Book Review – N. J. Reisman: “Defending Whose Country?”

Riseman Defending Whose Country

 
 
N.J. Riseman, Defending Whose Country?: Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War, University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ISBN 9780803237933. Hardcover, 304 pages, photos, maps

 
 
 
A Review by Greg Ivey

This book provides three case studies of indigenous participation in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War: PIB, NGIB, Police, Coastwatchers and ANGAU labourers in TPNG; Navajo Code Talkers in the U.S. Marine Corps; and Aboriginal (Yolngu) members in Military Units across Northern Australia. The author adopts a parallel-dimensions approach to comparative history and identifies, for example, similarities in recruitment policy, relationship to non-indigenous servicemen, and status in society.

Within the 300 pages, Riseman provides extensive notes for each chapter, a score of photographs, a practical index and a few maps. The bibliography includes archival sources (military and government), interviews with indigenous soldiers and published sources. Hundreds of published authors are cited including some well-known and others published in the last ten years. Among the well-known sources are some familiar to readers of war-time TPNG material – Hank Nelson, James Sinclair, Peter Ryan and Alan Hooper.

Indigenous soldiers and other disciplined workers in TPNG are the focus of only two chapters. If the contextualizing Introduction and the synthesizing Conclusion are added, then half the book can be seen as relevant to TPNG. Readers will find that the author sheds a strong light on some dark corners of race relations in TPNG, Australia and the United States. Riseman’s trans-national perspective casts a critical eye on pre-war society, on war-time practices, and on post-war conditions for these indigenous workers. The book is based on Riseman’s doctoral dissertation which won the Charles Bean Prize for Military History.

It would be worthwhile to discuss the author’s opinions and conclusions with PIB and NGIB servicemen. The opportunity to do that is quickly passing as there are less than a handful of these servicemen still alive. It is no surprise that Riseman quotes from the first book published by Alan Hooper because Alan served in both the PIB and ANGAU.(Alan had a keen appreciation for the Papuan culture while being conscious of a prevailing racialism among servicemen in several other Australian battalions.) The experiences and emotions felt by some indigenous soldiers are revealed in the interviews conducted by the Japanese scholar, Iwamoto Hiromitsu. Unfortunately, Riseman’s research was completed before the publication of the interviews of Sergeant Ben Moide by Papuan author, Lahui Ako.

Riseman has gathered some surprising data which challenges the (Australian) myths about the willing cooperation, shared burden and similar goals between the war-time indigenous workers in TPNG and the Australian supervisors. Examples in the book include:

  • The (labourers) patriotism was (appealed) to with nil result, until finally they were informed of the main and customary reason for going- they had to. I personally have recruited over 2,000 (labourers) for work in forward areas. Of these about 20 were not forcibly recruited.
  • In fact, (Australian) treasury documents determined that payment to PIR soldiers until 1 August 1945 was approximately one-fifteenth the AIF rate.
  • Australian colonial officials also reasserted their pre-war armed police patrols of some villages, much to the ire of villagers who even used Japanese weapons and arms to resist such incursions.
  • For those approximately seventy-five hundred Papua New Guineans who did receive (Australian post-war) gratuities the amount was approximately one-tenth that of those Australians who served in the Australian Service and one-fifteenth the regular overseas rate of gratuity.

Readers will find the odd factual, typographical or superficial error but will be impressed with Riseman’s carefully-argued conclusions such as:

  • Indeed, anthropologists such as David Counts, Marty Zelenietz, Hisafumi Saito and Carl E. Thune all describe the Second World War as a brief interlude, after which Australia reimposed the previous unequal relationship between colonizers and colonized.
  • These three case studies represent soldier-warrior colonialism because the governments exploited indigenous people and knowledge for defence while concurrently disregarding indigenous rights, vitality, and sovereignty. Indeed, the colonial governments essentially employed the various indigenous peoples as weapons to defend the very system that had disadvantaged them

Elsewhere in the book, these conclusions are anticipated by the acclaimed scholar of PNG, Professor Hank Nelson who said diplomatically in 2006: “The wartime generations have had the frustration of having endured, having seen what the rewards might be, but never having been able to possess them.”

This seminal book is a significant contribution to the belated recognition of the unjust yet effective role played by indigenous soldiers during the Second World War. Although limited in scope, it could become a reference work. Riseman documents the views of government, commanders and the soldiers themselves about their status and usefulness. Because it is written from a distant, academic distance from the military action, the book reveals no new information about the campaigns, operations or individual commanders. It does, however, summarise recent analysis of colonial forces and, hopefully, will stir the overdue debate on government recognition of the vital contribution made collectively by indigenous soldiers to successful military campaigns in the Pacific.

G. J. Ivey