…he said that the known death toll was inestimable because bodies were piling up all over Darwin. At 8am over 50 bodies were already lining the long hallway of the main police station in Smith Street alone. The morgue was filled to overflowing…We were then told that all of the post offices across Darwin were now designated morgues (due to their emergency backup power), but unfortunately they, too, were filled to maximum capacity. Bodies were piled up against every wall, and on top of sorting tables at every post office. The numbers were staggering…! He then named five of the closest post offices where they would definitely not take any more bodies. Casuarina, with 60 bodies on their mail sorting table alone, was the sixth.

One of the most pervasive suggestions – repeated in the popular press even recently – is that far more than the approximately 250 “officially” counted died.

The suggestion is many hundreds more, even thousands of people died in the two raids of 19 February, rather than the 250 or so established in other histories. Further, hundreds of bodies were disposed of by surreptitious methods, with the identities of the fallen being left unknown, and that this was done with official sanction.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the myth is perpetuated. From early 1942 the accounts of the first attacks were distorted. For example, a sailor of the time reported in his diary: “Eleven of those (ships) seen in the harbour were lost in one raid and 875 merchant seamen found a watery grave”. Instead, there were seven ships immediately lost in the harbour, and two sank over the following days – that has been established with as much certainty as is possible; and around 235 people died. But another soldier noted “We buried at least 300 bodies in one mass grave at Mindil Beach. From my estimation the losses were anywhere from six hundred to one thousand”.

Towards the end of the war a Queensland Senator, Herbert Yeates, visited Darwin. In July 1945 correspondence to Arthur Fadden, then Australian Country Party leader, Yeates wrote: “From the definite and reliable information I obtained whilst at Darwin….I am satisfied that about 1200 people were killed but that includes Merchant and other seamen, such as men from foreign ports. How about you putting this over in the House on my behalf?”

It is easy to see, however illogically, how the fatalities numbers mounted. People in positions of authority made hurried assessments that doubtless were passed on with all the weight of their originators. For example, post-19 February the manager of the Commonwealth Bank wrote to the Governor of the Bank in NSW that: “I can assure you that between 600 and 1000 lives were lost”.

Yet in the very same letter he charts his own progress, and that of his staff, over the hours following the first two raids, during which attacks he ventured no further from the bank than the bombed Post Office about 45 seconds walk away. His afternoon was full of meetings and decision making, during which the bank was closed and its cash together with commercial papers was loaded on trucks. At 0100 hours the day following the raids – that is, some 24 hours after the second raid had ended – he journeyed south down the main highway out of town to Adelaide River and beyond, never to return.

How the manager made his fatality assessment of the casualty numbers is unknown; according to this own accounting he went nowhere near the harbour where bodies were being taken from the water; nowhere near the damaged ships still afloat, nowhere near Mindil Beach – some three miles or five kilometres away, where bodies were being temporarily buried. But doubtless it was the retained wisdom of the Bank staff, repeated to anyone they encountered on their trip south and beyond, that “hundreds” had died in the first raids, and it must be probably that the figure of 600 and beyond was quoted. And these were witnesses who were there; they were people who had “been to see the elephant”, as American Civil War people said of those who had fought in battles: they knew what a mysterious and fabulous experience was – such as seeing a circus elephant, a great experience for a humble village lad – so they must be believed. Thus are myths born.

Variations on this theme have been repeated?in a number of publications. Over the past?few years, perhaps as a result of the increasing publicity this enemy attack – certainly the biggest ever perpetuated against Australia – has received, the suggestions of a higher death count have received increasing prominence.
Even modern fictional accounts of life in the Northern Territory perpetuate the stories. The popular writer Judy Nunn’s novel Territory suggests in a foreword note that: “The true casualty figure is estimated to be in excess of 500.” Roland Perry says in his history book Centre Stage, that as many as 1100 died and were buried in mass graves at Mindil Beach. The fictional 2008 movie Australia didn’t help matters by portraying Japanese forces landing in Darwin, which they never did. The body count in the film was at least unresolved.

