Buin, Papua New Guinea

Buin is a settlement at the southern end of the island of Bougainville, a part of the North Solomons Province, located in the northern Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean.

History

Not long after World War I, German settlers arrived in the Buin region to mine for gold. Many local Bougainvillians took skills such as brick-making from them.

During World War II, the Japanese occupied Bougainville in early 1942 and used Buin as a base. American military forces seized a portion of Bougainville in late 1943, but bypassed the rest of the island, including Buin. In late 1944, the Australian Army took over responsibility for clearing Japanese forces from the island and slowly began to advance south from Torokina towards Buin where the main Japanese forces were located. Stiff Japanese resistance and heavy rains, however, brought the advance to a halt in July 1945, just after the Australians reached the Mivo River. As a result Buin remained under Japanese control until the end of the war in 1945.

In 1943 Americans ambushed a flight carrying Admiral Yamamoto; his destroyed bomber crashed just north of Buin.

In 1975 Papua New Guinea (PNG) declared independence from Australian government rule.

Not long after Bougainville declared independence from Papua New Guinea government rule, causing PNG to invade Bougainville with the military support of both the Australian (Australian arms) and New Zealand governments (Kiwi pilots) in an attempt to take back control of the island to secure control of the lucrative Panguna Copper Mine from which PNG and Australia derived significant mineral resources such as copper, silver, and gold.

On the day Bougainville declared independence from PNG rule, Buin erupted with a storm of local activity, including the destruction of the local council building blocks, massive craters being dug out of the local airstrip (aka airport) with bulldozers to ensure PNG forces could not land there, and the local goal literally being torn apart and carried (manhandled) down the main street of Buin and dumped in front of the council buildings.

The locals formed a strong rebel army and successfully fought back and through a bloody and horrible series of fights, PNG and their allies Australia and New Zealand were ejected from the island, which still remains an independent state to this day.

Bougainville has since grown to be a strong and well established independent nation, with significant financial support from nations such as Germany.

Buin trade store on a Saturday morning, 1978

During its heyday, Buin was a wonderful town with a main street, with a very picturesque one-way road in square form encompassing its main area of development, which included four trade stores, three run by Chinese and white Australian families (the Chinese having been resident in PNG since pre-World War I German rule), and one run by the local people.

Buin High School students en route from town to school, 1978

There were very well-established primary and high schools, and a thriving vocational learning college, a small motel, the obligatory local drinking hole (aka tavern aka "pub"), local markets which ran every weekend filled with local trade including local fruit (guava, paw-paw, and mangoes), vegetables (cumu, taro, sweet potato and pumpkin), fish of all types, local fresh water crayfish, and fowl, including domestic chickens and local wild fowls. Bats and possums were often featured as well.

See also

• Bougainville Island
• Bougainville Campaign
• Solomon Islands campaign

References

• Long, Gavin (1963). The Final Campaigns. Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series 1—Army. Volume VII (1st ed.). Canberra: Australian War Memorial. OCLC 1297619. http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/second_world_war/volume.asp?levelID=67909. 
• Merriam Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, Third Edition. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1997. ISBN 0-87779-546-0.
• Odgers, George (1988). Army Australia: An Illustrated History. Frenchs Forest: Child & Associates. ISBN 0867770619.