“Java is heaven, Burma is hell, but you never come back alive from New Guinea” – Japanese military saying…
This book covers a little known and possibly not well documented portion of the Papua-New Guinea campaigns of World War II. While the desperate battles for Papua and the Kokoda Track are well documented, and MacArthur’s focus on getting to the Philippines as fast as, and by any means possible is well known, the (primarily) Australian led capture of Lae in New Guinea is not so well documented and perhaps under-rated – along with the privations the Japanese troops suffered in their eventual retreats over the mountains that equal (and perhaps exceed) those of the Kokoda campaign.
Continue reading “D-Day New Guinea”