Get over it, we weren't at the heart of World War II

[Copper]

PETER Stanley is charming in conversation, anxious to listen to others rather than to announce his opinions.

But when it comes to history he does not care who he upsets, however politely he does it. He is a tough reviewer and a ferocious advocate of whatever the evidence indicates, regardless of who his arguments outrage.

And this month Stanley is about to upset everybody who believes that Japan was intent on invading Australia in 1942, with a new book -- "my 19th, I think" -- on the invasion legend and the reasons it has a hold on the popular consciousness a lifetime later.

Stanley, director of historical research at the National Museum in Canberra, agrees that he is a contentious historian.

"I am writing about things that are important and arouse strong feelings," he tells the HES. "I don't want people to read and reflect, I want them to read and respond."

And respond they likely will, if the anger generated by earlier versions of his thesis is any indication. A 2002 conference paper upset some when it was reported in the media; a longer essay in 2005 enraged many more; and now there is a monograph, Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, which systematically sets out the case against claims that the Japanese had invasion plans.

"No historian of standing believes the Japanese had a plan to invade Australia, there is not a skerrick of evidence," Stanley says.

Yet many people are so insistent that there was a risk, last month the Government proclaimed the first Wednesday in September as Battle for Australia Day. Says Stanley, "It's not just the World War II generation that is upset by my argument, there is a curious amalgam of partisan activist veterans and younger nationalists who latch on to the Government's proclamation."

Why the invasion idea has such a hold across the generations is the other theme of Stanley's book.

He dates its resurgence to 1992, when then prime minister Paul Keating kissed the ground of the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea.

"This gave Australians permission to look at the war in a completely new way. The Battle of Australia idea was completely forgotten for 50 years until '92," Stanley says. "People are now interpreting World WarII as a threat to Australia, taking attention away from the Nazi and imperial Japanese threat to (all) humanity. This brings Australia, completely spuriously, into the centre of the world war."

Stanley says his book does not demean the achievements of the Australian infantry who stopped the Japanese army on the Kokoda Track.

But he is interested why proponents of the invasion argument are fixated on Kokoda, given that if any Japanese invasion plan had existed, it became impossible to put into action after the Battle of the Coral Sea months earlier.

For Stanley, this is an argument about much more than what the Japanese high command did or did notplan.

"Parochialism offends me," he says. "I am quite passionate that World WarII was a war worth fighting.

"People say I am denouncing veterans, but no, I want to praise that generation. They saved the world from tyranny. That is the thing to value, not just what they did to defend Australia but the way they helped to defend the world against the global threat to civilisation."

And for everybody who wants to argue, he has a simple suggestion: "Look at the evidence. Don't make assumptions, look at the evidence."