Hiroshi Tsuda
Introduction: Images of Australia
Beautiful nature and wildlife, Tolerant multicultural country etc.
‘Absence’ of Australian history in (Japanese) academic circles
1.Defending White Australia: ‘Finland in the Pacific’?
Nation-building, whiteness, and fear of Asian invasion
2. Forging the nation: Australia and the First World War
(1) Patriotism and Sacrifice
Sentiments of solidarity with Britain (ex. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher)
Vast casualties: 417,000 recruited and 60,000 dead (out of a 5 million population)
(2) Gallipoli campaign and ANZAC
Formation of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC)
Gallipoli campaign as ‘baptism of fire’ and creation of the Anzac legend
(3) War commemoration in interwar years
Anzac Day as the national holiday (cf. 14 July in France and 4 July in America)
Editing of the Official History and foundation of the Australian War Memorial
3. War memory transforming in multicultural society
(1) Backpackers’ pilgrimage to the Gallipoli Peninsula
Young generation’s public interest in Anzac Day commemoration
(2) ‘One of Us’: Representation of the ‘Unknown Australian Soldier’
75th anniversary of the armistice and funeral service at the AWM
(3) Multicultural Anzacs: Discovering the war effort of minorities
Anzacs of Aboriginal and Russian descent
4. Conclusion: Defining boundary of the Australian nation
Entanglement between whiteness, war and nationalism
5. Sources
(1) Andrew Fisher’s statement on the eve of the First World War:
Turn your eyes to the European situation, and give the kindest feelings towards the mother country at this time. I sincerely hope that international arbitration will avail before Europe is convulsed in the greatest war of any time. All, I am sure, will regret the critical position existing at the present time, and pray that a disastrous war may be averted. But should the worst happen after everything has been done that honour will permit, Australians will stand beside our own to help and defend her to our last man and last shilling. (The Argus, 1 August 1914)
(2) Charles Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918:
The failure of the Dardanelles Expedition made it evident that the war must be longer and more difficult than had been generally imagined; but the difficulty of the common task tended, as always, to draw closer to each other the several branches of the British People…In no unreal sense it was on the 25th of April, 1915, that the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born. Anzac Day – a national celebration held on the anniversary of the Landing – is devoted to the memory of those who fell in the war. (The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, vol.2)
(3) Concern about the internment of the Unknown Australian Soldier:
…Paul Keating is acutely sensitive to the power of symbol and ceremony to forge national consciousness, identity and self-perception. His high-profile support for changing the Australian flag and for republican government reflects the importance he attaches to the need to redefine the way Australians see themselves and the way the world (especially the Asia-Pacific region) sees Australia…The entombment of the unknown soldier is more than an act of civic religion and public pageantry. It is an opportunity for contemplation of the future that Mr Keating has sketched of an independent, multicultural republic, under its own flag, seeking its political and economic place in the Asia-Pacific region.
…When the Prime Minister expresses the gratitude of the nation to its war dead, when he pays homage to them, he will be speaking to what Australia might become, without mentioning the flag or the republic. To do so is not to politicise the occasion; it is merely to acknowledge its meaning and relevance. (The Age, 11 November 1993)
(4) Paul Keating’s eulogy for the Unknown Australian Soldier:
We do not know this Australian's name and we never will. We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, nor precisely how and when he died. We do not know where in Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the battlefields of Europe. We do not know his age or his circumstances – whether he was from the city or the bush; what occupation he left to become a soldier; what religion, if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not know who loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we do not know who they are. His family is lost to us as he was lost to them. We will never know who this Australian was.
Yet he has always been among those whom we have honoured. We know that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of the 100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.
He is all of them. And he is one of us. (The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 November 1993)
(5) Criticism against Keating’s eulogy by historian Geoffrey Blainey:
I can only marvel at Mr Keating’s loaded sentence implying that the soldier possibly had no religion. Mr Keating told his audience that he did not know the soldier’s occupation when he enlisted or even “what religion, if he had a religion”… But it suited Mr Keating to cast doubt on his religion rather than his possible lack of occupation.
If the body had been brought back to Australia in 1920, it would have been given a Christian burial. This soldier, however, was not given a Christian burial. In the sanitised prayers, Christ was not even mentioned…Last Thursday week, the soldier was not treated as a person of his time and place; in short, he was not treated as a human being.
Instead, he was “converted”, without his consent and, fortunately, without his knowledge, into a symbol of government policy. His body now belongs, it seems, to a more secular, less Christian Australia, in which Islam is courted with a fair deal of servility for its votes and traditional, although declining, Australian values are taken for granted…A great many Australians rightly gained comfort and pride from the ceremony, not noticing how Mr Keating was exploiting the occasion. (The Age, 20 November, 1993)
(6) Introduction of E. Govor, Russian Anzacs in Australian History:
When it comes to the Anzac tradition, our children of Lebanese or Vietnamese, Russian or Ethiopian background who so proudly say ‘I am Australian’ still feel like strangers amidst the Simons, Margarets and Patricks with relatives who fought in the Great War. We other Australians should not be strangers for this was our war too. We should all remember that, even in those distant years, not only men with names like Smith and Johnson made up the Anzacs; among their number there was also Abas Bhawoodeen Ghansar from India, Ernest Licey, an Aboriginal man from Ulladulla, Vlas Kozakovshonok from Russia and Vido Thomas Svekloha from Montenegro… (Elena Govor, Russian Anzacs in Australian History, UNSW Press, 2005)