Anne Curtis - Threat of Japanese invasion

Transcript

I've faintly got some recollection that the Japanese was starting to come down and I know my husband, he was on the Shropshire at the time. And I knew he was up further where the Japanese were. And they started to come down and come closer towards the coast, and this is where the exciting part was, the Americans came to our aid and we were lucky because the Japanese were coming down so far and in the department where I was I heard in the secretive path we were only going to hold out to Townsville and we were going to let the Japanese have down as far Townsville and then we'd start to protect the rest of the country.

And that was a part really that was a bit scary at the time and it was worrying. We wanted to know what was going to happen. And about every three weeks, I'd hear from the secretive path where we used to go at night which was this coding. We used to have to go and have a look in the big planted room where the map was. Of course, they used to say to me, "That's where your husband is."

When I'd go up to Laurie and them, they used to tell me where he was, so it was always a bit worrying, especially when we knew the Japanese were coming down fairly close. I suppose that's the part that worried me more than anything. I suppose when you look through it and that, there was some more horrible things I forgot about the bomb dropping and all of that.

I don't know as I say, I suppose with the work we were doing we were segregated away from a lot of people and when we did go home, being living at home and having to travel up and down, I was always so darn tired. I was glad to just go down home and sleep. And what we were doing, was all hush-hush.