acting as porters was well down the natives' list of acceptable voluntary activities and that they would fade away without great inducements. Many Papuan residents of Port Moresby either returned to their family villages or were evacuated to camps when the threat of Japanese invasion loomed. The city, while nominated to be abandoned to the Japanese in the spring by Australian factions was, by September, home to an important Allied complex of bases and thousands of troops were eventually stationed in the area or more often, staged through it, as it was the last allied bastion on the island and the last line of defense against the Japanese before Australia and conversely, a key staging and jumping off point as the Allies got their feet underneath themselves under MacArthur, and began conducting offensive warfare themselves, pushing back the Japanese advances. General George Kenney's outnumbered and out classed old fighters, when staged forward from new bases about Port Moresby, would affect Japanese decisions to withdraw from their beachhead on Milne Bay because the allied fighters were only minutes away and enjoyed a rapid turn around time to resume sweeps against long ranged Japanese air during the Battle of Milne Bay�and that earned Kenney a promotion for it was the first time Japanese aggression had been repulsed in any landing.
Thus it was doubly a strategic target of the Japanese invasion fleet meant to conduct a direct sea-land amphibious assault in May 1942, but the invasion was prevented in the historic Battle of Coral Sea, the first of five carrier versus carrier sea battles in mankinds' history. As long anticipated by MacArthur, the Japanese kept trying to reach Port Moresby, for their strategic bid for air dominance by setting up a network of bases commanding the Sea lines of communication was obvious as was their desire to isolate and cut off Australia as a war aim. But with a mixed command he was reorganizing and training up on the fly (Many
