Kolombangara: surveying a forgotten Second World War fortress

The battle for the Solomon Islands remains one of the Second World War’s most important campaigns in the Pacific Theatre. It halted Imperial Japan’s advance and brought the first Allied victories on land. Following the devastating Japanese defeat at Midway, Allied landings on the Solomon Island of Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942 struck the next blow against the Axis forces. The ensuing island-hopping jungle fighting between Allied soldiers and outnumbered but tenacious Japanese occupiers has become infamous. Traces of this brutal episode linger as coral-encrusted shipwrecks and an annual ‘iron harvest’ of unexploded shells. For all the fame of the Solomon Islands campaign, though, parts