Reading time: 3 minutes
1945: The Price of Peace – a new exhibition by the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library is now on show in the TL Robertson Library.
Eighty years on from a monumental year, our new exhibition commemorates key events of the last part of World War II, and the final months of John Curtin’s life. On 28 February 1945, Prime Minister John Curtin declared in parliament: ‘There is a price the world must pay for peace … I shall not attempt to specify the price, but it does mean less nationalism, less selfishness, less race ambition.’
Curtin died on 5 July 1945 after a long illness, having led Australia through the Second World War since October 1941. Our exhibition includes a touching letter from Curtin’s political opponent, Robert Menzies, written a week before Curtin’s death, urging him to take a ‘real holiday’, and condolence telegrams to Curtin’s widow, Elsie, from UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman. A panorama of Curtin’s funeral at Karrakatta Cemetery gives a sense of a nation in mourning; 20,000 people were estimated to be in attendance.
Curtin’s death came after the Allies had defeated Germany but six weeks before Victory over Japan was declared. On display is the diary kept by sixteen-year-old Hazel Masterton of Mt Hawthorn, future wife of Prime Minister Bob Hawke. She was at a dance when the first rumours rippled through about the Japanese surrender and wrote, ‘Everyone in the hall joined in a big ring & sang, “Auld Lang Syne” then “There’ll always be an England” & “Land of Hope & Glory”.’ The prominent place of religion in Australian society is shown in hymn-sheets for the May 8th Victory in Europe and for the August Victory in the Pacific thanksgiving services. Alongside celebrations of victory it was a time of remembering the dead — at least 35 million people worldwide — in solemn ceremonies such as a service held at the State War Memorial in King’s Park, captured in two photographs in our exhibition. Paper cranes, symbols of peace and hope in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are another aspect of the exhibition.
The exhibition on Level 3 of the TL Robertson Library near the Reading Room runs until November 2025.
