I spent many hours talking about the war with people from the Nagovisi (also known as Narkovissi, Nergovisi) language group. Many people had very clear memories of wartime, because it was only about 25 years in the past. One of the men whose stories I recorded was given a medal by the Australians and also appears in some US military histories — the famous “Black Brigadier,” whose name is variously rendered as Mesiamo, Musiyama, and in other ways.

I understand that your series of postings are about the fighting itself, and of course from an almost purely-military perspective. Even so, I’d like to make a few corrections and comments about larger Bougainville-related issues.

First, there are no poisonous snakes on Bougainville — at least not poisonous enough to count. There’s a green tree snake that will give you a painful bite, but that’s about all. Neither are there poisonous insects that do more than the same — give you a bite that hurts like hell, but from which a person recovers quickly.

You might have mentioned crocodiles, which are certainly lethal, and which are common all along the shores of Empress Augusta Bay.

Saying that Bougainville’s native inhabitants were under the influence of German missionaries is inaccurate. Certainly a few were, but the majority were not. And it is certainly true that some of the people around Kieta, especially those on PokPok Island, were enthusiastically pro-Japanese.

Very few of the others were. Again, I understand that your readers aren’t likely to be very interested in social issues relating to colonial Bougainville, but when I read military-historical articles and books about the Pacific War I am always struck by how little the authors appear to know about conditions among the local people.

I’ll speak only of the Nagovisi, although I know from other anthropologists that many of the other groups of people had similar ideas.

From the local point of view, there was absolutely nothing that should have, or did, create loyalty to the Australians (or the Germans before them). The Australians were colonial masters, and occasionally severe ones. They “recruited” labor, installed taxes, enforced settlement rules, and generally strutted around telling the local people what to do — at least when they weren’t in their Patrol Posts. They offered very little by way of education, health services, infrastructure (roads were the only thing people wanted), and so on. They were simply the white people who turned up every now and then, gave orders, collected taxes, and disappeared. Please ask yourself what sort of loyalty this would engender.

The Catholic mission was far better at delivering services. Even as late as the time I was there, it was the Catholics (and to a lesser extent the Methodists) who had the schools, the hospitals, and so on. The people I knew were far more loyal to the missionaries than they were to the government, and I was assured that this had been the case in the past, as well.

Now consider the fighting. First the Japanese pushed out the Australians without a fight, and installed themselves as the government. People I talked to said that the Japanese weren’t too bad at the beginning — remember that these people knew very well how to keep themselves out of the eye of whatever government there was, and they did the same with the occupying Japanese forces. Some worked for them. Some, as in the case of my friend Mesiamo, ran a double-agent scheme in which he supported the Coastwatchers while at the same time appearing to support the Japanese.

He explained it to me very clearly — his intent was to keep his people safe. He did not care whether the Japanese or the Australians won. It was unclear which way the fighting would go. Would the Australians return? Would the Japanese remain? I think you can easily see that a thoughtful leader would want to play both sides. Remember, these were colonized, exploited local people — they were not citizens of a participatory democracy who had a stake in their own government.

Mesiamo told me that he continued in this way until he was called upon to help the Coastwatchers Stevenson (and Mason) retrieve a supply airdrop that had gone astray. When they got it and opened the cases he saw that the materials were new and, he said, he then concluded that the Australians had not been beaten, and tilted strongly to their side.

He also said, as did others, that it was easy to understand that one country would fight with another, but hard to understand why such a fight didn’t take place on the territory of one of the combatants. Why fight each other in our place? he wanted to know.

Then came the Americans, as you are describing. At first — and again, this is not only what I was told, but can be gleaned from US records with a little reading between the lines (“targets of opportunity” seems to be the important phrase) before the Torokina landings — the US mauled much of the west coast of Bougainville from the air. Native people were killed by bombing and strafing. Nagovisi were afraid to light fires because when they did, the Americans attacked. Diesel fuel was dumped on gardens — there was no way for anyone to distinguish between Japanese and local gardens, so they were equally at risk. People asked me, Why did the Americans poison our gardens? We did nothing to them. I will say that at first I dismissed the “poisoning” accounts, but then I discovered US records showing that diesel fuel was used for that purpose. This was long before Agent Orange, I guess.

After the landings, many of the people I knew went to Torokina, and stayed for months. They were pressed into service as laborers and were content to work for the Americans, who they came to admire. Some, like Mesiamo, were used as guides and sources of information. They got to know some Americans. They were astonished to see black American soldiers.

After Torokina, the pro-American feelings continued, and were very much in evidence when I was there. On balance, people felt, the destruction just before and during the landings were compensated for by American behavior later.

Well, I won’t go on. I only hope I’ve succeeded in demonstrating to you that on Bougainville (and no doubt elsewhere) there’s a very strong local component to the fighting that’s too often completely ignored by the military historians.