Islanders of Destiny: The Intrinsic Importance of Pacific Islanders to the Secret War on Bougainville, 1941–2

The essential roles Indigenous people played in the Allied war effort during the Pacific War are widely acknowledged, yet few works examine how those contributions shaped key battles and campaigns. This military history aims to fill a gap in the historiography of the Pacific War by illustrating how Pacific Islanders operated within a strategic military framework and shaped one of the war’s key turning points – the Guadalcanal Campaign (1942–3). Specifically, this article examines the contributions of Indigenous people to the Australian Coastwatching network on Bougainville, arguing that the network’s successful intelligence-gathering efforts were made possible by the support of a small group of Pacific Islanders, such as the Fijian Methodist missionary-turned-spy Usaia Sotutu. Operating deep behind enemy lines, Sotutu and other Melanesians waged a secret war in 1941–2 that significantly influenced the course and outcome of the Second World War in the Pacific.