Was there a Rabaul atrocities cover-up?

Ross Wilkinson

I read with interest the article on the loss of the Montevideo Maru and wish to share the following regarding one of those presumed to have been lost on the ship - Harold Hillis Page [left] who was acting Administrator in Rabaul at the time of the invasion.

I was a kiap from 1968 to 1981 in a range of positions across the country. I went there to see what my father had done during World War II with the 2/14 Battalion. As secretary of the Battalion’s post-war Association, I was contacted by Albert Speer, formerly Deputy Director of Health in the pre-Independence administration. He was enquiring after the verification of facts behind a wartime photograph of a temporary cemetery of 2/14 Bn soldiers at Gona.

Albert had been a medical orderly required to visit the coastal region after the Lamington eruption to investigate possible resettlement sites for survivors of the eruption. He came across a cemetery similar to the one in the photo that he was advised contained the bodies of approximately 12 Europeans who were alleged to have been brought over from Rabaul with the initial invasion fleet. Whilst it is well known that many Rabaul nationals were brought over to act as carriers for the Japanese troops, Albert's source who was one of the survivors and had become a policeman, advised him that there were about a dozen Europeans brought across as well to advise the Japs on conditions, tracks and locations on the route to Port Moresby.

One of these was alleged to be Page. Apparently they refused to cooperate and were executed at Gona and their bodies left in the bush. The Gona villagers then quietly buried them for the duration of the war until the Japanese were defeated and then formalised the cemetery. The various temporary military cemeteries in the area were mapped when created and, at the end of the war, the bodies disinterred and relocated to Kokoda first then Bomana by the War Graves Commission. Our Association could not help Albert as my father considered the photograph was that of the military cemetery it claimed to be. He had very vivid memories of Gona and the cemetery.

As a military historian, I have read much on the fall of Rabaul and it is well considered that the Japanese used the loss of the Montevideo Maru to cover up many of the war crimes committed in the weeks after the fall of the town. It is alleged that many soldiers and civilians executed at Tol and other locations had their names added to the manifest of the ship after it was sunk in an attempt to cover up the war crimes.

Harold Page is alleged by Albert to be one of those names due to his belief in the veracity of what he saw and was told after the Lamington eruption.

Photograph: Major Harold Page (Pacific Islands Monthly)