He was a teetotaler who'd beaten alcoholism. A pacifist who led Australia through its darkest war. John Curtin took office as Prime Minister in October 1941, seven weeks before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and upended the Pacific. He was 56, leading a minority government, and about to face the worst military crisis in Australian history. Born in Creswick, Victoria on January 8, 1885, Curtin grew up in a working-class family. He left school at fourteen, worked as a copy boy and then a labor organizer, and drank heavily through his twenties and thirties. He dried out, married, and channeled his energy into the Australian Labor Party, eventually becoming its leader in 1935. When Japan entered the war, Curtin made a decision that redefined Australia's place in the world. He turned to America. His famous December 1941 declaration, published in the Melbourne Herald, stated bluntly that Australia looked to the United States "free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom." Churchill was furious. He'd ordered Australian troops to fight in North Africa and wanted to divert them to Burma. Curtin said no. He demanded his divisions come home to defend Australia. He got his way. When Japan bombed Darwin on February 19, 1942, killing 235 people, and when Japanese submarines entered Sydney Harbor in May, Curtin didn't flinch. He introduced conscription for service in the Southwest Pacific, a deeply controversial move in Australia, and worked closely with General Douglas MacArthur to plan the island-hopping campaign that pushed Japan back. He worked himself to exhaustion. Literally. He suffered from heart disease, insomnia, and chronic anxiety. He collapsed repeatedly during the final years of the war. He died in office on July 5, 1945, three months before Japan surrendered. He was 60. He never saw the country he'd saved make it through.