How Rabaul Lost Its
p. 55 · Read in the full issue
Rain Trees
One of the features of Rabaul before the war was the line of rain trees, a heritage from the days of the German administration, down the centre of Malaguna Road.
As well as being beautiful, the trees provided shade for natives and Euro peans alike, as they walked down the long road. Now the trees are gone, and the road has no shade, but is hot
and dusty.
A Rabaul native described their destruction to our correspondent there. This is the essence of what he said : IN September, 1942, four Lockheed-Hud son bombers of the Australian Air Force came to bomb Rabaul late at night. They bombed and straffed the houses bordering Malaguna Road very successfully. Many fires were started and many Japanese were killed. The planes did not fly at a great height, but just skimmed the tops of the marmar (rain) trees. One plane would start to fly along the road from Malaguna, run the length of the road and then wheel off into the bush; then another plane would run from the Rabaul end, low over the trees, to wards Malaguna.
These planes flew too low for the big Jap guns to fire at them. If all the Jap anese had started shooting with their big guns which were placed on the mountain tops, then the shells would have landed in the middle of the camp area and killed their own troops.
The next day the Japanese commenced to place machine-guns in the tops of some of the marmar trees along Malaguna Road, in case the Australians came back again that night.
Four planes did come back and repeated the previous night’s performance—bomb ing, machine gunning, destroying every thing and killing Japanese. In less than half an hour there were no more Jap machine-guns left in the tops of the mar mar trees. The troops manning the big guns on the mountain tops were very cross that four planes could cause so much trouble; they did not think straight any more and began firing their big guns down into the town where the shells exploded and killed many of their troops. The planes left without any casualties, leaving behind them many fires. Next day the Japanese started to repair the damage and commenced to leave the town and go into the bush.
At this time too, the Japanese started to cut down the marmar trees in Mala guna Road. To-day there are no trees along this road; it is clear and open and the sun burns the ground. It is no good.