‘Sport was the centre of my memories’: the performance of sport in Australia’s Asian garrisons

ABSTRACT

For better or worse, sport mirrors and mediates much of everyday life. Within both the military and colonial spheres, the physical attributes of sport are especially prized as tangible representations of social and cultural hierarchies. In turn, this further enhances the prestige and influence of sport within these two particular environments. Sport becomes particularly potent in instances where military forces undertake garrison duties in overseas colonial and post-colonial environs. This paper highlights the centrality of sport to the lives of the Australian service personnel and their families who were posted to Australia’s garrisons in the decades after World War II. The myriad roles of sport within these overseas garrison environments – as comforter, connector, healer and reinforcer on the one hand, and as isolator, oppressor and subverter on the other – are explored. This paper suggests that, for a variety of reasons, participation in sports served as the central organising force for most Australian service personnel and their families in these Australian military communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sean Brawley http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3140-8247

Notes

1 Walter Gibson, Survey Response, December 5, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project, Monash and Macquarie Universities, Ethics Clearance CF16/2102:2016001043.

2 These bases and their tenure were: the Netherlands East Indies (1945–47), Japan (1946–56), Korea (1950–57), Hong Kong (1949–85), Vietnam (1966–1972), Thailand (1962–68), Malaysia (1955–1988) and Singapore (1971–75) All were home to Australian bases, either exclusively or in conjunction with other Allies, usually other Commonwealth partners.

3 For detailed examinations of Australian defence policy see Peter Edwards and Gregory Pemberton, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts, 1948–1965 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992); Andrea Benvenuti, ‘The British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and its Impact on Australia’s Cold War Strategic Interests’, Cold War History 5, no. 2 (2005): 189–210. Derek McDougall, ‘Australia and the British Military Withdrawal from East of Suez’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 51, no. 2 (1997): 183–94.

4 Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 82.

5 For a broader introduction to the concept of the everyday in history consult Joe Moran, ‘History, Memory and the Everyday,’ Rethinking History 8, no. 2 (2000): 51–68.

6 Reflecting the longer duration of the Australian presence in Northern Malaysia, 65% of respondents were based there as compared to 17% of respondents who had been based in Singapore and 18% who had served at Terendak near Melaka.

7 Steve Bullock, ‘Playing for Their Nation: The American Military and Baseball during World War II,’ Journal of Sport History 27, no. 1 (2000): 67; Tony Mason and Eliza Reidi have made similar claims for British military history when justifying their 2010 book, see Mason and Reidi, Sport and the Military: The British Armed Forces 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1.

8 Amy Bass, ‘State of the Field: Sports History and the “Cultural Turn”’, The Journal of American History 101, no. 1 (2014): 148. Some useful preparatory studies from the American perspective include sections in S.W. Pope’s, Patriotic Games: Sporting Traditions in the American Imagination, 1876–1926 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Wanda Ellen Wakefield’s short study, Playing to Win: Sports and the American Military 1898–1945 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

9 Kevin Blackburn, War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1. One exception is the role of sport within the prisoner of war experience, see Kate Ariotti and Martin Crotty, ‘The Role of Sport for Australian POWs of the Turks during the First World War,’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 18 (2014): 2362–74; Kevin Blackburn, The Sportsmen of Changi (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2012); and P. Monteath, P.O.W.: Australian Prisoners of War in Hitler’s Reich (Sydney: Macmillan, 2011).

10 For examples see Steven W. Pope, ‘An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920,’ The Journal of Military History 59, no. 3 (1995): 435–56; Daryl Adair, John Nauright, and Murray Phillips, ‘Playing Fields Through to Battle Fields: The Development of Australian Sporting Manhood in its Imperial Context, c. 1850–1918,’ Journal of Australian Studies 22, no. 56 (1998): 51–67.

11 Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania), January 25, 1947, 7.

12 Commander’s Diary, 2RAR, Monthly Report May 1962, Australian Army Commander’s Diaries, Infantry Units, Australian War Memorial, AWM 95, Item 7/2/25.

