Loyalty

Name: Loyalty
Price: 49.95 AUD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9781923267541

Australians, Japanese and Espionage on the eve of the Pacific War

Nick Hordern

$49.95

Paperback

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English

Aust Scholarly Publishing
01 February 2026

History; Australasian & Pacific history

In the years before Pearl Harbor, Australian authorities were convinced that large numbers of the Japanese diplomatic and business community were spying, and that many of their Australian associates were helping them. Certainly, some Japanese avidly harvested information that was publicly available, and some Australians helped them to do so - but there's no evidence that either stole actual military secrets. Targeting Australians deemed security threats, the authorities relied on subjective judgements about people's 'loyalty' to decide whether they should be sanctioned. Nor did such suspicions about 'loyalty' die away at the War's end; the belief that prominent Australians had acted as collaborators, and had been prepared to welcome a Japanese invasion, persisted for decades. Drawing on previously unexamined evidence, this book argues that these beliefs emerged from a baseless conspiracy theory.

By: Nick Hordern
Imprint: Aust Scholarly Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781923267541
ISBN 10: 192326754X
Pages: 350
Publication Date: 01 February 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

A former diplomat and journalist, Nick Hordern is the co-author of two histories of crime in Sydney: Sydney Noir: The Golden Years (2017) and World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War (2019) and the editor of the first English translation of Liu Yichang’s classic 1963 novel of Hong Kong, The Drunkard (2020).