Chapter 592: Landing Battle
Let’s turn the clock back to July 15, 1938, a quiet and leisurely morning. Children from civilian families on Australia’s northwest coast were playing on the beach, chasing the waves as they often did, their laughter filling the sand. The long-abandoned trenches and gun emplacements became their playground.
Suddenly, an unsettling sound came from the direction of the sea horizon, where a thin, disquieting black line had appeared. The few children, looking at the distant sight that resembled an approaching dark cloud, dropped their small sand shovels and wooden blocks and ran quickly towards their homes.
By 8:30 AM, this thin line had become a fleet that stretched to the horizon. On the bows of the massive warships were golden chrysanthemum crests, and from the high masts, the red and white sun flag fluttered in the wind. The massive Combined Fleet of the Great Japanese Empire, escorting the landing fleet of the Japanese Army, had finally appeared off the coast of Australia.
Boom! The cannons of the Japanese Navy fired their greetings. The first shell landed on the poor, empty beach. Its power was greatly reduced by the sand, only kicking up a cloud of yellow dust and black smoke.
After about half an hour of artillery preparation, the soldiers of the Japanese Army began their amphibious landing. The massive and terrifying transport efficiency of the navy was once again on full display. Thousands of civilian ships and military transport vessels sent batch after batch of soldiers onto the unfamiliar coast.
Japanese sailors were unloaded from the warships and began to transfer to landing craft and small boats, advancing in a dense mass towards the Australian beaches. The waves rocked the vessels, and the soldiers shouted slogans as they drew closer and closer to their objective.
“Long live His Majesty the Emperor!” a Japanese officer shouted hoarsely, fighting back the urge to vomit. He drew the command sword at his waist and glared fiercely at his men.
“Long live His Majesty the Emperor!” all the Japanese soldiers shouted, raising their hands high. Although the long sea voyage had made them pale, although they had been tossed about by seasickness and the rolling waves, they still shouted the slogan with the loudest voice they could muster.
With the shouts rising and falling from the various small boats, the coastline was now close enough. One after another, the Japanese soldiers leaped from the boats into the seawater, heedless of the danger of drowning under the weight of their equipment.
They had been at sea for too long and longed for the taste of land. Their homeland was simply too small. Like hermit crabs, they wanted to find a spacious new home for their own growth.
“Charge!” a Japanese sergeant, his feet now on the seabed, stumbled forward towards the land he was about to conquer. Behind him, a Japanese soldier carrying a flag also ran unsteadily. Further away, some who were faster had already climbed onto a nearby reef, waving the Japanese military flag to display their valor.
“Major Matsumoto, the left flank has not met with any return fire. It seems they have abandoned their trenches and fortifications,” a Japanese officer in a major general’s uniform said, holding his command sword with one hand and looking at the operational map held by his aide in the sea breeze. As a commander accompanying the first wave of the suicide squad, he had his own persistence and pride.
“General Ogawa, the landing is proceeding very smoothly. There are no signs of a counter-attack. It seems the Great Japanese Empire has already crushed those Americans. They have abandoned Australia,” the major named Matsumoto said triumphantly, pointing to a village in the distance. “In a few minutes, we will be able to occupy that place.”
“The navy is as timid as a mouse. They think our declaration of war on Germany is making enemies everywhere. Although they fought well in the naval battle against the United States, in the end, it is still up to us, the Army, to win the war, is it not?” General Ogawa said, holding his command sword and wading ashore with his retinue and guards.
And on the coast that had already been taken by the Japanese army, columns of Japanese soldiers were assembling. They formed neat ranks, took roll call, and then, in droves, marched towards the distant village. And above their heads, planes from the naval air arm flew low, with a very menacing air.
On a Japanese naval warship in the distance, a captain was reporting the progress of the landing to Yamamoto Isoroku. “The enemy’s resistance is minimal. Apart from three army soldiers who died by drowning after leaving their ships prematurely, the rest of the forces have suffered almost no losses.”
Another officer ran over, handed a telegram to Yamamoto, and then asked, “A message from Rear Admiral Kurita, asking if he should continue the bombardment.”
“Tell him to cease fire. The enemy isn’t even putting up a decent fight. What’s the point of us making all this noise over here? To shame the navy?” Yamamoto Isoroku said resentfully. “Next time, start the bombardment after the army calls for reinforcements!”
