It was an unusually cold night on 31 July 1942 when, at 3.30am, a piece of shrapnel from a Japanese bomb pierced the walls of a Bamboo Creek Road home in Miallo.

John Scarcella was there, and remembers hearing the cries of two and a half year old Carmel Zullo after a metal shard grazed her head as she was sleeping in her cot.

"I was only 11 years old but I still remember it fairly well. There were three partners on the farm, there were two families living in one house on the farm.

"When the bomb fell it was such a very, very cold night, early morning, they hadn't realised what had happened as they were all sound asleep and cuddling under blankets.

"Then they realised the little girl couldn't stop crying. One of the shrapnel had taken her bonnet off and some hair as well.

"She was very fortunate because had it been another half a millimetre it would have killed her."

Mr Scarcella said people had not prepared for an attack, even though the Japanese were pushing south from the Torres Strait.

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"The Japanese were on our doorstep, up in the Torres Strait and that part of the world.

"You got the news later in the papers where they were flying at night from wherever they were based all the way down to Mackay and back.

"In those days having those sort of planes that could fly that sort of distance was a big thing."

While many stories have circulated as to why the Japanese bombers dropped their load on the region, Mr Scarcella, who now lives in Mareeba, says he believes they were being pursued by allied forces.

"I think the story that makes more sense is that our guys were chasing them and they unloaded their bombs to get away from them. They dropped eight bombs in the area, some were in the Daintree areas that didn't go off, and were recovered.

"They reckon it was a very, very bright moonlit night and there were some fires going on and they (the Japanese bombers) thought it was the Mossman Mill, but I think the other story makes more sense."

A monument to the event now stands on Bamboo Creek Road, opened by Carmel herself in 1992 on the 50th anniversary. Carmel now lives in Brisbane.

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