Qualla: Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay

Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. The Australian planners had the number wrong. When the 5th Division took over from the Americans on New Britain in late 1944, they believed the Japanese garrison around Rabaul numbered perhaps 38,000 men. The real figure was more than double that - some 93,000 soldiers of General Hitoshi Imamura's Eighth Area Army, well-fed, well-armed, and sitting on the Gazelle Peninsula waiting for an order to counter-attack that never came. The Australians, with a fraction of that strength, did not try to take Rabaul. Instead, they drew a line. From Wide Bay on the southern coast to Open Bay on the northern, across the narrow waist of New Britain, they built a containment line and held it until the war ended. It was less a battle than a siege of an enemy that had chosen not to fight back.

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Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: The Inheritance

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. New Britain had been Japanese territory since February 1942, when Imperial forces overwhelmed the small Australian garrison at Rabaul and turned the town into the most formidable base in the Southwest Pacific. US forces had landed at Cape Gloucester and Arawe in December 1943 as ...

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Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: Landings at Jacquinot Bay

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. The 14th/32nd Infantry Battalion came ashore at Jacquinot Bay on the southern coast in November 1944. There was no opposition. Over the following weeks the Australian 6th Infantry Brigade under Brigadier Raymond Sandover built up a base of operations there, while the 36th Infantr...

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Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: The Push Inland

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. Between late January and early February 1945, the 6th Brigade pushed eastward along the southern coast toward Milim and Henry Reid Bay. Boomerang fighters and Beaufort fighter-bombers attacked Japanese positions around Karlai Plantation on 15 February, and the 14th/32nd took the ...

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Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: A Quiet Ending

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. By April 1945 the Australians had their line. From Wide Bay on the south to Open Bay on the north, they had sealed off the narrow waist of New Britain and caged the 93,000 Japanese soldiers around Rabaul on the Gazelle Peninsula. What followed was not battle but patrol - small gr...

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Battle of Wide Bay-Open Bay: Memory and the Soldier-Cartoonist

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SpoolWhippets, CC0. One of the Japanese soldiers caught in this quiet siege was Shigeru Mizuki, who would later become one of Japan's most celebrated cartoonists. Mizuki survived New Britain - he lost an arm in an Allied air raid - and spent much of his postwar career turning the experience into com...

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