Remembering the war in New Guinea - Coming of the war to the Territories

The coming of the war to the Territories: forced labour and broken promises (Symposium paper)
Panel name: Indigenous experience
This page was contributed by Dr Geoffrey Gray (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies)
1. ANGAU and native labour
On 10 April 1942, the Papuan Administration Unit and the New Guinea Administration Unit were combined into the Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU); on 12 August, Major General Basil Morris, the General Officer in Command, was appointed administrator. The Territories Law Repeal and Adopting Order set out that both territories were to be amalgamated and known as Australian New Guinea, and the laws and administration of the mandated territory were adopted for both.[1] For the duration of the war, ANGAU was concerned with the “whole native population including medical care and rehabilitation”, and with the provision of and control of native labour. From the “administrative point of view it was to carry on the Civil Administration of the area, including control of the Natives, the administration of justice and the education of the Natives as to their part in the common war effort.”[2]. In this ANGAU was greatly assisted by former officers in the Papuan and New Guinea services: “because of their influence in pre-war days they have a decided effect on the native when the area had been under Jap domination.”[3] Its military functions included giving advice on native matters, the provision of guides, the collection of topographical and other information from native sources, the establishment of contact with natives in Japanese-occupied areas and the evacuation of natives from areas likely to be affected by military operations.[4]

ANGAU from the outset was confronted with a dilemma brought about by the needs of the army – it had to meet operational needs above all else – and being charged with making sure that native labour was not exploited in the name of the war effort. That is, its administrative role was “to carry on the administration of the country as and when operations permit.”[5] So widespread was the use of native labour that, in ANGAU, out of a total strength in February 1944 of 1,349, “no less that 723 were members of the NLS [NLS].”[6] Until late-1944 it can be argued that ANGAU failed to protect native labourers from undue exploitation; in August that year, with the almost complete removal of Japanese occupying forces, new regulations were introduced which emphasised the rehabilitation of native communities; hence future recruiting by the army was restricted to 30 per cent of the “effective adult population” of any village, and as far as practicable labour was employed in the home district.[7] The agriculturalist J.K. Murray, commenting on a report titled “Natives of the Salamaua Coast” and written by Ian Hogbin, a member of the army”s directorate of research and civil affairs, stated that if unnecessary jobs were being undertaken by New Guinean labour they should be “freed” to return to their villages to produce food, especially those in which the villagers were “in a bad way nutritionally.”[8]

The NLS was responsible for the control and administration of native labour recruited for the forces. The administrative structure adopted by ANGAU was that of the Department of District Services in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. The District Office was responsible for the recruiting of native labour, signing on of labour and “concentration at required destination”. Subject to the “general direction and supervision” of the District Officer, the NLS was responsible for accommodating and controlling all natives in native labour camps; organising the requisite working parties; allocating officers in charge of native labour and native labour officers; and supervising labour in their allotted tasks. It was proposed that native labour be organised into “labour companies based on sub-units of 40 natives. Each sub-unit will be in charge of one N[ative] L[abour] O[fficer].”[9] ANGAU also recruited for the native battalions, although “natives are not as ready to enlist as soldiers as they are for non-operational jobs.”[10]. One kiap [patrol officer] reported that there was a tendency for people to move from the main track, either because of fear of re-appearance of the Japanese or to be away should carriers be required.[11]

The use of New Guinean guides was seen as problematic, and the knowledge of the kiap was considered essential. Jim Taylor, a patrol officer before the war and a central character in Bill Gammage’s wonderful book Sky travellers, pointed to the limitations of ANGAU guides: they had no “special training or sense of discipline to fit them for front line soldiering.” They possessed no “supernatural ability, often credited to them of ‘smelling the Jap’”; nor should “ANGAU natives … be used as forward scouts to European patrols except when under direct control of an ANGAU representative [kiap] who can decide whether the natives are capable of carrying out the task.” Where guides were of “real assistance [was] in the identification of creeks, tracks, village sites etc.” He underlined the fact that “the guides are not soldiers and the majority can not be guaranteed in the face of strong opposition. … They are only bush natives and have to be nursed and encouraged as much as convenient to get the best out of them.”[12]