Several men who served in the military in the Territory have contributed. For example, one recent account is from Alex Peterson, who served with a medical supply unit slightly south of Darwin. He believes, in contrast to one “official figure” of 243, that: “…the number is higher, simply from the number of corpses he saw floating in the harbour that afternoon.” It must be asked if those bodies were counted, and what total was arrived at. Another claim is from Rex Ruwoldt, who was based at Lee Point during the raids. He says he received a news bulletin from his unit’s Field Headquarters a few days after the 19th. It mentioned “1, 100 deaths” that had been based on “estimates from Army Intelligence.” Ruwoldt is of the opinion that a large number of those killed were part of the “approximately 2, 000 or so itinerant workers in Darwin at the time of the attacks”. However, official reports of the time point out that:

All Aboriginal women and about 20 per cent of Aboriginal men were moved out of the city. Of the Territory’s population of half-caste people, at least 500 women and children were evacuated to southern states. On the morning of 19 February 1942 only 100 adult Aboriginal men remained in the Darwin area: 30 employed by the armed forces, 24 prisoners of Darwin’s Fanny Bay jail, and the rest in woodcutters’ camps on the edge of town. However, a group of 40 half-caste children from the Roman Catholic mission on Melville Island had arrived at Darwin on 15 February and were still in port when the Japanese bombers struck.

Ruwoldt also advised: “Jack Burton the Mayor of Darwin at the time estimated about 900 killed. Army Intelligence estimated about 1100. Official figures about 250. Most of the civilians not counted were buried in two mass graves on Mindil Beach.” Further: “One Padre later the Bishop of Bendigo said “250? I buried more than that myself!”

Ruwoldt says the bodies can be found below the sand at Mindil Beach, near where the casino is today:

“I’ve spoken to the fellas who dug those graves,” he says. “It’s a very traumatic thing for them. They haven’t ever talked to their families about it. They’ve talked to other soldiers like myself. One fella told me, `We dug down to the water level and we stacked the bodies in.’ Another fella said he counted 300 in the first grave – didn’t even look at the second one.”

But analysis confirms that “Jack Burton’ was not the “Mayor of Darwin” on 19 February – there was no position of mayor at the time, although a Territorian of that name had indeed been prominent in local government. Anyway, historian John Bradford notes that Burton kept a record of all the raids throughout the period of bombing from February 1942 to November 1943, and his entry for 19 February stated “Estimate 900 killed on wharf and ships” is well in excess of the official figure. Further: “Apart from his dubious claims re-the number of personnel killed, his credibility as a reliable eyewitness was not exactly enhanced when he claimed three Japanese submarines were sunk in Darwin harbour, one on 8 June 1942, and two more on 9 August 1942. “Inside” the harbour means inside the boom net. No such combat actions are recorded in any of the sources listed in this book, which include many histories of Darwin. and of the histories of the Australian Army and Navy in WWII.” Further, Ruwolt’s “Army Intelligence” documents showing such numbers have not been found.

Interestingly, the “Padre later the Bishop of Bendigo” may well have referred to Chaplain Charles Lawrence Riley, service number VX20306, who during the war was the fourth Bishop of Bendigo from 1938 to 1957; and concurrently Chaplain-General to the AMF from 1942 until 1957. His Service record is open and available on the National Archives of Australia website, or physically in Melbourne under his full name. However, it shows that he served overseas in 1941; then returned to Australia and was given his high clerical rank in the new year. There is no reason to think he was in Darwin in February 1942; indeed, his Record shows he was officially elsewhere.

There are several accounts of bodies being buried on Mindil Beach: none of them attest to religious personnel performing any sort of ceremonies. For example, Bill Dedman recalls:

At about one o’clock….We went around to Mindil Beach, and we worked until eleven o’clock that night [picking] the bodies up…at Mindil Beach, and we were putting them in holes about three foot, or four foot deep, and leaving them there. Of course, that was being controlled by the officers. And then we went ashore. The next day they came down and they arranged for them bodies to be removed…”

Burials occurred near to where death had been met, because as everyone knew then, there were no facilities in Darwin where corpses could be stored. There was on that day only practicality: no morgue attendants to collect the dead, no funeral directors, no bureaucracy to carry out the necessary practicalities – people were starkly realistic, as they had to be. RAAF pilot Kym Bonython noted briefly in his account of the raids that:

At ten o’clock that night, those of us remaining on the base attended a macabre funeral service. By lantern light, the unfortunates who had been killed that day were wrapped in army blankets and rolled into hastily-dug graves on the edge of the airfield.

