Like Darwin , in the Northern Territory of Australia, Horn Island , in the Torres Strait , off the tip of Queensland, recently marked the 75th anniversary of commencement of Japanese WWll attacks .
By Peter Simon
Situated 800 kilometres north of Cairns , the island's airstrip enabled Allied attacks on Papua New Guinea and other Pacific targets . As a result , it became the second most attacked Australian target after Darwin .
A longtime Territory resident , the late Les Penhall , was not only in Darwin the day of the first attack , he later served on Horn Island as a signaller with the 74th Mobile Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Battery .
I met Penhall in Darwin in the late 1950s when I covered the Darwin Police Courts and the Supreme Court for the Northern Territory News and Les worked for the ( Aboriginal ) Welfare Department, appearing regularly at the Monday morning court call over , representing Aboriginal clients.
Penhall first came to Darwin from Adelaide on November 29,1941 , an 18 year old clerk with the Native Affairs Branch , his work involving contact with bushman Bill Harney, later a popular author , the first caretaker of Ayers Rock (Uluru).
On the morning of February 19 , 1942 , he made arrangements with Iris Bald and two of her girlfriends to attend The Star Theatre in the evening .While sitting at his desk , the drone of planes was heard and the bombing began . He ran out of the office , past the police station-bombed , heading for a cliff which fell away to the beach . As he raced for his life , he saw a bomb fall on the Post Office , killing nine staff , including , Iris Bald and her parents.
A piece of shrapnel tore a hole in his shirt and caused a minor cut . One vivid memory was seeing the USS Peary sinking , an anti-aircraft gun still firing as it sank from view. Bullets from Zeros could be heard zipping through the foliage , there were violent , deafening explosions
He travelled overland in a police party in a truck loaded with rescued Works Department files and ended up in Alice Springs where one of his many jobs was to sort out the files brought down from Darwin . He also helped draw up a list of crewmembers from ships sunk in Darwin who were evacuated south in road convoys , many of them Chinese and Malays , who wore name tags .
General MacArthur in Alice Springs
During the month he spent in Alice he had meals at the Stuart Arms Hotel and was there when General Douglas MacArthur , his wife and son , passed through , having fled the Philippines. The son, about four , had a three wheeler bike and "made a nuisance of himself " by riding it round and round inside the hotel, running into people's legs and sideboards.
Drafted into the Army, Les went by train to Adelaide, underwent training , and was sent to Horn Island , which the Japanese first bombed on March 14, 1942. The main airstrip had been completed in 1940 and work then started on a cross trip.
Penhall arrived aboard the SS Islander which was later sunk by the Japanese . The feeling at the time was that the Japanese, in New Guinea , would island hop down through the islands to the mainland . Allied bomber and fighter raids were launched from the island , which resulted in stepped up attacks by the enemy .
Searchlights , he said , were set up on nearby Tuesday and Wednesday islands to help protect Horn Island from attack . When planes made night raids on Japanese targets , a searchlight was positioned vertically into the sky as a beacon to guide returning pilots. Each searchlight group consisted of 12 men .
The 2002 book, Horn Island 1939-1945 , by Vanessa and Arthur Liberty SeeKee , mentioned Penhall . In a special presentation copy to Les , the inscription read : Thank you for what you did here in Horn island during World War Two . The 74th Mob SL Bty and yourself won't be forgotten .
