New Ireland Invasion

Painful Post-Mortem On New Ireland Invasion

From a Rabaul Correspondent New light on the dark days of the Japanese invasion of New Guinea in 1942 has been shed by the publication of a book by a former New Ireland resident, Mary Murray. The book, Escape : A Thousand Miles to Freedom, is likely to set off a new controversy and open up new wounds.

P SCAPE deals with the escape from New Ireland of planter Harry Murray, of Kavieng, and 16 other civilians, with the Japs at their heels. The party included District Officer J. H. McDonald.

The book, published by Rigby Ltd., of Adelaide, at 35/-, won’t be listed as one of the great war books because although the story is full of adventure the writing is pedestrian.

Its main value is as a record to be read in conjunction with Eric Feldt’s The Coast Watchers and with the Australian war histories which touch on early events in New Ireland and New Britain.

Relatives and those few surviving members of the main body of the Ist Independent Company (an Aus tralian commando unit) stationed in New Ireland, won’t like what Mary Murray has to say about that unit.

Nor will some New Guinea people be happy to read her comments on

the attitude of many New Ireland civilians during the Jap invasion.

Although she herself wasn’t there at that time (she first went to New Ireland in 1948 and married Harry Murray in 1950—and both now are living in Queensland) she checked her facts with the survivors of the escape.

Her published story, she says, answers a question that has been left unanswered for 22 years—the question asked by the wives of many civilian men who were left behind on New Ireland after Murray and his party arrived in Sydney in June, 1942. The question is, why did they escape and not the others?

Plenty Of Names But Murray at that time, says Mrs. Murray, “couldn’t very well tell the women that their husbands had not made any attempt to escape; that rather than organise themselves into escape parties they had preferred to sit down in their comfortable homes and await the enemy”.

This book names names. It tells how whole groups of planters simply refused to escape because they thought the war would be over soon, or that the Japs would treat them as the Australians had treated the Germans in New Guinea in 1914.

It tells how rifles issued to civilians as a local defence measure were simply abandoned to the enemy; how one select group of civilians which did decide to escape set off in style aboard five copra vessels loaded with goods taken from abandoned Kavieng stores—when the space could have been better occupied by additional passengers.

It tells of lack of initiative and/or panic in leaving large supplies of food and fuel in the town for the Japs; and of how some civilians re fused to assist the Murray party when it needed help or supplies dur ing its long escape trek.

Mrs. Murray’s book underlines again the particular tragedy of the

Chinese in World War ll—whose wives and children were not evacua ted with the white women and children but left, as if they were natives. Understandably, there is still a legacy of resentment in New Guinea over this discrimination by the Administration.

Administration errors, however, were not confined to the Chinese question, and Escape recalls the lack of preparedness of those days, the lack of instructions, the lack of action, the lack of initiative by those in authority. Here was one of those

rare occasions when advice and aid were needed from a government, yet the answer was silence.

It was the same story, too, in nearby Rabaul—where the results were even more tragic. Lack of instruction when instructions were requested resulted in the capture of hundreds of civilians who, with hundreds of soldiers including most of the commando unit from New Ireland, later were drowned in the Montivideo Maru sinking (see Tolala’s report opposite).

It is what Escape has to say about

the Ist Commandos that will re awaken the worst of the old con troversies. Eric Feldt in his book bought himself into a bitter fight when he accused the Kavieng detachment of running away, and of surrendering without a shot being fired or sustaining a casualty.

Officers, relatives and the RSL fiercely attacked Feldt and he later apologised publicly.

According to Murray’s testimony no apology was needed for Feldt’s main charge—that the commandos had run—although Feldt was wrong in his information on how the men had surrendered; and they certainly had suffered some severe casualties.

According to Murray, the com mandos had gone off in the last re maining vessel, the Indiana Star, with out giving the civilians the oppor tunity of travelling with them, and despite a specific radio signal to them from Port Moresby to remain and do as much damage to the enemy as possible. Their behaviour was not in the tradition of the men on Bougain ville, nor of the Australian indepen dent company cut off on Timor and which harassed the Japs for months.

These men had worse odds to face.

"Disgraceful Act"

On this aspect of the book, F. A. (Snowy) Rhoades, a former Coast watcher and Lt./Cdr. RANVR, now of Rabaul, says: “The surreptitious departure of the independent com pany was a disgraceful act . . . it savoured of panic. And Harry Murray’s party with their long ex perience of the island and knowledge of the west coast anchorages could possibly have piloted the Induna Star to safety had they been allowed.”

There is, naturally, a lot of what might-have-been in this account of a tragic time in New Guinea history.

Hindsight is always easier.

But the adventures that befell Harry Murray and his party leave no doubt that Murray was one man who knew what he had to do, and who did it with initiative and guts.

It was Murray’s leadership which got the party through despite what often looked like overwhelming odds.

This book gives him full credit for his work and clears up a lot of the confusion on just who did what. It makes it clear, for instance, that it was Murray and not somebody else who made the dangerous voyage to the Tanga Islands to obtain the vessel in which the party finally escaped more than three months after Kavieng was attacked.