page_title: Damien Parer
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Damien Parer / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: AWM Caption: Some members of D Company, 39th Battalion, returning to their base camp after a battle at Isurava. Right to left: Warrant Officer 2 R. Marsh, Privates G. Palmer, J. Manol, J. Tonkins, A. Forrester and Gallipoli veteran Staff Sergeant J. Long. Their shoes sink deep in the mud on the hilly jungle track.
context_page_description: Damien Peter Parer was an Australian war photographer. He became famous for his war photography of the Second World War, and was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire at Peleliu, Palau. He was cinematographer for Australia's first Oscar-winning film, Kokoda Front Line!, an edition of the weekly newsreel, Cinesound Review, which was produced by Ken G. Hall.
context_section_description: By World War II, Parer was experienced at photography and motion pictures, and was appointed as official movie photographer to the Australian Imperial Force (AIF)
  His first war footage was taken on HMAS Sydney after it had sunk the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. Soon after, he was aboard HMS Ladybird while it was bombarding the sea port of Bardia in Libya. His first experience at close quarters was during a troop advance at Derna.
  Parer filmed in Greece and in Syria, covering the action from aircraft, the deck of a ship and on the ground with the infantry. After Syria he travelled to Tobruk once again on the Ladybird in August 1941 before covering the fighting in the Western Desert. By mid-1942 Parer was in New Guinea ready to cover the fighting against the Japanese. Together with war correspondent Osmar White, he undertook an arduous journey by schooner, launch and on foot from Port Moresby to Wau via Yule Island, Terapo and Kudjiru, in order to document the efforts of the meagre forces then fighting on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea.
  During this phase of the war, he filmed some of his most famous sequences, some at Salamaua and, most notably, those used in Kokoda Front Line!. This documentary won its producer, Ken G. Hall, an Academy Award for documentary film-making.
  Damien Parer shot footage during the Battle of Guam that won him a posthumous Headliner Award from the American Journalists' Association.
  Parer was killed on 17 September 1944 by Japanese gunfire while filming a United States Marine advance in Palau on the island of Peleliu.
  Damien Parer was initially buried in a shallow grave on Peleliu but later exhumed and moved to Makassar War Cemetery, Celebes, South Sulawesi, Indonesia after the war in 1946. He was then moved to his current grave location in Ambon War Cemetery, Pandan Kasturi, Kota Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia when all the graves in Makassar were relocated there in 1961.
caption: Australian 39th Battalion troops returning to their base after battling the Japanese at Isurava, Papua New Guinea, 1942
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