After the war, the present-day town of Buin was established, inland to the north from its original location, which had been a minimal point of sea-landing on the coast.

One Chinese trade-store family arrived during German period before World War I, four of whose members ultimately continued running Buin trade stores until the political and military crisis which began in 1988.

A lined village was the Australian idea of neat orderly living, but it was bitterly resisted by the chiefs because they feared the indecency of their women being seen by bondsmen.

[11] The Imperial Japanese Army occupied Bougainville in early 1942, building two air bases on the southern end of the island, one at the site of what would become Buin after the War and the other at Kahili.

The Japanese established themselves in the north adjacent to the Buka Passage, in the east around Kieta, and in the south at Buin early in March 1942….For the first year of their occupation they concentrated mainly on airfields at either end of the island.

Buin briefly attained worldwide attention when on 18 April 1943 a Japanese Navy airplane carrying Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then on a tour of forward bases, was shot down near there.

[20] During the 1970s, there were expeditions to Buin by large groups of Japanese to find the bones of fathers and grandfathers killed in South Bougainville during the war, to cremate the remains, and take them home to Japan.

“To replace and improve livestock destroyed during the war, the Department [of Agriculture] built pig-breeding centres at Lae, Madang, Wewak, Aitape, Manus, Sohano and Buin; and day-old chickens were flown in from Australia, reared, and distributed.”[21] “Around…[1967], developments in timber and road metal in the Buin area of South Bougainville were handled with … contempt for villagers.

In order to try and entrench itself among Bougainvilleans, CRA [Bougainville Copper Ltd.] suavely hired a miscellany of experts, including at least three noted anthropologists.

One of these, professor Douglas Oliver of Harvard and the East-West Centre of Hawaii, had already written a masterly ethnographic study of the Siwai of South Bougainville dating back to 1938-39.

These included the new Arawa, which became the capital when provincial status was established in 1975 — substantially at the urging of the Buin political leader, figure of national eminence in Papua New Guinea and Roman Catholic priest, (Father) John Momis.

In 1973, Papua New Guinea was granted self-government, and then independence in September 1975 from Australian government rule on orders by the United Nations, some 30 years ahead of plan.

The locals formed a strong rebel army, and they fought back and through a bloody and horrible series of battles, PNG and its allies Australia and New Zealand were ejected from the island, which reportedly still widely yearns to become an independent state.

Despite its lack of a hotel, foreign tourists arrived frequently, including aforementioned Japanese seeking remains of forefathers from World War II, and coming both from Kieta and Arawa on the eastern coast of Bougainville and from the south in the Solomons by boat.

There was a thriving Saturday market with fruit and vegetables brought by nearby villagers, fish and shellfish by Treasury Islanders, the international boundary not being closely monitored.

“In the last two decades of the 19th century, the national border between Bougainville, part of German New Guinea, and the rest of the Solomons, a British colony, changed several times.

In a deal … concluded in 1899, Britain extended her Solomons border northwards to the Buin Straight south of Bougainville.”[27] Village women always wore blouses to Saturday markets as to religious services, though as elsewhere in Bougainville and Buka they often went topless when not attending such functions.

Douglas Oliver,[29] an anthropologist of Harvard University and later the University of Hawaii who gained world fame with A Solomon Island Society, 1938 after study in Siwai and The Pacific Islands was frequently consulted by Bougainville Copper and often visited Buin in the 1970s, where well-read people were pleased to meet and talk with him, inter alia as to his knowledge of by then past traditions which he knew from his aboriginal studies in Siwai in 1938-39.

Unlike in Enga Province and elsewhere in the New Guinea Highlands where Australian academic supervisors insisted that day students be allowed to take books home despite the warning that that would result in parents tearing them up to roll cigarettes, Buin High School students rejoiced in ample library books, borrowed them both at school and to take home, and read them thoroughly.

Sporting activities at Buin High were extremely lively on well-kept fields, as were cultural exhibitions and exchanges and choir singing.

Unlike many places in Papua New Guinea, Buin and the southern coast of Bougainville island experience a rainfall maximum during the south-east monsoon (low sun season).