BOOK REVIEW (by Greg Ivey)

Yukio Toyoda & Hank Nelson (eds.) The Pacific War in Papua New Guinea: Memories and Realities, Rikkyo University Centre for Asian Area Studies, Tokyo, 2006.
ISBN 4990263804, 458 pages, soft cover, maps, photographs, endnotes.

This book presents 25 papers from a series of symposia held in Japan and Australia, between 1998 and 2003, on the Second World War in Papua New Guinea. The majority of the contributing authors are published historians while the others are Doctoral students; and all articles include extensive endnotes and references. In keeping with the purpose of the university symposia, the authors are citizens of Australia, Japan or Papua New Guinea (and one from Switzerland). The book editors acknowledge that their coverage of the War in PNG is not comprehensive and they hope that the omissions (e.g. the War at sea, the United States perspective, the effects on southern Papua) will be dealt with in future collaborations.

One value of this book is the detail or depth of information presented in the various articles leading, in most instances, to a deeper insight for the reader. Among the 13 authors, more space than average is occupied by the writings of Dr Hiromitsu Iwamoto and Professor Hank Nelson, both former residents of PNG. Another value to the general reader is the degree of objectivity apparent in the articles, the credit for which belongs to the multi-national team which convened the symposia and to those authors who rose to the challenge.
This book may be difficult to source so actual extracts are presented below in order to show the range and style of the authors in this valuable book:

Hank Nelson text (page 1+) In July 1939 an Australian government officer, Neill Elliot and a New Guinean policeman, Constable Aipoum, were killed by villagers in the Aitape sub-district in the northwest of New Guinea. For Australians, Papua and New Guinea were frontiers to the unknown and where the land (with its mud-slips and volcanoes) and its people could both be dangerous. The Australians were unsure of their long-term aim in Papua and New Guinea…Some Australians thought that Papua might one day become an Australian state, but others thought it would always be outside the Australian nation.
… But Papua New Guineans were among those people least prepared for the battles of a World War…
Over 8,000 Australians are buried or have their names recorded at the war cemeteries near Rabaul, Lae and Port Moresby. For Australians, Papua New Guinea was the most deadly campaign area…
As Henry Frei concludes, a tragedy took place in New Guinea, “an island never meant to be included in the Pacific War”.

Bryant Allen text (page 14+) But Bingoihe Hretihi (or Tomi) was already caught in the terrible dilemma that faced many Papua New Guineans at this time, of not knowing who was the most powerful force: the Australians who were fleeing in disarray, or the Japanese with their war planes and ships. He remembers that he thought that if the Japanese caught him with the Australians they would surely kill him. So he returned from Talasea to Pondo on a local canoe. When the Japanese arrived at Pondo a local guide identified him as a foreman. He was tied up for four days and taken back to Rabaul and after a short time shipped to Buna with many other Sepiks.
Recaptured at the Wairopi crossing of the Kumusi River after the debacle that saw General Horii drowned, Tomi was enlisted in the Papuan Infantry Battalion, trained at Bisiatabu and fought at Finschhafen where he was wounded. He claims to have killed 38 Japanese. He was then trained as a medical orderly and went on to become the first aid post orderly in the Dreikikir area

Hiromitsu Iwamoto text (page 49+)Since the Pacific War, hundreds of Japanese survivors from Papua New Guinea have written books and articles about their experiences. There
are about twelve hundred written pieces – five hundred books and seven hundred magazine articles. The number of publications looks enormous. However, if it is compared with the number of the Japanese men and soldiers who fought in Papua New Guinea, it is not so high. About 300,000 Japanese service personnel were sent to PNG; 170,000 perished and 130,000 survived to return home…
Most authors devote the major part of their writing to describing the history of their battles, with the soldiers uniformly concluding that the war in Papua New Guinea was just terribly miserable… A small number of authors only have expressed their views on the war, war responsibility and Papua New Guineans. They argue that Japan entered the war for a justifiable cause, but they admit that the war caused damage to Papua New Guineans and express their apologies…As a whole (Japanese perceptions) lack the recognition that the primary victims of the war were Papua New Guineans.

Yukio Toyoda & Atsuko Fukushima text (page 119+)Most of this applies also to the contents of the (Japanese) newspaper articles. Firstly, most of the experiences described are not of battles, but of the men’s stay in New Guinea during the war. This is probably related to the fact that the newspaper articles are usually short and do not appear in successive issues. They stress that the men had little to eat, that they had to escape from the Allies and they had seen many comrades dying of sickness and hunger. Quite often, the area during the war is described as ‘hell on earth’. There was a saying that “Heaven is Java, hell is Burma, and you never come back from New Guinea even if you die.”
…Recent articles, especially from the late 1990s, have begun to deal with the issue of war compensation in New Guinea. In 1994 it was reported that an International Forum on War Compensation for the Asia-Pacific Region had been held in Tokyo. Also in 1998, Asahi introduced a group of Papua New Guineans who had come to Japan to join the same international forum. Although the forum in 1994 did not attract many people’s interest, one in 1998 did arouse some attention. The article mentioned the heavy losses the people of PNG had suffered and pointed out that the figures were much heavier than had previously been reported…
Although we mentioned that the number of articles dealing with New Guinea is small, the war in these articles has been a common topic. Compared with China, Korea and Southeast Asia, the war has been talked about without causing serious problems. It would be very controversial for Japanese to talk about the war in China, Korea and Southeast Asia. But war veterans have been talking about the war in New Guinea, although they do not mention controversial issues such as the cause of the war or war compensation.