Like so many of the old Anglo-immigrant stock along the coasts from Cape Cod to Chesapeake Bay, I say ahnt and peeKAHN. I alternate between UMbrella when I’m not thinking about it and umBRELLA when I stop to think. And, although I pronounce poem in two syllables, my reduced vowel (“barred i”) always elicits correction from my daughter. What these dialect survey results show is how mixed-up, scattered about, and network-based U.S. dialects really are. The old regions overlap all over the place.
Category Archives: language
U.S. Dialect Survey Map and Results
Yakuza Japanese
Yakuza Japanese is just the site for those who wish to improve their J-gangsta street cred in the Kansai area. Or just to follow Japanese crime shows on TV. (Takes me back to high school days in Kobe.) It’s rough talk, but most of it’s not unique to yakuza.
via Language Hat
Muninn on Deciphering Korean and Konglish
Muninn, who’s back to blogging, has some interesting posts on deciphering Korean by filtering words through screens of Japanese, Chinese, and/or English.
Konglish (like Let’s Dutch pay ‘let’s go Dutch’, overeat ‘vomit’, and walker ‘combat boots’)
Guessing Korean 안내 [annae] and 은행 [eunhaeng] (respectively, 案内 ‘information’, Jp. annai, not used in Ch.; and 銀行 ‘bank’, Jp. ginkô, Ch. yinhang).
BTW, the ginkgo tree in Korean is also eunhaeng. This is much easier for an English speaker who knows Japanese to remember than for a monolingual speaker of either Japanese or Chinese.
Its name means “silvery apricot” (銀杏 yin2 xin4) in Chinese. The same name is used in Japan, where ginkgo later transplanted, but the Japanese pronunciation [was] ginkyō, and this is what the Westerners heard in the eighteenth century. However, the modern Japanese reading is ichō or ginnan (although the Kanji are the same).
But Muninn warns of false cognates, like 手紙 ‘hand paper’, Jp. ‘(postal) letter’, Ch. ‘toilet paper’.
Da Hawaii Pidgin Bible
From 1987, get 26 local peopo dat help fo make da Pidgin Bible. Dey da Pidgin Bible Translation Group. Dey all volunteer peopo dat stay talk Pidgin from small kid time. Dey give couple hour every week fo translate. Dey Christian peopo dat go diffren churches, but dey all working togedda…. An dey awready write 40% a Da Befo Jesus Book, but gotta check um plenny so gotta wait.
Some a dem live odda place now, some a dem get job dat no let um get time fo translate, an Auntie Rachel Silva, she wen mahke awready 1994. March 2000, dey pau make Da Jesus Book. June 2001, get um back from da printa guys. Five translata guys stay working awready fo make Da Befo Jesus Book.
Wat Da Bible Say Bout Important Stuffs?
Jesus say, “God wen get so plenny love an aloha fo da peopo inside da world, dat he wen send me, his one an ony Boy, so dat everybody dat trus me no get cut off from God, but get da kine life dat stay to da max foeva.” (John 3:16)
Tink hard bout wat I telling you. Cuz da Boss, he goin make shua you undastan everyting I say. So tink plenny bout Jesus, da Spesho Guy God Wen Send. He da One dat wen come from King David ohana. God wen make him come back alive, afta he wen mahke. An dass da Good Kine Stuff From God dat I stay telling everybody. (Letta Numba 2 Fo Timoty 2:7-8)
Ngatik Men’s Creole and Its Legacy
One result of the massacre of all the men on Ngatik atoll in 1837 and their replacement by their killers from aboard the cutter Lambton was the creation of an unusual language, Ngatik Men’s Creole, described in Ethnologue as:
A creolized language from the Sapuahfik dialect of Ponapean and English whose genesis is the direct result of a massacre in 1837 of adult males on Ngatik by British traders. Spoken by adult males who are also native bilinguals of the Sapuahfik dialect of Ponapean. Adult male speakers. Women and children understand it.
Most Pacific creoles are built out of words from the colonial languages (chiefly English or French) in a grammatical framework based on local languages. Ngatik Men’s Creole is the reverse: The nouns, verbs, and adjectives are mostly of Pohnpeic origin, but the pronouns, prepositions, and such are mostly from English. It appears as if the foreign men started by speaking (some Pacific maritime variety of) English to each other, but gradually replaced the English content words as they became bilingual in the language of their wives.
