Australians at the Battle of the Beachheads 1942 to 1943

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Fall of Gona

Japanese troops began landing in Gona in July 1942. They used the settlement as a base to launch their advance along the Kokoda Track towards Port Moresby. A Papuan recalled how people 'ran into the bushes' when they saw the Japanese ships approaching the shore.

By November 1942, the Japanese survivors of the Kokoda battles were back on the Papuan coast. They took up defensive positions from Gona to Buna.

The Allies' assault on the Japanese at Gona began on 22 November with an Australian advance. The Australians expected the garrison to be weakened and exhausted after the Kokoda battles. Because of that, they launched a quick attack. But Japanese reinforcements had been brought in by sea. After 2 days of fighting, the Australians withdrew. Their own numbers were depleted after Kokoda and they had suffered heavy losses for no gain.

Further attempts followed over the ensuing days. There was little success and increasing casualties. One officer later remembered ‘terrible moments of horror' as he watched his men shot down by machine guns in one of the assaults against the Japanese at Gona. Another man recalled ‘bloody losses … in reckless attacks'.

In quiet times between attacks, the men could seek cover from enemy fire. The forward-most forces on both sides were often dug in less than 50 m from each other. An Australian wrote in his diary of the Japanese at Gona:

we learn that the enemy are only 35 yd (32 m) forward of us, in fact we can here (sic) him talking + working on his positions.

With the arrival of reinforcements, the Australians launched a renewed attack on 8 December 1942. They managed to overrun half of the Japanese posts at Gona. The surviving Japanese troops tried to break through the Australian lines that night. They were unsuccessful. When Australian patrols moved through the Japanese positions the next day, they found few survivors.

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Although they had fought the Japanese on the Kokoda Track, the 39th Battalion War Diary described Australians' surprise at the enemy's way of fighting at Gona:

Three … were killed making for our positions, but most of them died from a fanatical and very often pointless determination to remain at their posts until they were killed.

So desperate was the fighting at Gona that Japanese troops used the bodies of their dead as protection on the parapets and as fire steps in the squalid ground under their feet.

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Scene of the battle

Look at the black sandy beaches along the coastline of the Solomon Sea from Gona Creek to the village of Gona, with the Owen Stanley Range in the distance (video runs for 48 seconds).

This is where 220 Australians died in the Battle of Gona in November 1942.

Fall of Buna

While the fighting continued at Gona, US forces focused on the network of Japanese defences from Buna to Cape Endaiadere. The US had suffered some 500 casualties during a series of attacks in November 1942. They made little headway in this latest battle.

In early December, Australian infantry and tanks were ordered to join the battle. Some of the US forces were placed under Australian command.

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The Allied troops were facing well-entrenched Japanese troops who were experts at making use of the terrain. One Australian wrote of the strong points where many Japanese soldiers conducted their defence:

these pillboxes are amazingly strong as they were several feet thick and made of coconut logs with 45 gallon (204 l) drums filled with sand in between, and full of men and machine guns. Besides that they were well concealed by having grass etc growing over the top.

The same man said Japanese weapon pits were:

so well hidden you would almost put your foot down them before you seen them.

Allied infantry also had to contend with snipers. One Australian wrote:

they are beauts at getting up the coconut trees and sniping … I can't climb them stripped, yet they can take a machine gun up one

US troops entered Buna village on 14 December after its Japanese garrison had escaped by sea at night.

Australian troops assaulted towards 2 airfields outside the village 2 days later where Japanese troops remained. The fighting lasted days. US troops joined the attack.

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After several unsuccessful attempts, the Allies - supplied with reinforcements - captured the area around Buna by 2 January 1943.

Months after the fighting there had ended, evidence of the violent combat that had taken place was still all around:

• knocked out Australian tanks
• destroyed pillboxes
• damaged coconut palms
• swarms of flies
• piles of fallen coconuts (thought to cover bodies on which large rats fed).

