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The War in Papua – The executions
at Higaturu
Some 67 years ago, Japan, the first
Asian nation to industrialize and to build a modern, mechanized
military capability, believing in its own superiority and in its
destiny to dominate, rule and gain access to all the
raw-material resources it wanted, conceived of a vast,
militaristic, neo-colonial operation which it named “The greater
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”.
The aim was to invade and take over all of South East Asia, as
well as the islands and the Australian continent which lay to
the south.
The Japanese had already invaded and taken possession of the
Korean Peninsula, and had also conquered and possessed the
Manchurian provinces of mainland China.
The Japanese believed that as they advanced into SE Asia from
these bases, any threat from America, at that time neutral in
the European conflict begun by Hitler’s Nazi Germany, would be
minimized if they attacked and sank the USA’s Pacific Fleet,
normally at anchor at its huge base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.
Thus the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere campaign was launched
in a dawn attack upon the Pearl Harbour base on December 7th,
1941. It was a surprise attack, and was devastating.
Eight weeks later, in January of 1942 a Japanese invasion of
what is now Papua New Guinea had commenced and soon New Britain,
New Ireland, Manus and parts of the mainland had been occupied.
On the 21st of July, Anglican missionaries near the then
Government station of Buna were surprised to see very large
ships approaching the coast. Thus began the invasion of what was
then the Northern Division of the Territory of Papua, with the
aim to press through to Port Moresby. From here air and sea
attacks upon Australia would be launched with ease.
Australia’s reaction was one of panic. As a loyal member of the
British Empire Australia had committed almost all its military
resources to fight with the British and their allies in North
Africa, in Europe, and in the defence of Singapore.
In Australia there remained, at best, a “Dad’s Army” of elderly
and unfit men whose service in the First World War was
considered experience enough to allow them to man the coastal
defences of Australia.
The plan of action was for civilian populations of Queensland
and the Northern Territory to withdraw to the south to a
position below what planners called “The Brisbane Line,” drawn
across the continent from east to west.
From here a defensive land-battle would be undertaken. Lands to
the north, and the island territories governed by Australia were
too big and too difficult to man and supply, let alone to
defend.
This fall-back position behind the Brisbane Line was the place
the opposing forces would engage if and when the Japanese
approached northern Australia.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, but most fortunately for the
rest of us, Papua New Guineans and Australians alike, the
Americans, impelled by the unheralded and massive attack at
Pearl Harbour, came into the war with a huge impact. The US
Pacific Command was created, and in due deference to his
experience and to the huge resources at his command, the
American, General Douglas MacArthur was given command of all of
Australia’s forces at home and in the Pacific.
MacArthur immediately dismantled the “Brisbane Line”
preparations and requested the Prime Minister of Australia to
assemble a military force for the defence of Port Moresby,
correctly anticipating Japan’s plans in this regard.
The force which was dispatched to defend Port Moresby was almost
entirely composed of young and unwilling conscripts to the
Australian Militia, which was, by law, prevented from operating
outside Australia. Relying upon Papua’s status as an
Australian-protected Territory as his justification, the Prime
Minister authorized the dispatch of this force to Port Moresby.
Older soldiers named these youths “The Chocolate Soldiers,”
predicting that they would melt once they faced the heat and
discomforts of service in Papua. Their officers were for the
most part, men who had been judged as too old or otherwise unfit
for service in other theatres of war. On arrival at Port
Moresby, the “Chocolate Soldiers” showed their resentment by
disobeying orders and by systematically looting and vandalizing
the stores, warehouses and private residences of the town. Even
churches were vandalized and despoiled, as recounted to this
writer by the daughter of the then Anglican Rector of Port
Moresby, Reverend Mathews.
Despite the complaints of the remaining white residents of Port
Moresby, little was done to restrain these youths in uniform by
their largely ineffectual officers. At the same time, civilian
officers of the Papuan Administration were sent on patrol in all
the coastal districts with instructions to conscript all healthy
males within a certain age-band for service with the Australian
Army as carriers and labourers. This was done, and men from the
West, from the Gulf, from all parts of Central and Milne Bay and
Kokoda in the Northern Division, now Oro province, were brought
to Port Moresby.
