It amazed me that I was sitting in front of it

 


The Plane That Started It All

By Makayla Lockwood 

During this trip, one moment where I felt like I pieced together a major part of the story in relation to the Bombing of Darwin was whilst we were at the Darwin Aviation Museum.

Hajime Toyoshima was the man who led the bombing squadron against Darwin on the fateful 19th February 1942. He was also the man who led the raid on Perl Harbour less than a year before. His plane caught my attention, because without him and his plane leading the squadrons of Japanese pilots, there wouldn’t have been an attack that day. It hit me: this was one of the planes that struck fear in the citizens of Darwin. You would have heard it in the skies. Seen it fly overhead. It was used as a weapon against Australia. And now it sat here, just a pile of scrap metal. It crashed somewhere on Melville Island, on Australian soil. Toyoshima was the first Japanese prisoner of war in Australia and died during an attempt to escape his POW camp in NSW.

I sat in front of it and realised that this is the plane that started it all. That lead the other planes. That caused hundreds of deaths on Australian soil. And it amazed me that I was sitting in front of it. He thought he was going to destroy us, but we actually destroyed him. The plane, once so big, now amounted to nothing right in front of me. It reminded me that even the most skilled people can get it wrong. The best plans can fail. That we are never sure what tomorrow will bring. Or even if we will have a tomorrow. That we need to live every moment as if it was our last.


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