Fall Of Rabaul
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
Anniversary Kept in New Guinea
and Australia
THE eighth anniversary of the fall of Rabaul, NG, to Japanese forces on January 23, 1942, was remembered in Australian cities where groups of ex- Territorians now live, and in Rabaul.
In Sydney, members of the New Guinea Women’s Club and other ex-New Guinea residents gathered at the Cenotaph in Martin Place about 8.15 a.m. on January 23 and placed wreaths on the monument in memory of the fallen. This hour has always been chosen as that nearest the time when the Japs actually landed in Rabaul.
In Rabaul and in Melbourne, the anni versary ceremonies were held on January 22.
Territorians now living in Melbourne join forces each year with the 2/22nd Battalion which was the AIF unit in Rabaul at the time of the invasion. This year, in commemoration, the Brunswick Salvation Army Band played in the Inner Sanctuary of the Shrine of Remembrance as a tribute to its predecessors. When the 2/22nd Battalion was formed in 1940, members of the Brunswick Salvation Army band joined up en masse and be came the regimental band. Only one of these bandsmen came back, the rest were lost with the majority of the 2/22nd, only the remnants escaping from the Japs and the New Britain jungle.
The Service at the Melbourne Shrine was conducted by survivors of the 2/22nd and by relatives and friends of those who fell at Rabaul.
Rabaul Services
TWO services were held in Rabaul on January 22. One at the obelisk near Vulcan Island, where the Japs landed in 1942, and the other at the Montevideo Maru obelisk at Colyer Wat son’s old wharf, Rabaul, from which the ill-fated prisoner-of-war ship is believed to have sailed about mid-1942.
The service was at 5.30 a.m. at Vulcan, where Father Ormond addressed the 40odd people present.
Wreaths were placed on the Stone by Mrs. E. Britten on behalf of New Guinea Women’s Association, Melbourne; by Senator Kendall, then visiting Rabaul, for Brisbane New Guinea Association; by Miss Dorothy Stewart for New Guinea Women’s Club of Sydney; Mrs. Una Adams, for NGVR; and by the president of the Rabaul Branch of the RSSAILA and by the District Officer, members of trading firms etc.
At the Colyer Watson wharf service, which followed that at Vulcan, there were many personal floral tributes to those who had lost their lives.
At the Rabaul dawn service. Inset, the Vulcan Obelisk.