ANGAU had a poor reputation as an employer of native labour.[13] Research by Ian Hogbin uncovered practices which he saw as endemic, systematic brutality by ANGAU overseers. He was critical of the way labour was recruited: “some district officers make patrols themselves, though the more usual procedure is to summon the native leaders and issue a demand through them for every person available to present themselves.”[14] James McAuley, lecturer in colonial administration in the School of Civil Affairs and the ASOPA, observed in 1946 that the “longer the smell of Angau clings to the P[atrol] O[fficer]s, the less use they will be in their proper administrative functions.”[15] Hogbin too had recognised this earlier: “the Administration is losing standing in the people”s eyes by itself engaging in any form of recruiting.”[16]

In contrast W.E.H. Stanner, also a member of the directorate, saw service for the army as further preparation for the modernisation of colonial peoples: he claimed that,

[S]ervice with the army has definitely improved the native. His control has been firm, but just; his physique has improved from the excellent housing and rations he receives; he has learnt the value of discipline and his added responsibilities; he has a far more extensive appreciation of health and hygiene matters; he has been taught how to produce more and better food within his own village. Thus when the European returns, or decides to settle in New Guinea he should be well-served with efficient and contented labour, and if such proves the case, most of the credit should go to the personnel of ANGAU because his efforts on behalf of the native during the war period.[17]

2. Some consequences


A task of district officers and patrol officers attached to ANGAU was to move into previously occupied areas or where there had been fighting to,
[Impress upon] the natives the facts that the “Government” was still functioning, and looking to their welfare. One kiap reported that the natives were assured that the old laws, and promises, were operative. … Many questions regarding “Government” were asked. … One of the main questions put was about [the relation] of Government to Army. I explained that, for the purpose of driving out the Japanese, the Government had joined hands with the Army; and that, when every one of the enemy had been killed, or forced from New Guinea, by strength of our men and materials, the Government would revert to its old status.[18]

Indentured labourers working on plantations before the war were usually “youngsters and unmarried and liked seeing something of the world.” ANGAU recruited old and young, single and married. Those older than twenty-five were anxious to return home and “resented conscription, disliked being herded with so many strangers, and were worried about the well-being and food supplies of their dependants and the fidelity of their wives.” Hogbin added that broken promises were a source of complaint: they were often told that once a particular job was completed they would be returned home, “only to learn later that unforeseen circumstances had arisen and that they must stay.” The 1,500 Papuans who were awaiting transport home from Lae were “perhaps the most bitter.” Hogbin wrote that,

These men had worked first on the Bulldog-Wau road, where conditions were so severe that the District Officer, Major Vertigan, wrote that, “the labourers run away just to get warm; they are debilitated by their privations and just cannot stick the course”, and subsequently on the Wampit road from Wau to Lae, being assured each month, so they maintained, that this would be the last. At the time of my departure they had been held up for several weeks pending a ship being made available.[19]


Despite the considerable numbers of New Guineans conscripted into the war effort, Hogbin’s experience suggested that the “majority continue to look upon the war as primarily our concern … it is useless to expect that the cause we are fighting can ever be appreciated” by New Guineans.[20]

ANGAU did not endear itself to many New Guineans, and its officers, often kiaps who returned to New Guinea as part of the colonial administration, were remembered poorly. Maria Lepowsky states that in the late-1970s, villagers on Misima Island who shouted commands at their family or neighbours were sarcastically addressed as “Angau”. In Manus, Margaret Mead wrote that “Angau” referred to a man who takes things from other people: Manus people recalled that ANGAU officers confiscated the goods American soldiers had given them.[21] In west New Britain, the Kilenge bitterly recalled that ANGAU agents “punctured tins of food and threw them into the ocean, how they took away and destroyed clothing.”[22] There were uprisings or simple acts of resistance to Australian rule: Lepowsky describes the murder of ANGAU officials and the subsequent public hanging of the perpetrators.[23]

Gavin Long, speaking of the period 1944–1945, when there had been improvement in the conditions of service for carriers and labourers, wrote, “the burden of war was weighing heavily on the New Guinea native – more heavily, man for man, than on the general run of Australian citizens”,[24] despite instructions that the native population must be safeguarded.[25] Nevertheless, the war effort took precedence and if this involved sacrificing native interests, then so be it. It is clear that the native labour force was used not only to benefit the war effort but benefited the lives of Australian soldiers, such as the “well drilled native waiters” who served the Lae Officer”s club.[26] Hogbin also pointed out the use of New Guinean labour as personal servants.[27]

