Well it as the US that saved Australia from becoming Japanese.
What would have happened if Australia had fallen to Japan?
The population would've been enslaved or butchered, as happened everywhere else Japan marauded ...refer 'The Rape of Nanking'...and mommy dearest probably turned into a Japanese sex slave, laundry slave or worse.
And I would not have been born...or I could've been the son of a Japanese army rapist.
Luckily, the rag tag Aussie militia kids who were sent to the jungles of PNG to fight the crack Japanese troops, although losing every battle managed to hang on long enough until reinforcements arrived and all were suppied with new guns, not the WW1 relics they had to fight with.
Then they thought up some new tactics...and prevailed.
On the 29th August the Japanese broke through the Australian lines forcing the Australian Battalions to withdraw towards Alola and then to withdraw to Templeton's Crossing. This was followed by a further withdrawal to the major supply point of Myola. News of the withdrawals reached Australia and the hierarchy expected the Japanese to soon claim victory. American General Douglas MacArthur announced that:
"the Australians have proven themselves unable to match the enemy in jungle fighting. Aggressive leadership is lacking."
With defeat looking inevitable, preparations were under way to form a defensive grid across central Australia where the next attempt to stop the Japanese would be made.
But back in Papua New Guinea, the Diggers, despite being down for the count, had refused to surrender. They had endured two months of retreats up and down ridges that were knee deep in mud, starvation, jungle sicknesses and being soaked by constant rain, yet they still persevered. Some found the strength to continue with patriotic notions about defending Australia. Others conformed to the battler ideal of finding victory in a refusal to give in. Some kept going by supporting their mates, or receiving the support of their mates. Some just wanted to live.
There was no chance of an evacuation and because the Japanese never showed humanity to prisoners of war, surrender was not an option either. The only way the Diggers could survive was to keep going.
At Ioribaiwa, the Australians halted the Japanese advance. For the next few weeks the Australians employed the "offensive-defence" tactics that had been used by the Diggers in Tobruk.
Japanese forces would be concentrated by holding positions as long as possible, minor counter attacks destroyed or delayed them and it was then it was set up to do it all again and then again. As the Japanese weakened, they began to withdraw and suffered what the Australians had suffered in the preceding two months. They faced constant retreats up and down ridges, starvation, dying comrades, jungle sickness, soaked by constant rain and all this whilst they were trying to defend themselves against an attacking force.
The Japanese didn't seem to cope with the conditions quite as well and the Australians took little time to seize the initiative. Village after village was recaptured until finally, on the October 29th, Australian troops moved out of the dank rain-forest to halt and gaze at the distant sun-warmed village of Kokoda. A final push to retake the beachheads at Buna and Gona saw the Japanese not so much defeated, but annihilated. It has been estimated that of their total force of 13,500 men only about 700 survived the fighting, disease and starvation. The Australian troops forced the few survivors out of Oro on the 23rd January 1943. The tide of the war had turned.
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US troops were also fighting the Japanese in PNG.
And it was in the Battle of The Coral Sea that the US Navy really saved Australia.
