Early in the war, the Japanese overran the Australian garrison at Rabaul and immediately started turning this sleepy outpost into a major air and naval base. Troops were brought in as were construction personnel along with anti-aircraft and defensive shore batteries. It wasn't too far into the war that the Japanese realized that they would have trouble maintaining the safety of place. Rabaul was within the range of US medium and long range bombers operating out of bases in New Guinea.

As the Allies moved out of Guadalcanal and up the Solomons on one side and across the mountains into northeastern New Guinea on the other, there was planning regarding what to do about Rabaul. MacArthur wanted to invade, but the Navy wouldn't go with it as the loss of Allied life would be quite high. The lesson of Guadalcanal and the difficulty of removing large numbers of Japanese would not be easy.

So the plan was to bypass Rabaul and to take over territory around the area, effectively isolating the Japanese. So that is what this book is about. It included the bombing campaign as well as the invasions of Japanese bases in northern New Guinea and in southern New Britain, a tactic that the Allies used for much of the rest of the war. This series is basically a photo compilation with brief historical sections for each batch of images so we have some idea of what these images are all about. I've always been interested in this part of the war and very much enjoyed this one. I'm sure you will find it just as nice.

January 2025

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