Ken Cook and the Japanese collaborators : the Grace Building, 77-79 York Street

Guests and visitors to the elegant art deco Grace Hotel can view in its marbled and tiled foyer a detailed illustrated display of the building's history. They learn of the Grace's dashed expectations with the onset of the Depression following its construction as an office building in 1930, its struggle to attract tenants during the rest of the decade, and like Australia itself, its salvation in early 1942 when the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, took over the premises, bringing it financial security at last. But what the chronology fails to reveal is that the man who promised he would return to the Phillipines and wrest it back from the Japanese who were sweeping towards New guinea and Australia was taking up residence in a building which had housed, since 1933, none other than the Japanese Consulate-General as a major tenant.