AWM 092547 (Australian War Memorial)
Australian soldiers examine a modified Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go light tank amidst abandoned Japanese positions near Ruri Bay on the Bonis Peninsula, Bougainville, 24 May 1945. The original 37 mm gun turret had been replaced by one from a Type 97 medium tank (with a more powerful 47 mm gun) and the resulting hybrid had been dug in and used as a pillbox. When the Australians took over from the Americans on Bougainville in October 1944 they estimated that they faced no more than 25,000 Japanese troops. In fact the Japanese 17th Army had a strength of approximately 40,000 men and possessed large quantities of tanks and artillery on a scale not seen elsewhere in New Guinea.

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