But not all New Guineans were so directly effected by the war; Hank Nelson has pointed out that perhaps one-third of the population knew nothing about the war: “the inhabitants of the upper Sepik, Fly and Strickland Rivers and of the intensely gardened valleys of the western and southern highlands who were beyond central government control in 1942 remained largely undisturbed in 1945.” Nevertheless, this did not mean that people were immune from the impact of war;[28] experiences were varied and diverse and often indirect, such as the dysentery epidemic which swept westwards through the highlands.[29]

In October 1944, the Commonwealth set up the Native War Damage Compensation Committee to recommend a just and practicable plan for compensating natives in Papua and New Guinea for loss or damage to land and property, and death or injury, arising from military operations, or arising “from causes attributable to the existence of a state of war in the territories”.[30] The committee included Hogbin.[31] The chairman spent eight days in Papua New Guinea so that most of the work fell on Hogbin and James L. Taylor (the other member of the committee). The committee reported to the government in August 1945.[32]

ANGAU gave way to civil control by the end of 1946, but much of the personnel had not changed. A problem of the then-returning administration was how to establish proper respect from the native: the purpose was not academic but practical and vital.

It is to determine as far as possible the effects of the war … on the natives towards us and our Administration … It is a matter of assessing and building up their morale and degree of co-operation with us, and overcoming any discount and opposition which might exist.[33]

But of course that concern soon dissipated as other priorities emerged.

3. Loyalty and the future

Early in the war, associated with the problem of loyalty, was the question whether a postwar Papua New Guinea would be governable. In July 1943, A.P. Elkin, professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney and unofficial advisor to the Commonwealth government on matters to do with native peoples, wrote to Frank Forde, Minister for the Army, noting that,

The coming of the war to the Territories [of Papua, and New Guinea has shown to the] natives that the white man in general and our administrative officers in particular are not invincible … this is going to create a different psychological attitude in the natives towards our administration, and is going to make the work of our officers much more difficult.[34]

Perhaps Elkin was thinking about the nascent independence movements in south-east Asia and their challenge to white hegemony. Certainly the problem of loyalty, while not explicitly mentioned, was uppermost in his mind. New Guineans, in some cases, had sided with the Japanese and acted against the interests of Australian colonial rule.

The anthropologist Kenneth E. Read (or Mick Read as many knew him) pointed out that loyalty to the colonial administration was imposed, and backed, by force and that indigenous peoples had either to accept it or suffer the consequences.[35] Ian Hogbin “always maintained” that when the Japanese occupied New Guinea, the people “simply had no alternative” but to do as they were told. Therefore they “couldn’t be counted as traitors” even if they became “Japanese village policemen, or worked for the Japanese or anything else. ... The government of the day were the Japanese, the Japanese had conquered the country”.[36] Hogbin”s view was not generally accepted in ANGAU. Punishments and public hangings for New Guinean “traitors” has already been alluded to.

In August 1944, a chaplain attached to ANGAU wrote to F.O. Theile, Director, Lutheran Missions, that he had visited various centres in the Morobe District where Japanese occupation had been prolonged. He told Theile that “the natives have remained loyal to our country and faithful to their church. The severe testing through which they have had to pass has not found them wanting.”[37]

4. Postwar

To persuade New Guineans, promises were made about a new order after the war. Peter Lawrence states that when Yali, a “cult” leader from the Rai coast, joined the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB), the special unit within which the Coast Watching Service was incorporated, he and other recruits were given a propaganda address in the following terms:

In the past, you natives have been kept backward. But now, if you help us win the war and get rid of the Japanese from New Guinea, we Europeans will help you. We will help you get houses with galvanised iron roofs, plank walls and floors, electric light, and motor vehicles, boats, good clothes, and good food. Life will be very different after the war.

