PART I-BUNA
Background of the Buna Operation
Geography and Climate of the Buna Area
(Map No. 3, facing page 9, and
Map No. 4, facing page 27)
THE ENEMY had taken cunning advantage of the peculiar geography of the Buna area to construct two almost impregnable defensive lines hidden in the swampy jungle. One of these lay across the Soputa-Sanananda Road; the other was in front of Buna itself. Our forces on 18 November had only the vaguest notion of these fortifications. The campaign cannot be understood without a description of the area, of its climate, and of the Japanese defenses.
The fighting took place in a narrow strip on the northeastern coast of Papua extending on both sides of Buna Mission, the prewar seat of government for the area. The Mission, sometimes called the Government Station, consisted of three houses and a few dozen native huts. Buna Village, a half mile to the northwest, was merely a cluster of huts. Bounded on the west by one of the several outlets of the Girua River and on the east by the coast a half mile south of Cape Endaiadere, the battleground was about 3½ miles long and ¾ of a mile deep. To a casual observer, the area would seem to be merely typical Papuan terrain, with its irregular pattern of steaming jungle, impassable swamp, coconut plantations, and open fields of coarse, shoulder-high kunai grass. Our troops came to know and to distinguish the smallest terrain features, usually the result of differences in vegetation.
Variations in the elevation played little part in the Buna landscape for the whole area is a flat, low-lying plain. The landing field at Buna is 5 feet above sea level, and even at Soputa, 7½ miles inland, the land rises only to an elevation of 10 feet. The sluggish rivers that run north
