter quoted by Charles Duguid.
RAAF Historical Section, Canberra, Unit History Sheet, Number 326 Radar Station, Cape Levique. See entries for 6 September 1944, 10 November 1944 and 27 December 1944. The quote above is drawn from the entry for 25 December 1944.
Salt, vol. 7, no. 11, 1943.
The Bulletin, 30 August 1944, 13.
Australian Archives, A431, item 46/915. Report by Patrol Officer Harney, 24 March 1942. See also AA Melbourne, series MP742/1, item 164/1/283; Aborigines in the Forces - Request for Enlistment.
AA, A431, item 46/915. Letter, Abbott to the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, 30 November 1942.
AA, A705, item 68/1/700; Use of Aboriginal Labour by RAAF. Letter, G.S. McIlroy, to Flight Lieutenant Thomson, 7 December 1942.
AA, AA1978/215, 34; Letter, Acting Director, Native Affairs Branch to Superintendents of NT Missions, 10 February 1943.
AA, A659, item 45/1/5816; Letter, Chinnery to Abbott, 18 February 1946.
ibid.
ibid. Note from Chinnery to Abbott, 6 November 1945.
Figure 2 shows the number of articles appearing under the heading ‘Aborigines’ in the index to the Sydney Moming Herald, but it should be noted that similar patterns emerge for the Argus, the Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser and other papers.
Index to The Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Mail, issued quarterly. Index for January to March 1938 and April to June 1938.
Harold Blair was a well know Aboriginal opera singer and political advocate. He campaigned throughout the 1950s for Aboriginal advancement.
Index to The Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Mail, issued quarterly. Index for April to June 1956 and January to March 1957.
AA Northern Territory Branch, Fl, item 44/275. Report by Patrol Officer Harney, Native Affairs Branch, to Director of Native Affairs, 9 October 1943.
AA A461, item C412/1/2; Northern Territory Industrial Conditions 1937–44. Administrator's Annual Report for the year 1947.
Ronald and Catherine Berndt, End of an Era 156.
This has been suggested to me but my research has failed to provide any firm evidence although the petrol and high octane aviation fuel was more readily available at RAAF bases near mission stations than at any time previously.
AA Northern Territory Branch, F1, item 42/286 Part 1; Finke River Mission — Hermannsburg — Mr Battarbee's Fortnightly Reports to December 1943. Report, 8 September 1943.
AA, MP729/6, item 29/401/686; Looting Roper River. Letter, Constable Edwards, Roper River Police Station to the Superintendent of Police, Alice Springs, 25 March 1942. The Army authorities denied that these events had occurred and questioned the truthfulness of evidence given by Aborigines.
AA, A373, item 3950; Transfer of Natives - Cape York Peninsula.
AA, MP1049, item 603/201/770; Letter, NOIC Thursday Island, to the Secretary of the Naval Board, 21 March 1942.
AA, A2653, item 1943, vol. 3, agenda item 137/43; Report, Commander 4th Australian Division, Major General J.J. Murray, to HQ First Australian Army, 14 September 1944. A complicating factor was that during the war the economy in the Torres Strait experienced great inflation and the soldier's pay packets could not adequately support the communities.
AA, A431, item 46/1614; Northern Australian Development Committee - Minutes and Report of the 2nd Meeting – 30 April 1946. Minutes of Meeting, 30 April 1946. The Queensland Director of Native Affairs sought the transfer of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion campsite to the State government to establish a hospital to cope with the number of Tuberculosis and other infectious disease cases which had developed during the war.
Watson, Len, ‘1945: Enter the Black Radical’, The National Times Magazine, 1 April 1974, 5.
AWM 54, item 628/4/5; Report on Sit-Down Strike by A.B and C Companies on 30 December 1943.
AWM, 52, item 9/5/10; ‘P’ Field Security Section. See War Diary entries for 16 January and 23 January 1944.
Gerald Peel, Isles of the Torres Strait: An Australian Responsibility (Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1947) 7. Peel also claims that militant unionists among the white servicemen at Thursday Island were responsible for implanting a desire to fight for improved conditions after the war. See Peel, Isles of the Torres Strait, 117.
AA, MP729/6, item 38/401/138; Aroetta- Movements. Letter, Donald Thomson to Colonel Hoare dated 28 December 1942; minute, Flight Lieutenant Collie for Squadron Leader Thomson to Director of Military Operations, dated 26 December 1942.
