structural:expansion, information:classification, structural:summarization
Death

By 1944, a time when he was travelling to and from London and Washington for meetings with Churchill, Roosevelt and other Allied leaders, Curtin had already developed heart disease. He had a heart attack in November 1944, and did not return to work until January 1945. With the end of the war in sight, his health began to deteriorate seriously and at a rapid pace.

At 4:00 am on 5 July 1945, as Australia's 7th Division began its last operation against Japanese forces in the Battle of Balikpapan, John Curtin died at The Lodge. Aged just 60, he was the second Australian prime minister to die in office within six years. The next day, Curtin's body was laid in state at the King's Hall in Parliament House, where a memorial service was held, conducted by his friend, the Presbyterian minister Hector Harrison. Ben Chifley and Enid Lyons were seen to weep openly. Harrison seemed to include Curtin among the Australian servicemen who had made the ultimate sacrifice:

"His Calvary was the anguish of a man of peace who loathed war with all his heart and soul. A one who spent his life in an attempt to promote human understanding, and journeyed oft in that attempt. And yet who, by a strange irony of fate, was chosen by destiny to lead the nation in her hour of direst peril... when the hosts of the North came down like a mighty flood, confident in strength and exalted in victory, he did not shrink from the hazards of the conflict but threw himself into his work with an utter devotion which at length laid him low and at last called for the supreme sacrifice. We pay him today the homage of a grateful people as one whose name will live forever more in the land he loved and among the free peoples of the world.

Bearing his coffin from the King's Hall were Opposition Leader Robert Menzies, and former Prime Ministers Billy Hughes, Earle Page and James Scullin. His body was returned to Perth on a RAAF Dakota escorted by a flight of nine fighter aircraft. After lying in state, he was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth; the service was attended by over 30,000 at the cemetery with many more lining the streets.

Curtin was initially succeeded as prime minister by his deputy, Frank Forde; seven days later a party ballot installed Ben Chifley as Labor Leader and therefore prime minister. Many of Curtin's post-war reconstruction plans were implemented by his successor Chifley, who in 1946 led the ALP to consecutive victories for the first time. Curtin's 9 years and 277 days as leader of the federal ALP would remain a record until it was surpassed by Gough Whitlam in 1975.