New Guinea (Japanese)

Japanese-occupied New Guinea covers the territories seized in 1942 and fought over until the surrender in 1945. Japan landed at Rabaul in January 1942 and took it as a major base, then moved along the northern coast of Papua. The objective was Port Moresby, from which northern Australia could be bombed. The seaborne attempt was turned back at the Coral Sea in May. The overland attempt followed the Kokoda Track across the Owen Stanley mountains, and was halted about thirty miles from Port Moresby by Australian militia and regulars in appalling conditions, then pushed back. The campaigns that followed at Buna, Gona and Sanananda were among the most lethal of the Pacific war for both sides. Disease killed more men than combat. Papuan and New Guinean carriers and stretcher-bearers, conscripted under Australian regulations, sustained the Allied line and were later commemorated in ways that did not extend to compensation. Japanese garrisons were bypassed and left to starve as the Allies moved north, and at Rabaul close to a hundred thousand troops sat isolated until the end. The occupation was brutal where it held, with forced labour and executions. Australia resumed administration in 1945. The war left an infrastructure of airstrips and roads, an aware and politically altered population, and a trusteeship obligation that led to independence in 1975. The Kokoda Track is about ninety-six kilometres long and crosses ranges over two thousand metres. Australia's militia units were conscripts who could not legally be sent outside Australian territory, which Papua was. The carriers were called the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels in Australian writing of the period. Rabaul's garrison surrendered in September 1945 without having been attacked.

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