PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Although they would be baffled by modern policing methods, it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that, pound for pound, an old time policeman in Papua New Guinea probably had more balls than ten of his equivalents today. 

Nowhere was this made more apparent than during World War II.

Papua New Guinea was hopelessly unprepared for war. As part of the scramble to meet the Japanese threat, the Pacific Islands Regiment was born.

Some 3,800 Papua New Guineans fought as regular soldiers with the regiment. And many of the recruits came from the ranks of the Royal Papuan Constabulary and the New Guinea Police Force.

They fought with the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), some with the coastwatchers and others with the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles.

Others took part in fierce guerrilla actions with the Allied Intelligence Bureau or ‘M’ Special Unit.  Thousands more fought as ordinary policemen.

One such recruit was Sergeant Yauwiga (sometimes spelt ‘Yawige’) from the Sepik.

Yauwiga joined the New Guinea Police Force in 1930 and by October 1941, just before the Japanese invasion, attained the rank of sergeant. He was attached to the Allied Intelligence Bureau on Bougainville in February 1942.

He participated in the allied landings at Torokina in November 1943 and led guerrilla bands in northern Bougainville. He won the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the highest award possible for a non-commissioned officer, as well as the Loyal Service Medal.

He lost his left hand and the sight of one eye but survived the war.

He tells his own story in the book To Find a Path: The Life and Times of the Royal Pacific Islands Regiment, Volume 1 – Yesterday’s Heroes 1885-1950 by Jim Sinclair (Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1990, pp 285-9).

Here is Yauwiga speaking…. 

I stopped on Bougainville after all the Europeans had gone down to the Solomon Islands.  Only some policemen remained with the patrol officers. 

After about one week the Japanese bombed Kieta, so we collected all of the stores and all the material that we could from Kieta and took it and hid in various camps around in the bush. 

We had been in the bush for about one month when I heard that the Japanese had killed Sergeant Waramapi, who was working with Jack Read up in the northern section of the island, so I left Kieta with my line and went up into the area, and I found Waramapi’s wife and children and took them back down to the Numa Numa Plantation.

I then went up into the mountains near Buka Passage to a place called Aravia and there I found Jack Read with his camp, and I worked with him for nearly three years.  When we were first up at this camp the Japanese came looking for us. 

The Japanese had a line of about a hundred natives and about a hundred Japanese, split into two parties.  Some of the Japanese came up from the Numa Numa side, and the others came up from the Teop Plantation side.  They were trying to find where we were hiding up in the mountains.

We knew the Japanese were coming but Jack didn’t want to fight them and I became very cross and I said to him, “Why do we run away the same as women do?”  Jack told me that this wasn’t the job of the coastwatchers and since I was a coastwatcher scout it was not my job to fight because if I fought the Japanese how could I then watch and pass on the information about Japanese bombers and submarines and troop movements – that was my job. My job was not to fight.

I didn’t like this but it was the job they gave me.  I was told that if the Japanese came, if I could possibly escape, my job was to run away, so that I could live to spy another day.

One particular day when we were up in the bush near Ariva, we had our camp on the slopes of a small hill that was surrounded by big bush.  It was not the kind of place that you could run away from very easily and I was up on this ridge line above the main camp with an Australian signaller whose name was Allan Forbes and another policeman whose name was Wamulu, from Manus Island.

At a point down the trail that approached our camp I had bent a branch of a tree down and lightly fastened it onto the other side of the road and then later on while we were sitting up on the side of the hill I heard a noise as this branch of the tree was knocked out of position and swung back. We looked down the track and there were a lot of Japanese milling around us as the branch had knocked some of the Japanese over.

We yelled out to the others to get out of camp and the Japanese started to shoot at us with machine guns. The three of us quickly jumped behind a large tree and opened fire on the Japanese.

There was a mixture of Japanese and local natives in the group that was coming towards us.  In this engagement until we ran out of ammunition we killed twenty-five.

We then slipped away from the camp and made our way up the side of a mountain until we got to a ridge line.  The only way up was by waterfall and there we waited to see what the Japanese would do.