Maisin Recollections of the Kokoda Campaign, 1942-3

Abstract

ABSTRACT The contributions of Papua New Guinean labourers in the brutal Kokoda Track campaign of 1942–3 have long been acknowledged, yet firsthand accounts are extremely rare. During fieldwork in Maisin villages of Collingwood Bay in Oro Province in 1982–3 and 1997, the author recorded 22 extended reminiscences from former labourers and women about their war experiences. This article draws on these narratives to reconstruct the course of the labourers’ engagement in the war, to give voice to the dangers they faced and sacrifices they made, and to probe their perceptions and moral evaluations of their compelled alliance with Australian and American forces in the fight to defeat the Japanese. Focusing on the voices of Papuan veterans and their families, this article contributes to recent research contesting the stereotype of the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’ and seeking a more complex and richer understanding of the Indigenous experience of the war and its legacy.