Perception of a Threat to Australia: The Japanese in New Caledonia before 1941

This article opens with a brief historical overview of the emergence of the Japanese community in New Caledonia in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and outlines some of the concerns which arose in Australia over the presence of Japanese miners in New Caledonia. It then discusses the preparations that the Australian and New Caledonian authorities undertook in the early 1940s in the event of war with Japan. It shows that the authorities in both locations, despite the lateness of the decision by the New Caledonian authorities to pursue a program of transferring Japanese internees to Australia, made quite extensive preparations for the internment of the Japanese residents there