The Queensland Government had a lot of influence over the lives of Indigenous Australians. The government controlled when and how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people could access their money, as well as where they could live. Torres Strait Islanders were not usually allowed to settle on Thursday Island, and some were forced to live on missions or reserves elsewhere in Queensland.
Because the Torres Strait makes up part of Australia’s northern border, TI took on a different kind of importance during World War II, when Australia began to fear an attack from Japan. Military troops were stationed on TI and the surrounding islands from 1940, and the airstrip on Horn Island was completed the same year. In December 1941, Japan entered the war by attacking the United States of America and several countries in South East Asia. TI’s entire Japanese population were declared enemy aliens and interned in camps on the Australian mainland.
In January and February 1942, the majority of TI’s civilians, including my then seventeen-year-old grandma, were evacuated from the island due to the threat of a Japanese attack. While the Torres Strait Islanders who lived in the Catholic mission on nearby Hammond Island were evacuated, the vast majority of the Torres Strait Islander population were left on their home islands to fend for themselves. Nonetheless, 830 Torres Strait Islanders, as well as 40 Aboriginals and Torres Strait Malays, volunteered to join the Torres Strait Light Infantry – a battalion made up almost entirely of Indigenous Australians. However, Indigenous soldiers only received one-third the pay of a white soldier.
On 14 March 1942, Japanese planes bombed the airfield on Horn Island. There were seven more air raids over the next eighteen months, but Thursday Island itself was never attacked, possibly because the Japanese military thought it was still home to many of their country folk.
Thursday Island was a key Allied base during the war against Japan. There were more than 7000 Australian troops in the Torres Strait by the end of 1942, as well as hundreds of Americans. The Horn Island aerodrome was used for air raids into Japanese-held New Guinea, and played an important role in refuelling planes during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. But despite what everyone thought, Japan never had any serious intentions of invading Australia – they just wanted to weaken Australia’s defences so they could continue their campaigns in Asia and New Guinea.
The Japanese people held in Australian internment camps were generally treated well. They were given plenty of food and the opportunity to volunteer for cooking, gardening, dressmaking and a variety of other crafts. Children went to a school in the Tatura camp, and there were plenty of recreational activities including sports, movie screenings, concerts and picnics.
When the war ended, most Japanese internees were sent back to Japan. Despite many of them having lived in Australia for decades, the only Japanese who were allowed to stay were those who had been born in Australia, or who were married to Australian or British citizens.
In 1946, TI was returned to civilian control. Many former residents went back to the island, including some of the Japanese people who weren’t deported. However, the civilians discovered that most of the property they’d left behind when evacuating had been stolen or destroyed by the military. High-ranking Australian Army officials had looted anything of value and shipped it south to be sold.
Unfortunately, the Torres Strait pearling industry never fully recovered after the war. Manufacturers had started making buttons and combs from cheaper plastics, so there was very little demand for pearl shell any more.
But the war brought some positive outcomes for Torres Strait Islanders. Thanks to their bravery and commitment in the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion, Torres Strait Islanders were given more respect and freedoms, including being allowed to live on TI. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that Torres Strait Light Infantry soldiers finally received full pay for their service during World War II.
Nowadays, Thursday Island is home to more than 2500 people, around two-thirds of them of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. There are still a handful of small pearl farms in the Torres Strait, one of which is owned by a former Japanese diver.
Acknowledgements
Enormous thanks must go to my grandma, Robin Rogers (nee Hockings), whose vivid childhood memories both inspired and informed this book. I’d also like to thank my great-uncle David Hockings for his outstanding family research and record-keeping.
A lot of people helped me transform this story from a messy manuscript to a fully-formed book. Thank you to my beta-readers – Jacinda Woodhead, Nean McKenzie and Alex Sadler – and the rest of my workshopping crew: Benjamin Laird, Jo Horsburgh, Kate Goldsworthy and Melissa Keil. And a huge thanks to Jess Owen, my editor at Penguin, whose insights and extraordinary attention to detail helped take the manuscript to a whole new level.
Many thanks go to Pippa Masson and the rest of the team at Curtis Brown for sorting the book contract and allowing me to eat.
I’ve never met any of them in real life, but thank you to the amazing people behind Trove (trove.nla. gov.au). Writing a work of Australian historical fiction like The Fighting Stingrays would be practically impossible without Trove, an incredible cultural resource that needs to be preserved.
Finally, thank you to my family and friends, whose love, support and undying belief gave me the courage to finish this damn thing.
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017
Text copyright © Simon Mitchell, 2017
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Pages 101–2: Notice appeared in the ‘Torres Strait Pilot’, 27 Jan 1941.
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ISBN: 978-1-76014-667-2
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