When Japanese forces landed in New Guinea in 1942, the Australian territories were placed under the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, which used wartime regulations to conscript indigenous men as carriers, labourers and medical orderlies at fixed low rates of pay, with penalties for desertion; the carriers of the Kokoda campaign, later celebrated in Australia as the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels', were largely conscripted, a point the Australian War Memorial itself now makes in setting the myth against the record. Japanese forces likewise requisitioned labour, food and land in the areas they controlled, and researchers working on the New Guinea campaign have documented sexual violence against local women by both armies. Villages were bombed, gardens destroyed and populations moved by the fighting along the north coast, in the Markham and Ramu valleys and around Rabaul, where the Tolai were displaced for the duration. Civilian deaths from fighting, disease and famine in the territories ran into the tens of thousands and were never systematically counted. Australian postwar compensation for war damage in the territories was limited.
Australian military administration and Japanese forces conscripted Papuans and New Guineans as carriers and labourers and drove villagers from their land
Australian administration counts covered only the districts under government control and recorded roughly one million people in 1940; the highlands were still being contacted and were largely unenumerated, so the true total is usually put at 1.3-2 million. Any share calculated on this base carries an uncertainty of several hundred thousand.
No authority counted indigenous civilian deaths in the New Guinea campaign. The range reflects estimates in the literature covering deaths of conscripted carriers from disease and exhaustion, civilians killed in fighting and bombing, and famine deaths where gardens were destroyed or populations moved; all are approximations.
Australian War Memorial and ANGAU records, and research published in the Journal of Pacific History on the New Guinea campaign, document compulsory labour, village destruction and sexual violence by both armies.
Papua New Guinea