Getting Ready For
p. 54 · Read in the full issue
Pacific Islands
Regiment
Getting Ready For Demobilisation
rE rapidity with which the Japanese prisoners are being shipped away from New Guinea to Japan—it is expected that they all will be gone by the end of July—makes the maintenance of the three battalions of the Pacific Is lands Regiment (natives of Papua and New Guinea) no longer necessary; and plans for demobilisation are under way.
Originally, it was intended to keep the battalions at full strength, for guard duty over the Japs.
Reports about “mutiny” in the Regi ment were exaggerated, state officers who recently came from Rabaul. There was restlessness and discontent, and a few ugly scenes—but nothing so bad that it could not be handled by the Regiment’s officers.
The real trouble occurred, not in the military ranks at all, but among some 3,000 native labourers—Aitapes and Sepiks —who were concentrated in large camps at Kokopo and Keravat, and who had a long wait for transport. They certainly “played up,” and extreme measures had to be taken; but that was not a military incident. The principal agitators were removed and dealt with, and there was no trouble after early February.
The Depot Battalion of the PlR—the battalion into which recruits were re ceived—has been demobilised. Lieut - Colonel Mullaly has taken over the second battalion from Lieut.-Colonel Norman Neal—the latter has secured his discharge and has returned to his home in Wau.
Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, who was in charge of the 22nd Battalion of the AIF in Rabaul when the Japs invaded in 1942 has taken over the third battalion of the PIR from Lieut.-Colonel Murchison.