New Guinea’s Harshest Campaign: Why Japanese Veterans Remembered Australian Troops with Lasting Unease

What happens when war erodes the boundary between duty and survival? During the New Guinea campaign, around 140,000 Japanese servicemen entered an operation that became a catastrophe. Supply lines collapsed, disease spread, and hunger weakened both bodies and judgement. Yet some survivors later recalled that the jungle was not their only source of fear. They also remembered the Australians who opposed them: determined, adaptable and increasingly unwilling to give ground.

The Australians began the campaign under difficult circumstances. Some militia units were mocked as inexperienced and underestimated by Japanese planners. Over time, however, they became a disciplined jungle force. Their story includes the bitter “rabbit” protest, the success of the Australian-designed Owen gun and the emotional hardening created by months of close combat. It is not a simple account of heroes and villains, but a warning about how prolonged warfare can change ordinary people.

Why did Japanese veterans speak of Australians with guarded respect and unease? The answer lies in the terrain, failed logistics and relentless fighting. It also lies in the psychological damage created when both armies came to believe that hesitation could be fatal. New Guinea deserves attention because it exposes the human cost hidden behind maps and official reports.

The Second World War is often remembered through Normandy, the Battle of Britain and the great naval clashes of the Pacific. New Guinea rarely holds the same place in public memory. Between 1942 and 1945, however, it became one of the conflict’s most punishing theatres. Mountains, swamps, tropical illness and inadequate transport shaped every decision. Soldiers were pushed beyond normal endurance, while distant commanders often failed to understand what their men faced. For Japanese survivors, the environment remained unforgettable, but so did the Australians who learned to use it with patience and determination [00:07], [01:04].

A Destination That Came to Mean Defeat

Japanese soldiers developed grim shorthand for their postings. Java could be called heaven and Burma hell, while New Guinea represented a place from which few expected to return [00:41]. What began as dark humour later appeared painfully accurate. Of approximately 140,000 Japanese servicemen deployed there, about 127,000 did not return. Many were not killed directly in battle. Disease, malnutrition, exhaustion and the failure to move supplies through the interior caused most of the losses [01:22], [01:32].

Those figures show what happens when ambition becomes detached from logistics. Every advance depended on food, medicine, ammunition and transport. Once those systems failed, courage could not compensate. The tragedy was not only that so many died, but that they were committed to positions their own army could no longer sustain.

The Miscalculation Behind Kokoda

The crisis developed after the fall of Rabaul in January 1942. Japanese leaders saw the port as a base from which Allied communications could be threatened and Australia’s link with the United States weakened. Popular accounts sometimes describe the campaign as preparation for a direct invasion of Australia. The broader plan, associated with Operation FS, was instead intended to isolate Australia by seizing New Guinea, New Caledonia and Fiji [02:49], [03:07].

Japan’s defeat in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 disrupted the plan to capture Port Moresby by sea. Commanders then turned to an overland approach across the Owen Stanley Range and along the Kokoda Track. Their assumptions proved disastrously optimistic. The route was not a broad corridor suited to rapid movement, but a steep network of ridges, valleys and waterlogged paths. Heavy rain lasted for hours, while malaria, dysentery and skin infections reduced fighting strength. Clothing decayed, equipment failed and carrying a wounded man could require an entire group [03:35], [04:09], [04:27].

A few miles on a map could demand days of climbing and rebuilding crossings. Men told to expect momentum instead experienced isolation and the gradual disappearance of dependable support. The campaign became a warning that geography cannot be defeated by determination alone.

The Unexpected Defenders

The Australians blocking the advance were not all veterans of the Australian Imperial Force. Many experienced AIF formations were serving in the Middle East, leaving militia units to face the early pressure. These young conscripts were derisively labelled “chocolate soldiers”, based on the belief that they would melt in real combat [05:08].

At Isurava in August 1942, that belief was overturned. Australian units resisted the elite Nankai Shitai, or South Seas Detachment, long enough to disrupt the Japanese timetable. A captured intelligence diary expressed surprise at troops who launched bayonet charges and held positions with a determination that did not fit earlier expectations of Western militia [05:47], [06:07]. Australians discovered they could withstand a respected opponent, while Japanese troops learned that the advance would not proceed easily.

The defeat at Milne Bay deepened that change in perception. Japanese land forces had seemed almost unstoppable during the opening months of the Pacific War. Milne Bay showed that they could be defeated in a major ground operation [06:41], [07:00]. It gave Australians confidence and warned the Japanese that the balance was beginning to shift.

Collapse, Hunger and the Loss of Restraint

When the Japanese advance stalled near Ioribaiwa, collapsing supply lines made withdrawal unavoidable [07:20], [07:28]. Retreat through the mountains became a prolonged struggle by sick and underfed men. At Buna, Gona and Sanananda, troops were confined to swampy defensive positions as Allied pressure increased. Food became critically scarce, and soldiers sometimes counted individual grains of rice.

