The Things That

Went On!

A Sour Commentary

By R. W. Robson

There have been times in the past 30 years, after learning of

bureaucracy’s bunglings in New

Guinea, when I have shut myself in a quiet room, and tried to control my blood presure.

“VjtfHATS the use of howling »» against the bureaucrats?” I have asked myself. “The practice of plac ing authority in the hands of rule of-thumb officials is part of the sys tem of democracy. The blighters will always be with us. Calm down. Make the best of them!”

Of course, in a true democracy, one can always get after the more intolerable bureaucrat through Parlia ment. But there are few elected Parl iaments in the Islands, and little men usually get away with their stupidi ties, to end up often with decorations and a place high on the lists of pro minent citizens. Yet, for every half dozen pinheads, there usually is one man of sound judgment.

I suppose I mellowed, with the years, and forgot my hates. But

Mr. J. K. McCarthy, as seen by Bretl Hilder, and sketched specially for PIM.

memories of them came flowing back, in full measure, as I read J. K.

McCarthy’s new book, Patrol Into Yesterday, which has already been favourably reviewed in PIM.

McCarthy went into New Guinea, a talented youngster, in 1927. I launched the Pacific Islands Monthly, and so began to take a personal in terest in P-NG Administration, in 1930, As I read the book, I began to notice how often McCarthy’s history of events I well remember faded out when, if he had carried on, he was bound to make acidulous comment upon stupidity and incompetence in high places.

Mutterings In The Club For example, away back in the thirties he was a young ADO in New Ireland, and he noticed that the vil lagers, under an ironbound system maintained by the merchants and planters, with the help of Adminis tration, were forced to sell their copra at a miserable price to the licensed trade stores, spaced rigidly every two miles along the Bulominski Road.

So he encouraged the natives to make a better grade of copra and sell it, to their much greater profit, to small, independent traders in Kavieng. He laughed at a warning that he was taking his official life in his hands—he pointed out that his immediate superiors in the District Service approved of what he was do ing. But soon afterwards, he found himself posted to the new port of Salamaua, and down-graded to Patrol Officer. The Kavieng Club’s mutter ings had been heard, and bureaucracy had spoken—and that was that.

Back in the thirties I often talked to crippled George Murray, who probably was the most devoted and enthusiastic Director of Agriculture that New Guinea, or any other Paci fic territory, had ever known. He spent his duty hours, and his nights, and his leave, working out detailed plans for agricultural development.

I still have copies of his plans— together with the letters by means of which high bureaucracy dumped him and his ideas, and tried to keep him quiet.

Old George died miserably in Rabaul in 1942. Since then, the bu reaucrats have spent millions in trying to do the things he fought for vainly a quarter-century be fore. For the last few years now scores of high officials are spending their energy, and huge sums of Aus tralian money, in going up and down

the Territory, urging the natives to become independent producers and merchants on their own account.

But it is in that section of the book dealing with the Japanese invasion and the Pacific War that my memory becomes furiously alive.

The Tragedy of Rabaul Intelligent observers knew 30 years ago that the Japanese, sooner or later, would attack us in the South Pacific. But it was not until after Hitler struck in 1939, and established the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo “Axis”, that Australia’s bureaucracy reluctantly accepted the warnings and placed an Australian “garrison” in Rabaul in 1940-41.

There are few worse examples of incompetence than the story of what happened in New Guinea after that.

By now, McCarthy was an ADO at Talasea (on the north coast of New Britain) and he saw it all.

Through his book, he lets daylight in on many things that high officialdom kept hidden in wartime, and no doubt some people had hoped were now long forgotten.

Curiously enough, McCarthy makes no reference to the most damnable bit of official bungling in the history of New Guinea—namely the failure of the Canberra Pooh- Bahs to get 200 official and non official men out of Rabaul at the end of 1941 when it was clearly known that a Japanese expedition was com ing to seize the port.

The fact was kept hidden for years; but now it is known that Acting- Administrator Harold Page actually sought permission to evacuate the Europeans from Rabaul on a large Scandinavian motor-ship that had gone in there to load copra.

He never received that permission —the result, I believe, not of de liberate refusal, but of bungling offi cial incompetence during a sacrosanct Canberra weekend—with the result that Page and hundreds of Australian men were lost, and the big motor ship was sunk in Rabaul harbour.

Some Pointed Questions Again and again, at that time I tried to get from the Canberra archives some explanation of how and why that Rabaul community (European, Chinese and native) was sacrificed; but bureaucracy always ganged up to hide the blunder and conceal the names of the fools re sponsible for it.

In his book, however, McCarthy tells much of the circumstances sur rounding that debacle; and, on what he says, it is possible even at this late

date to ask a series of pointed ques tions—questions which bureaucracy never has answered and, of course, never will answer. For example: Why was no attempt made to put into operation the defensive civilian (not military) organisation created by John Walstab and set out in the “Blue Book” which he circulated long before the Japanese invaded?

Caches of essential supplies were established in designated places, and duties were allocated to both official and non-official civilians. But in De cember, 1941, and January, 1942,

when it was known that the Japs were coming, and the men around the coasts of New Britain, New Ire land and New Guinea frantically sought information and advice, in ac cordance with “Blue Book” plans, no comprehensible orders could be got.

Australia’s 22nd Battalion was in Rabaul nearly a year before the Japs invaded —why was nothing done to train those men in the techniques of jungle warefare, or how to live off the country?

When the enemy landed in Rabaul in overwhelming force all the Austra

lian citizen-soldiers who could escape became scattered in the New Britain jungles. McCarthy describes how he and his men, scouting in from Tala sea practically to the back door of Rabaul, found scores and scores of these soldiers, disease-ridden and dis pirited, starving alongside supplies of native foods which they could neither recognise nor render palatable.

Over one hundred soldier escapees were rounded up by the Japs on the south coast, and systematically mas sacred on Tol plantation; but a couple of hundred who struggled out onto the north coast were rescued by the McCarthy organisation, and even tually got clear. If the bureaucrats, military and non-military, had given that battalion even rudimentary jungle-training in 1941, many more lives would have been saved.

McCarthy tells how he had offered to train some of them, but his re quests had received no reply.

He Got An MBE Under what system were courage, resourcefulness and determination to fight on in the New Guinea area recognised by Top Brass?

Certain military talent which was rescued in the jungle by McCarthy, and which finally escaped westward in one of McCarthy’s precious small boats, ended the war with high deco rations. But McCarthy, whose courage and resource saved scores of men from certain death in the jungle, was not—as far as I know—even officially praised. He does not men tion it in his book, but the records show he was awarded only the MBE!

When Australia Rejected Manus Treasure-Trove New Guinea, in an economic sense, was battered almost out of existence

by war. The Americans had created an enormous base at Manus, At war’s end, they offered the Manus base to Australia —and the never-to be-forgotten Dr. H. V. Evatt, then a responsible Minister, rejected it.

So then the Americans proceeded to dispose of huge masses of equip ment, building material, etc., at a peppercorn price—to the great en richment of Chinese traders, who were first in, and of scores of “dis posals merchants” who came later.

McCarthy was now DO at Madang, and desperately needed such

things as building materials, engines, sawmills, transport, for the work of rehabilitation. All he wanted was there at Manus, only 200 miles away.

Australia’s Top Brass did nothing about it—getting hold of this stuff when it was needed but later spent tens of millions of pounds buying the kind of stuff that was going begging in Manus in 1945-6.

There are many little things in the book which point the same way, but about which McCarthy, being a serv ing officer and a gentleman, does not make the obvious comment.