On the night of May 31 and the early hours of June 1, 1942, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. During the five hours of the attack a torpedo sank the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 sailors. A week later Japanese submarines shelled Sydney, but only one of the 10 shells fired detonated fully.

“Others recall the panic and excitement of being herded into shelters, under beds, stairwells and kitchen tables as the sirens sounded all over Sydney. All of these stories are significant, no matter how trivial they seem.” Aged-development worker Alecia Buchanan said Sydney Under Attack was about adding a social dimension to military histories.

The way we were: Mr [Earl Brabazon], left, Mrs [MARJORIE Hancock], Mrs [Brenda Humble] and Mr [Bruce Crosson] at Sydney’s Paddington Town Hall; Dan Peled; Photo: Photo

MARJORIE Hancock was having a magic night dancing on The Showboat with her sailor boyfriend, who had just come back from the Coral Sea.

“I was 19, it really was a wonderful night,” the 79-year-old recalls.

“Later that night, someone woke me up, said the air sirens were going. I told them not to be so silly and went back to sleep. The next day I woke to find thewindows shattered for a mile around. Everyone was going around like stunned mullets, shocked. The most serious damage was the backyard dunnies, quite a lot of them went over.

“If you couldn’t laugh about the lighter side, you would have gone mad.” She was a nurse at the time. “I was 19, looking after guys who had been shot to pieces, lost their arms, lost their legs. I grew up fast.”

The night Japanese shells rained down upon Sydney’s eastern suburbs lives on in the memories of many an elderly citizen. Those memories are now being recorded in the oral history project Sydney Under Attack.

On the night of May 31 and the early hours of June 1, 1942, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour. During the five hours of the attack a torpedo sank the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 sailors. A week later Japanese submarines shelled Sydney, but only one of the 10 shells fired detonated fully.

South Sydney Council and the federal Veterans Affairs Department yesterday brought together more than 120 senior citizens. Mayor John Fowler said recording vivid memories of ordinary people added to Australia’s social history.

“Some were eyewitnesses, some heard the blasts from the shelling,” he said.

“Others recall the panic and excitement of being herded into shelters, under beds, stairwells and kitchen tables as the sirens sounded all over Sydney. All of these stories are significant, no matter how trivial they seem.” Aged-development worker Alecia Buchanan said Sydney Under Attack was about adding a social dimension to military histories.

All Brenda Humble, 68, can remember is her excitement as an eight- year-old being hidden under a table in her parent’s kitchen. Earl Brabazon, 78, remembers being stuck with the job of digging up the unexploded shells that fell on Woollahra golf course at Rose Bay.

Bruce Crosson, 78, who was a volunteer air raid warden, said: “You could hear the booms and bangs, but we didn’t know what was going on. We had dug an air raid shelter in the backyard, but it was a wet winter, it filled up with water.I tumbled out of bed, grabbed my tin hat and gas mask … “