In early 1942, our nation had been engaged in hostilities for two and a half years, but this was the moment the reality of war hit home.
February 19.
Our date of infamy.
Australia's Pearl Harbor.
Today we stand “safe on freedom's vantage ground” and look back on those events with gratitude and respect.
Gratitude and respect that the passing of seven decades has only served to increase.
The Japanese Imperial force that attacked Darwin was much the same force that attacked Hawaii nine weeks earlier.
It was a massive armada of 242 planes and Darwin didn't stand a chance.
It took just five bombs to destroy the USS Peary.
She went down as a brave ship does - with all guns blazing, even as the water began to cover her deck.
The historian Peter Grose called it a “doomed yet magnificent reply” to the Japanese assault.
A feat that deserves an honoured place in the military history of the United States and in the story of our two nations.
The USS Peary holds that place, securely and lastingly.
A place her crew earned with their courage and with their lives.
Therefore the placement of this gun is no accident.
It points directly to the spot where the USS Peary rests on the floor of Darwin Harbour.
Not a wreck but a war grave.
As precious in its own way as the lawns and granite tablets beneath which their comrades rest in Hawaii.
Friends, these Americans died alongside many Australians.
They were among the first of thousands who would serve and die together in the 40 months of bitter warfare to come, bonded in a brotherhood of shared sacrifice.
As our personnel fought side by side, so did our nations.
And thus from these disastrous events came some lasting benefit:
The distant pre-war friendship between Australia and the United States became a firm and lasting alliance.
The course of Japanese history was turned towards democracy and peace.
And together our countries helped build, through the United Nations, a world order more just and secure than what had gone before.
These were prizes dearly bought.
So today we gather to ensure that the value of the sacrifice made in this city is never surrendered.
We commit ourselves to always “see and hold the good”
To honourably inhabit the freedom for which these brave Americans offered the gift of their lives.
Speaking in Australia at the height of the war, Eleanor Roosevelt said that “victory comes as a result of the full and free gift of all that we have within us.”
These gallant men gave all that they had - in full and free measure, as Americans always do.
They were far from American soil.
But they were not strangers.
Here they rest in Australia's embrace - at home with us and in peace - forever.