Only a generation after the end of ‘the war to end all wars’, the world was again engulfed in a world war after German forces invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Two days later, United Kingdom declared war on Germany and Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that Australia was also at war.

Australia sent forces to the Middle East and Europe for the war against Germany and Italy. But there was also a long-held fear of attack by Japan. More forces were sent to areas likely to be attacked, such as Malaya and Darwin, ready for action. In December 1941, Japan launched a series of attacks across the Pacific. There were simultaneous attacks including the British colony of Malaya and the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Australians were among the first in action against the Japanese when airmen of 1 Squadron RAAF, at Kota Bharu, northern Malaya, bombed the invasion fleet. But on all fronts the Japanese advanced and Allied territories began falling. Australians, alongside their allies, fought against overwhelming odds in Malaya, Singapore, Ambon, Timor, Java and New Britain. By the end of March 1942, more than 2000 Australians had been killed, most in battle, but in several places men and women who had been captured were massacred.

More than 22,000 Australians were taken prisoner of war in these early campaigns, among them the only Australian servicewomen ever to experience captivity - some nurses who were captured at Banka Island, off Sumatra, and at Rabaul. Australian and other prisoners of war endured brutal slave labour, disease, starvation, beatings and some were executed. They were sent all over the Japanese ‘empire’, from the Burma-Thailand Railway to the infamous Sandakan prison camp in Borneo to coalmines in Japan.

On Australia’s home front, men and women volunteered or were conscripted for the war effort, enlisting in record numbers or working to produce war supplies, from foodstuffs to aircraft. In 1942 most Australian forces were recalled from the Middle East and were joined by American forces. The war reached Australia’s shores on 19 February 1942 when Darwin was bombed, with more than 240 Australian and Allied lives lost. It was the first of more than 70 air raids across northern Australia. On the morning of 1 June 1942, midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour, and torpedoed HMAS Kuttabul, killing 19 Australian and two British sailors. Off the east coast Japanese submarines attacked and sank Allied merchant ships. In the worst attack, the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was sunk on 14 May 1943, killing 268 servicemen and women and merchant seamen.

In early May 1942, the Japanese suffered the first vital defeat in the Battle of the Coral Sea, when Australian and American fleets prevented an attack on the base at Port Moresby, New Guinea. In June at the Battle of Midway, north-west of Hawaii, American forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers which were critical to their planned operations.

The naval losses forced the Japanese to launch a perilous overland attack against Port Moresby in July 1942. Australian troops on the now famous Kokoda Track fought hard to stop the advance. In September, Australian and some American forces defeated another Japanese force that had landed at Milne Bay. The Japanese also began retreating on the Kokoda Track. By November, the Allies had reached the northern coast where the battles for Buna, Gona and Sanananda began. These were to be the most costly of the war in the Pacific for Australians.

In early 1943, Australian troops defeated the last Japanese offensive in the south-west Pacific, defending the mountain village of Wau. Allied aircrews then inflicted a devastating blow on Japanese shipping in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. The Allies in the Pacific then advanced relentlessly, taking the Huon Peninsula on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, and continuing further along the island’s northern coast.

On all fronts, Allied forces pushed back the Japanese. From Burma in the west, to the Solomon Islands in the east, Australians served as part of the Allied forces fighting, and dying, to defeat the Japanese, enduring both battles and tropical diseases.

Amid naval battles in the Philippines in late 1944, Australian warships were among the first to experience the terror of kamikaze attacks. HMAS Australia was very badly damaged and experienced heavy casualties. As the war continued during 1945, Australian forces conducted the ‘final campaigns’ against Japanese strongholds in Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Some Australian warships took part in operations off Japan. On 15 August 1945 Japan announced it would surrender to Allied forces. Victory in Europe had been achieved on 8 May 1945, and Japan’s surrender brought a final end to World War II, which had raged for six years.

World War II was Australia’s first and only taste of global war that reached our shores. Men and women were called upon to serve in the armed forces or merchant navy or in essential industries. Nearly one million served in uniform – most in the Pacific or on the home front. The war ultimately cost 40,000 Australian lives. Of these, 19,000 servicemen and women, more than 600 merchant seamen and several hundred civilians lost their lives in the Pacific and south-east Asian theatres, including more than 8000 who died in captivity.

On 2 September 1945, on board the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in Japan, Australia joined other Allied signatories to accept Japan’s formal surrender, reflecting the critical role Australia had played in her defeat.