July 13, 2006
They offer us many sepia-toned images of World War II, but few are more evocative than the Papuan carriers supporting Australian troops on the Kokoda Trail. For example at www.diggerhistory.info we read how much they loved us:
The men of the tribes of Papua and later of New Guinea flocked to help the Aussies. Some fought independently because the Japanese mistreated them, something that the civilian Australian Patrol Officers had never done.
Oh really? Let’s see.
PNG was effectively an Australian colony. Under the Native Regulations and Ordinances in Papua, according to former district commissioner David Marsh:
A native wasn’t allowed to drink. He couldn’t go into a picture show with Europeans. When walking along the footpath the native was expected to move aside. We had the White Women’s Protection Ordinance which more or less said that if you smiled at a white woman it was rape … They also had a Native Women’s Protection Ordinance which seemed to say something quite different, and didn’t mean much anyway. (Quoted in Waiko: 77)
In 1929, twelve years before the war for ‘freedom’, black workers in Rabaul struck for higher pay. Astonished to find themselves without breakfast, white mastas were outraged. ‘My coon’s not here’ complained one; another grumbled that there was ‘no response from the slave … the Government … is disgustingly lenient with the natives … why, the only thing a native understands is a beating.’ White police put the strike leaders on trial; and a white magistrate jailed them. (Waiko: 100, 101.)
So why work for the Aussies during the war? In many cases local people simply lined up with whoever seemed to be winning in their area, or whoever conscripted them:
Not only did New Guineans fight New Guineans at various stages of the war, but Fijians fought Bougainvilleans and Pohnpei people fought New Guineans serving with the Australians … Ninety-six men and one woman suspected of collaboration with the Australians were massacred at the Iatmul village of Timbunke by people from other Sepik villages acting under Japanese orders. (White & Lindstrom: 23)
That brings us to the Papuan carriers, condescendingly known as ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’. The Australians ‘recruited’ these unfortunates to virtual forced labour. No one told them what the war was really about, but they soon learned how vile it was. According to historian Peter Ryan:
Recruitment in some villages was 100% of male adults … The villages suffered severely, without men to clear gardens, hunt, maintain houses and canoes etc. Diet was deficient, disease mounted … there was in some places near starvation and very high infant mortality…. (Quoted in Waiko: 114))
Captain G. H. Vernon recalled that during fighting on the Kokoda Trail:
many carriers were without a single blanket, rice was practically the only food issue, meat was withheld for two or three weeks and tobacco scarce: the regulation governing the reduction of loads to 40 lbs was often ignored, and excessive weights and distances imposed on the carriers as if they were merely pack animals. (Quoted in Brune: 52)
In the late 1960s, former carriers told PNG University’s Ulli Beier that about two-thirds of them had tried to escape. But whenever some did escape, the Australians conscripted their sons, so that fathers were forced back to face ghastly penalties. ‘The most terrifying punishments were the so-called drum beatings in Kerema … A fire was lit in a 44-gallon drum and when it was hot the unlucky carriers were put cross the drum and beaten.’ A song still current among villagers in the 1970s ended:
The white man has brought his war to be fought on this land
His King and Queen have said so
We are forced against our wishes to help him. (McQueen 2004: 176)
Something to remember today as the ADF and Australian police head for more and more places to our north.
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