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'Rabaul' (German: also ''Simpsonhafen'') is a town in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The town is built within the caldera of a large volcano, called Rabaul caldera, and is continually vulnerable to eruptions. Settlements around the edge of the caldera continue collectively to be referred to as ''Rabaul'' despite the town of Rabaul itself being reduced to insignificance by a volcanic eruption in 1994. Little of its pre-1994 site having survived or been rehabilitated.
Until 1994 Rabaul was the provincial capital, after the volcanic eruption the capital was moved to Kokopo, about away. The destroyed airport was rebuilt at Tokua, farther away on the far side of the caldera.
Rabaul was the headquarters of German New Guinea and then the Australian mandatory Territory of New Guinea from 1910 until 1937. During World War II it was the base of Japanese activities in the South Pacific.
As a tourist destination Rabaul is popular for SCUBA diving and for snorkelling sites and a spectacular harbour; it had been the premier commercial and travel destination in Papua New Guinea and indeed in the wider South Pacific during much of the 20th century until the 1994 volcanic eruptions. There are still several diving operators based there.

Contents

History

Colonisation

1937 eruption

World War II

1994 eruption

References

External links

History

Rabaul's proximity to its volcanos has always been a source of concern. In 1878 before being established as a town an eruption caused the formation of Vulcan in the harbour.

Colonisation

In 1910 the Germans as part of establishing German New Guinea relocated its headquarters from the unsuccessful township of Lae to the new town of Rabaul. It was given the name Rabaul, as this means mangrove in Kuanua (the local language) and the town was built on a reclaimed mangrove swamp.
At the outset of the First World War Australia occupied German New Guinea with its Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. Following Germany's defeat at the end of the war in 1919, the territory was handed to Australia by the League of Nations as a Trust Territory. Rabaul subsequently became the capital of the Territory of New Guinea.

1937 eruption

Under the Australian administration, Rabaul developed into a regional base. Then in 1937 a catastrophic volcanic eruptions destroyed the town after the two volcanos, Tavurvur and Vulcan, exploded killing 507 people and causing enormous damage.
Following this the Australian administration for the Territory of New Guinea decided to return the territorial headquarters to the safer location of Lae, which had been the original German headquarters before the booming colonial economy of the New Guinea Islands region had made it desirable to have an administrative hub in the Islands.
The Australian administration had determined not to re-establish the territorial headquarters at Rabaul in the long term the second World War II, however, intervened before substantial steps had been taken to deal realistically with the improvidence of having established the New Guinea islands' principal town in so hazardous a location.

World War II

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour it was apparent that Rabaul would come under attack. By December 1941 all women and children were evacuated. In January 1942 Rabaul was heavily bombed, and on January 23 the Battle of Rabaul began with the landing of thousands of Japanese marines.
During their occupation the Japanese developed Rabaul into a much more powerful base than the Australians had planned after the 1937 volcanic eruptions, with long term consequences for the town in the post-War period. The Japanese army dug many kilometres of tunnels as shelter from the Allied air forces. By 1943 there were about 110,000 Japanese troops based in Rabaul. The Japanese army also set up brothels in Rabaul where "... perhaps 2000 or more women were deceived and forced into prostitution of a most demanding kind ...", according to Emeritus Professor Hank Nelson from the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.^[1]
On April 18 1943, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was shot down and killed by U.S. fighter planes over South Bougainville, between Buin (on its then-coastal location) and Kahili after taking off from Rabaul. Japanese communications describing Yamamoto's flight itinerary were decrypted allowing the hastily dispatched fighter contingent.
Instead of capturing Rabaul, the Allied forces bypassed it by establishing a ring of airfields on islands around it. Cut off from re-supply and under constant air attack, the base became useless. The Japanese held Rabaul until they surrendered at the end of the war in August 1945.
The war made a lasting impression on Rabaul. There is still much military debris in the harbour, on the land and buried in the hills.

1994 eruption

In 1983 and 1984 the town was ready for evacuation when the volcanos started to heat up. Nothing happened until 19 September 1994, when again Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted, destroying the airport and covering most of the town with heavy ashfall. Most of the buildings in the eastern half of Rabaul collapsed due to the weight of ash on their roofs.
The last eruption prompted the relocation of the provincial capital to Kokopo.

References

1. http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2426

External links

★ East New Britain Tourism & Trade Directory

★ Tavurvur, Rabaul Caldera