13 The Examiner (Launceston, Tasmania), January 14, 1948, 5.

14 The Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Queensland), August 18, 1946, 3.

15 Riverina Herald (Echuca, Victoria), July 31, 1947, 2.

16 No.2 SQN Minute 3/5/AIR (7A), 22 January 1960, A1196 1/501/781, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA).

17 John Hungerford, Malaya Posting (1962–1965), Sporting Life, private memoir provided to Australia’s Asian Garrison Project, 14 August 2017.

18 Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (New York: Penguin, 2004), 14.

19 Janice N. Brownfoot, ‘Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds: Sport and Society in Colonial Malaya,’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 19, no. 2–3 (2002): 131.

20 Brownfoot, ‘Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds,’ 131; See also Jared van Duinen, ‘Playing to the “Imaginary Grandstand”: Sport, the “British World”, and an Australian Colonial Identity,’ Journal of Global History 8, no. 2 (2013): 342–64.

21 See Brian Stoddart, ‘Sport, Cultural Imperialism, and Colonial Response in the British Empire,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 4 (1988): 649–73.

22 For two recent examples that tie sport to military history and colonialism see Gerald Gem’s recent study of the ‘relatively underscrutinised’ place of sport in the American occupation of the Philippines and Elizabeth Cooper’s study of cricket and the West India Regiment. See Gems, Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and Bayonets (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 1; and Cooper, ‘Playing Against Empire,’ Slavery & Abolition 39, no. 3 (2018): 540–57.

23 See Samuel M. Clevenger, ‘Sport History, Modernity and the Logic of Coloniality: A Case for Decoloniality,’ Rethinking History 21, no. 4 (2017): 6.

24 For examples see James Mills, ‘Colonialism, Christians and Sport: The Catholic Church and Football in Goa, 1883–1951,’ Football Studies 5, no. 2 (2002): 11–26; for a challenge to orthodox constructions of reception and resistance in colonial sport see Clevenger, ‘Sport History, Modernity and the Logic of Coloniality,’ 1–20.

25 Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania), September 28, 1946, 4.

26 Christine De Matos, ‘Occupation Masculinities: The Residues of Colonial Power in Australian Occupied Japan,’ in Gender, Power, and Military Occupations: Asia Pacific and the Middle East since 1945, ed. De Matos and Rowena Ward (London: Routledge, 2012), 28.

27 Albany Advertiser, July 28, 1947, 9; Riverina Herald, July 31, 1947, 2.

28 For examples see the discussion of sport in the RAAF Education Section newspaper Simbun, published at RAAF Iwakuni. The paper’s sport pages in a March 1949 edition document RAAF personnel playing Australian Rules, rugby league, squash racquets, athletics and basketball and preparing for the upcoming cricket season. Matches were against other Australian service units from the Army and Navy. The Iwakuni teams travelled around the bay to Kure to play in BCOF competitions. Simbun 2, no. 27, March 26, 1949. This edition is held in the Private Papers of Deborah Abbott, privately held – a copy provided to the Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

29 Kalgoorlie Miner, Sept 26, 1949, 2.

30 Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, February 10, 1950, 4.

31 De Matos, ‘Occupation Masculinities,’ 28.

32 Brownfoot suggests that by the 1920s the local communities of both Singapore and Malaya had embraced western sport and its underlying ethos, see Brownfoot, ‘Healthy Bodies,’ 134. See also Allen Guttmann, Japanese Sports: A History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 67–95.

33 See the collection of essays in Sean Brawley and Nick Guoth, eds., Australia’s Asian Sporting Context, 1920s – 30s (London: Routledge, 2012); Brian Stoddart, ‘Orientalism, Golf and the Modern Age: Joe Kirkwood in Asia,’ Sport and Society 9, no. 5 (2006): 898–913.

34 Brownfoot, ‘Healthy Bodies,’ 135.

35 Noel Carter, Survey Response, December 7, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrison Project. Some units had even greater sporting requirements. Stationed in Singapore in the early 1970s, 6RAR members played competitive sport two times a week, undertook a cross country run two mornings a week and completed physical training (PT) on the remaining three mornings. Commander’s Diary, 6RAR, Monthly Report 1969, Australian Army Commander’s Diaries, Infantry Units, Australian War Memorial, AWM 95, Item 7/6/69.

