"The dark side of Townsville" and interesting things about Townsvilles past.
as described by Josh Bavas
Secret documents lift lid on WWII mutiny by US troops in north Queensland
Updated
Fri 10 Feb 2012, 1:24pm AEDT
An Australian historian has uncovered hidden
documents which reveal that African American troops used machine guns to
attack their white officers in a siege on a US base in north Queensland
in 1942.
Information about the Townsville mutiny has never been released to the public.
But
the story began to come to light when James Cook University's Ray
Holyoak first began researching why US congressman Lyndon B Johnson
visited Townsville for three days back in 1942.
What he discovered was evidence detailing one of the biggest uprisings within the US military.
"For
70 years there's been a rumour in Townsville that there was a mutiny
among African-American servicemen. In the last year and a half I've
found the primary documentation evidence that that did occur in 1942,"
Mr Holyoak told AM.
During World War II, Townsville was a crucial base for campaigns into the Pacific, including the Battle of the Coral Sea.
About 600 African-American troops were brought to the city to help build airfields.
Mr
Holyoak says these troops, from the 96th Battalion, US Army Corps of
Engineers, were stationed at a base on the city's western outskirts
known as Kelso.
This was the site for a large-scale siege lasting eight hours, which was sparked by racial taunts and violence.
"After
some serial abuse by two white US officers, there was several
ringleaders and they decided to machine gun the tents of the white
officers," Mr Holyoak said.
He has uncovered several documents
hidden in the archives of the Queensland Police and Townsville Brigade
detailing what happened that night.
According to the findings, the
soldiers took to the machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons and fired
into tents where their white counterparts were drinking.
More than 700 rounds were fired.
At least one person was killed and dozens severely injured, and Australian troops were called in to roadblock the rioters.
Mr Holyoak also discovered a report written by Robert Sherrod, a US journalist who was embedded with the troops.
It
never made it to the press, but was handed to Lyndon B Johnson at a
Townsville hotel and eventually filed away into the National Archives
and Records Administration.
"I think at the time, it was certainly
suppressed. Both the Australian and the US government would not have
wanted the details of this coming out. The racial policies at the time
really discluded [sic] people of colour," Mr Holyoak says.
Both
the Australian Defence Department and the Australian War Memorial say it
could take months to research the incident, and say they have no
details readily available for public release.
But Townsville historian Dr Dorothy Gibson-Wilde says the findings validate 70-year-old rumours.
"Anytime
it was raised, people usually sort of said, 'Oh you know, no that can't
be true. Nobody's heard about that', and in fact it must have been kept
pretty quiet from the rest of the town," she said.
Mr Holyoak
will spend the next two years researching the sentences handed out to
both the officers and the mutineers involved, and why the information
has been kept secret for so long.