Lawrence comments that the address was delivered in “Pidgin English” [Tok Pisin], and hence the text,

[M]ay be an exaggeration of the original but there can be little doubt that an address with substantially the same message was made. Yali definitely believes that this is what he heard. Other natives in the southern Madang District have told me that army recruiting officers made similarly grandiose promises of material rewards for services against the Japanese.[38]

Ted Wolfers states that “[s]ome Papua New Guineans can still recite the promises made to them at the end of the war by ... Major General B.M. Morris, word for word.”[39]

Were these promises kept; was life, for New Guineans, very different after the war? How could loyalty be reclaimed once the Japanese had been sent on their way? In a paper presented to the 1968 Waigani Seminar, Peter Ryan avoided this question, putting the problem of colonial rule in the following terms: did we (Australia) have any right to impose such a burden on New Guineans? Ryan answered, albeit with fuzzy logic, that Australia was a benign colonial master compared to the Japanese: in his words,

[I]f the Japanese had been likely to care for the people better than we did, our rights might have been dubious, but all the evidence is that they would have been a good deal worse off under Japanese rule, so it was reasonable to expect – even to insist – that the indigenous people support the war effort.[40]

Ryan emphasises Australia’s rights but ignores what rights New Guineans may have had. Writing about forced labour today, I would underline the rights of New Guineans and question whether Australia should have used New Guineans in a war in which the benefit was for Australia. Can we say that a postwar Japanese colonial administration would have been any better or worse than continued Australian rule? Peter Ryan, who expresses admirable concern for the future of New Guinea and its relations with Australia, could not see the separate interests of New Guineans other than through the lens of Australian interests.

It is almost a cliché to say that war brought about change, but change, as we know, often brings with it anxiety about the future; uncertainty about what it may mean for us as individuals. The past takes on new meanings, and stresses stability and certainty. Many New Guineans understood these anxieties of the colonial ruler and reflected them back. They too became uncertain about a future without the “masta”. Some New Guineans longed for the perceived harshness of a time before the war. On the other hand, many New Guineans wanted change as they had developed ideas about a future Papua or New Guinea as a consequence of their experiences during the war, but they lacked the power to challenge, let alone take over running, Australian-controlled institutions. The anxieties and concern of both groups found some solace in the idea of controlled and gradual development as advocated by Paul Hasluck during his period as minister.

This brings me to a final question: Did Papua and New Guinea and its people benefit from the war? How did Australia pay its debt? There are several answers to this. One is that the war enabled New Guineans to experience a range of occupations that hitherto had been denied them; it set in train a series of changes over which neither Australia nor Papua New Guinea could exercise control. It led in the first instance to New Guineans developing a sense of themselves outside of the colonial world imposed by Australia, and inevitably led to a questioning of Australia’s colonial rule and finally independence from Australia. Hank ranges over an array factors which impacted on Papua and New Guinea and its people as a result of the war, including, for example, meeting Afro-American servicemen, and it is pointless in me repeating them here.[41]

Australian colonial rule remained limited by Australian views about the capacity (usually expressed as a lack of capacity) of native peoples, either in Papua New Guinea or in Australia. An examination of postwar government policy indicates to me that it was premised on the idea of preparation: that is to become independent (or self-governing) people, New Guineans had to be prepared, go through a transition period from uncivil to civil, pre-modern to modern. Left in the waiting room of history, the labourers who had carried the burden were denied the opportunity to obtain education, power or property.