Here they faced a frightening, dangerous and low-paid existence
for an unknown period. In the beginning, naturally, there were
many desertions. Then with the landing of the Japanese invading
force at Buna matters began to change. An advance party of
experienced men of Australia’s Seventh Division, called back
from service with the British forces, prepared for movement to
Port Moresby soon after their arrival in Australia.
These men together with the young militiamen, a great many of
whom were teenagers, and referred to contemptuously as “Chockos,”
were deployed to the Sogeri Plateau and beyond to meet the
Japanese advance.
Marching with them as carriers and stretcher-bearers were the
Papuan conscripts who would become known as the “Fuzzy-Wuzzy
Angels.” These two groups had a lot in common, being for the
most part young, bewildered, badly-paid, and apprehensive of the
immediate future.
In the extreme adversity in which they found themselves these
two groups of men formed a bond of a kind which neither side had
ever known or expected to be a part of. The young Australians
initially viewed the Papuans, with whom they could not converse,
as strange and unpredictable savages, whilst the Papuans began
to recognize that they had much in common with the young
white-men, a race which they had been accustomed to view with a
degree of awe and even fear; a race with which they had never
imagined that they would share a cigarette, let alone a cup of
tea or a hardman biscuit.
This however, was what happened. From shaky beginnings both
groups steadied and became resolved to carry the fight forward
to the Japanese, buoyed by growing comradeship and admiration
for each other, a regard forged in the raging crucible of
extreme danger, death and discomfort.
Ultimately, victory was achieved through this spirit of one-ness
and the bravery which grew with it. This is the true story of
the “Chockos” and the “ Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” and the campaign
which, together, they fought.
The Australian soldiers were paid six shillings a day, the
equivalent today of roughly
K 8.40 per fortnight, with rations, shorts, shirts and boots.
The “Angels” were paid the equivalent of K1.40 per fortnight
plus rations, a “rami” (laplap) and a leather belt. All were
provided with a waterproof cape, blankets and a mosquito-net. A
stick of tobacco with newspaper cost roughly 5 toea in today’s
money at the labourers’ canteen in Port Moresby. A box of
matches was 1 toea.
In recent years it has been stated that the PNG campaigns fought
by the Allies and their Papuan and New Guinean fellow-soldiers
was something which had nothing to do with the people of this
country. It has been intimated that the local people who were
caught up in any way with the fighting were unfortunate pawns in
a matter which had nothing to do with them.
This theory is quite incorrect as we have seen. Papua New Guinea
was an object of the Japanese desire for conquest and domination
and exploitation just as much as Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and India were. Such
expressions of opinion constitute an insult to the thousands of
Papuans and New Guineans who fought and died to make their
native land safe from the occupation of a merciless and brutal
foe. This is to say nothing of the more-than-9000 Australian
servicemen who lie buried in War Cemeteries and in as yet
undiscovered graves throughout Papua New Guinea today. All,
brown and white alike, fought and died so that together we could
remain free of the rule of the Japanese Empire.
In my youth, among many men who served in the war with
distinction, I knew the RP&NGC’s Sergeant Segera of
Daru,Sergeant Sahanopa of Oro, ex-Sergeant- Major Katui MM, late
of the Papuan Infantry Battalion, from the Goaribari tribe of
the Gulf, and ex-Sergeant Major Samai of the Kairi tribe,
upstream from Kikori, also a non-commissioned officer of the PIB.
All served in the Kokoda- Popondetta-Buna-Gona-Sanananda
campaigns, all with distinction. All were either involved or
well-acquainted with the now newly-controversial executions at
Higaturu and elsewhere. All had many stories to tell, including
those of the executions, and had a wide audience for these.
