On Port Moresby

When The Japs Looked Down On Port Moresby

LETTER from an old resident of New Guinea to the editor of the PIM: "There was an argument here recently. Someone said that when you were broadcasting you said that the Japs would never get across the Owen Stan ley, but that when they appeared on top of the range you said that they might now get to Port Moresby. What did you really say?"

Answer by R. W. Robson: Thanks for the inquiry. Those radio broadcasts of mine are something I am more than ready to boast about.

The Japs got to Kokoda late in Aug ust, 1942; and began to climb towards the summit of the range. Then the cal amity-howlers got going in both news paper and radio. I attacked the calam ity-howlers. In my broadcasts, night after night, I insisted that, because of terrain, weather, supply difficulties and lack of air mastery, the Japs could not capture Port Moresby by a drive across the Owen Stanley mountains. I never deviated from that view, not even when the Japs appeared on the southern side of the summit a little more than 30 miles from Moresby. Finally, on the evening of September 24, 1942, I said this: "I may be called an optimist, but I have no doubt of the outcome. I believe that these Japanese infiltrators have done just a little too much infiltrating, and that this enemy force, stuck out there on the end of 70 miles of mountainous jungle track, is going to find itself, before long, in a highly interesting position. I have not the slightest doubt that the sons of the Anzacs will do to the Japs in New Guinea everything that the Anzacs accomplished under not dis similar conditions in Gallipoli. Both came to the job knowing little of war, and hating war, but both won—or will win—in their high courage and in the arts of war, im perishable fame."

Before I left the ABC studio that night of September 24, Sydney people were telephoning to insist that I be prevented from broadcasting such dangerous optim ism. In the Sydney Morning Herald next morning there was a demand that I be officially suppressed. Everyone was giving Port Moresby away.

I did not broadcast again for a week.

By October 1, the Australians were at tacking and the Japs were running.

Thenceforward, for three years, they never ceased running. . . .

On August 11, 1944, in a broadcast through BBC, London, I outlined my con ception of the strategy by which I be lieved General MacArthur and the United States service chiefs would defeat Japan—by leap-frogging the islands, by passing the Jap garrisons and using mas sive air-power directly against the islands of Japan itself. The censor— who nearly drove me crazy in those days —had a good chop at it; but what sur vived turned out to be a pretty accurate forecast of the remainder of the Pacific War.

Mr. H. C. Morris, who was an engineer in the Department of Public Works, New Guinea, until the evacuation, has been engaged by the High Commission for the Western Pacific (Suva) to take charge of reconstruction work in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. He will be prim arily concerned with the important task of erecting the buildings for the new ad ministrative establishment at Abemama, in the Central Gilberts.