War of Words by McDonald Hamish

Author:McDonald, Hamish
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2014-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

ISLAND FORTRESS

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

— The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Hong Kong–Singapore 1936–42

But where to go? Charles contemplated his options. As the Japanese had undoubtedly noted, he would make a very good spy for the British or Australians, but the question of his citizenship was still hanging over him.

While he was preparing to marry Naka back in 1921, he’d been informed by the British consulate in Yokohama – there would not be an independent Australian mission in Japan for another 15 years – that it could not carry out the ceremony or register the marriage, as his naturalisation as a British citizen was only ‘local’ to Australia.

At the time Charles had written off letters to the highest authority he could think of in Melbourne, the Governor-General’s executive council, applying to have his citizenship made ‘Imperial’. First came a reply from a secretary for immigration that it would not be possible to lodge an application for Imperial status as he had not been resident in Australia for the previous year, as required. Then a terse note from the viceroy’s secretary that any children of their marriage would not be recognised as British citizens.

Five years later, in September 1926, Charles had been informed by the consulate that as he had been outside British jurisdictions for seven years, even his local naturalisation was subject to revocation under Australian law. He sent off another letter querying this, and asking now whether if he came back to Australia, Naka and their two boys would be allowed to settle.

A very cold letter came from an assistant secretary in the Australian Immigration Department confirming that this was the case, unless he could show he was on some mission of service to British interests or had maintained a ‘substantial connection with His Majesty’s dominions’.

As you have lived in Japan since 1919 your certificate is liable to revocation early next year if you continue to reside outside of British territory … With regard to the question of the admission of your Japanese wife and your children into Australia, I have to inform you that in view of the ‘White Australia’ policy it is regretted that authority cannot be granted for them to enter and settle in this country.

Charles’ Australian citizenship was duly revoked in early 1927. With his father dead, the chances of his Swiss paternity being acknowledged had also disappeared. He had been left with simply the entry of his birth in Chika Sakai’s family register, her koseki, as having been born to her at Negishi – an entry she always insisted was a fiction of convenience. At the time Charles had gotten himself re-registered as a Japanese citizen, then went to the British consulate to hand in his British passport and the impressive certificate of naturalisation under which he’d entered the Australian Army and served at Lone Pine.

Now in 1936, with Japan repudiating him too, he spent the next few months collecting

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