Of them all, Katui’s picture stays clearly in my mind today,
some fifty years later. Katui, even when approaching old age was
a particularly impressive figure of a man, standing some six
feet in height, broad-shouldered and big-boned without being
heavy. A man with the unmistakeable look of a warrior. Katui,
who worked together with Tom Grahamslaw, of whom more later, was
renowned for his practice, when encamped within known distance
of a Japanese outpost, of going out at night clad only in the
skimpy garment known as “sihi,” and equipped only with a large,
sharp sheath-knife of the type in those days issued to Village
Policemen. Katui would quietly work his way close to the
Japanese camp in the early hours of the morning. With patience
and skill this big man would inch forward quietly, slowly, ever
closer to the cold and sleepy Japanese sentry. Then suddenly and
in silence, he would cover the man’s mouth, slit his throat, cut
his ears off, and withdraw. Katui’s grisly collection of dried
Japanese ears became a legend throughout the Allied forces in
the country, and in his own Kikori district he was regarded with
awe and respect until the day of his passing.
These men and many others like them told their stories to a wide
audience, both brown and white. It is true that the news of the
hangings at Higaturu and elsewhere were not released by the Army
to the news media during the war, being seen as a negative in a
time when high morale amongst the civilian populace was very
important. The news services published a largely positive
picture of the progress of the Kokoda/Gona/Buna campaign in the
Australian media, emphasizing the positive part played by local
enlisted servicemen, policemen, and the conscripted “Angels.”
However, the fact that the executions and the crimes which led
to them were so widely-known and talked about ensured that they
remained no secret. All the Allied service personnel who were
present in Papua during the war years knew about these events.
And most Australians who later lived and worked together with
the men of the RPNGC and the PIR in Papua in the decades after
the war also became familiar with this part of the war’s
history.
All the crimes committed by Papuans against their own people,
against foreign civilians and Allied servicemen at various
locations, and the executions which followed, are the subject of
a number of published works which have long been available to
anyone with interest enough to seek them.
All this is quite contrary to the sensational allegations of
cover-up made in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s
recent feature, presented within its “Foreign Correspondent”
program.
The Port Moresby-based ABC reporter is a relative newcomer to
PNG and although he may have been misinformed, he has shown
himself at best to be gullible. An apology for the insult and
the misinformation generated is warranted. Not only have the
Allied servicemen and the white and Papuan mission personnel who
were tortured and murdered, been insulted, but so have the
majority of the population of today’s Oro province.
Their forbears, like the famous Raphael Oimbari of Popondetta,
who lives to tell the tale, shouldered the burden and fought
hard for their birthright, their freedom and their land. These
people were also horrified by, and in many cases murdered, raped
and kidnapped by the gangs of Papuan men who became the spies
and facilitators of the Japanese, and who were hanged for their
crimes.
Among the Australians who worked as government officers in
pre-war Papua, and who later served in the Army’s on-the-ground
village liaison and logistics unit, ANGAU, was one Thomas
Grahamslaw.
Grahamslaw rose later to become Chief Collector of Customs in
pre-independence PNG. He retired late in the 'sixties. In 1971,
aged 70, he wrote a personal memoir which detailed his
experiences as an ANGAU officer in the Moresby/Milne Bay /Buna /Gona/
Popondetta areas in 1942/43. The memoir was published in 1971 in
the then-widely-read Australian magazine, Pacific Islands
Monthly and it has been quoted from and referred to many times
since.
Tom Grahamslaw, aided by then Sergeant Katui, PIB, among others,
was the officer who oversaw the execution of those who were
hanged at Higaturu in 1943.
After the respective hearings and sentencing, Grahamslaw
together with the late Claude Champion, and with David Marsh,
today still hale and hearty, a well-remembered District
Commissioner of Central Province, appealed to the General
Command for clemency for the condemned men. These three
Australians whose whole lives and interest were bound up with
Papua and its destiny, recommended that the capital penalty be
reduced to one of life imprisonment. Their advice was considered
but rejected by the Commanding Officer in Port Moresby,
Lieutenant General Edmund Herring, who ordered that the
executions be carried out immediately, at Higaturu. Edmund
Herring was later Chief Justice of Victoria.
Following the arrival at Higaturu of the Warrants for Execution,
Grahamslaw arranged for and oversaw the grisly and sad events
themselves. Claude Champion oversaw the construction of the
gallows. In his memoir Grahamslaw gives an exhaustive account of
the events leading up to the arrests, convictions, and the
executions under prevailing laws, of the Papuan offenders, as
well as the executions.
