AUSTRALIANS' TASK

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 147, 23 June 1945, Page 9

AUSTRALIANS' TASK

BOUGAINVILLE & NEW GUINEA

The number of Japanese dead since the Australians took over the operations in the Solomons and New Guinea about seven months ago is now*over 10.000, not including several hundred killed in the earlier bitter fighting in New Britain, says an Australian Army operational review. In spite of these losses, the Japanese continue to fight ferociously for the retention of territory, and nowhere is the enemy giving any indication of crumbling before the weight of our superior fire power and our complete domination of the air.

In both Bougainville and New Guinea the Jap has lost more territory as bombardments wrecked stronglybunkered positions, but he withdraws what he can from one over-run position to the next, digging in and awaiting the inevitable renewal of our ground and air plasterings. In this way his strength is gradually being whittled down, but such determination as he is showing is making his subjugation a gradual and difficult task —not being accomplished without Australian casualties.

The Jap is still formidable, for in all the areas in Bourgainville and New Guinea alone more than twenty-one thousand Japs remain.

In Southern Bougainville a brilliantly executed drive by the troops of the 3rd Australian Division, which swept around the enemy's forward troops, dug in on the Hari River, deprived ( the Japs of so.me of their most valued garden areas and will further complicate his food position.

Our troops landing oh the beach near the Portem plantation, on the Bonis Peninsula, North Bougainville, soon encountered fanatical resistance from Japanese marines in strongly-held positions in pill-boxes to the south. Some of our barges grounded on an uncharted reef, and came under heavy fire, and there were many individual acts of heroism. Subsequently our troops suffered casualties in some of the fiercest fighting yet in these operations. The landing was covered by heavy bombing by the R.N.Z.A.F. and R.A.A.F. The action was witnessed by the Commander-in-Chief, General Blarney, and the General Officer Commanding the 2nd Australian Corps, Lieutenant-General Savage. General Blarney described the. four days' operation as a "most gallant and inspiring spectacle."