36 John Nordheim, Survey Response, November 19, 2014, Butterworth/Penang Project, University of New South Wales, Ethics Clearance, 13 101.

37 Barry King, Survey Response, August 18, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrison Project.

38 LAC Anon (name not for publication), Survey Response, December 8, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

39 Geoffrey Curnow, Survey Response, February 5, 2014, Butterworth/Penang Project.

40 Rick Lovett, Survey Response, January 20, 2014, Butterworth/Penang Project.

41 Mrs M.C. Hunter, Red Cross, Terendak to J.S.L. Crab, Acting Chief Commissioner, ARCS, National Headquarters, Melbourne, 13 September 1968, 182 Field Force 1968 Malaya, Red Cross Archives, Box 33.

42 See Straits Times (Singapore), February 20, 1957, 14; RAAF News, April 1964, Army News June 1970 and December 1970. New Nation (Singapore), November 10, 1972, 16.

43 LAC Anon (name not for publication), Survey Response, December 8, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

44 Pam Hilditch, Survey Response, December 10, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

45 Robert Hawke, Survey Response, December 4, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

46 Gino Cinelli, Survey Response, July 24, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

47 Allen Stevenson, Survey Response, December 9, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

48 LAC Anon (name not for publication), Survey Response, December 8, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

49 Carolyn Hooper to Mrs D.J. Cotton, Maroochydore, Queensland, February 3, 1969, private papers of Carolyn Hooper, privately held, a copy provided to the Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

50 Hooper to Cotton, August 12, 1969, Hooper Papers.

51 Hooper to Cotton, June 21, 1969, Hooper Papers.

52 Jacquie Williams, Survey Response, April 4, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project. Hooper to Cotton, June 21, 1969; and Hooper to Cotton, August 12, 1969, Hooper Papers.

53 Trish Bassett, Survey Response, April 9, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

54 Army News, January 28, 1971.

55 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1963, 98.

56 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 17.

57 Australian Military Forces, Minute Paper, ‘Bukit Terendak – Primary School Accommodation’, 26 August 1958, A981/1/193 B4574572, NAA.

58 Douglas Booth, The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History (London: Routledge, 2005), 209.

59 Thomas C. Holt, ‘Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History,’ American Historical Review 100, no. 1 (1995): 1–20.

60 Richard White, ‘The Outsider’s Gaze and the Representation of Australia,’ Australia in the World: Perceptions and Possibilities (1994): 22–28. Jared van Duinen, The British World and an Australian National Identity: Anglo-Australian Cricket, 1860–1901 (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Graeme Davison, ‘The Imaginary Grandstand: International Sport and the Recognition of Australian Identity,’ in The Imaginary Grandstand: Identity and Narrative in Australian Sport, ed. Bernard Whimpress (Kent Town: Australian Society for Sports History, 2002), 12–26.

61 Richard White, ‘Travel, Writing and Australia, Studies in Travel Writing,’ 11, no. 1 (2007): 5. See also Sean Brawley, ‘“Second Rate Java Jaunters”: Soccer Football, the Imaginary Grandstand, Cultural Diplomacy and Australia’s Asian Context.’ in Australia’s Asian Sporting Context, 1920s – 30s, ed. Brawley and Guoth (London: Routledge, 2012); and Stuart Murray, ‘Sports Diplomacy in the Australian Context: A Case Study of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade,’ Sports Law eJournal (2013).

62 For a discussion of a range of sports with a range of Asian nations during the interwar years consult the series of essays edited by Brawley and Guoth, Australia’s Asian Sporting Context; Megan Ponsford, ‘An unsung History: The Birth of Indian–Australian Cricket,’ Sport in Society (2017): 1–20.

63 Daniel Oakman, ‘The Politics of Foreign Aid: Counter-Subversion and the Colombo Plan, 1950–1970,’ Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change 13, no. 3 (2001): 255–72.

64 Richard Cashman, Sport in the National Imagination: Australian Sport in the Federation Decades (Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2002), 105.