Among the many books by individuals, as well as Army unit
histories covering these happenings, along with the entire
campaign, that written by acclaimed Australian journalist
Timothy Hall- NEW GUINEA 1942-44, published by Methuen in 1981
stands out. This is not only because it tells the story of the
Papuan campaigns very well, but because it is well-researched
and quotes its sources in a comprehensive bibliography. Here
reference is made to many files accessed at the Australian
Archive and the Australian War Memorial. These files are
available for perusal by anyone with sufficient interest to do
so, and they contain reports relevant to the subversive
activities, conspiracies and murders carried out by a small
minority of the native population of the relevant districts. A
simple “Google” search provides references to this data.
In fact an extract from the collection of ANGAU diaries held at
the AWM, being a page from the reports of Captain J.S.Beharall,
sometime colonial Magistrate, co-opted to serve in ANGAU, is in
this writer’s possession. This gives an intimate record of the
exhumation of the bodies of murdered Anglican missionaries, of
several American servicemen, of an Australian officer of the
Papuan Infantry Batallion, and of several local Papuans
including the Anglican teacher Lucien, who, whilst able to run
away, stuck with the white missionaries to try to dissuade their
Papuan captors from handing them over to the Japanese. The
leader of the treasonous villagers was one Embogi, the first of
the men to be hanged later at Higaturu. Lucien was himself
murdered and his body thrown into Gambureta Creek, from which it
was later removed, placed in a coffin and properly buried at
Sangara by Beharall’s group. Lucien Tapiola is now regarded by
the Church as a Saint.
The well-known Australian academic, Hank Nelson, has written no
less than three books in which these events are treated. One of
Nelson’s books was actually published by the ABC! Nelson remains
easily contactable in Australia, being an erudite source of
historical information upon many matters of history in PNG
More recently, Eric Johns, an Australian who worked in PNG for
many years as a teacher has written a multi-volume textbook, a
history of PNG for school-children. This work is entitled “PNG
HISTORY THROUGH STORIES” and was published some years ago. In
Volume One, on page 64, the story of the executions begins. It
is entitled “Hangings at Higaturu” and it provides a thorough
and balanced overview of these events, a sympathetic account
which gives expression to the confusion which existed in many
districts when the war first began. Here agin, good exposure has
been given to the story because this book was serialized in POST
COURIER’s Weekend Extra in 2004. Thus it reached a wide audience
within PNG, although not, it appears, the informants upon whom
the ABC relied.
The torture and murder of a number of Australian and English and
Papuan Anglican missionaries by Japanese aided and in some cases
physically assisted by Papuan collaborators in and around
Buna,Gona and Popondetta is commemorated in the well-known
Martyrs Memorial High School, not far from Popondetta. In annual
services in Anglican churches both in PNG and in Australia. the
murders of the missionaries and their helpers is commemorated.
As well, the deaths by summary execution, often preceded by
torture, of Allied and Papuan servicemen and policemen captured
by local villagers and handed over to the Japanese, are also
commemorated both in monuments and in the histories of the
campaign.
The summary and ghastly executions by the sword of the young
Australian mission-workers, Mavis Parkinson and May Hayman were
the consequence of prior abuse by their captors. A cover-up.
Even rank-and-file Japanese soldiers had some knowledge of the
rules of war and the consequences which might follow where rape
and torture of civilians were discovered. The events were
observed by a loyal Papuan villager who remained hidden for some
time near the shed in which the two women were held captive, and
who subsequently gave evidence at an inquiry into their fate.
Several other Anglican missionaries as well as a larger number
of Allied servicemen suffered similar fates, having, like
Parkinson and Hayman, been beguiled and then put in the hands of
Japanese by Papuan men pretending to be supportive or acting as
decoys. One of the main groups of treasonous village men was
that led by Embogi, who, as a Japanese-appointed “Captain,”
armed a number of his cohorts with rifles. This group was
responsible for the capture and handing over of several Allied
servicemen, and Embogi was physically involved in the subsequent
killing of one of these. Embogi’s group was also responsible for
armed raids upon villages in the Managalase area, where houses
were burned, women raped, and a number of people tied up and
taken away.
