The Netherlands regained sovereignty of western New Guinea at the end of the war and retained it after officially recognizing Indonesia’s independence in 1949. The best known is the attack on Pearl Harbour (Hawai), in which the American fleet was severely damaged. CMH Pub 72-7 Cover: Troops of the 3d Battalion, 128th Infantry, 32d Infantry Division, cross a stream …

During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded the Australian-administered Mandated Territory of New Guinea (23 January) and the Australian Territory of Papua (21 July) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the … On 7 December 1941, Japan attacks several targets simultaneously. By 1941, they had expanded far south and Australia was in their sights. Expanding across the Pacific and the east Asian mainland, forces sought to conquer territory for the Japanese Empire, and, in particular, to drive out western influences in the region. Papua … The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. The Japanese invasion of Australian and Dutch New Guinea lasts from November 1941 until April 1942. Papuan activists confront police and soldiers during a brief scuffle at a rally near the presidential palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2019. The Japanese occupied the northern part of Dutch New Guinea during World War II until Allied forces recaptured the town of Hollandia (now Jayapura, in the province of Papua) in 1944. In 1942, the northern coast of West New Guinea and the nearby islands were occupied by Japan. Dutch New Guinea becomes involved in World War II in 1942.

The Japanese effort at the start of World War Two was focused on conquest. On Anzac Day many of military campaigns fought in the Pacific during World War Two are commemorated, but one place that is rarely mentioned is West Papua. The most exhaustive treatment of the campaign remains Samuel Milner, Victory in Papua (1957), a volume in the series United States Army in World War II. Nowhere in the modern world has an armed liberation struggle persisted for so long - nearly 30 years - and with such secrecy, as the West Papuan war of resistance against the military government of Indonesia. The region became important in the War in the Pacific upon the Netherlands' declaration of war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

West Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly known as …