But it is the inflated accounts of fatality numbers that are the stuff of media attention – because these are controversial. Adelaide historian John Bradford has been told a story by a Ross Dack, who reports he was a member of a burial party that had buried “1,500 people” on Darwin’s Mindil Beach. Dack said that there were lots of bodies which were placed in a large hole dug by a bulldozer. Nobody counted the bodies, which were all black, as they were covered in oil. However, he also expressed the belief to John Bradford that the bodies were later exhumed and relocated to Adelaide River War Cemetery. An officer’s diary quoted from in Rayner supports this story: “Police anticipate about 500 dead. Many are being washed up now and are being buried on the beaches”.

Another story is from a Harry Morgan, who was also in Darwin during the first attacks. In an article carried in The Age newspaper, he suggests that there was a deliberate and official cover–up:

…this officer with a heap of ribbons walked past our captain, ignored him completely, and said to us all: `Keep your bloody mouths shut.’ We didn’t know who he was, we never found out who he was.

We cannot be sure who this officer was, who thought it necessary to wear ceremonial ribbons just after a battle, but he must have been a higher rank than a captain. Why at least a major – a rank important enough to command hundreds of men – should have the strange task of walking around talking to haphazard groups of working soldiers is unknown, but anyone familiar with military operations knows that if you wish to give soldiers a legal and important order, this is not the way to do it. The personnel are gathered together; given the order, and then made to sign to indicate – for later legal action if necessary – they were there and heard and understood it.

Seventy-eight years of age when the article was printed in early 2001, Morgan was said to be “legally blind and living in a retirement village near Bendigo”. He says that he “no longer feels like keeping his mouth shut”, and that the official 243 death toll is part of a cover–up. He suggests over 300 bodies were buried at Mindil Beach?“in a bomb crater” – that would have been an enormous crater – but admits that they could have been “later moved, and reburied in official graves”.

He further alleges – although he does not say whether he observed this – bodies were taken to sea in “barges” and disposed of:

About three days after the bombing they had these barges down there [near the wharf ]. Three of them were piled with bodies – I’d reckon 3–400 bodies at least on those three big barges. They were towed out to sea through the boom defence. They didn’t tell us how far – we’d presume about 15-20 miles – where they were sunk. Nobody knew who they were – they were all colours, races and sizes. Nobody knew where they came from. They were found in little old shanties where they were gathered up. I was there when they were loading them on. I saw it.

The Mindil Beach burials

It does seem that bodies were buried on this beach after the first raids, a sandy strip about a kilometre long inbetween Myilly Point, about three kilometres from Darwin’s Central Business District, and Bullocky Point, where Darwin High School has been established on?the site of what was once Vestey’s Meatworks. Mindil Beach has been built over in recent years, first with the pyramid-styled Darwin Casino, and secondly with an esplanade complete with toilet blocks and substantial amounts of paving to host Darwin’s famous Thursday night Mindil Beach Markets
Aboriginal remains have been found in the area, and it seems that the site was a burying ground for the Larrakeyah aboriginal tribe. But none of the excavations over the years have uncovered mass WWII graves. Indeed, modern techniques with ground penetrating radar are capable of analysis which could easily reveal mass graves around Darwin: proponents of such theories have the duty to back up their upsetting allegations with analysis.

However, while the possibility that some bodies from the 19 February attacks were buried on the beaches seems positive, but there is also evidence that this was a temporary means of coping with the reality of the situation, albeit temporarily, and these remains were soon moved to a more respectful location. Author Robert Rayner, who penned that encyclopedic book The Army and the Defence of Darwin Fortress, interviewed 14th Anti-Aircraft unit members who recalled burying bodies on Mindil Beach, but he notes that these remains were later recovered for re-interment in more suitable cemeteries such as Adelaide River and sites dedicated to American personnel.

