Buin is a town on Bougainville Island, and the capital of the South Bougainville District, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in eastern Papua New Guinea. The island is in the northern Solomon Islands Archipelago of the Melanesia region, in the South Pacific Ocean.

It is a government-established town in the jungle, now inland from the coast, where its sea-landing predecessor of the same name was located. The town is in an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea established in 2000, and was the former North Solomons Province (1976–2000).Merriam Websters Geographical Dictionary, Third Edition, p. 183.

History

Buin and Bougainville Island gained world attention with the Japanese Army's occupation in 1942, World War II, and the subsequent American counterattack in November 1943.

After the war, the present-day town of Buin was established, inland to the north from its original location, which had been a minimal point of sea-landing on the coast.

In 1943, Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was flying over Buin in his G4M "Betty" bomber. A squadron of American P-38 Lightnings flying up from Guadalcanal ambushed Yamamoto’s bomber, killing him when the "Betty" crashed.

During the late 1960s, Buin became a regional center of government, commercial, and education activity. After Bougainville Copper, Ltd., was established, it came to national prominence as the source of a large proportion of the country's financial base. The town was isolated from contact and commercial activity during the 1990s Bougainville Civil War. In 2000, it fell within the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, upon the Autonomous Region's establishment.

German New Guinea

Buin was within German New Guinea from 1884 to 1919. Three anthropologists explored traditional cultures in Bougainville in the 1930s, one in Siwai, the ethnically and culturally closely related region immediately to the west of the later Buin; another in the region of the long-established east-coast town of Kieta to the north. They published widely read books.

One Chinese trade-store family arrived during German period before World War I, four of whose members ultimately continued running Buin trade stores until the political and military crisis which began in 1988. The Germans, though not the later Australians, permitted Chinese immigration.

Roman Catholics and Methodists (from 1968 the United Church in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands) established missions early in German times in the region of what later became Buin, a small number of other Christian denominations also later establishing a smaller presence. A Roman Catholic nunnery was very early established immediately adjacent to the later Buin airfield. Pre-Christian traditional beliefs of course remained alive, including the firm one that souls of the deceased remained alive on Lake Loloru in a volcano northeast of the later Buin, and powerful men continued taking multiple wives. On the other hand, a strong tradition of intelligent and talented women having considerable influence remained vastly important. Indigenous Roman Catholic nuns and female Methodist ministers became deeply appreciated.

Territory of New Guinea Buin was within the Territory of New Guinea, a Mandate of the League of Nations, that consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and a number of outlying islands. It was wholly controlled by Australia during 1920–1942 and during 1945–1949 and mostly occupied by Japan during World War II, between 1942 and 1945.

In 1914, Australia seized German New Guinea which included Bougainville and Buka as the northernmost two islands of the Solomon Islands, which Germany and Great Britain had divided between them, the south of which had been taken by Great Britain. Despite Australia's remaining a British colony until the Statute of Westminster of 1931, affirmed its independence when the "autonomous Communities within the British Empire [became] equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another"Brown, p. 69. within a "British Commonwealth of Nations" despite Australia's not accepting such sovereignty until 1942 with the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942. Australia took virtually no steps to develop this remote part of Papua and New Guinea, apart from minimally developing the small towns of Kieta, Buka Town, and Buin (initially on the south coast), and permitting plantations to be established from Kieta up the coast to Buka.

Indeed, one of the most widely read books on pre-World War II Bougainville was Douglas L. Oliver’s1913–2009, born in Rushton, Louisiana D.Phil. from the University of Vienna; professor of anthropology at Harvard University and University of Hawaii: "Dr. Douglas L. Oliver: 1913–2009," "Hawaiian & Pacific Collections News" Thursday, November 5, 2009. http://hpcoll.blogspot.com.au/2009/11/in-memorium-douglas-l-oliver.html Retrieved January 26, 2013. A Solomon Island Society: Kinship and Leadership Among the Siwui [sic] of Bougainville,Boston: Beacon Press, 1955 a lengthy report of his 1938–39 anthropological study of a village in Siwai. Oliver made no mention of the coastal port of Buin, though would necessarily have been where he landed and entered. Nor did he mention it in his Bougainville: A Personal HistoryHonolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973 or Black Islanders: A Personal Perspective of Bougainville 1937–1991.Melbourne: Hyland House, 1991).

