IN DIRE STRAITS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 11 January 1944, Page 5

IN DIRE STRAITS

JAPANESE STRAGGLERS ON HUON PENINSULA NATIVE GARDENS STRIPPED (Rec. 11.2 a.m.) Sydney, This Day. Japanese forces retreating before Australians on the Huon Peninsula, New Guinea, have stripped native gardens of all food, and have endeavoured to catch womenfolk and impress men as carriers. Poignant stories of the Japanese shooting in cold blood three native boys and a native woman were told by terrified natives to members of an Australian fighting patrol. Several other natives narrowly escaped the same fate. An Australian patrol, company strong, moved through the inland sector of the peninsula to discover any enemy concentrations in the mountains and to eliminate Japanese stragglers. During the patrol nine Japanese were killed and the bodies of fourteen others who had died from starvation were counted.

When the Australians reached the former Lutheran mission at Kalasa used by the enemy as a staging camp, more than 40 natives who had fled into the jungle to escape the Japanese came out of their hiding places. Half starved they told how when the retreating Japanese first came through their village they stripped the gardens of all edible fruits and roots, leaving nothing for weaker troops following them. The villagers fled to the jungle when the Japanese endeavoured to seize women and force men into service as carriers, but later hunger forced one party to return and search for food. The natives were digging in a garden when enemy soldiers fired on them, killing three men and a woman. The others fled. Throughout the Australians’ patrol conclusive evidence was found that Japanese stragglers were in dire straits. Every deserted native village had been stripped of food and the emaciated bodies of enemy soldiers who had died of privation during the retreat were found along the way.— P.A. Special Australian Correspondent.