Notes

* This is a revised paper presented to Remembering the War in New Guinea, Australian War Memorial, held at the ANU, Canberra, 19-21 October 2000. I would like to thank the AWM for funding much of this research.
[1]. “A.N.G.A.U.” , November 1944, author unknown. AWM 54, item 80/2/1. BM Morris to Lt-General HD Wynter (LGA), 28 August 1942. AWM 54, item 80/2/7. In this letter, Morris set out the “raison d”etre of the Unit, its present composition, its functions, its character, and some of its problems”.
[2]. Ibid. See also Peter Ryan, unpublished paper on ANGAU presented to Second Waigani Seminar, University of Papua and New Guinea, Port Moresby 1968; also Neville K Robinson, Villagers at War: some Papua New Guinean experiences in World War II Canberra: ANU Press, 1979.
[3]. DM Cleland to COMSOUPAC, “Operational role of ANGAU and Provision of ANGAU Detachments”, 23 January 1944. AWM 54, 80/2/12.
[4]. Memo: “ANGAU”s function in operations”, May 1945. AWM 54 80/6/16.
[5]. DM Cleland to COMSOUPAC, “Operational role of ANGAU and Provision of ANGAU Detachments”, 23 January 1944. AWM 54, 80/2/12.
[6]. Ian Hogbin, “Report of an Investigation of Native Labour in New Guinea … carried out on instructions from the Director of Research by Lieutenant Colonel Ian Hogbin during the period March to June 1944”, undated, Hogbin Papers (hereafter HP).
[7]. “ANGAU”, AWM 54, 80/2/1. November 1944. Hogbin noted that “of the ultimate repercussions of the prolonged absence of the menfolk I am not prepared to speak without further study, and it must suffice at present to state that anthropologists and others competent to speak have pointed out that the employment before the war of only twenty-five to thirty per cent of the adult males was undermining the whole social structure. It is significant also that in 1925 the Government of the Belgian Congo, after an official inquiry, agreed to limit employment under indenture to five per cent of the adult able-bodied males. Additional numbers, it was agreed, would create problems for which a satisfactory solution could not be found.” Hogbin, op. cit, [undated].
[8]. JK Murray to DM Cleland (ANGAU), 16 October 1944; “The Natives of the Salamaua Coast”, A preliminary report by Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hogbin forwarded to Brigadier Cleland, ANGAU HQ, for perusal and despatch to the Director of Research, LHQ. 7 October 1944. HP.
[9]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[10]. “ANGAU”, November 1944. AWM 54, 80/2/1.
[11]. J Blencoe (Warrant Officer II, Patrol Officer) to New Guinea Force, nd. c. April, 1944, 100/1/14/90, Elkin Papers, University of Sydney Archives (EP)
[12]. Memo, “ANGAU”s Function in Operations”, JL Taylor, May 1945. AWM 54, 80/6/16.
[13]. See also Geoffrey White & Lamont Lindstrom (eds), The Pacific Theater. Island Representations of World War II, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990, passim.
[14]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated]
[15]. McAuley to Wedgwood, 10 September 1946. ANL MS 483, Box 1.
[16]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[17]. WEH Stanner, “A.N.G.A.U.”, November 1944. AWM54, 80/2/1. It resonates with an assessment Stanner made of Aboriginal labour in army employ in the Northern Territory. “Notes on meeting held at the office of I[spector] G[eneral] of A[dministration] on 8/1/43 to discuss the above question [employment of Aboriginal Labour]”; report acting WO W Charles Duffy, Administration of Native Affairs Section - Care and Guidance of Native Races by Army”, HQ NT Force, 23 April, 1945, AA: F1, 42/435; Report Captain F.R. Morris, Controller of Native Personnel, NT Force, “Participation in the War Effort by Australian Aboriginals”, 8 September 1945. AA: MP742/1, 164/1/209. Also Stanner to McIlroy, 22 December 1942. AA: A705, 68/1/700.
[18]. J Blencoe (Warrant Officer II, Patrol Officer) to New Guinea Force, nd. c. April, 1944, 100/1/14/90, EP.
[19]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[20]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[21]. Maria Lepowsky, “Soldiers and Spirits: the Impact of World War II on a Coral Sea Island”, in Geoffrey M White and Lamont Lindstrom (eds.), The Pacific Theater. Island Representations of World War II, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990, pp. 220-21.
[22]. Marty Zelenietz and Hisafumi Saito, “The Kilenge and the War: An Observer Effect on Stories from the Past”, in Geoffrey M White and Lamont Lindstrom (eds.), op. cit., p. 177
[23]. Lepowsky, op. cit., pp. 213-217.
[24]. Gavin Long, The Final Campaigns, (quoted in Peter Ryan, 1968). Ryan makes the point, in 1968, seven years before independence that “it is useful to elucidate the truth, for now Australians are being asked to shoulder quite substantial burdens for New Guinea. To be sure they are financial burdens, not blood and labour, but if the time comes when Australians show reluctance to continue this help, it will be useful to know precisely what the New Guinea people did for us during the war for five or ten shillings per man per month.”
[25]. KC McMullen, Deputy Director of District Services and Native Affairs, 15 May 1942. Quoted in Ryan, op. cit., [1968], p. 539.
[26]. Quoted in Ryan, op. cit., [1968].
