Pacific · Australia and United States vs Japan
Battle of Buna-Gona
16 November 1942 – 22 January 1943
The Japanese beachheads on the Papuan north coast at Buna, Gona and Sanananda were fortified with bunkers in the swamp and held by troops ordered to fight to the death. Australian and inexperienced American units attacked for two months with little artillery and heavy losses from disease. The last position fell in January 1943.
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Day by day
— Closing on the coast
Across the Kumusi the 7th Division splits, the 25th Brigade for Gona and the 16th for Sanananda, while the 126th and 128th Infantry of the untried US 32nd Division come round from the east by boat and jungle track to Buna. About 6,500 Japanese hold the three beachheads, many of them fresh from Rabaul, in coconut-log bunkers invisible at ten metres.
— Stopped in the swamp
The 25th Brigade walks into the Gona bunkers on the 19th and loses heavily; at Buna the Americans attack on the same day without tanks or artillery and get nowhere. The 16th Brigade is halted on the Sanananda track short of the coast, and dysentery and scrub typhus start to take more men than the Japanese.
— Gona
The 21st Brigade, back from Kokoda and down to 900 men, takes over at Gona on 29 November and attacks for ten days through the swamp on both sides of the mission. The last bunkers fall on 9 December; 638 Japanese dead are buried in the position. Eichelberger has replaced Harding at Buna with orders to take it or not come back alive.
— Tanks at Cape Endaiadere
The 18th Brigade lands at Oro Bay with eight Stuart tanks of the 2/6th Armoured Regiment, and on 18 December the 2/9th Battalion goes into Duropa Plantation behind them. The bunkers that had stopped the Americans for a month are burned out one by one; the cape and the New Strip are cleared in a week at a cost of half the battalion.
— Buna Government Station
Attacking from both sides, the 127th Infantry across the creek and the 2/12th Battalion with the tanks along the beach from Giropa Point, take the Government Station on 2 January. The Buna position is finished; some 1,400 Japanese dead are counted in it. Only Sanananda is left, and the 18th Brigade turns west to it.
— Sanananda
The 163rd Infantry of the 41st Division and the 18th Brigade with tanks close on the Sanananda track from three sides from 12 January. Cape Killerton and Sanananda Point fall on the 18th, and the last organised position is cleared on 22 January; a few hundred Japanese get away west along the coast by barge. The beachheads cost the Allies about 3,500 killed and 5,500 wounded, and far more sick.
