Buna, Papua New Guinea

Template:Template other Buna is a village in Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. It was the site in part, of the Battle of Buna–Gona during World War II, when it constituted a variety of native huts and a handful of houses with an airstrip. Buna was the trailhead to the Kokoda Track leading to Kokoda.

History

Buna was the site of a handful of houses, a dozen or so native huts, and an airfield acting as a trailhead up the Kokoda Track to the foothills village of Kokoda (see Kokoda Track campaign).

File:Wounded Australian soldier led by a Papuan orderly at Buna.jpg

An Australian soldier is aided by a Papuan orderly near Buna in December 1942.

During World War II, Imperial Japanese troops invaded on 21–22 July 1942 and established it as a base (see Buna Airfield). Six months later, Buna was recaptured by the Australian and American armies during the Battle of Buna-Gona on 2 January 1943 during the New Guinea campaign in the South West Pacific Area. The Fifth Air Force established air bases there as the Allied counter-offensive against Japan picked up the pace and continued operations to isolate the major Japanese base at Rabaul and attack Lae and points west.

For weeks at a time General Douglas MacArthur, commander in the South Pacific, used Buna as an informal forward base. MacArthur's biographer William Manchester relates a story how Allied commanding air officer Lt. General George Kenney loved repeating of how he'd gone back to Australia for a week, and MacArthur had stolen his house, claiming it was cooler at night than his own. A week later the Monsoon winds shifted, making MacArthurs' old house now the cooler— and he never asked for Kenney to switch back.

References

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