[27]. Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[28]. Hank Nelson, Taim Bilong Pait: The impact of the Second World War on Papua and New Guinea, in Alfred W McCoy (ed.), Southeast Asia under Japanese Occupation, Monograph Series No. 22, Yale University South East Asia Studies, 1980, p. 252.
[29]. “Serious epidemics have swept through the country …[and] … it is probable that dysentery, meningitis, measles, mumps, and chicken pox, all of which are still [1944] raging , have accounted for [the death of ]many hundreds more.” Hogbin, op. cit., [undated].
[30]. Second reading speech of the Minister for External Territories, EJ Ward, on the Papua-New Guinea Provisional Administration Act 1945. Canberra.
[31]. The chairman of the committee was JV Barry, KL Taylor was a major in ANGAU and was one of the first whitemen in the Highlands of New Guinea when he accompanied the Leay brothers. See JD Legge, Australian Colonial Policy. A survey of Native Administration and European Development in Papua, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1956, pp. 185-7. See also Hogbin, Transformation Scene, London, 1951, pp. 19-21.
[32]. Hogbin to Patience, 14 May 1944. AA: MP 742/1, 274/1 /245. Hogbin asked that Read, an ex-student of Hogbin at the University of Sydney, accompany him
[33]. Elkin to Forde, nd. EP.
[34]. AP Elkin to Frank Forde, Minister for the Army, 31 June 1943. EP.
[35]. KE Read, “Effects of the Pacific war in the Markham Valley, New Guinea”, Oceania, vol. 18 (2), 1947, p. 100. The Administrator of New Guinea, Walter McNicoll, in a memorandum to the army, stated that: “One of our most serious problems is the effect of the present war on the native mind and the possible reactions of the native.... Thousands of natives are employed as labourers on plantations while thousands are engaged in growing economic crops for which they can no longer find a market. In the event of the failure of the planters to meet their contractual obligations to the natives there will be considerable damage to the good name and prestige of the British people. This possibility is not improved by the insidious propaganda circulated by some of the personnel of the German missions and other Germans in the Territory.” McNicoll (Administrator) to the Department of the Army, 19 July 1940. AA: MP529/5, Item 3. Similar concerns were expressed concerning Aborigines on mission stations under the control of German nationals, or Australians of German descent, principally in Northwest Western Australia, in Hermannsburg in central South Australia, and in Northern Queensland, particularly Hope Vale. On the question of Aboriginal loyalty, see AA: MP729/6, 29/401/621; also West Australia State Archives, ACC993, 592/43. See also Hank Nelson, “Loyalties at Sword-point: Lutheran Missionaries in Wartime New Guinea, 1939-1945”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 24 (2), 1978, pp. 199-217.
[36]. Jeremy Beckett, Conversations with Ian Hogbin (Sydney: Oceania Monograph, 1989), p. 32. See Hank Nelson, op. cit., [1980], pp. 253-55.
[37]. Robinson to Theile, 28 June 1944; Theile to Minister for External Territories, 14 August 1944. Lutheran Archives. I wish to thank Christine Winter for bringing this to my notice.
[38]. Peter Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo. A study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District New Guinea. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1964, p. 124.
[39]. Edward P Wolfers, Race Relations and Colonial Rule in Papua and New Guinea, Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1975, p. 112.
[40]. Ryan, [1968], p. 539. Of course Ryan”s logic is flawed: what we knew in the future justified our action in the past, that is the then present actions were explained by what we could only know in the future. Besides flawed logic Ryan”s account makes no mention of Japanese colonial practice in Micronesia, nor how they proposed implementing native policy in Papua and New Guinea, nor how their policy worked in places like the east Sepik were they were for nearly three years (cf Michael Somare, Sana. An autobiography of Michael Somare, Port Moresby: Niugini Press, 1975, p. 5); for an interesting argument on the influence of an individual Japanese see Basil Shaw, “Yukio Shibata and Michael Somare: Lives in Contact”, in Geoffrey M White (ed.), Remembering the Pacific War, Occasional Paper 36, Centre for Pacific Island Studies, University of Hawai”i, 1991. See also Hank Nelson, op. cit., [1980], pp. 255-56. Nelson”s account would suggest that the Japanese offered a policy and practice similar to other colonial nations, including Australia; where Japanese policy and practice fell apart was as they realised they were loosing the war, and they were in retreat, trusting no one.
[41]. Nelson, 1980, p. 258.
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Click images to enlarge. Native Carriers pause on the Kokoda Track in November 1942 to listen to a speech of congratulations from an Allied Officer
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A party of Australian and New Guinea Administrative Unit Native Carriers cross a river between Wideru and Ayr in September 1943.
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Native Carries negotiate a dangerous ledge along Bulldog Road about a mile south of Eggleston’s Gap in July 1943. This ledge varies from 18 to 2 feet wide.
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