So Mindil Beach was a temporary means of coping with the reality of the situation, albeit for a short while, for Darwin, a small town, lacked the refrigerated mortuaries in which to place the dead. The human remains were soon disinterred and moved to a more respectful location. Author Robert Rayner, in The Army and the Defence of Darwin Fortress, interviewed 14th Anti-Aircraft unit members who recalled burying bodies on Mindil Beach. However, he notes that these remains were later recovered for re-interment in more suitable cemeteries such as Adelaide River and sites dedicated to American personnel. Colin Price, who was serving on board the corvette HMAS Katoomba at the time, confirms the burial of bodies recovered from the harbour and taken to the beach: “On the 19th-20th-21st of February dozens of bodies were floating in the harbour. Manunda lowered one of her boats and went from corpse to corpse using ropes to attach them together and dragging them to the beach where they were buried.”

So any suggestion of mass burials seems to have a basis in fact, but it was only a temporary measure. There would seem to be from modern construction activities no bodies in the Mindil Beach area except for in 1992 some local aboriginal remains.

Burials at Sea?

This suggestion necessitates involvement with the Royal Australian Navy, given that they were in control of harbour craft at the time. If barges were used then they would need to be towed by a powered vessel, and that vessel’s log would show at least the movement concerned, even if the operation was secret. There were indeed a myriad of ships that could have performed such a task. However, the ship’s company concerned could hardly have not participated, and such an operation as the disposal of hundreds of bodies would have become a controversial event. It is unlikely that such an action would have remained secret over the years – what would be the reason for the scores employed in the covert burial parties to keep the secret? Where too are the notes in the vessels’ Record of Proceedings – all available in archives now, even at the highest Most Secret level – to indicate vessels had this task?

Interviews with two RAN sailors who were in Darwin on the day do not confirm the story. Frank Marsh was on board the corvette HMAS Deloraine, and took part in the ship’s defence and also its duties later. He confirms he “did not see hundreds of bodies being transported by barge”. Nor?did his shipmate Clarrie Rogan, who recalls the ship raised steam the following day and went around vessels in need of help. The corvette then was refueled at the Darwin wharf. There he did see: “…perhaps 30-40 bodies in sheets. We were under the impression they came from (the hospital ship) Manunda”.

Rogan also notes: “We would have known about such a movement of bodies out to sea… any seaman would know that disposing of bodies like that wouldn’t make sense – they would come back in on the tide and they wouldn’t have had time to weight them.”

It may well be that Harry Morgan saw the bodies from Manunda. Such a sight would be shocking, and indelibly etched upon one’s memory. The number of bodies sighted may well have created such an impression that Morgan thought there were many more than there were in actuality. Indeed, historian Robert Rayner believes this is the cause of many of these stories: “…what they saw was indeed a lot of bodies which, to the young mind, stunned by the events in which they were all participating for the first time, might well have seemed larger than it in fact was”.
One important factor puts the seal on any suggestion of bodies being disposed of outside the harbour. The previous month Allied naval forces had been extremely busy off Darwin: fighting a squadron of Japanese submarines. This was no mere depth-charging by fearful sailors: one of the submarines had surfaced; been almost rammed, and been depth-charged at point blank range. She remains there sunk to this day. The last action any naval ship would have undertaken was a voyage where a ship was dangerously exposed to attack, on a “cargo run” outside and back to the shelter of the harbour’s boom net and guns.

Just because someone – even a someone with the indelible veracity of having served in the armed force on the day – says they saw something does not mean they did. During the action to sink the Japanese submarine outside Darwin the previous month Deloraine crewmember Stan Hale, loading depth charges on the ship’s quarterdeck, said he and his crewmate Fred Savage saw a periscope: “…about 30 ft. away in line with the port thrower….we saw it turn towards us. When it focused on the ship the periscope started to go down just as the buzzer sounded to drop a depth charge.” The trouble with this account is that the other three submarines – by their own logs – were many kilometres away, and searched records show no other submarines nearby. What they saw was probably a floating log, or a crocodile.

During the Darwin raids one witness attested to newspapers that he saw Japanese aircraft with British and American markings on them. Another said he saw “swastika markings” on an attacker. Does this mean that this was so? The examination of the raids since then does not suggest that this is true. Should we place credibility on those reports? People make mistakes; hear accounts which become part of their own memories; think wishfully, or sometimes lie for various reasons. (Author Lewis, in his own military career, was involved in enemy rocket strikes in Baghdad; in one he would have said about 15-20 people were killed in it, if asked immediately afterwards, from what he saw – the eventual reality was three KIA.)