Partly for linguistic reasons, the people of Ngatik later came to identify strongly with Americans. Among the nonlinguistic reasons is the relative egalitarianism of Americans compared to the more explicitly (but fluidly) hierarchical orientation of Pohnpeians.
Sapwuahfik people explicitly compare their perceived egalitarianism to American ways, and mehn Pohnpei share the recognition of American style as egalitarian….
Sapwuahfik’s sense of having special ties with Americans is founded on a number of historical incidents, beginning with uncertainty about Hart’s nationality, which for some people has become the determination that he was American (from the documents, he appears to have been a British citizen; the Lambton was registered in Sydney, Australia). (One man joked to me about filing a claim for damages against the United States on account of the massacre.) Sapwuahfik’s history of affiliation with Americans can be traced through stories about the immediate postmassacre period (when several memorable Anglophones, some American, lived there), the American missionary era, World War II (when the U.S. military visited and bestowed gifts on the atoll) and the post-1960 era of U.S. economic generosity. Anecdotes of World War II include personal encounters with flyers and soldiers that emphasize the bravery, friendliness, and generosity of the Americans. Because they alone spoke English, Sapwuahfik men on Pohnpei acted as interpreters and assistants to incoming U.S. troops.
Today it is the people of Pohnpei, and to an extent other Micronesians in the Eastern Carolines, who have greatest access to and familiarity with American ways. Yet Sapwuahfik people retain a sense of identification with Americans. In their view of the past, they moved from a state of darkness through the trial of the massacre onto a path of increasing enlightenment, which today is consonant with the general shift in Micronesia toward political democracy and decreasing emphasis on traditional rank as a source of power. The construction of history is thus strengthened by American ideals of democracy and social equality, in which mehn Sapwuahfik see themselves as more like Americans than are their Eastern Carolines neighbors.
A second symbolic elaboration of Sapwuahfik identity is as sincere Christians, in distinction from neighbors who are thought to use sorcery. Concern about possible magical harm pervades discussions about illness or misfortune, and caution about sorcery dangers accompanies Sapwuahfik visitors to Pohnpei. Throughout much of the Pacific and elsewhere, it is “others” who employ magic, and “we” who are true Christians. The Sapwuahfik claim partakes of this general phenomenon. Yet beyond this, the notion of Sapwuahfik virtue (like the assertion of egalitarian socioeconomic relations) is supported by a historical argument: atoll people rejected pagan ways as a result of the massacre and are now firmly committed to increasing “enlightenment” in both religious and political terms. God’s mercy on the island after the terrible punishment of the massacre is a reward for their faithfulness to his religion. Sapwuahfik’s claim of special divine protection rests on uniquely local indicators–people point out that Sapwuahfik does not suffer from typhoons or food scarcity, as other islands do, and that it was preserved from bombing in World War II.
Egalitarian and religious considerations are thus potent markers, affirming the forward-looking, allied-with-power, “enlightened” qualities of Sapwuahfik culture.
SOURCE: The Ngatik Massacre: History and Identity on a Micronesian Atoll, by Lin Poyer (Smithsonian I. Press, 1993), pp. 232-234
Filed under language, Micronesia
Blowback from Linguistic Nationalism in Sri Lanka
Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, by Neil DeVotta. Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific (sponsored by the East-West Center). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. xxii, 276 pp. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $22.95. Available online from Stanford University Press or from University of Chicago Press Distribution Center, (800) 621-2736.
In the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese politicians began outbidding one another on who could provide the greatest advantages for their community, using the Sinhala language as their instrument. The appeal to Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the country’s official language with Sinhala and Tamil (the language of Sri Lanka’s principal minority) was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language in 1956. The Tamils’ subsequent protests led to anti-Tamil riots and institutional decay, which meant that supposedly representative agencies of government catered to Sinhalese preferences and blatantly disregarded minority interests. This in turn led to the Tamils’ mobilizing, first politically then militarily, and by the mid-1970s Tamil youth were bent on creating a separate state.
