PACIFIC SPY SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25964, 3 October 1945, Page 8

PACIFIC SPY SYSTEM

WORK BEHIND ENEMY LINES PART PLAYED BY AUSTRALIANS (O C.) SYDNEY, Sept. 25. Another report has been released of the activities of the Allied Intelligence Bureau and the prominent part played by Australians in it, in securing valuable information behind Japanese lines in the Pacific war. The A. 1.8. was comprised of personnel brought from all the principal Allied countries, and by the end of the war its organisation had developed into one of the Allies’ ■most effective weapons. , The bureau was established in July, 1942, under an Australian Army officer, with an American officer as his deputy. Americans, British, Dutch, Chinese, Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Fighting French, Filipinos, arid Malays took part. However, 80 per cent, of the total were Australians recruited from the army, navy, and air force. According to the official story, they were “so reckless in their disregard for their own safety as to keep headquarters in continual apprehension.” ,

The first party for the Philippines left Brisbane in December, 1942, and it was a month before wireless monitors in Darwin heard their first signal. This came from Negros, and told how the agents were fanning out. They even established themselves in the Japanese Secret Service building in Manila early in 1943.

They obtained sketches of important Japanese airfields, and one agent got important documents out by making a roll of them and putting them in his hip pocket, so that they protruded for everyone to see. He walked out of the office, chatted with the Japanese sentry at the front door, then strolled .off unchallenged to keep a rendezvous with a United States submarine, which was waiting off the coast to take them to Australia.

Filipino agents hired themselves to the Japanese as labourers, house boys, water buffalo drivers, and airstrip maintainers. Agents sat in the front doorways of all important airfields, ports and other installations, and reported movements by tiny wireless sets relaying to bigger stations. These in turn relayed the " snap codes ’’ to waiting aircraft and submarines and to Australia.

The work could not have reached such proportions without the guerrillas, who were supplied by two of the largest submarines in the world, lent by the United States Navy. From Melbourne to Manila, and from Tulagi to points far west of Timor, were scattered units of A. 1.8. administration, communication, supply and training. For every agent in the field scores of men and women planned, taught, supplied, and operated the great detail of office and communications.