Constituting the world's smallest continent, Australia is a vast country that lies between the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. During World War II, its location was of supreme strategic importance, with the Netherlands East Indies and New Guinea directly to the north, and the Coral Sea Islands to the northeast. The Japanese eyed Australia as the greatest of Asian-Pacific prizes and believed that its conquest would certainly force the British and Americans into negotiating a favorable peace. Australia was a member of the British Commonwealth and was vigorous not only in its own defense, but in that of the entire Commonwealth. Royal Australian Air Force pilots flew in the Battle of Britain, and the Royal Australian Navy contributed ships and personnel to the Mediterranean campaign during 1940-41, where they were instrumental in the victory at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941. Australian troops were sent into the North African Campaign and fought in Greece and Crete.

At its peak, Australia mobilized 680,000 troops, and its modest industrial infrastructure geared up to produce both aircraft and munitions. However, once the Pacific war began with the attack on the United States at the Battle of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the thrust of Australian strategy immediately shifted to defense of the suddenly imperiled homeland. Not only did 15,000 Australians instantly become prisoners of war (POWs) in the Fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942, but the city of Darwin, Australia, was bombed on February 19, and the Japanese, rolling up conquest after conquest, bore down on Port Moresby, New Guinea, stepping stone to a full-scale invasion of Australia. At this point, the principal Allied force in the Pacific, the United States, became Australia's major ally. Indeed, wartime alignment with America signaled a growing independence from Great Britain, and when Australian troops were recalled from the Middle East, Australian prime minister John Curtin defied British prime minister Winston Churchill by committing the troops to the defense of Australia rather than dispatching them to Burma. On the U.S. side, it was to Australia that General Douglas MacArthur traveled after his evacuation from the Philippines, and he established his first headquarters as supreme allied commander in Melbourne and then in Brisbane. . .

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