Filed under language, nationalism, Sri Lanka
Kamishibai Shrinks but Spreads
Kamishibai–“the picture card show”–is a kind of storytelling that, as late as 1950, was still enormously popular in the Japanese countryside. It has been estimated that at that date there were yet active some 25,000 players. In spite of the poor documentation (as is the case, incidentally, with nearly all other types of folk arts in Japan and elsewhere until recently), the magnitude of their impact on society was tremendous. Satoshi Kako calls kamishibai a type of early-day television. With the advent of that modern electronic device, however, its primitive forerunner faded from the streets with amazing rapidity.
Kamishibai now is to be found, for the most part, only in primary school classrooms as a teaching device and devoid of its traditional associations. Very few Japanese under age forty whom I approached had ever heard of kamishibai as a form of street entertainment.
“Uncle Kamishibai” usually carried with him three sets of pictures for telling separate stories. Each set consisted of approximately ten thick paper sheets or light boards of illustrations. The sheets would be inserted one after another into a box with a large, fixed-frame aperture. The most important words that went along with a given scene would be written on the back of the sheet. The box, during this century, was most often attached to the back of a bicycle. The kamishibai player would ride about from neighborhood to neighborhood, striking his wooden clapper or beating on a small drum to attract the attention of children. When a crowd had gathered, he would sell them sweets or, more rarely, books, medals, and trinkets that even poor children could afford. Those who bought from him would be permitted to stand up front where they could see and hear clearly. This is how the kamishibai player earned his living. One is reminded of the old folk doctor of the American frontier. It is difficult to say which of his wares were more important–the remedies, potions, and appliances or the bombastic rhetoric and showmanship. In both cases, what was important is that a minor entertainment “event” took place that relieved the participants of the tedium of everyday life.
The origins of kamishibai are lost in obscurity but may, perhaps, be traced back to so-called “shadow-pictures” (kage-e). It has also been suggested that they may have been imported from Germany during the nineteenth century. Peep shows … were indeed introduced to Japan from abroad and were known during the Meiji period (1868-1912) as nozoki karakuri (“peep gimmick”) or karakuri-megane (“gimmicky glasses”) (note that puppets and marionettes may be referred to as karakuri-ningyoo “gimmicky dolls”). It would seem, however, that the technique of kamishibai was derived from a combination of influences (etoki [‘picture-explanations’ at temples dating back to Heian times], kage-e, Middle Eastern and European picture boxes, etc.). Be that as it may, kamishibai clearly falls within the general development of Asian picture-storytelling.
SOURCE: Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis by Victor H. Mair (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1988; now out-of-print), pp. 115-116. [Mair compares these traditions with Southeast Asian wayang ‘shadow’ plays, Indian bhopo, Chinese pien wen (Buddhist song-tales dating from Tang times), German bänkelsang, Italian cantastorie, and medieval European jongleur traditions.]
While kamishibai has shrunk down to a classroom technique in Japan, it has expanded to classrooms around the world. There is even a kamishibai version of Beowulf.
WWII Japanese Translators: The Hakujin Experience
Faubion Bowers, The Man Who Saved Kabuki, was a Japanese language translator in World War II. He contributed the following memoir to the Japanese American Veterans Association website.
In 1941, the year war with Japan broke out, there were 25 American Hakujin (Caucasians) who could read, speak and write–more or less–the Japanese language. Most of these were older, scholastic men who had spent years in Kyoto among art treasures or were missionaries who had set their minds on converting the Japanese from their heathen ways. Twenty-five is not much of a number when you are planning on an Army and Navy of five million or so against a nation of 100 million. The idea of using Nisei [2nd generation Japanese immigrants to America] or Kibei [Japanese Americans who had returned to Japan (usually for education)] had only begun to glimmer in 1940, and, even then, the idea was roundly rejected by the Navy. It would later use its own method of developing linguists: it would go to the Ivy League colleges, assemble the cum laudes and phi beta kappas and offer them a commission (instead of the draft) in exchange for a year’s intensive language training at Boulder, Colorado. The idea was a good one, because it produced, among others, Donald Keene, Ed Seidensticker and Robert Ward, some of the best Japanese scholars in the world today.
