After reading T A G Hungerford's 1954 Sowers of the Wind, I wasn't sure that I wanted to read much more about the role of Australian forces in the Occupation of Japan, but Robin Gerster's prize-winning Travels in Atomic Sunshine, Australia and the Occupation of Japan turned out to be very interesting reading indeed. More importantly, while it acknowledges the less edifying aspects of the novel, it counters Hungerford's somewhat sensationalised account and pays credit to the soldiers of the show more occupying forces where it's due.

According to the author info in the front of the book, Robin Gerster is a professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Big-noting: the heroic theme in Australian war writing (1987) and other books focussed on Asia. Travels in Atomic Sunshine won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History in 2009, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Award and the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. I think that's because he writes in an approachable way, avoiding academic jargon while retaining a scholarly approach so that his account is obviously trustworthy.

Histories about this issue need to be trustworthy, because anything that casts doubt on the heroic myth-making about Australian military service has to be backed up by research...

It seems that the soldiers of the Occupation forces felt the pressure of the heroic Anzacs, and felt discouraged and dispirited because of it. Their tasks in Japan were more mundane than the fierce fighting that had led to Japan's defeat, and they were more like workers or labourers involved in doing a job that many found dreary and even demeaning. Today, that means that some whose health was affected by atomic radiation in Hiroshima, are denied the benefits that fighting forces receive in recompense for their active service.

BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupation Force] performed many useful tasks during that first year of the Occupation. After completing its initial deployment, the force settled down to begin its essential operations of sea, ground, and air patrols — a variety of Intelligence tasks, including (in the early, uncertain days) road reconnaissance; to seek out resistance elements and potential guerrilla activities; checks on illegal immigration; the control of black marketing and smuggling activities; the confiscation of narcotics and other contraband; port and dock control; the demilitarisation and dispersal of repatriated Japanese servicemen; the collection of weapons; the disarmament and disposal of hidden enemy ammunition and equipment.

Both skilled and hack work had to be done to get the region back into some kind of working order. Soldiers were engaged in various clearing, building and maintenance tasks, in concert with a force of Japanese workers that totalled more than 40,000 at its peak, in October 1946. (p.78)

For an example of the essential infrastructure that urgently had to be made functional, Jim Grover, a signalman, helped rebuild the communication system with a modern telephone exchange in Kure. American B-29 bomb damage had destroyed the hygiene infrastructure, but as Gerster acknowledges erecting lavatories is not quite in the same league as scaling the rocky slopes of Gallipoli under raking Turkish fire. (But if it had not been done, outbreaks of disease would have been catastrophic.)

These soldiers were, however, also achieving historic if not heroic change. The Occupation brought Japan out of the feudal age and introduced democracy, including women's suffrage. It also prepared the way for lasting stability and economic prosperity and a normalisation of Japan's relationships with other countries in the west.

However, the Australians had more to contend with than the ghosts of the Anzacs. For a start there was also poor leadership. Their CO had an outstanding WW1 and WW2 military record but from Gerster's analysis, was not the right man for a different kind of job in such an unfamiliar place. (In the Afterword, Gerster tells us that he refused to shake a Japanese hand, and he publicly admonished the citizens of Hiroshima for creating their own mess.) Briefings about what to expect were inadequate and littered with stereotypes. Hectoring about fraternisation being forbidden didn't stop randy young men from getting what they wanted (and VD into the bargain), but it did make it difficult to develop friendly working relationships between nations who had been at war such a short time ago. Worst of all, the soldiers were not warned about avoiding radioactive sites, and it is quite shocking to read about soldiers sightseeing in Hiroshima and bringing souvenirs back home.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/02/10/travels-in-atomic-sunshine-2008-by-robin-ger... show less

Feb 10, 20251 other review

shawjonathan 1,252 reviews

Travels in atomic sunshine : Australia and the occupation of Japan by Robin Gerster

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/travels-in-atomic-sunshine/

Thousands of Australian soldiers and their families were part of the Occupation of Japan from February 1946 until early 1952. They formed the bulk of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, generally overlooked in the shadow of the much larger and better equipped US occupation forces. While the US occupiers, with headquarters and amenities in Tokyo, set about imposing democracy by decree and using military might to show more change a militaristic culture to a peaceful one, insisting on freedom of the press except for stories that might make trouble for the occupiers, the Australians – whose generals led the BCOF – were stationed near the devastation of Hiroshima and seem to have managed without any sense of themselves as Liberators. They are scarcely mentioned by any of our otherwise zealous military historians, and barely appear in the Canberra War Memorial. Sneered at by the British, discounted by the US, at home they are 'the forgotten Force'.

At the time, thanks to reports of atrocities in the Burma–Siam Railway and Changi Prison as well as the bizarre White Australia Policy, anti-Japanese sentiment was fierce in Australia, and the occupationnaires were in a bind. If they enacted the home sentiment, as many did, they were likely to be brutal, even criminal, in their dealings with the already shattered population, and there are plenty of stories of rape, sexual exploitation, black marketeering ('wogging') and careless disregard for human life. If they were open to Japanese culture and the humanity of the people, as again many did, they were likely to be shunned as 'Jap-lovers': there were plenty of headlines at home to that effect, and when people returned it was to even less acknowledgement than the troops who served in Vietnam. Governments still deny that their high incidence of cancer might be connected to the time they spent at nuclear 'Ground Zero'.

If someone wanted to make a serious war movie, they could do a lot worse than mining this book. The movie would run very little chance of feeding adrenaline addiction the way so many well-intentioned anti-war movies do. It would have trouble being read as a tale of Good vs Evil. It would leave a number of received True Stories looking decidedly tatty. After so many movies about the horrors of the Japanese prisoner of war camps, how refreshing to show those liberated Aussies as occupiers of post-War Japan – some acting out their racism-boosted vengefulness on the civilian survivors of Hiroshima, others coming to appreciate the culture and even falling in love. The book seethes with potential story lines.

Travels in Atomic Sunshine won the 2009 NSW Premier's History Award. It should also have a chance in the Literary Awards. show less

Dec 14, 20091 other review

Budzul 2,103 reviews

Hotel Asia by Robin Gerster