DANIEL KUMBON
WHEN I met him in the United States, Barney Nelson, a jovial 72-year old, told me where his friends were killed in New Guinea.
Lt Barney Nelson was a veteran of the war in the Pacific – and he was to become my instant hero.
After all those years Barney still remembered two Melanesian Pidgin words - kaikai (food) and meri (woman).
He rang me quite unexpectedly one morning as I began to settle down to work at The Plain Dealer, a newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. He was excited and fired questions at machine-gun pace.
“How are you doing? Where in New Guinea do you come from? Buna? Aitape? Is Port Moresby still the capital? Do you know Milne Bay? Is…”
“Now, wait a moment sir, how did you know my name?” I interrupted.
“In the paper. I saw an article about you coming here to Cleveland, so I wanted to see you.”
His words were music to my ears and, that evening, Barney picked me up for dinner at a restaurant near where I lived at Bosworth.
The minute he stepped out of his car he waved and smiled. He looked at me and we shook hands. He was astonished to see a person from a country he fought hard to defend. Equally astonished was I to meet a veteran of World War II.
Before I was born, Allied and Japanese war planes were seen chasing each other over the skies of Enga in the highlands. Even though the main fighting took place on the coast, bombs had been dropped on the Kandep lakes.
Some fell on Kyakau village. Some people tried to get scrap metal to make axes from an unexploded bomb. It blew up killing seven men and injuring several others. A big crater remains where the explosion occurred.
“Now, we’ll go have some kaikai,” Barney said with a radiant smile which never faded as we drove to Shooters, a waterfront restaurant where the Cuyahoga River empties into Lake Erie.
As we feasted on two huge Spanish pizzas, Barney poured out stacks of war photographs, charts, maps, books – everything on PNG. I was overwhelmed that this old man could remember so many places – and that he was still concerned about what was happening in my country so many decades later.
“‘I’m pleased to hear the splendid progress against the primitive situation I encountered in the 1940s,” Barney said. “I never expect to return to New Guinea but I see a lot of your country through you.”
He told me of his war experiences –the friends he lost in battle and the places he saw. I listened to him the way I listened to my father’s legends back home.
On 22 April 1944, Barney landed on the coast of Aitape and its jungles infested with mosquitoes, crocodiles and Japanese soldiers.
Having served as a lieutenant for only seven months, he had little experience in jungle warfare and wondered if he would ever see America again.
His company immediately engaged the enemy in a battle which lasted for 40 days in a series of small but bitter skirmishes.
“We killed many thousands of Japs,” Barney said. “Many times I could have been killed but I survived. I simply was lucky.”
The Allies had over 7,000 casualties in the battle at Aitape.
“I never feared death. Sadness became apparent only when some of my close friends were killed,” Barney said. “We had to fight on. It was a duty and finally we defeated Tojo and saved the islands.”
In Aitape, the assault in which Lt Barney Nelson participated included simultaneous landings at Biak and Hollandia. With the Australians holding Saidor, the Japanese forces were pinned in the jungles between Madang and Aitape.
“They were boxed in, completely cut off from Japan. They had nowhere to get food supplies. Most of them were starving,” Barney said.
“We would let them grow vegetables and stuff then, when the crops were ready for harvest, our planes would go in and - BOOM – their food was gone.”
The frustrated Japanese attempted to fight their way out on numerous occasions but were always repelled with heavy losses.
On the night of 10 July 1944 several thousand Japanese infantry broke through US lines defending the Drinumor River. For the next month, US troops were locked in a battle of attrition with the Japanese. The Americans fought hard to restore the broken line and destroy the Japanese.
Barney said the campaigns in New Guinea were among the best kept secret of the war. It was only in 1984 that an insight into the fight at Aitape was revealed by Dr Edward Drea of the Combat Studies Institute in Kansas.
Barney said New Guinean policeman, known then as ‘polisbois’ contributed much to the allied success. They scouted for the Allies and fought alongside them.
“They would go into the jungles, look for Japanese positions and tell us their strengths and weaknesses. Then they would go straight back in and fight alongside us. They were fearless,” he said.
Lt Barney Nelson married after the war and he had a son, who sadly died. He also had two daughters - Barbara, a professor in political science at the University of Minnesota, and Beverly, a teacher in Michigan.
His wife Rachael had retired as director of the Cleveland Heights Public Library.
Barney “entered the restaurant business” soon after the war ended. His business expanded and over the years he owned 11 restaurants in Cleveland. By 1961, he’d sold them and started a consultancy firm.
“The worst thing a person can do is to stop working,” he told me. “I will retire when I can’t move around anymore.”
Barney showed me two pictures – one of Lt John Dorigan and himself and the other of Captain Bottcher and Lt Dorigan – all smiling and taken at the same spot under a coconut tree at an Aitape beach on 9 September 1944.
Nelson lost both friends in the Philippines – Capt Bottcher in December 1944 and Lt Dorigan in March 1945.
Barney still mourned their deaths and wondered why a man should be killed when the war was just about to end.