The island of New Guinea had three governing powers in 1884. The Dutch controlled the western half of the main island as Netherlands New Guinea. The Germans controlled the northern sector of the island’s eastern half, together with New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville, as German New Guinea. The southern sector of the eastern half was a British protectorate known as the Territory of Papua. In 1906, the Territory of Papua became an Australian protectorate; in 1920, after the First World War, the League of Nations assigned the German sector to Australian control as the mandated Territory of New Guinea. During the Second World War, the Australians fought in both Papua and the Territory of New Guinea. This region—referred to by commanders and troops alike as New Guinea—is today the nation of Papua New Guinea.
Following the outbreak of war in the Pacific on 8 December 1941, the Japanese moved rapidly to establish a far-flung defensive perimeter. New Guinea was a critical part of this perimeter, providing a formidable shield against any future Allied advance from Australia. The invasion of New Guinea began on 23 January 1942, when the Japanese South Seas Force landed at Rabaul, on New Britain, and at Kavieng, on New Ireland. The small Australian garrisons were overwhelmed. On New Britain, the Japanese troops set the pattern for what would become a vicious war by massacring some 150 unarmed Australian prisoners. The invasion of mainland New Guinea soon followed, with landings at Lae and Salamaua on 8 March 1942. However, a successful attack on both anchorages by carrier-borne US aircraft delayed the planned assault on Port Moresby until early May, when the Japanese force was turned back in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Meanwhile, meagre Australian forces hit back at the garrisons at Lae and Salamaua with attacks from the air and commando raids on the ground.
After their navy had suffered reverses in the Coral Sea and at Midway Atoll, northwest of Hawaii, the Japanese tried to reach Port Moresby overland, via the Kokoda Trail. On 21 July 1942, in preparation for this advance, they landed troops on the north Papuan coast between Gona and Buna. By late August they had begun crossing the Owen Stanley Range in the face of an underprepared Australian force and a complacent Allied command. Victories at Isurava, Efogi and Ioribaiwa Ridge brought the Japanese force too close to Port Moresby for comfort. A combination of attrition, strategic priorities elsewhere and a hardening Australian resolve eventually forced the Japanese to withdraw, but much hard fighting remained before the Australians retook Kokoda and reached the north coast. Meanwhile, in August–September 1942, Australian troops and aircraft also pushed back a bold Japanese seaborne assault on the airfields at Milne Bay.
Having fought their way back across the Kokoda Trail, the Australians came up against well-defended Japanese positions on the coast, at Gona and Sanananda. At Buna, two fresh American regiments were also unable to make headway. As long as the Japanese held these beachheads, Port Moresby would be under threat. After heavy losses, the Australians finally captured Gona on 9 December 1942, but Buna did not fall until almost a month later, and then only after an Australian brigade had been brought in to finish the job. Sanananda was not secured until the Australians had made the vital breakthrough to the coast, in late January 1943. For the Allies, the battle for the beachheads was the costliest fighting of the war in New Guinea.
Ever since the Japanese invasion, the Australians had held the town of Wau, in the ranges inland from Salamaua. From there, Australian commandos operated against Lae, Salamaua and Mubo. After their defeats in Papua, the Japanese reinforced Salamaua and sent a force overland to attack Wau in January 1943. In a bold manoeuvre, it reached the outskirts of Wau, where a company of Australians held on long enough for reinforcements to be flown into the local airfield. A difficult campaign among the jungle-clad ridges that protected Salamaua continued until September 1943. It proved a clever diversionary strategy, drawing Japanese troops away from Lae, which was already isolated in the wake of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea on 2–3 March 1943, when a Japanese convoy had been sunk by Allied aircraft.
On 4–5 September, the Australians landed from sea and air, east and west of Lae; within two weeks, they had retaken the town. Only days later, a company of Australian commandos captured the inland village of Kaiapit and defeated a much stronger enemy force moving towards Lae. Australian infantrymen were then flown into Kaiapit airfield and the advance continued up the wide valleys of the Markham and Ramu Rivers. The Australians then moved into the sharp and narrow ridges of the Finisterre Ranges, where fierce fighting continued. The towering massif of Shaggy Ridge was the most formidable challenge of all: it was four months before the Australians finally captured it, opening the way to Madang, on the coast north of Lae. Meanwhile, other Australian forces landed at Finschhafen, east of Lae, on 22 September, to find the Japanese well entrenched. It was not until late November that the mountain fortress of Sattelberg fell and the Australians could continue the advance around the Huon Peninsula coast towards Sio.
These Australian offensives became possible only after the US Army Air Force gained the ascendancy in the air over New Guinea. Its offensives against the Japanese airfield complex around Wewak and the base at Rabaul had dealt critical blows to Japanese air power, while its air transport squadrons enabled the Australian troops in the Markham and Ramu Valley campaigns to be flown in and kept supplied. In addition, the US Navy’s 7th Amphibious Force had carried out the landings at Lae and Finschhafen, and in December 1943 US Army and Marine Corps troops had landed at Arawe and Cape Gloucester on West New Britain. These operations gained control of the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits for operations further north. After another landing at Saidor, east of Madang, on 2 January 1944, the Americans captured the Admiralty Islands in March and then made their great leap further west along the northern New Guinea coast to Aitape and Hollandia on 22 April 1944. The New Guinea offensives consigned what Japanese forces remained in New Guinea to strategic irrelevance.
The Australian armed forces fought on in New Guinea, moving into Bougainville and Aitape to relieve American divisions as they moved on to the Philippines and beyond. Unwilling to have Australian troops wait out the war inside defended positions, the Australian command directed that the fight be taken to the remnants of the Japanese force, who were now mainly engaged in subsistence farming. These campaigns—increasingly seen as unnecessary by the Australian troops and the public at home—cost still more lives. The end of the war came as a relief to both sides.
That is the simple chronology of the New Guinea war. The aim of this book is to fill in that outline of dates, places and operations, telling the story of Australia’s war in New Guinea from the perspective of some of the men who fought it. It relates the war as the men themselves described it—in diaries, letters and memoirs, in interviews with war correspondents, interrogators, official historians and archivists, and with those who, like the author, just wanted to listen and learn.