Historical testimony includes evidence of cannibalism under extreme starvation. The subject should be treated without sensationalism, because it reflects the collapse of organisation and judgement rather than an entire people or culture. Some accounts refer to fallen comrades, enemy troops and local carriers. Japanese headquarters later issued Army Order 371 in an attempt to prohibit the practice among Japanese personnel, although its wording did not clearly offer the same protection to non-Japanese victims [08:26], [08:45], [09:38].

Starvation does not excuse abuse, but it helps explain how men can descend into behaviour they once considered impossible. Responsibility also reaches upward. Soldiers remained in positions where food and medicine could not reach them, while orders still demanded resistance. A command culture that treated surrender as dishonourable made the disaster even worse.

The Hardening of Australian Attitudes

Australian conduct also changed. Reports of mistreatment, prisoner deaths and the execution of Sergeant Leonard Siffleet intensified anger. A photograph recording his death was found among a Japanese officer’s possessions and became a symbol of the conflict’s brutality. General Thomas Blamey compared the enemy to vermin, reflecting a climate in which compassion became increasingly difficult [10:16], [11:02], [11:50].

Prisoners were not always taken, and Australian units developed aggressive night patrols that kept Japanese positions under pressure. These tactics were effective, but they also show how fear and grief can narrow moral choices. Australian courage can be recognised while still acknowledging that dehumanising language has consequences. Honest remembrance requires both.

One practical advantage was the Owen submachine gun. Senior officers initially dismissed it as a “gangster’s toy”, but its reliability suited jungle fighting. Mud and humidity could disable the British Sten or complicate the American Thompson, while the Owen continued to operate in harsh conditions [12:39], [12:48], [13:16]. For a patrol moving through dense vegetation, reliability could determine who returned.

The Distance Between Commanders and Soldiers

Relations between frontline troops and senior leadership were strained. After Isurava, Blamey made remarks interpreted as criticism of men who had endured extraordinary hardship. The response became known through the “rabbit” incident. As he visited wounded soldiers, some chewed lettuce leaves in silent reference to a song about a rabbit running away [14:32], [15:06].

The gesture looked humorous, but its meaning was serious. It expressed resentment towards leaders who seemed willing to judge sacrifice from safety. Commanders spoke of objectives and formations; soldiers remembered mud, illness and missing friends. The protest gave exhausted men a voice without open disobedience.

A Campaign That Continued

During the final year, Australian forces pursued remnants of the Japanese 18th Army. Historians still debate whether these operations were essential for clearing Allied territory or whether political considerations prolonged fighting whose strategic value had declined. Whatever the answer, the soldiers involved continued to face disease, danger and loss.

In this period, forty-two Japanese soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Masaharu Takanaga surrendered. Their decision challenged the Senjinkun, the military code that discouraged capture and promoted death over surrender [16:13], [17:02], [17:33]. Choosing life required courage in an institution that taught them to see survival as shameful. Their surrender was more than a tactical event; it rejected an ideology that had consumed thousands of lives.

Aftermath, Responsibility and Memory

The New Guinea war formally ended on 13 September 1945. General Hatazō Adachi surrendered his sword and led the survivors of his shattered army into captivity [18:23], [18:46]. They were shadows of the force that had arrived years earlier. Adachi later died by suicide. In his final statements, he did not fully separate himself from the actions of troops who had suffered under his command, suggesting a lasting burden of responsibility [19:13], [19:44].

One of the campaign’s most moving stories belongs to Kokichi Nishimura. After surviving the war, returning to Japan and building a civilian life, he eventually went back to New Guinea. He spent many years searching for the remains of members of his unit, determined that they should not remain anonymous in the jungle. His work continued for roughly a quarter of a century, linking private grief with a wider duty of remembrance. Nishimura died in 2015, still closely connected to the landscape that shaped his life [20:17], [20:31].

His story reminds us that war does not end for everyone when a surrender document is signed. Some survivors spend decades trying to understand why they lived, what happened to their companions and whether memory can restore dignity to those left behind.

The New Guinea campaign does not fit neatly into a celebratory narrative. It brought together strategic error, environmental hardship, courage, prejudice, endurance and moral collapse. Japanese veterans who remembered Australians with unease were not simply describing an opponent that defeated them. They were recalling troops who adapted to the jungle, rejected expectations that they would fail and pursued a retreating army with growing confidence.

The deeper lesson is not that one side became naturally stronger or more ruthless. It is that prolonged war can reshape ordinary people until suspicion replaces empathy and survival overwhelms restraint. Remembering New Guinea honestly means respecting courage without romanticising suffering, examining wrongdoing without turning entire nations into caricatures, and recognising the burden carried by those who returned home with memories no official history could fully contain.