The Army was sloppier. Anyone, any White man, who went to Washington in 1940 or 1941, and said “Ohayo gozaimus,” (“Good morning”) or said he had been to Japan as a missionary’s son or businessman or whatnot, was immediately given a commission in Military Intelligence. I had spent the year from March, 1940, to March, 1941, in Japan and, since there were no other tourists, and foreigners were scarce in that country which had been ostracized for the Shina Ji[k]en (China “Incident”) since 1937 and the capture of all of China’s main cities, I had no alternative but to learn Japanese or die of loneliness. I learned it so well, thanks again to the absence of English speakers in the country that, when I left Japan (reluctantly, but it had become impossible for an American to remain there, as war was drawing near), and I continued my travels on down to Indonesia, the Dutch there assumed I was a Japanese spy and put me under armed guard until a ship could be found to send me back to America.
Back in America, by September 1941, I was drafted. I didn’t know about that trick of going to Washington and saying “Ohayo gozaimus.” At the induction center, I filled out all the forms, and, when it came to languages, I noted that I knew well French, Russian, Japanese and Malay (as Bahasa Indonesia was known in those days). The Army was so screwed up then, that my language ability went unnoticed. I was a private, trained in the Artillery, and, when Pearl Harbor exploded, I was in basic training in Fort Bragg, given a quick leave and readied to be sent to Africa for eventual landing in Italy.
However, mirabile dictu, when I reported back to camp, a Major Dickey appeared out of nowhere and said “Ohayo gozaimus” to me. I immediately answered in astonishment, rather homesick for the language, the people and the country I had come to love. My Japanese was better than Dickey’s, and we continued in English. From then on, Army life was more pleasant. I was instantly transferred to the Presidio in San Francisco, and was surrounded by Nisei and Kibei. All of us were privates, or at least none of us was an officer.
Then, we were sent to [Camp] Savage in cold Minnesota. Savage had been an Old Folks’ Home before the Army took it over, and it was a mess. All of us worked long and hard to clean it out. Then, as our military training continued — long hikes with full gear on our backs, PT, tattoo and taps — we began, rather continued, our studies in Japanese. If the hikes had been John Aiso’s idea, he was so conscientious, the Japanese lessons were an antidote. The instructors were marvelous. There was Tusky Tsukahira, a civilian. There was Tom Sakamoto, a staff sergeant, if I remember correctly, and others. Our classes consisted of Japanese-Americans and about 5 or 6 Hakujin–Matt Adams, Jurgenson, Charlie Fogg–I can’t remember the rest. Some of the students were simply marvelous in Japanese. Others were simply awful.
The Hakujin officers, aside from Colonel Rassmussen and Major Dickey, were splendid men; those Hakujin who had gotten their commissions by going to Washington ahead of the hot pursuit of the draft, well, their Japanese was terrible, to put it politely. Trouble began to brew. Here were the Nisei, brilliant in Japanese far beyond the ken of the Hakujin officers. They were drafted privates or PFCs at best. Their parents were confined in camps, their worldly goods and homesteads sold at fractions of their value. And here they were, serving their country in the most invaluable way possible–intelligence.
Rasmussen and Dickey were alarmed at the growing resentment. They were, in addition to being regular Army officers, experienced men of the world, having been military attaches at various embassies throughout the world, notably Japan. It became imperative that some–the best–Nisei be commissioned. However, the Army moves on precedent, and never in its history had anyone ever been commissioned on the basis of language. Further complicating matters was the prejudice against the Japanese-Americans, who had yet to prove themselves in battle.
So, Rassmussen decided to make me a test case. I was the best of the Hakujin linguists, and he reasoned with the authorities in Washington, that, to keep this poor private a private was a grave injustice. So, I was commissioned on the basis of language and given my little gold bars. Rank mattered a lot in those days, and I well remember having a little tiff with Paul Aurel, one of those Washington “Okayo gozaimus” officers. He barked at me, “Look here, Faub, I’m a first lieutenant, and you’re only a second lieutenant.” That taught me a lot about human nature and the importance–to some–of having a rank. At any rate, Rassmussen championed me, and, once I was an officer on the basis of language, it became possible for the first time in the U.S. Army for all the more deserving, far better than I, Nisei and Kibei to be commissioned. And a rather sticky moment in Army history passed without incident.
