Allied troops in the South Pacific, 1942

Soldiers in slouch hats, a girl and a small child stand at the kerb of a Sydney street; off a dark beach a column of black smoke rises from a burning craft; in dappled jungle shade men serve a light gun; behind strands of barbed wire in a coconut grove, men in field caps crouch on the bare earth; a map rings Japan's conquests with a white line and sets American arrows against it.

In the second half of 1942 Australian and American troops drove the Japanese back over the Kokoda Track and fought for Buna and Gona on the north coast of Papua, while American marines and soldiers held and widened their hold on Guadalcanal. Australia became the base of MacArthur's South West Pacific command. The newsreel, released by MGM as News of the Day, told the war as its American audience was meant to see it.