Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 483
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[Page 483]
(26)
repair the two badly cratered and unusable airstrips. First, the long one, fifteen miles away around the bay, and next, the much shorter one across the isthmus near Rabaul township. For this work we impressed big gangs of over a thousand Japanese soldiers to fill the big holes with rammed earth, their only tools and equipment being shovels, hand-barrows and two old Diesel road rollers.
Restoration of the airstrip near the town was barely finished when a United States Airforce general and two captains arrived unheralded, out of the blue, in a big C. 46 transport plane. A jeep was unloaded and the general drove to our divisional headquarters in the civil hospital buildings up on the hill behind the town. United States superfortresses, based on Manus Island, had made several severe bombing raids on Rabaul and these visitors had come to see what damage had been done thereby. But there was little to see. All the flimsy houses and other buildings were mostly flattened at the outset and the industrious Japs burrowed several very long high tunnels into the steep hillsides to preserve their ammunition, foodstuffs, equipment, and themselves. In addition there were many dugouts and shelters for protection from the air raids; and some of these had been wrecked.
As soon as the surrender formalities were over, and the Japs had handed in all weapons and equipment, and our troops were in command at all dumps, camps and installations, the remainder of the Eleventh Division, including badly needed engineer units, was brought up and encamped at tactically important localities. The disarmed Japanese were left to langish in their huts until the time when they would be repatriated.
I set up my C.R.E. headquarters in the extensive garden of what had been the Methodist Parsonge. The big wooden residence had long been blasted flat and burnt, but several healthy Frangipani shrubs still flourished around the ruin and sweetly perfumed the stagnant air. A dozen Paw-paw trees marked the boundary of the site, and every evening I used to knock off a few of the