I also remember in Australia, it became urgent for a Nisei to be given a medal of some sort. Morale, again, was low. Their work was so invaluable that it had to be recognized in some public way. Finally, in New Guinea, my friend Kozaki was wounded. He was strafed while ducking in a boat, as a Japanese plane flew over. We were all assembled in formation, and the citation–Purple Heart and Silver Star–for bravery for Kozaki was read out loud to all of us. He was wounded in the Hopoi sector of New Guinea, it said, and for the duration, “Hopoi” and “ass” were synonymous at ATIS.
D. Yee on Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!
Danny Yee reviews a book with an irresistible title: Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!, by Robin Gill (Paraverse, 2003), “a collection of a thousand haiku about sea cucumbers (namako), given both in Japanese and in translation, and with extensive commentary.”
An introduction places namako in Japanese culture, defends the use of “sea slug” for what are actually sea cucumbers rather than nudibranchs, surveys their taxonomy, and touches on some issues in defining and translating haiku. The bulk of the book divides up the haiku by aspects of sea slugs: frozen, featureless, protean, do-nothing, agnostic, mystic, scatological, helpless, meek, ugly, lubricious, just-so, tasty, slippery, chewy, drinking, silent, melancholy, stuporous, nebulous, and cold, with a large “sundry sea slugs” chapter for everything else….
And Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! offers a different perspective on Japanese culture, with insights into history, literature, mythology, food, and more. These take the form of scattered details rather than substantial analysis, but they are given context by the haiku they help explain.
“‘Mountain’ and ‘ocean’ are formal antonyms in Japan, where one may still be asked whether one plans to vacation in the former or the latter.”
Gill’s tone is relaxed and informal and he doesn’t take himself too seriously or struggle for academic respectability, but he is still precise in his own way, and insanely erudite.
Kids in Micronesia used sea slugs as water pistols–by picking them out of the water, aiming, and squeezing. The Chinese appetite for sea cucumbers (and sandalwood) brought many Pacific islands into world trade networks. The bêche de mer (‘sea cucumber’) trade gave rise the name of the lingua franca of Vanuatu, Bislama. There’s definitely room for a book by Mark Kurlansky on Sea Cucumber: A Biography of the Slug that Changed the World.
The New Guinea Schoolboy and the Japanese Officer
The following story was told to me in 1976 by a man from Morobe Province, New Guinea who was a noted traveler and raconteur whose nickname was “Samarai,” because he had once spent time there. (My late West Virginia uncle had also spent time as an Army cook on nearby Goodenough Island after spending time in Australia. He had a lot of respect for the Aussies, and he’d been in fistfights with more than a few of them.)
In this first, rough translation, I’ve tried to capture the storyteller’s idiom without presuming too much specialized knowledge on the part of my readers. We can be sure the story has “improved” over countless retellings, but it nevertheless conveys a third-party perspective on the Pacific War that is too rarely heard. For more local reactions to the Pacific War, consult the Australian-Japan Research Project for Australia and PNG, and the book Typhoon of War for Micronesia.
While were were in school [around March 1942], the Japanese came and took over Lae, took over the Bukaua coast [the south coast of the Huon Peninsula], all the way to Finschhafen. But we stayed there at school for another year. Then, okay, the Australians and Americans seemed to be planning to come back. Their number one patrol officer, Taylor, sent a letter saying, “Natives, don’t stay in your villages any more. Build huts in your hillside gardens and stay there. A big fight is coming.”
So here’s what we did. We people at Hopoi abandoned Hopoi. We took our school, our desks, and everything and set them up in the forest. We stayed at a place called “Apo.” We kept going to school and, okay, the Australians came from over on the Moresby side, they came all the way to Wau. And they came down that little trail and they and the Japanese fought each other over at Mubo and Komiatam [above Salamaua].
And they sent word to us Kembula [Paiawa], Numbami [Siboma], and Ya [Kela] villagers to go carry their cargo to Komiatam. And they did that and the fighting got harder. The Australian forces got bigger. And some Numbami went and carried cargo over at Salamaua. They went at night. They went there and the Australians came down and fired on the Japanese so the Numbami ran into the forest.
They ran into the forest and there was one guy named G. “G, where are you? We’re leaving!”
