The range of subjects covered on ABC Radio National is extraordinary , especially noticed when your television set is on the blink . It recently ran a report on the visit to Australia by American movie cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy and his wife in l954, part of a world tour .
By Peter Simon
It said Hopalong - alias William Boyd - and his blonde partner , Tripalong, intended to have a quiet time in Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, after the hectic earlier part of the tour. However , they were amazed to see the huge, enthusiastic crowds , many of them Aboriginal , that greeted them when they landed in Darwin .
In the city's open fronted Star Theatre , Wednesday night had long been the well attended "Cowboy Night ", when westerns were run, legions of poor " Redskins" biting the dust . Hopalong Cassidy and his white horse ,Topper, often pounded across the screen , causing uproar in the audience , Aborigines in the cheap front seats , as this photograph shows . Several rows back is a buffalo shooter with his hat on a rifle barrel.
The Star Theatre scene was colourfully described in the following 1937 clip which is now displayed at the long gone cinema site.
Author Xavier Herbert , at one stage superintendent of Darwin's Aboriginal Kahlin Compound in the 1930s , told me the residents loved westerns, but the films they were shown had been censored . The Chief Protector of Aboriginals gazetted special permission for Aborigines to be in Darwin late at night to see approved movies .
Aborigines , he continued , could not be shown scenes in which coloured people gained the upper hand over whites . "Red Indians " could not be shown winning in cowboy movies as this would , presumably, lead to to what he described as " an outbreak of scalping and war dancing in the Top End."
Herbert was delighted when a film adaptation of the life of Mexican bandit Pancho Villa , who became a general in the l910 Mexican Revolution , was screened . He told the Assistant Chief Protector of Aboriginals at the compound , Vin White, all the "yeller fellers" in town would be holding up trains and rioting after seeing the film . He used the film censorship situation in his novel Poor Fellow My Country .
At the end of the ABC radio item on Hopalong Cassidy 's visit to Darwin , I remembered that a Northern Territory Aborigine had captured the first Japanese on Australian soil , if I remembered correctly , by ordering him : "Stick -em up, all the same Hopalong Cassidy! "
A quick check of Douglas Lockwood's l966 book , Australia's Pearl Harbour, confirmed that a Japanese fighter pilot forced down on Melville Island had been captured on February 21 , l942, two days after the first bombing of Darwin . Matthias Ngapiatilawai ,21, had pushed the handle of a tomahawk into his back, said " Hands up!" No mention of Hopalong Cassidy .
Furthermore , Aboriginal women had first seen the pilot and two of them had written accounts of the event from which Lockwood quoted. One said she was minding babies while other women were out looking for honey when she saw the Japanee man , who had come up and saluted . On receiving a properly big fright, she had run away . The pilot had picked up a child and gone into the bush , later he gave a watch to a boy . A conversation had taken place .
Furthermore , Aboriginal women had first seen the pilot and two of them had written accounts of the event from which Lockwood quoted. One said she was minding babies while other women were out looking for honey when she saw the Japanee man , who had come up and saluted . On receiving a properly big fright, she had run away . The pilot had picked up a child and gone into the bush , later he gave a watch to a boy . A conversation had taken place .
The women had spent the night hidden in the bush . The next day , Matthias and other men had come on the scene and crept up on the man .
The pilot had been stripped of his flying suit, a pistol and map , marched in his underpants to Air Force intelligence officers. The well researched book contained the surprising fact that no trace could be found about the fate of the pilot , said to have been Hajime Toyoshima . His name was not listed in Japanese who died in captivity and he did not return to Japan after the war . For reasons known only to himself , the author suggested Toyoshima may have changed his name , rank and unit ; he had simply disappeared
In my l963 presentation copy of Father Frank Flynn's Northern Gateway , written in collaboration with journalist /author Keith Willey , former news editor at the Northern Territory News , there is coverage of the capture.
A Catholic priest and eye expert, Father Flynn said Matthias, an influential Tiwi leader , who acted as Father Christmas in later years , had followed the downed airman ...According to a newspaperman who interviewed him soon afterwards , Matthias , in the tradition he had observed at Darwin's Star Theatre on Wednesday nights , ordered : "Stick-em up allasame Opperlong Casserty !"
At the mission, in the hands of the Air Force , the prisoner claimed to be a rear gunner , with no special knowledge of aviation . But Matthias knew he was a pilot because of markings of control pedals on his boots , this later confirmed in Melbourne.
When I contacted Kim Lockwood in Melbourne and told him about the Hopalong Cassidy radio report and my reading of his father's account of the capture , he responded by sending much additional information, including a July 2, 2016 ABC report about the above statue to Matthias , his name given as Ulunguru, not Ngapiatilawai
The statue was erected on Bathurst Island to commemorate the historic capture . At first , there had been a move to place the statue in Darwin, but the Tiwi people wanted it in their country .
A surprise claim in the ABC report was the statement that the Japanese pilot had been placed in the Cowra, NSW, internment camp and had been a leader in the l944 break out attempt by 1104 Japanese . On that occasion a number of Japanese died , some said to have committed suicide . Could this explain the disappearance of Hajime Toyoshima ?
And finally , the ABC report said Matthias , in capturing the airman , had said : "Stick 'em up . I'm Hopalong Cassidy !"
The pilot had been stripped of his flying suit, a pistol and map , marched in his underpants to Air Force intelligence officers. The well researched book contained the surprising fact that no trace could be found about the fate of the pilot , said to have been Hajime Toyoshima . His name was not listed in Japanese who died in captivity and he did not return to Japan after the war . For reasons known only to himself , the author suggested Toyoshima may have changed his name , rank and unit ; he had simply disappeared
In my l963 presentation copy of Father Frank Flynn's Northern Gateway , written in collaboration with journalist /author Keith Willey , former news editor at the Northern Territory News , there is coverage of the capture.
A Catholic priest and eye expert, Father Flynn said Matthias, an influential Tiwi leader , who acted as Father Christmas in later years , had followed the downed airman ...According to a newspaperman who interviewed him soon afterwards , Matthias , in the tradition he had observed at Darwin's Star Theatre on Wednesday nights , ordered : "Stick-em up allasame Opperlong Casserty !"
According to Father Flynn's version of the dramatic episode, supplied by Matthias , the pilot had been stalked through the bush , a revolver had been grabbed from his belt , the gun kept pointed at him all the time . It becoming dark , they camped overnight , got up early and made for the mission , crossed creeks , a shot fired into the air to alert the mission .
At the mission, in the hands of the Air Force , the prisoner claimed to be a rear gunner , with no special knowledge of aviation . But Matthias knew he was a pilot because of markings of control pedals on his boots , this later confirmed in Melbourne.
When I contacted Kim Lockwood in Melbourne and told him about the Hopalong Cassidy radio report and my reading of his father's account of the capture , he responded by sending much additional information, including a July 2, 2016 ABC report about the above statue to Matthias , his name given as Ulunguru, not Ngapiatilawai
The statue was erected on Bathurst Island to commemorate the historic capture . At first , there had been a move to place the statue in Darwin, but the Tiwi people wanted it in their country .
A surprise claim in the ABC report was the statement that the Japanese pilot had been placed in the Cowra, NSW, internment camp and had been a leader in the l944 break out attempt by 1104 Japanese . On that occasion a number of Japanese died , some said to have committed suicide . Could this explain the disappearance of Hajime Toyoshima ?
And finally , the ABC report said Matthias , in capturing the airman , had said : "Stick 'em up . I'm Hopalong Cassidy !"
