Fixated on crime and cricket, Australia not ready for war, said LBJ

FUTURE US president Lyndon B. Johnson adopted parts of a searing critique of Australia's war effort in the dark days of 1942.

FUTURE US president Lyndon B. Johnson adopted parts of a searing critique of Australia's war effort in the dark days of 1942, and noted in his diary that allied command was racked by jealousy.

The insights were gleaned by the then congressman during a fact-finding mission to Australia for president Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when a Japanese invasion was feared.

Johnson, later president from 1963-69, took a close interest in the racial tensions in the US garrison after being briefed on a mutiny by black GIs in Townsville, against a background of friction with their white officers and ill-feeling about liaisons between the African-Americans and local women.

Johnson concluded that no more black servicemen should be sent to Australia "or into any area where there are no women to accept them".

The information was uncovered by Townsville-based researcher Ray Holyoak, who was given access to Johnson's papers by the LBJ presidential library while he was checking what Johnson got up to during his three-day stay in the Queensland city.

This will add fire to the debate sparked in 2007 when British historian Max Hastings claimed the Australian army "dropped out of the struggle" in the Pacific, while the war effort at home was compromised by strikes and lethargy.

Johnson's diary shows he had dinner on June 17, 1942, with US journalist Bob Sherrod, who wrote for the magazines Time and Life, and was scathing about Australia's commitment to fight.

After a briefing requested by Johnson, Sherrod wrote: "The country in which we are building our last ditch in the Pacific is disappointing. It not only lacks resources. It lacks leaders and it lacks intelligence.

"Australia has no ideology. Its only heroes are Ned Kelly, the bandit, and Don Bradman, the cricketer -- crime and cricket. The national motto, so far as I have been able to determine, is f--k-all.

"I can't imagine America without its Washington, its Lincoln and its Lee. But here, actually, is a country without a hero. Most Australians suffer from inferiority complexes, especially since the Americans arrived -- and I must say that the hundred thousand or more Americans over here contain an astonishingly high proportion of gentlemen.

"The Australians continually refer to the 'flower of American manhood' in apologising for Australian troops by comparison, but I like to believe the Americans who are over here are just average."

Johnson went on to paraphrase the journalist in his typed notes of the Australian visit, forwarded to Mr Holyoak by the presidential library in Austin, Texas. "The 'unified' command in Hawaii and Australia is purely a myth," LBJ wrote. "It is imperative that there be greater co-operation and co-ordination within the various commands and between the different war theatres."

In a handwritten entry in his diary dated June 17, 1942, Johnson mentions Sherrod and "too much jealousy among brass hats".

The two evidently had dinner in Sydney the night before LBJ was to see the headstrong US commander in the southwest Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur.

Over drinks with US officers at Townsville's Queens Hotel, Sherrod gathered the story of the May 22-23 mutiny by about 600 African-American troops of the 96th engineers, who were building airfields, barracks and other military installations.

This was "one of the biggest stories of the war which can't be written and which shouldn't be written", he wrote in his account for Johnson, asking him to sidestep military censors and slip it to his editors at Time back in the US.

According to Sherrod, Johnson later told him he destroyed the document because it was "too hot". In fact, Mr Holyoak believes the ambitious congressman appropriated the journalist's work when he reported to Roosevelt, hoping to impress the president.