65 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1965, 4.

66 John Ryan, Survey Response, December 6, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

67 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1963, 15.

68 While noting that the children had ‘made a worthwhile impression’ in their sporting engagements with locals, the sports master went on to contradict his earlier message in the same paragraph. Being a good sport was important but it was now also known within the host community that the Australian students were ‘a force to contend with, particularly in athletics and swimming … ’. Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 24.

69 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 24.

70 Martin Clark, Survey Response, May 29, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project. As a military policeman Howard Jackson had a similar experience when he was posted to Terendak in 1969, Survey Response, September 12, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project. The written record supports such recollections. In June 1968, the only external sporting matches being played at Terendak and reported by Army News were hockey and soccer matches against Malaysian army units. See Army News, June 20, 68. In 1973, Army News reported on Australian participation in a 20 team 6-a-side cricket competition. All teams were from the Australian, New Zealand and British forces, see Army News, March 8, 1973.

71 Straits Times, September 18, 1970, 29.

72 Mathew Radcliffe, Kampong Australia: The RAAF at Butterworth (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 209–214 & 238–42.

73 That the Southern Malaysian and Singaporean experiences of the Australians appear to have more in common than the Southern and Northern Malaysian experiences speaks to the importance of the garrison experience over any historical or racial dimensions informing local sport. For a study speaking to the distinctions between Malaysian and Singaporean sport consult Peter Horton, ‘The Ambivalence of the Reaction, Response, Legacy and War Memory: The Japanese Occupation of the Malayan Peninsula: The Consequences for Sport of the Imperial Past and the Democratic Present,’ in Japanese Imperialism: Politics and Sport in East Asia, eds. Tianwei Ren, Peter Horton, Gwang Ok, and J. A. Mangan (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 279–334.

74 Commander’s Diary, 2RAR, Monthly Report June 1962, Australian Army Commander’s Diaries, Infantry Units, Australian War Memorial, AWM 95, Item 7/2/27 Part 1.

75 Bill Heins, Survey Response, March 12, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

76 Oliver Ireland, Survey Response, February 2, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

77 Graham Henry, Survey Response, June 7, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

78 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 24.

79 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 17.

80 Ian Flett, Survey Response, June 3, 2014, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

81 Kathleen Raynes, Survey Response, November 23, 2013, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

82 Tim Radford, Survey Response, June 11, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

83 See Graeme Davison, Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2004); Georgine Clarsen, ‘Automobiles and Australian Modernisation: The Redex Around-Australia Trials of the 1950s,’ Australian Historical Studies 41, no. 3 (2010): 352–68.

84 Routine Orders, 6RAR, Kangsaw Barracks, December 7, 1972, Australian Army Commanders’ diaries (Vietnam), Infantry Units, AWM 95, Item 7/6/68.

85 Army News, January 10, 1974.

86 Army News, August 10, 1972.

87 Army News, August 10, 1972.

88 J.A. Jacobs, ‘Future of RAAF Presence at Butterworth’, 30 September 1980, Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur, A1838, 696/6/4/5 Part 7, NAA.

89 Frank Daly, Survey Response, February 7, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

90 Michael Slattery, Survey Response, December 7, 2016, Australia’s Asian Garrisons Project.

91 Dave Peters, Survey Response, January 22, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

92 New Nation (Singapore), April 22, 1979, 28.

93 John Archer, Survey Response, June 5, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

94 See Robert A. Stebbins, ‘Pleasurable Aerobic Activity: A Type of Casual Leisure with Salubrious Implications,’ World Leisure Journal 46, no. 4 (2004): 55–58.

95 Tim Radford, Survey Response, June 11, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

96 ‘Aussie Hash Genealogy,’ http://www.hhh.asn.au/ (accessed August 15, 2017).

97 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1971, 35.

98 Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1971, 35.

99 The Sunday Times, September 3, 1905, 1.

100 Ai Kobayashi, ‘Turning Japanese? The Development of Judo in Post-War Australia,’ in Making Histories, Making Memories: The Construction of Australian Sporting Identities, ed. Rob Hess (Melbourne: Australian Society for Sports History), 39–40.

