Word: buna
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...until light tanks, 13-ton General Stuarts, were brought into action Dec. 8 did the tide begin to run decisively for the United Nations (TIME, Dec. 28). Even then it was a slow, bunker-by-bunker ad vance. Thrice General MacArthur announced that victory was near. Buna village and Gona, farther north, fell by mid-December, but not Buna Mission, a mile from the village, or other regions along the coast...
General MacArthur announced that the Buna area had been cleaned up. Between Buna and Gona a pocket of Jap jungle fighters remained on Sanananda Point, their number unknown, their lives a poor risk, even though victory in New Guinea is as elusive as Tojo's motionless...
Reports from the front were meagre but the Wednesday communique from Gen. MacArthur's main headquarters here indicated that the struggle for Sanananda, two and one-half miles up the coast from Allied-hold Buna, had begun...
Between Gona and Buna, both in U.S.Australian hands, Japs were still entrenched. General Douglas MacArthur called the Jap plight desperate, announced that "the last line" of Jap fortifications had been breached, indicated that it was only a matter of time before the U.S.Australian forces, now aided by light tanks, had the entire Buna area firmly in hand...
Slowly victory neared at Buna, but the nature of victory was as ominous as it was painfully slow. More important Japanese bases still were at Lae and Salamaua, about 150 miles farther north in New Guinea. And Lae and Salamaua, in turn, were outposts of Rabaul. Behind Rabaul were scores of Jap island bases. Buna was teaching how long and bitter would be the road to final victory in the South Pacific islands...