ISLAND GROUP SEIZED

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 121, 17 February 1944, Page 5

ISLAND GROUP SEIZED

N.Z. And U.S. Units In S.W. Pacific 135 MILES FROM RABAUL

(By Telegraph— Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received February 16, 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, Feb. 16. New Zealand and American ground troops, covered by Allied naval and air forces, have occupied the Green Islands (the Nissan Group) in the extreme northern Solomons. Japanese groun resistance was negligible and the air reaction weak. “This culminates the successful series of flanking movements which began in the New Georgia Group and which gradually enveloped all the enemy forces in the Solomons,” declares General MacArthur’s communique today. “These forces, 'estimated at 22,000 strong and dispersed through Choiseul, the Shortlands, Bougainville, and Buka Islands, are now isolated from their source of supply at Rabaul. Starvation and disease are certain to ensue from the military blockade and to render their position hopeless. “With their airfields destroyed and their barge traffic paralysed the relief of these scattered garrisons is no longer practicable and their ultimate fate is sealed. For all strategic purposes this completes the campaign for the Solomon Islands. “One landing vessel was fired on from an enemy shore position, but apart from this the invaders were practically unmolested. No reports of casualties have been received.’

The participation of the Third New Zealand Division in the operation was announced by the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, vesterday afternoon. In a dispatch from New Zealand headquarters in the [Pacific, an official war correspondent with the N.Z.E.F., under date February 15, says: “Nissan Island, on which the New Zealanders and Americans landed today in a big invasion directed toward the reduction of Rabaul and New Ireland, is the largest of an atoll lying only 40 miles from the northern tip of Buka Island and almost a similar distance from the .nearest New Ireland shore. It is 130 miles east of Rabaul, 26'5 miles southwest of Kavieng, SOO miles south-east of Truk, and four degrees south of the equator. The group is popularly known as Green Island, but this is incorrect, as it applies strictly to the Carteret Islands, further east. The atoll, of which Nissan is bv far the biggest island, is the Sir Charles Hardy group, discovered by Sir Philip Carteret in the eighteenth century. It is now part of Australia’s mandated territory of New Guinea. Rough Coast, Placid Lagoon. . "This elliptical coral plateau, enclosing a lagoon about seven miles by four at its extremes, has an outer coast of rough 10-foot coral cliffs, indented by big caves with overhanging rocks which are exposed to heavy seas. The lagoon gives calm beaches, though it can be entered only by two narrow channels on the west side. The land width varies from half a mile to 3000 yards. There are two cocouqt plantations of more than 450 acres, and the rest is fairly thickly bushed country, though the soil is but a shallow covering to the hard coral base. “The atoll was first used by the Japanese two years ago on the occupation of the Bougainville area,- but was not particularly helpful to them till the Allied sea and air supremacy_pushed the big Japanese ships from the seas south of New Britain and forced them to use the island as a daytime hide-out for barges, routed from Rabaul to Bougamivlle and endeavouring to run the blockade of the tight American ring. ’