Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, which immediately led the United States and Great Britain to declare war on Japan. The next day Australia declared war on Japan, the first declaration of war Australia had ever made independently of Britain. In his New Year’s message delivered on the radio on 26 December 1941 and published in the Melbourne Herald the next day, Curtin announced that: ‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.’ This decisive move away from Great Britain infuriated British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.(1) (1)-https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/curtin-brings-home-troops