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Fall of Sanananda

After the fall of defences at Gona and Buna, only the Japanese bastion at Sanananda remained.

Both Australian and US troops had tried to advance along the road leading to Sanananda in November and early December 1942. They suffered heavy casualties from wounds and illness. They did not try again until fresh troops could be brought up from Port Moresby.

The Allied advance resumed on 19 December, but again there was no progress. One man wrote:

So again we gained nothing, and good men were just mowed down

On 21 December, senior officers agreed there could be no advance on the Sanananda front with their current force, even with reinforcements.

Extra troops from the US and Australian forces based at Gona were moved to Sanananda for a renewed attempt. This began on 12 January 1943.

The Australians attacked the Japanese on the Sanananda road. The Australians suffered heavy casualties and made little progress. But the Japanese began withdrawing from Sanananda that night and the next, taken away on barges.

Sanananda village was in Australian hands by 18 January. The troops effectively encircled the Japanese positions, fighting until the last Japanese resistance was broken on 21 January.

By then, the Japanese troops were in a pitiful state. One Australian described a Japanese soldier he had just killed as a ‘walking Japanese skeleton'.

On the Allied side, soldiers were also exhausted. One historian wrote that when on watch in the dangerous forward positions, some men fought the overwhelming urge to sleep by pulling the pins out of grenades and holding down the levers. They knew that if they fell asleep and released their grip, the grenade would kill them. The strain alone was enough to keep others alert:

… every time a branch shakes or leaf falls everyone becomes tense, rifles and owen-guns are grasped tightly as we crouch down in our holes – you cannot see, only listen – and wait.

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The capture of Sanananda brought the campaign in Papua to a successful end for the Allies. The fighting that began in July 1942 had included battles on:

• the Kokoda Track
• Milne Bay
• the beachheads of Buna, Gona and Sanananda.

Although the fighting had been merciless and intense, among the Australians were some who had developed a respect for the enemy. One soldier wrote:

How (they) have stood the shelling rain, + lack of food these last two weeks is a “plurry marvel”

A week later, the same man added:

He is a tough nut to crack, this so often despised little yellow chap.

Another Australian soldier wrote that the Japanese:

are tough and great jungle fighters, and have given the infanteers a hard job ...  (but in the end they) have met their masters at that game.

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Scene of the battle

Look at the village of Sanananda, on the northern coastline of Papua, and the now overgrown airfield of Buna (video runs for 48 seconds).

This is where Queenslanders and Tasmanians in the 2/12 Infantry Battalion charged into the heart of the Japanese defences in 1943.

Aftermath

The Allied victory at the beachheads ended Japan's campaign in Papua. The defeat in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and then in Papua ended Japanese designs on Port Moresby. It opened the way for Allied offensives in New Guinea.

Victory in Papua eased the sense of foreboding that had prevailed in Australia since the fall of Singapore. After Buna, Gona and Sanananda, there was a sense that the initiative had passed to the Allies in New Guinea. Senior Allied officers began planning the next phase of operations against strongly held Japanese positions on the Huon Peninsula.

Some 9,500 Japanese soldiers lost their lives in the beachhead fighting. More than 6,400 Allied soldiers, including some 3,400 Australians, were killed or wounded.

One Australian veteran remembered that only after the battle for Buna ended did he truly realise that 2 of his closest friends had ‘ended their life on this earth.' Many of the newer troops didn't get time to learn the skills that might have helped them survive. Veterans of the fighting in North Africa or Syria were also killed on the beachheads along with inexperienced reinforcements.

The Papuan campaign had shown Australians that the Japanese could be beaten. But they knew that a lot of hard fighting lay ahead before the enemy would finally be defeated.

Commemoration of the service and sacrifice by Australians, Papua New Guineans and their Allies in the Battle for Buna, Gona and Sanananda in 1942-43 include:

• the memorial at Popondetta
• Anzac Day services hosted by DVA at Bomana War Cemetery.