If defeating the Chiang Kai-shek Government was the ultimate goal of the war in the CBI theater, the Japanese fought in the South Pacific for the fulfillment of a less definitive military objective: to keep at bay the Allied armed forces while maintaining Japan’s control over the resource-rich British and Dutch colonial territories in Southeast Asia. “The task assigned to 8 Army Group by G.H.Q.,” according to Gen. Imamura Hitoshi, general officer commanding the 8th Area Army from the time of its formation in mid-November 1942 until the cessation of hostilities in September 1945, was “to co-operate with the Navy, [to] occupy the SOLOMONS, and to occupy strategic parts in NEW GUINEA and prepare for operations in that area.” Prior to Imamura’s appointment, the Japanese had fought in the region costly battles that pushed their troops to the limits of human endurance for some four months, in the Battle of Coral Sea, the Battle of Milne Bay, the Battle of Guadalcanal, and the New Guinea campaign along the Kokoda Trail over the Owen Stanley Range between Buna and Port Moresby. The American and Australian forces resisted their foes with matching determination so as not to give away either Guadalcanal or Port Moresby, two strategic points of great importance for Australia and its allies in the region. Within weeks of Imamura’s assumption of the 8th Area Army’s command at the Rabaul headquarters in New Britain, the Government of Japan reached the conclusion that the initial offensives in the South Pacific were a lost cause and that the troops in Guadalcanal and Buna must be withdrawn.