Buna is a village in Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. It was the site in part, of the Battle of Buna-Gona during World War II, when it constituted a variety of native huts and a handful of houses with a airstrip. Buna was a trailhead to Kokoda the Kokoda Trail
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Buna was the site of a handful of houses, a dozen or so native huts, and an airfield acting as a trailhead up the Kokoda Track to the foothills village of Kokoda.
During World War II, Imperial Japanese troops invaded on 21–22 July 1942 and established it as a base. Six months later[1], Buna was recaptured by the Australian army during the Battle of Buna-Gona on 9 December 1942 during the New Guinea campaign in the South West Pacific Area. The Fifth Air Force established air bases there as the Allied counter-offensive against Japan picked up the pace and continued operations to isolate the major Japanese base at Rabaul and attack Lae and points west. For weeks at a time General MacArthur used Buna as an informal forward base. MacArthur's biographer William Manchester relates a story Lt. General George Kenney, commanding officer Allied air loved repeating of how he'd gone back to Australia for a week, and MacArthur had stolen his house, claiming it was cooler at night than his own. A week later the Monsoon winds shifted, making MacArthurs' old house now the cooler—and he never asked for Kenney to switch back[1].