“Hai!” The officer, having been inexplicably scolded, could only bow his head, stand at attention, and reply loudly.
Unlike the forced landings on islands like the Philippines and Malaysia, the first wave of the Imperial Japanese Army to land in Australia met with almost no resistance. These troops easily landed on the beach, the only trouble the soldiers encountered was getting their shoes full of sand.
The first unit to land, the Japanese Army’s 19th Division, had originally prepared some equipment for a frontal assault. But these weapons were soon discarded on the beach. The soldiers relaxed and chatted together. Some even took off their shirts and, bare-chested, enthusiastically welcomed the officers and men of the 13th Division who landed subsequently.
“Welcome to Australia! This place has already been occupied by us!” a Japanese soldier, with a rifle on his back and the two flaps of his helmet swinging back and forth in the wind, said with a smile to his comrade. “The Americans are all cowards. They don’t even have the courage to fight. We’ve already won this war!”
His words drew a wave of cheers. Many Japanese soldiers gathered together, raising their arms and grinning foolishly at the war photographers. The Japanese had prepared many things for this grand landing operation, such as a Type 89 tank that was at this very moment stuck in the sand on the beach, unable to move.
“Get the engineers ashore! Quickly! If the tide comes in, it will all be over! Have them get the tanks that are stuck in the mud and sand out! Quick!” an officer from a Japanese Type 89 medium tank unit shouted. He had climbed out of his tank, jumped off the tall vehicle, and had run a long way to find the infantry unit that was supposed to be providing them with cover.
Like the Italian tanks, due to substandard welding technology and a backward design philosophy, the Japanese tanks were covered with a dense array of rivets. This structure had been proven to seriously affect structural integrity and would cause the rivets to pop off upon being hit by a shell, causing secondary damage. However, because the Army’s production quotas were suppressed by the Navy, they could only continue to use this in fact obsolete and backward tank.
A squad of Japanese soldiers swaggered into the village and began their usual process of looting, robbing and harassing house by house, instantly turning this quiet Australian fishing village into a chaotic scene of chickens flying and dogs jumping. The unrestrained Japanese soldiers showed no intention of holding back, laughing wickedly as they chased the local white women, for a moment forgetting that they were no longer in Southeast Asia.
Crack! A gunshot startled everyone. A tall, burly local Australian man, holding a shotgun, had killed a Japanese soldier who had burst into his house. And so, a landing operation that had been as peaceful as a tourist trip had, in a few minutes, turned into a slaughter of hellish proportions.
No one had expected the counter-attack to come not from the Australian army, but from the local, unarmed civilians. Although to say these civilians were unarmed was a bit of an exaggeration, compared to the Japanese landing force, they certainly had no equipment advantage. But the outcome of the battle was shocking. For a time, the Japanese soldiers, who were used to bullying the civilians of the occupied territories, were actually driven out of the village by the Australians who had risen up in resistance. Six Japanese soldiers were killed, and another was shot through the stomach, screaming for a doctor to help.
The frontline commander of the landing force, Matsumoto, upon hearing this news, abandoned his tanks that were stuck on the beach and immediately organized a force of 200 men to attack the village again. The locals immediately paid the price in blood for their impulsiveness. Over 130 civilians were killed, and only a few children, escorted by a few men, escaped in a car.
However, the Japanese soldiers’ good days ended as the scale of the landing operation expanded. In fact, many Australians had chosen to stay behind to defend their homes. Many of the new recruits had not left with the Americans but had instead organized their own defense forces. These defense forces numbered as many as three divisions. It was just that because Australia’s territory was too large, these forces could not defend the long coastline.
After consolidating their beachhead defensive positions, some of the Japanese army’s reconnaissance units encountered these remaining Australian army units on their way to the Australian interior. The two sides engaged in a fierce struggle for several important roads.
The Australian soldiers, who had been beaten by the German Wehrmacht in North Africa to the point where they could only cower in their trenches and wait to be captured, were now incredibly brave in the face of the Japanese Army. They held out until they were attacked by Japanese planes before they retreated, and the Japanese soldiers finally took control of the landing point and captured all the nearby villages.
But when the Japanese went full throttle, preparing to advance into the Australian interior, they found that what stood in their way was not an enemy army, but an endless desert. Yes, a desert—a type of terrain they had never seen before.
Published: 2025-09-09T03:03:40.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-01-11T13:45:07.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c592-landing-138474199
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