The Vienna-born and ultimately also US-based anthropologist Richard Thurnwald, (1869–1954), “one of the most productive ethnologists of his time,”Robert H. Lowie, “Richard Thurnwald 1869–1954 Obituary,” American Anthropologist October 1954, New Series 56(5:1):863-867 in American Ethnography Quasimonthly http://www.americanethnography.com/article.php?id=4#.UPsDIx1dOAg retrieved 3 February 2013. wrote two published studies of people in the region of today’s Buin, both in English: Profane Literature of BuinYale University Publications in Anthropology (1936) and Pigs and Currency in Buin (1934)Oceania 5:119-41. "Before World War II only three of Bougainville’s societies had been studied comprehensively by trained anthropologists. One of those was Buin, which was studied by the German anthropologist, Richard Thurnwald, in 1912–13, and again by him and his wife in 1934–35. A second was Halia, (just southeast of Buka Passage, which was studied by the British anthropologist, Beatrice Blackwood, in 1930. The third was carried out by [Douglas Oliver] in 1938–39.” Olliver, 1991, p. 92.

World War II

The Imperial Japanese Army occupied Bougainville in early 1942, building two air bases on the southern end of the island, one at the site of what would become Buin after the War and the other at Kahili.

The northern tip of the island was the home of the third air base, and the fourth was across the Buka passage on Buka. Buin briefly attained worldwide attention when on 18 April 1943 a Japanese Navy airplane carrying Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then on a tour of forward bases, was shot down near there. The architect of the Japanese Navy's air attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the USA into the war, Yamamoto was the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The ambush was carried out by P-38 Lightnings flying from Guadalcanal. Yamamoto's airplane crashed just north of the later site of Buin.

"It was obvious to the planners that Japanese air power sited at Rabaul and at the Bougainville fields of Kahili, Buin, Kieta, and Buka must be neutralized before the Empress Augusta Bay operation could take place.”Harry A. Gailey, Bougainville: The Forgotten Campaign, 1943–1945. The University Press of Kentucky: Lexington, Kentucky, 1991. p.61.

“On Bougainville [by mid-1944] the Japanese were forced to retreat north to Bonis Peninsula and Buka island, and south around Buin.”James Griffen, Hank Nelson, Stewart Firth, Papua New Guinea: A Political History (Richmond, Victoria: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1979) p.97. In late 1944, the Australian Army took over responsibility for clearing of Japanese troops from the island,Odgers 1988, p. 177. and they slowly began to advance south from Torokina towards Buin where the main Japanese forces were located.Long 1963, p. 217. “By the end of June in the major area of operations, southern Bougainville,…it was estimated…that the Japanese army had dwindled to approximately 14,000 men…. Over eight thousand were in the Buin area, now only thirty miles from the advancing Australians."Harry A. Gailey, Bougainville: The Forgotten Campaign, 1943–1945, p.209.

Stiff Japanese resistance and heavy rains, however, brought the advance to a halt in July 1945, just after the Australians reached the Mivo River.Odgers 1988, p. 178. As a result Buin remained under Japanese control until the end of the war in August 1945. The northern and western Solomons long remained world-famous because two later presidents of the USA served in the U.S. Navy in this area, Lt. Richard Nixon on Green Island just north of Buka, and Lt. John F. Kennedy on a patrol torpedo boat based on Rendova Island.

During the 1970s, there were expeditions to Buin by large groups of Japanese to find the bones of fathers and grandfathers killed in South Bougainville during the war, to cremate the remains, and take them home to Japan. Many also visited Yamamoto's wrecked airplane and obtained accommodation at the Buin High School, bringing substantial gifts of books for the school library.

Post-World War II development

“To replace and improve livestock destroyed during the war, the Department [of Agriculture] built pig-breeding centres at Lae, Madang, Wewak, Aitape, Manus, Sohano and Buin; and day-old chickens were flown in from Australia, reared, and distributed.”James Griffen, Hank Nelson, Stewart Firth, Papua New Guinea: A Political History (Richmond, Victoria: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1979) p. 108. “Around…, developments in timber and road metal in the Buin area of South Bougainville were handled with … contempt for villagers.

In order to try and entrench itself among Bougainvilleans, CRA [Bougainville Copper Ltd.] suavely hired a miscellany of experts, including at least three noted anthropologists. One of these, professor Douglas Oliver of Harvard and the East-West Centre of Hawaii, had already written a masterly ethnographic study of the Siwai of South Bougainville dating back to 1938–39. His published advice to CRA shows no awareness of the political implications of mining, but merely a facile optimism that the people he portrayed to CRA shareholders as simply primitive and superstitious ‘will probably get used to the Company’s presence.’”James Griffen, Hank Nelson, Stewart Firth, Papua New Guinea: A Political History (Richmond, Victoria: Heinemann Educational Australia, 1979) pp.151–2.