Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1943-01-24
Mop-Up in Pupuu


The cleaning out of the last scat
tered pockets of resistance on San
amanda Point marks the close of a
campaign with swings of fortune
almost as extreme as those in North
Africa. 1t was just six months ago
| that the japanese, then in their full
tide of conquest, landed an army of
$4,000 picked troops at the twin
ports of Buna and Coma on the
southeastern shores of New Guinea
From those settlements a trail runs
over 10,000foot range known as
the Owen Stanley Mountains to Port
Moresby, the main base in New
Guinea which shields Australia from
invasion, With surprising ease the
skilled jungle fighters from Nippon
scaled the range and drove almost
within striking distance of Port
Moresby. 1t looked ominously like
another japanese blitz triumph.
However, the invaders had been
unable to transport much heavy
equipment across the mountains and
were short of supplies. Hastily re-
inforced Australians held the Japa-
neSe in the foothills, while Australian
and American flyers first gained
local command of the air and then
began methodically blasting the
japanese supply line, not merely by
land, but clear back to the rear
bases northward on New Guinea and
at Rabaul, New Britain, with the sea
links between. Soon the invaders
felt the pinch. Short of munitions
and literally starving, the Japanese
were pressed back across the noun
tainS to their beachheads at Buna
and Coma. Then began a grim
process of attrition by the now en-
larged Australian and American
Army under the personal direction
of General Douglas Macarthur. The
Japanese had made good use of their
time by fortifying the swamps and
jungle back of the beaches. That
almost impossible terrain had to be
won slowly, almost foot by foot.
Everywhere the japanese fought to
the death, and repeated attempts
were made by their tenacious high
command to reinforce them from
light craft sent in under cover of
night despite the heavy toll taken by
watchful Allied airplanes and block
aiding surface ships. But MacAr-
thurs strangling grip was memorable,
and now the end has come.
With all Papua regained, the Al
lies now are free to proceed against
the twin footholds of Lac and Sala-
maua. some $50 miles up the New
Guinea coast. Those intermediate
bases are being continuously softened
up by aerial bombings. The same is
true of the main base at Rabaul,
where, on the very day of the final
chapter in Papua, Allied flyers made
a pre-dawn attack on the harbor
crowded with shipping and sank
three big merchant vessels totaling
$4,000 tons That is merely the latest
of series of Furnishing air raids
which have repeatedly disrupted
Japanese concentrations for coun-
teroffensive that has never been able
to get started.
Meanwhile, the plight of the Japa-
nese Army on Guadalcanal. once as
strong as that in Papua, is growing
equally desperate. An American
marine officer just returned from
that island reports that less than
1000 Japanese remain alive there,
sick. hungry and so dispirited that
they probably can be either wiped
out or induced to surrender within
a relatively short time. Thus here,
likewise, the end is in sight.
Yet the task ahead should not be
underestimate. The Japanese have
undoubtedly fortified their remain
ing strongholds on New Guinea
and in the Solomons as strongly as
they did their Papuan beachheads,
and the garrisons can be counted on
to resist with equally fanatical de-
termination. Even their reduction
will be merely the preliminaries to
an attack on Rabaul, the japanese
key base in the South Pacific. The
road to that ultimate triumph thus
appears long and bloody. Yet the
victories already gained are heart
ening portents that it will be sue