The Prime Minister wants Darwin to become known as Australia's Pearl Harbour and says too few people know what happened there seven decades ago.

"I didn't learn about it at school," Julia Gillard told a television interviewer in Darwin, where she commemorated the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the city by Japanese forces during World War II.

Feeling the heat … a soldier during the ceremony. Photo: Glenn Campbell

"The government of the day, concerned about morale, deliberately released low numbers of how many people had lost their lives,'' she said. ''They said 15 when of course the truth was more than 240 … This is really Australia's Pearl Harbour and we should understand it."

Among the 5000 people who gathered to remember the bombing were about 90 who lived through it.