John Curtin at a War Council meeting in Canberra,
26 March 1942
During the final days of December 1941, the newly appointed Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, was approached to provide a New Year message to be published in the Melbourne Herald. Amongst his controversial statements to the Australian people was the oft-quoted sentence:
'Without any inhibitions of any kind, I made it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.'
Curtin's suggestion that Australia should play a role with the United States in determining Pacific strategy upset both the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the American President, Franklin Roosevelt, as well as many Australian conservatives.
Once the Philippines fell to Japanese troops, Roosevelt decided that Australia would become the main American base in the south-west Pacific. Roosevelt ordered General Douglas MacArthur, former US commander in the Philippines, to travel to Melbourne to take command of the Allied forces in the area. Although Curtin was keen to share the military burden with the new Commander-in-Chief, South-West Pacific Area, he would not relinquish his government's control of the disposition of Australian forces. He also established the Prime Minister's War Conference to be a link between the Australian Government and MacArthur. The Conference members included MacArthur and Curtin and any other ministers deemed necessary for a particular discussion.
By early 1942, over 25,000 US troops unable to travel on to the Philippines had already arrived in Australia. Australians rallied to welcome their Allies, with the country providing food and accommodation as well as airfields and other resources for the increasing numbers of American service personnel arriving in the country.