Description
Title: Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy
Author: Stanley, Peter
Condition: Near Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1997
ISBN: 1864482788
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 274 pages
Comments: The comprehensive account of the Battle of Tarakan during World War 2.
In 1945, 240 Australians died taking the small Borneo Island of Tarakan from the Japanese. The tragedy of Tarakan was that by the time they succeeded, they need not have begun. Peter Stanley explores that battle, what it was like am what it means to us over fifty years on.
He traces the operation from its origins in MacArthur’s GHQ, down to the rifle sections patrolling Tarakan rugged jungle. Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy suggests new ways of looking at Australia’s experience of war.
It critically appraises the view that the Borneo campaign was unnecessary, arguing that it was a justifiable operation doomed by the politics of coalition warfare and by bad planning. Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy illuminates the Australian experience of war.
Through it, we can hear men of Tarakan – scared, angry, humorous, proud, bitter and, above all, Australian-the voices of a vanished Australia. Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy is the story of people at war, how it affected them, and how we have remembered it and them.
