Japanese Occupied Australia

Hey, guys.
Disregarding how it came to be, what would live be like for Australians under Japanese occupation? I have read a while ago, that enslavement and extermination was planned for both Australia and New Zealand, but also, that Germany wanted South Australia and Tasmania to be left for German-Australians.

What would life be like in SA and TAS? Would Germany appoint a German leader to send to Govern these areas, or would a local be incharge?

Again, I don't want answers like, "ASB, they wouldn't invade". We're by passing how they invaded, and we're looking at occupied Australia.

Cheers, Fat. (Also, please don't take offence to my name)
 
Australia is really freaking big, I mean its, really big, Japan's logistics were already stretched thin as is. In short, I think if they pushed it they may get some cities in northern australia, and man that is really freaking pushing it. No I do not think they can control the outback or even a majority of the countries cities. as for how they would be treated?

Nankings a pretty good example, mass slaughter mass rapes, with every thing of value being looted.
 
Australia is big physically but its population is mainly concentrated in a few locations towards the east and that must have been even more of the case in 1940.

Not to mention it only had about 7 million people in 1940. I believe one of the impetus for the mass post-world war II immigration drive was to get Australia's population up due to the fears of invasion it had during the war.

Not saying it would have been easy for the Japanese but would it have been less logical logistically than Germany invading the USSR? Now that was a big country in both size and population.
 
Hey, guys.
Disregarding how it came to be, what would live be like for Australians under Japanese occupation? I have read a while ago, that enslavement and extermination was planned for both Australia and New Zealand, but also, that Germany wanted South Australia and Tasmania to be left for German-Australians.

The chances of this happening are really, really thin. Having this as "WI: Japan-occupied Australia" over at ASB can get you much more and better responses than you may expect.

So, assuming ASB uses handwavium and Australia magically capitulates its power to the Empire of Japan:
  • Japan has just gotten its hands on a large amount of resources; they also just destroyed a major base of operations for both Britain and the US. The war effort will be hampered greatly.
  • Australia's economy will be swamped by the mass-production and circulation of Japan's famous "war-time yen"; forced labour may be seen to keep up production.
  • I don't think there'll be large amounts of Japanese colonisation of Australia, since their colonisation of the Pacific islands occurred before the war.
  • This still doesn't mean much for the scope of the war, since the US still has an upper hand against Japan - and now they would have a much wider support form the population.
 
Firstly, cheers for the replies, guys.

What I should have put in, is post-war occupation. Say, it's 1946, or even sometime as the 1950's. Let's say that Japan offered South Australia and Tasmania to the Germans. What would live be like under the two different occupiers?
 
Australia is big physically but its population is mainly concentrated in a few locations towards the east and that must have been even more of the case in 1940.

Not to mention it only had about 7 million people in 1940. I believe one of the impetus for the mass post-world war II immigration drive was to get Australia's population up due to the fears of invasion it had during the war.

Not saying it would have been easy for the Japanese but would it have been less logical logistically than Germany invading the USSR? Now that was a big country in both size and population.
Except the the Japanese Army would never have accepted diverting the necessary divisions from China to Australia, for what was an occupation of so little value.
And yes it would have been less logical logistically, because once Japan went to war against the British, Dutch, and Americans, it lacked the shipping for such an enterprise. The invasion of the Soviet Union didn't require shipping.
 
The chances of this happening are really, really thin. Having this as "WI: Japan-occupied Australia" over at ASB can get you much more and better responses than you may expect.

So, assuming ASB uses handwavium and Australia magically capitulates its power to the Empire of Japan:
  • Japan has just gotten its hands on a large amount of resources; they also just destroyed a major base of operations for both Britain and the US. The war effort will be hampered greatly.
  • Australia's economy will be swamped by the mass-production and circulation of Japan's famous "war-time yen"; forced labour may be seen to keep up production.
  • I don't think there'll be large amounts of Japanese colonisation of Australia, since their colonisation of the Pacific islands occurred before the war.
  • This still doesn't mean much for the scope of the war, since the US still has an upper hand against Japan - and now they would have a much wider support form the population.
The Japanese getting its hands on Australian resources, is like the Nazis getting their hands on Libyan oil. They can't use what they don't know is there.
 
Well they might be able to take Darwin. Of course, that's even less useful to them than the Channel Islands were to the Germans, which makes them worth about the square-root of jack-sh*t.
 
I don't have an opinion on what the consequences of an invasion of Australia were.

Though an invasion of Australia in the first half of 1942 is always dismissed because:

1) The Japanese Army couldn't spare enough troops;
2) The Japanese merchant fleet wasn't large enough to transport the troops or take advantage of Australia's economic resources even if the invasion was successful;
3) The Australian jungles and deserts would kill all the Japanese troops, doing the job of the Australian armed forces for them.

The first two points are valid, but Australia's defences in the first half of 1942 were rather weak and the Imperial Japanese Army defeated numerically superior British Empire forces on several occasions in the first half of 1942.

I think the third point is overrated because the IJA learned to survive and fight in the jungles of Burma and Malaya. I don't see why they couldn't have done just as well in the jungles of Australia and learned to survive in the desert.

However, it would help if the POD was before 1941 so the Japanese could build up a larger merchant marine. Which they needed to do because they were too dependent on foreign merchant shipping in peacetime regardless of how it would have helped in World War II. Ideally doubled to 12 million tons, but an increase of 50% to 9 million tons would be enough for your purposes.
 
Well they might be able to take Darwin. Of course, that's even less useful to them than the Channel Islands were to the Germans, which makes them worth about the square-root of jack-sh*t.

Even the Australians recognise that Darwin could have been taken easily. One has to remember that the Outback is just as impassible for large Australian military forces as for Japanese ones, and the lack of infrastructure around Darwin means that for all practical purposes, its an island. And when it was bombed, the Australians were freaking out because the local home guard equivalent were ubder-manned and under-gunned to defend against even a miniscule invasion force.
 
They take Darwin and can't move their troops through the outback. The US and British Navies blockade them. It is an expensive defeat for the Japanese.
 
Well they might be able to take Darwin. Of course, that's even less useful to them than the Channel Islands were to the Germans, which makes them worth about the square-root of jack-sh*t.

It might be of some military value because the USAAF and RAAF bombed the Dutch East Indies from bases in northern Australia. Occupy Darwin and the north coast of Western Australia and the Japanese oil supply is more secure.

Whether that is a good enough reason to to invade the north of Australia instead of the Indian Ocean raid and/or the attempted amphibious attack on Port Moresby that led to the Coral Sea is another matter.
 
It's also of detriment to the Japanese, as it means supplying yet another distant garrison, which means all the more targets for submarines.
 
Firstly, cheers for the replies, guys.

What I should have put in, is post-war occupation. Say, it's 1946, or even sometime as the 1950's. Let's say that Japan offered South Australia and Tasmania to the Germans. What would live be like under the two different occupiers?

Basically like how it was like for Poland, Indonesia, France, Greece, Phillipines, Yugoslavia.

Pretty bad. I guess there will be hardly anything left to occupy in Australia if the Japanese invade and hold all of it for so long. There is a low population and lots of desert. There would be a mass migration, deportation and genocide that would make occupation basically obsolete.
 
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