Talk:Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels

Indentured Servitude and Conscription of Labour

The tone of this article is positive and appears to mostly propagate or not contradict the myths of the fuzzy wuzzy angels. A detailed analysis of these myths is described in this paper here downloaded from the Australian War Memorial - https://www.awm.gov.au/sites/default/files/svss_2012_rogerson_paper.pdf. To give one example from this paper, a war correspondent at the time noted "the majority [of Papuans] did their work only because the white men in command bullied them into doing it. Few if any were serving voluntarily and most would have deserted if possible." - the government had broad mandate to conscript Papuans and they were heavily mistreated.

I believe this article should be flagged with a review box, and rewritten to include a more critical perspective based on available information. 118.209.201.4 (talk) 11:04, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

I am the poster above. As no action has been taken I have put a POV box on the article to attract discussion. 118.209.101.105 (talk) 00:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I will be working on adding details on their recruitment, pay etc then. ¬¬¬¬

Questions

What tribes were they from? Did they do it of their own free will or were they paid to do it? Who recruited them? How were they rewarded after the war? 86.134.53.150 07:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Bert Keinzel, a plantation owner and ANGAU ( ustralia New Guinea Administration Unit) Officer who was highly regarded by the locals for the manner in which he dealt with them, organised Papuans to help. Peter Fitzsimons' book "Kokoda" has good information about this. I have pictures of three of the remaining 6 FWA from my hike of the Track. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Proberton (talk • contribs) 00:14, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Incidently, the villagers of the track are the Koiari people. Proberton (talk) 00:35, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

they did do it in their own free will as i understand, they weren't recruited they just helped. jameogle

invasion!

I am pretty certain that japan was not to invade australia, just scare us out of the war. thats why they wanted port moresby, so we would go aaah! we won't attack just leave us alone, plus with them their it would be hard to get the US defence force in to help. --Jameogle 03:02, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually it was more complicated than that. Port Moresby, combined with Guadalcanal, would have given them control of vital shipping lanes. The Japanese clearly understood that they could not militarily or logistically invade Australia and we knew that. Wartime propaganda of course played up that fear. Their real intention was to sever links between Australia & the US. Brisbane was the northernmost main submarine base for the entire Pacific war effort, and the general who bravely ran away, McArthur, was also based there in command much of of the Pacific theatre. In addition, Perth, although thousands of kilometres south, was the main submarine base for many long range hunting subs.

So no, it was NOT to scare us out of the war, Imperial Japan was facing the entire Commonwealth as a whole, it would involve a separate peace with Australia & they clearly knew that such a plan could not work. Princebuster5 (talk) 14:22, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

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Counter-productive & reverse biased proposed changes

By making such changes, even if accurate, which it is clearly not completely so as written documentation will never be comprehensive, it would paradoxically minimise the proven heroism & hard work of the blokes who did carry supplies & the wounded. It is a proven fact that Lt Bert Keinzel was instrumental in uniting often competing tribes into a coherent force, without using force or coercion. This 'myth' is more important to Papuans than to Australians (etc) as it validates the work done by the native people to aid in defending their homeland against the Japanese invasion.

Stating that they only did it by force would be counter-productive to Papuan historical memory. I do not think that this should be altered significantly as I see no historical benefit from doing so. In particular, stating or implying that most of the work was done by bayonet is not only untrue but then implements a strong bias in the other direction. A simple statement that some of the FWAs who served were conscripted should be sufficient. We should refrain from pedantry here, there is a bigger picture and changing the tone of the article so drastically will not be completely accurate & will bring no benefit to anyone. Princebuster5 (talk) 13:58, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

External links Modified - leads to dead (404) pages as of 25/04/2020

The modified external links below are no longer supported:

"I have just modified one external link on Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070311132354/http://www.australia.gov.au/asfaras/angels.html to http://www.australia.gov.au/asfaras/angels.html''

Can someone with greater knowledge than me please fix this? Thanks, Princebuster5 (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2020 (UTC)