NEAR APPROACH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1943, Page 4

NEAR APPROACH

TO VALUABLE AIR STRIP MADE BY' AMERICANS IN NEW BRITAIN COURSE OF THE CAMPAIGN IN NEW GUINEA. JAPANESE STILL TRYING TO ESCAPE. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 11.45 a.m.) . SYDNEY, This Day. The American invasion forces on Ney/ Britain are now approaching an an strip about four miles east of the Arawe plantation. The strip, formerly a civil emergency landing field, is overgrown with weeds, and was little used by the Japanese. It is on an elevated tongue of land, and is about 600 yards long and 60 yards across. The Americans are working at high speed to fortify then beachhead from Arawe to Umtingalu village. , The latest reports of land fighting on the Huon Peninsula, in New Guinea, reveal that the Japanese in the coastal sector have now been swept back to within a few hundred yards of the Masaweng River, about 12 miles noith of Finschhafen. The Japanese are still trying to escape, though trapped remnants of the enemy force have macle suicide stands. More than 300 dead Japanese have been counted in the past fortnight’s fighting in this sector. War correspondents in the area point out, however, that casualties in jungle warfare rarely give any indication of the intensity of the fighting or the number of troops involved. It is regarded as certain that heavy artillery and aerial bombardments of the retreating Japanese have inflicted several hundred more casualties above the'number killed in closer combat. _____