The Sepik War

Before Aitape–Wewak became one of Australias most disputed final campaigns, the Sepik had already been at war for years.

From the Japanese occupation of Wewak and Aitape to the final surrender in September 1945, war spread across the vast Sepik District.

Its culminating phase was the Aitape–Wewak campaign. From December 1944, Australia’s 6th Division advanced east from Aitape towards Wewak along coastal and inland routes, fighting through jungle, swamps, rivers and mountain country against a Japanese XVIII Army already ravaged by disease, hunger and isolation, yet still refusing to surrender.

Wewak fell on 10 May 1945, but the fighting continued. By war’s end, some 21,000 Japanese had been killed or had died from disease and starvation. The Americans had lost 450 dead or missing. Australian losses included 587 dead, while an unknown, and probably substantial, number of Sepik villagers also lost their lives as the war swept across their country.

In The Sepik War, Ian Howie-Willis tells the wider story of this brutal regional conflict and asks the question that has shadowed its final campaign ever since: did these last battles need to be fought?

Meticulously researched ... the work of a master historian. Major General John H. Pearn AO RFD, Former Surgeon-General, Australian Defence Force