My Father was there - Almost died
The campaign on New Guinea is all but forgotten except by those who served there. Battles with names like Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima overshadow it. Yet Allied operations in New Guinea were essential to the U.S. Navy’s drive across the Central Pacific and to the U.S. Army’s liberation of the Philippine Islands from Japanese occupation. The remorseless Allied advance along the northern New Guinea coastline toward the Philippines forced the Japanese to divert precious ships, planes, and men who might otherwise have reinforced their crumbling Central Pacific front.
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/new-guinea/ng.htm
My wife’s dad served there too. Got shot up there, in fact.
He passed away a few years ago. If you haven’t read it, I reccomend “Ghost Mountain Boys”. An excellent historical acount of what happened there.