101 Williamstown Chronicle, April 5, 1946, 3.

102 Kobayashi, ‘Turning Japanese?,’ 39–40.

103 A central character in Kobayashi’s account is a BCOF veteran she identifies as ‘Roy Stapoes’. See ‘Turning Japanese?,’ 42. It would appear this is a typographical error and the individual concerned was one Roy Staples. The Australian World War II nominal roll shows that Staples was discharged from the Army on 1 November 1945 before the Australians commenced their occupational role in Japan. It is possible that he later re-enlisted and served in the occupation force though his name does not appear in the extent nominal roll for BCOF compiled by Neil Smith. See Neil Smith, Disarming the Menace: Australian Soldiers with the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces Japan, 1946–1952 (Brighton: Mostly Unsung Military History, 2012).

104 Kobayashi, ‘Turning Japanese?,’ 40. For a broader discussion of judo’s transformation after World War II consult Miguel Villamón, et al., ‘Reflexive Modernization and the Disembedding of Jūdō from 1946 to the 2000 Sydney Olympics,’ International Review for the Sociology of Sport 39, no. 2 (2004): 139–56; Alex Channon, ‘Western Men and Eastern Arts: The Significance of Eastern Martial Arts Disciplines in British Men’s Narratives of Masculinity,’ Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science 1, no. 2–3 (2012): 111–27.

105 Interview with Gordon Johns, recorded July 5, 2004, Australians at War Film Archive, UNSW Canberra, http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/2176-gordon-johns.

106 See Windward Marine (Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohoe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii), 20, no. 5, February 5 1971, 4; and History of the Kyushin Ryu Jujitsu Club in Queensland. http://www.kyushinryujujitsu.com/our-history/ (accessed January 24, 2018).

107 See for example the letter to the editor from Royal Australian Navy sailor Colin Davis who had trained in Kure while stationed at HMAS Commonwealth and was now keen to find a local club on his return to Perth. Western Mail, November 25, 1954, 3.

108 Canberra Times, April 30, 1957, 12. Smith’s nominal role does not list a Ken Fender. Another member of the Canberra Judo Club was Keith Moore. A Private Keith A. Moore did serve with the 65 Battalion in BCOF. See Smith, Disarming the Menace, 156.

109 Truth (Brisbane), November 16, 1952, 10.

110 Courier-Mail (Brisbane), June 12, 1953, 6.

111 See ‘7th Dan – Shihan Jim Stackpoole,’ http://www.kyushinryujujitsu.com/7th-dan-shihan-jim-stackpoole/ (accessed January 24, 2018).

112 Australians joined Tae Kwon Do clubs in Singapore, see Army News, February 22, 1973; and July 26, 1973.

113 http://ijji.org/ijji_history. A club was also established at the RAAF School on Penang, see Sue Morley, ‘Judo – An Enjoyable Occupation,’ Austral: RAAF School Penang, School Magazine, 1962, 51–52.

114 ‘Geoff Reddish Shihan,’ Bugeido Australia, www.bugeido.com (accessed October 25, 2017).

115 RAAF Gunnies Mail, April 27, 2017, https://gunnies.com.au/sites/default/files/Gunnies%20Mail%20%2027th%20April_1.pdf (accessed July 14, 2017).

116 Telephone interview with Raymond Lea, October 3, 2017, Australia’s Asian Garrison Project.

117 See Graham Rennie, Jui-jitsu & kuatsu (Sunshine: International Jui-Jitsu Academy, 1974).

118 ‘Geoff Reddish Shihan,’ Bugeido Australia.

119 Fulton Smith, Survey Response, January 25, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

120 Frank Daly, Survey Response, February 7, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

121 Neil Handsley, Survey Response, February 23, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

122 David Coote, Survey Response, March 3, 2014 Penang/Butterworth Project.

123 Denis Silcock, Survey Response, February 19, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

124 Terrence Flynn, Survey Response, February 2, 2014, Penang/Butterworth Project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [Grant Number Discovery Grant/DP160100750].