Deep South Down Under

Abstract

This article examines the fiction writing of two American authors, James A. Michener and John Oliver Killens, and asks how the American ‘occupation’ of Australia during the Second World War featured, or failed to feature, in their writings. The Second World War arguably remains the watershed moment in which American servicemen and Australians from all walks of life entered into a prolonged awareness of one another, courtesy of the presence of around a million enlisted Americans who passed through Australia on their way to the war against Imperial Japan. In his short story ‘The Jungle’, Michener structured international gender relations in ways that anticipated his novel Sayonara (1954), allowing the reader to draw parallels between the American–Australian and American–Japanese social dynamic but also subordinating the wartime social history of Australia to American current affairs. For his part, Killens was likewise preoccupied with American social history, specifically the rights of enlisted African‐American servicemen. His novel And Then We Heard the Thunder (1963) deployed Australian characters in a race war fantasy that had hitherto imagined an alliance between African Americans and Japanese. In summary, Michener and Killens both subordinated Australian wartime history to American current affairs, albeit with different literary objectives in mind.