If indeed there were many extra fatalities resulting from the first raid, where did they come from? The raid chronology is quite precise: 71 high level “Kate” bombers hit the wharf and town infrastructure; then left; 81 “Val” divebombers hit the ships, flying around for a few attempts to ensure their single bomb each was not wasted – and then they left. The 36 Zero fighters left with their respective bomber squadrons. Each aircraft was armed with machineguns, and they would have directed fire at likely targets, although the amount of ammunition they had was quite limited: Zeroes for example had less than 30 seconds of ordnance, and all would have retained some ammunition in case of enemy interception on the way home.

The fatalities resulting from each ship was well documented. The biggest loss of life was from the destroyer USS Peary – 88 personnel, sometimes given as a few more. The ten other ships were well accounted for in their respective logbooks and subsequent reports.

On shore the Post Office was almost completely destroyed, but the civilian casualties were known to townspeople and those who had died tallied soon enough. Buildings such as the Police Barracks were also destroyed, although not to the extent that survivors were unable to give a good accounting. The town in fact was not heavily damaged in warfare terminology, although to those inexperienced in military attacks it certainly seemed devastating enough. Darwin today for example possesses many examples of buildings which were right in the target zone and yet survived albeit heavily damaged: the Bank of New South Wales, the Commonwealth Bank, the Victoria Hotel, Cashman’s Newsagency, and so on. The documented casualties were relatively light: the Post Office was the main point of loss, but less than 10 other townspeople are listed as killed.

This therefore means that “several hundred more” casualties must have come from somewhere else. But what buildings – damage known and assessed – and what ships: from which of the nine sunk of the approximately 65 in the harbour, and another two outside, can they be? The extra casualties must have come from somewhere? It is not good enough to say that they merely existed, and were “lost’ on the day. In fact Darwin’s personnel was more accounted for than ever before or probably since on that particular day.

On the grounds of logic alone the suggestion of an “Official Cover–Up” must fail. Where is the motive for the armed forces concealing an enormous number of deaths? There was limited reporting in the immediate days after the raids, so morale had already been less damaged.

To give a concrete example, for the mass and secret disposal of bodies to have occurred would have taken scores of defence members, and none have come forward over the years to make this admission. Neither the officers and non-commissioned officers who would have had necessarily to oversee such work, nor the sailors, soldiers and airmen who would have carried out the traumatic physical labour have appeared. Surely if this had happened, these people would have stepped forward rather than carry their secret to the grave, human nature seeking closure – to use a modern term – of such troubling event. Are we to presume they were given some order so terrible in its consequences none will reveal it? This is not credible. It is furthermore insulting to the honour of the Services to suggest many hundreds of its members knew of such dastardly practices and covered them up.

On the grounds of logic alone any idea of a cover-up must fail. Where is the motive for the armed forces concealing an enormous number of deaths? The forces and government of the day had already been successful in their minimisation of the raids’ impact, with many southern newspapers reporting far less than the truth in the days afterwards; an act of media control that many governments exercise in war to lessen the impact on public morale.

Furthermore, to suggest an “official” cover-up is to belie the reality of military operations. Even in war-time administrative procedures are followed, and there has been no paperwork uncovered to show such a claim can be substantiated. To suggest that the lack of such paperwork is proof itself of secrecy is the stuff of Roswell flying saucer theorists: lack of evidence does not in itself constitute evidence. Dr Peter Stanley, the Australian War Memorial’s Principal Historian, noted in a public talk of 2002:

Darwin has attracted many myths, not the least being that news of it was suppressed. It was certainly diminished. The following day news reports put the death toll at 17, but word of the raids on Darwin was never suppressed, not least because it supported the Curtin government’s desire to mobilize Australians into working, fighting or saving by frightening them about what could happen.

If thousands of people died as is claimed in?the Darwin raids, where are the many more thousands of relatives who would have followed up the losses after the war? To claim that some 700 dead were itinerants who provoked no inquiries as to their loss seems a casual dismissal: aboriginals who died in the raids were indeed counted and treated respectfully: Daisy Martin, who died at the Administrator’s Residence, is interred in Adelaide River; one of those. Aboriginals in the Top End place great store by their kinship networks, and the loss of many members would be remembered by their families today.

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