The Japanese seizure of Rabaul on New Britain in January 1942 directly threatened Northern Australia and, as a result, General Douglas MacArthur took command of the Southwest Pacific Area. In July 1942, the Japanese attacked south across the Owen Stanley mountain range. Thanks to the hasty deployment of Australian militiamen and veteran Imperial Force troops the Japanese were halted at Ioribaiwa Ridge just 27 miles from Port Moresby. MacArthur’s priority was to regain Northeast New Guinea and New Britain. The capture of airfields at Buna and reoccupation of Gona and Sanananda Point were prerequisites. The Allied offensive opened on 16 November 1942 with Australian infantrymen and light tanks alongside the US 32nd Infantry Division. Overcoming the Japanese and the inhospitable terrain in tropical conditions proved the toughest of challenges. It remains an achievement of the highest order that the campaign ended successfully on 22 January 1943. This account with its clear text and superb imagery is a worthy tribute to those who fought and, all too often, died there.

“A compelling chronicle of the Battle of Papua New Guinea with rarely viewed images from World War II . . . an excellent book.” —Naval Historical Foundation The Japanese seizure of Rabaul on New Britain in January 1942 directly threatened Northern Australia and, as a result, General Douglas MacArthur took command of the Southwest Pacific Area. In July 1942, the Japanese attacked south across the Owen Stanley mountain range. Thanks to the hasty deployment of Australian militiamen and veteran Imperial Force troops the Japanese were halted at Ioribaiwa Ridge just 27 miles from Port Moresby. MacArthur’s priority was to regain Northeast New Guinea and New Britain. The capture of airfields at Buna and reoccupation of Gona and Sanananda Point were prerequisites. The Allied offensive opened on 16 November 1942 with Australian infantrymen and light tanks alongside the US 32nd Infantry Division. Overcoming the Japanese and the inhospitable terrain in tropical conditions proved the toughest of challenges. It remains an achievement of the highest order that the campaign ended successfully on 22 January 1943. This account with its clear text and superb imagery is a worthy tribute to those who fought and, all too often, died there. “Covers a seriously neglected key campaign of WWII. Most Highly Recommended.” —Firetrench “A fascinating look at real jungle warfare and the images only accentuate how miserable troops must have been during the fighting.” —ModelingMadness.com

His book tells not only how victory was gained through a combination of technology, tactics, and army-navy cooperation but also how the New Guinea campaign exemplified the strategic differences that plagued the Pacific War, since many high-ranking officers considered it a diversionary tactic rather than a key offensive.

A GREAT WARRIOR AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWERS In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur faced an enemy who, in the space of a few months, captured Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and, from their base at Raubaul in New Britain, threaten Australia. Upon his retreat to Australia, MacArthur hoped to find enough men and matériel for a quick offensive against the Japanese. Instead, he had available to him only a small and shattered air force, inadequate naval support, and an army made up almost entirely of untried reservists. Here is one of history’s most controversial commanders battling his own superiors for enough supplies, since President Roosevelt favored the European Theater; butting heads with the Navy, which opposed his initiatives; and on his way to making good his promise of liberating the Philippines. In the battles for Buna, Lae, and Port Moresby, the capture of Finschhafen, and other major actions, he would prove his critics wrong and burnish an image of greatness that would last through the Korean War. This was the “other” Pacific War: the one MacArthur fought in New Guinea and, against all odds and most predictions, decisively won.

Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

The Japanese defense of the Buna area of the northeastern coast of New Guinea was organized around major strongpoints. Taken together they formed a well-designed complex of mutually supporting bunkers concealed by dense tropical vegetation and sited in such a manner as to cover every possible avenue of approach. It was hot and humid, a mixture of jungle and swamp infested with insects and leeches. Scrub typhus, malaria, dengue fever, and dysentery were epidemic.

A harrowing account of an epic, yet nearly forgotten, battle of World War II—General Douglas MacArthur's four-year assault on the Pacific War's most hostile battleground: the mountainous, jungle-cloaked island of New Guinea. “A meaty, engrossing narrative history… This will likely stand as the definitive account of the New Guinea campaign.”—The Christian Science Monitor One American soldier called it “a green hell on earth.” Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps—New Guinea was a battleground far more deadly than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the Empire’s strategy to knock Australia out of the war. Allied Commander-in-Chief General Douglas MacArthur committed 340,000 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Australian, Dutch, and New Guinea troops, to retake New Guinea at all costs. What followed was a four-year campaign that involved some of the most horrific warfare in history. At first emboldened by easy victories throughout the Pacific, the Japanese soon encountered in New Guinea a roadblock akin to the Germans’ disastrous attempt to take Moscow, a catastrophic setback to their war machine. For the Americans, victory in New Guinea was the first essential step in the long march towards the Japanese home islands and the ultimate destruction of Hirohito’s empire. Winning the war in New Guinea was of critical importance to MacArthur. His avowed “I shall return” to the Philippines could only be accomplished after taking the island. In this gripping narrative, historian James P. Duffy chronicles the most ruthless combat of the Pacific War, a fight complicated by rampant tropical disease, violent rainstorms, and unforgiving terrain that punished both Axis and Allied forces alike. Drawing on primary sources, War at the End of the World fills in a crucial gap in the history of World War II while offering readers a narrative of the first rank.

This book covers the dramatic events that saw ultimate Allied victory over the Japanese in remote Northern Burma on the Chinese border. The plan involved two separate but concurrent operations. US Army General Joseph Stilwell was ordered to train up two Chinese divisions and together with a US special force (Merrill's Marauders) advance to seize the key Japanese base at Myitkyina. At the same time Brigadier Orde Wingate and his 77 Brigade (known as the Chindits) penetrated and fought deep behind Japanese lines. While the success of this Operation remains debatable, the Chindits' courage and determination destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility. Despite terrible deprivation a second much larger operation went ahead.