So, okay, they went and slept overnight and the next morning arrived at Buansing. And a Japanese bigman there named Nokomura [probably Nakamura], he heard the story so he came down and talked to me. He talked to me and I said, “Oh, that was my cousin, my real [cross-]cousin.”
So the Japanese guy said, “Really? Your cousin? Oh, your cousin has died. The Australians shot him dead.” And he spoke Japanese, and he said, “One man, bumbumbumbumbumbu, boi i dai.”
I said, “Oh, you’re talking bad talk.”
Then he said, “Tomorrow, you go to school until 12 o’clock, then come to me.” So I went to school until 12 o’clock and I went to him.
He gave me, dakine, a rifle, a gun. And he gave me, dakine, ten cartridges, ten rounds. Then he said, “I’d like for you to take this and go shoot a few birds and bring them back for me to eat.”
So, okay, I took it and I went. And he wrote out my pass. And there were bigmen with long swords the Japanese called “kempesi” [probably kempeitai, the dreaded military police]. One man, his name was Masuda [possibly Matsuda]. This man had gone to school over in Germany. And he really knew German well.
So I came by and he saw me, “You, where are you going with that gun?”
So I said, “Oh, a bigman gave it to me to shoot birds for him to eat.”
“Let me see your papers.”
So I showed him my papers and he said, “Okay, go.”
So I went and found a friend of mine. His name was Tudi. I said, “Hey, Tudi. A bigman gave me a gun and I haven’t shot a bird yet. Could we both go and you shoot?”
“Okay.”
So we both went and stopped at an onzali tree and two hornbills were there. So he went and planted his knee and shot one and it fell down. So I was really happy and ran and got it. We kept going until he shot a cockatoo.
So after I thanked him, I said, “Give me the gun and I’ll see if I can shoot.”
So he gave it to me and we kept going until we saw some wala birds, and I said, “I’ll try to shoot. Shall I shoot or not?”
So, okay, I fired and I shot a wala bird to add to the others. So I said, “Okay, we have enough, so I’ll take it and go.”
So I tied the wings together and hung them over the gun and carried them back over to Buansing. I went and all the Japanese bigmen were sitting in a, dakine, committee. They were talking about the coming battles. They were sitting there talking and their bigman said, “Look, here comes my man,” and the guards saluted him. And I was invited in.
So I entered the building and the guard at the door said, “Ha!” When he said that I replied, “Ha!” And I bowed three times and he bowed three times.
After we finished, okay, I went up to the second guard and he went, “Ha!” And I said “Ha!” And I bowed three times and he bowed three times. Okay, then I walked on.
So then I went up to the man who stood at the steps up to the bigman. When he said, “Ha!” then I said, “Ha!” and we had both bowed the third time, I went up the steps.
I went up the ladder and the people who were sitting in the meeting, they stood up and went “Ha!” to me and I said “Ha!”, then I went up and they gave me a chair. I sat down.
And the bigman glanced at his cook. And, okay, he took smokes and opened a pack and passed them around until they were gone. Okay, then he struck his lighter and gave everyone a light, then we all sat down. We sat and sat, maybe a half-hour. Then he told his people, “Okay, the talk is over.”
So they all split up and went out leaving just him and me still sitting. We stayed sitting until he said, “I’ve already given you a blanket and a mosquito net. Here’s a knife. Here’s your lavalava. Over there are your bags of rice and dried bonito, two tins of meat, a tin of fish.”
I said, “Oh, you’ve given me so much. How will I carry it?”
He said, “Oh, it’s all right. Take it away.”
So I asked him, “You’ve given away so much. What does it mean?”
“Oh, there’s a reason. I guess I’ll tell you. After you leave, a ship will come tonight, a submarine will come and I’ll board it and go to Rabaul.”
I said, “Why are you going to do that?”
“Nothing. All us bigmen are going up to Rabaul because the bigmen and a whole lot of soldiers are at Rabaul. And these people, their job is to stay behind, and fight the Australians and Americans when they come, and destroy them, destroy them here. And us bigmen will be in Rabaul.”
“Oh, all right.”
Then he told me, he said, “You go get a good night’s sleep so that when you see the crack of dawn you’ll get up quickly.”
So I listened to him and left.
For a very well-researched Japanese account of the defense of Lae-Salamaua, see here.
Filed under Japan, language, military, Papua New Guinea, war