AWM, 54, item 628/1/1. Letter, Acting District Finance Officer to Deputy Director of Native Affairs, undated but about June 1942. AWM, 52, item 1/6/8; Headquarters Thursday Island Forces. Appendix C to War Diary for April 1942. Letter, Fortress Commander Thursday Island to HQ Northern Command, 18 April 1942.
Interviews, Tom Lowah (22 October 1986), Peter Tapau (24 October 1986) and Elia Ware (25 October 1986) with the author. Elia Ware had planned to join the Second AIF but after witnessing the evacuation of whites from Thursday Island and from Merauke in Dutch New Guinea, reasoned that he should stay to defend his family. See also AA, MP729/6, item 16/402/126; Issues to Civilians - Thursday Island.
Boutilier, J.A., Hughes, D.T. and Tiffany, S.W. (eds), Mission, Church and Sect in Oceania (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1978) 220.
Bayton, J., Cross over Carpentaria (Brisbane: Smith and Paterson, 1965) 167.
House of Representatives Report from the Select Committee on Voting Rights for Ahorigines, Part II - Minutes of Evidence, 19 October 1961.
Letter, Kim Beazley to Senator Gorton, Minister for the Navy, 13 September 1961. Beazley was so moved by John's evidence that he immediately alerted Gorton as the Minister responsible for the Navy. Beazley wrote, ‘it would he a deplorable thing if there developed among the aboriginals of the north a concept that their loyal services to their Australian nation were not reciprocated by the nation's good faith with them’. The following year the Navy recognised the Aborigines' service and awarded them their service medals and a flat-rate payment of £200 each for their service. This flatrate payment was topped up to bring it into line with standard service pay scales, plus inflation, in 1992 with the final payments being made in 1994. The letter was obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act. See also AA, F1, item 63/273; Aboriginals Employed by Army During 1939–45 War.
AA, MP508, item 275/750.1310; Letter, A.P.A. Burdeu, President, Australian Aborigines' League, to the Secretary to the Prime Minister, 30 March 1941.
AA, MP508, item 50/703/12; Letter, H.J. Milera to Prime Minister Curin, undated. Milera had attempted to re-enlist for the Second World War but had been rejected by the Army.
West Australian, 8 January 1943.
Several cases can be cited: Reg Saunders, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Stewart Murray, Tim Hughes, George Tongarie, Bert Groves and others took leadership roles after completion of their war service.
Kinness, C.H., The Australian Crisis (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1909). Kinness was a pseudonym for Frank Fox, editor of the Lone Hand, a literary offshoot of the Bulletin. The Australian Crisis first appeared as a serial in the Lone Hand in 1908.
Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens, 197. See also Mary Durack, The Rock and the Sand (London: Constable, 1969).
Pohlner, Gangurru, 112–117.
AA, MP742/1, item 175/1/189; Report on Hermannsburg Mission by GSO 7th Military District, 11 July 1940.
AA, A659, item 41/1/101; Letter, Patrol Officer Strehlow, to Director of Native Affairs, 17 March 1941. Strehlow himself was under suspicion due to his German name.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 1942.
AA, MP729/6, item 29/401/626; Japanese Activities Amongst Aborigines. Letter, Director-General of Security to the Director of Military Intelligence, Allied Land Force Headquarters, Melbourne, 24 July 1942.
Scott Bennett, Aborigines and Political Power (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989) 57.
AA, A373, item 5903. Extract, HQ Queensland Lines of Communication Intelligence Report for the week ending 1200 hours, 16 April 1943.
The Pindan movement grew out of actions taken by the Port Hedland Euralia Association, an Aboriginal organisation, when the Army declared Port Hedland a prohibited area and out of bounds to Aborigines in 1942. Encouraged by Don McLeod, the Aborigines agreed that collective action should be taken to secure better conditions for themselves. Waiting till the end of the war they organised a shearing strike in 1946 demanding higher pay. By 1949 most pastoralists in the district had met their demands. The Pindan Movement supported the Aboriginal strikers with mining activities and went on to acquire pastoral properties of its own through the success of its mining operations.
One of the best examples of this is Geoff McDonald's Red Over Black (Bullsbrook: Veritas, 1982) which argues that Aborigines are being manipulated by international communists who seek, through the Aboriginal land rights movement, to fragment Australia leaving it open to further communist penetration.
McGregor, Morris J., Integration of the Armed Forces 1940–1965 (Washington D.C: Defense Studies, Centre of Military History, United States Army, 1981) 13–16.
Charles Perkins' 1965 Freedom Ride is a prime example of the inspiration drawn from the US civil rights movement. Perkins and fellow university students toured northern New South Wales towns exposing racist practices to the scrutiny of a national television audience.