Whilst a number of ordinary villagers supported the Japanese
tacitly or actively when ordered to do so, understandably in the
circumstances, those who were executed were pre-war village
officials and leaders who, tempted by offers of payment and the
use of rifles, became facilitators and spies of the Japanese.
These men, so-called "Captains" enjoyed considerable power over
their fellows in the villages, and exercised it to their own
advantage in many ways. Their actions, widely resented,
ultimately led to their conviction upon a range of charges
supported by numbers of witnesses from the villages, men who had
learned to despise and to hate them.
With the retreat of the Japanese, Embogi was placed in some
minor supervisory capacity with the Army labour-line at Soputa.
Initially Embogi ingratiated himself with Grahamslaw who found
him likeable and helpful until, inevitably, the truth of his
treasonous and murderous deeds came out.
The executions took place before a large assembly of villagers,
who, summoned by Grahamslaw, began to assemble the day before
the event. At the appointed time, Grahamslaw addressed the
crowd, speaking in the Motu lingua-franca he knew, also using
the services of a local interpreter who repeated what was said
in the local language.
As Grahamslaw recalled, it was a grim experience. Each man was
given the chance to speak, and each did so. Grahamslaw recalled
that Embogi's speech had a profound effect on all present. He
had a sonorous voice and was obviously a gifted orator. He
stated that he had done wrong, and that he was fully conscious
of this. He said that he was an uneducated man, and had not
known better. He stated that the punishment he was about to
receive was just, and urged his people to heed the Government
and to obey its laws.
Grahamslaw wrote as follows; " I lay awake most of that night
listening to the drums beating and the wailing of the mourners
in the village adjacent to Higaturu, and I re-lived the events
of the day. I had seen death in various forms during the
preceding 12 months, but nothing affected me as deeply as the
hangings of Embogi and his fellow murderers."
None of the people concerned in the hangings of Papuan and
Japanese war-criminals escaped unscathed. Tom Grahamslaw’s
memoirs show that he carried an ongoing sense of sadness at the
recollection of these events and the killings and betrayals by
trusted men which preceded them. The Port Moresby-born Claude
Champion, scion of a family famous in the annals of Papuan
administration and exploration, and present with Grahamslaw at
Higaturu, recalled later in life that the executions were
distressing in the extreme; impossible to forget.
As a young man in the then Territory in the ‘fifties I knew the
late Bill Gordon, again a scion of an old Port Moresby-based
Australian family, for whom the modern-day suburb Gordon’s
Estate is named. Bill was the hangman in all but a few of the
Northern Division executions, although not in case of the first
five executions at Higaturu. An officer of the Royal Papuan
Constabulary sent from Port Moresby for the purpose officiated
here. Bill Gordon, an alcoholic whose later life was governed by
his addiction, once said in his cups “I don’t care about the
Japs. I hung lots of them, too. But those natives- bad bastards
and all that they were, I still see ‘em. Still see ‘em.”
It was not simply that Australian laws or prevailing martial law
as it existed in Papua-(civil government was extinguished by
decree in Papua on the 14th. Of February 1942)- had been broken.
Traditional Papuan custom and relationships, and relationships
established over many decades with the Anglican Church had also
been ridden over, roughshod, by those who had conspired with and
acted with the invading Japanese. The situation was a very
complex one within a complex and costly period in the history
both of Papua and of Australia. All those who were there on the
ground and continued to fulfill their duty to the end handled it
in a way which deserves the greatest of approbation from us all.
To them and to the Americans we all owe our present-day freedom
and our participatory democracy.
Footnote: John Fowke was appointed a Cadet Patrol Officer
and sent to Kikori in 1958. Later he established the present-day
government station at Baimuru. As a co-op officer he was posted
to Ihu and later to Talasea in West New Britain. Most of the
following 38 years were spent in various associations with PNG's
coffee industry. For the past 18 months, he has resided in
Brisbane where he writes and maintains constant contact with PNG.
 
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