In Allied hands, Saidor was a stepping stone towards Madang, the ultimate objective of General Douglas MacArthur's Huon Peninsula campaign.

The capture of the airstrip at Saidor also allowed construction of an airbase to assist Allied air forces to conduct operations against Japanese bases at Wewak and Hollandia.

But MacArthur's immediate objective was to cut off the 6,000 Imperial Japanese troops retreating from Sio in the face of the Australian advance from Finschhafen.

MacArthur's original Elkton III plan called for Australian troops to capture first Lae, then Finschhafen, and finally Madang with a combination of airborne and amphibious assaults.

Saidor was chosen as it had accessible beaches, a harbour, and a pre-war airstrip, and it was allocated the codename "Michaelmas" by MacArthur's General Headquarters (GHQ).

It was recognised that the capture of Saidor might make that of Madang unnecessary, as both could cover the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits, and both would provide airbases close to the Japanese base at Wewak.

The Japanese wrested back the initiative and threatened to derail MacArthur's strategy, but ultimately failed to dislodge the Australian 9th Division or prevent the occupation of the Finschhafen area.

With the battle won, the 9th Division initiated a pursuit of Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi's retreating Japanese Eighteenth Army on 5 December 1943.

[3] That he had an opportunity to destroy Adachi's army was not lost on MacArthur, who decided on 10 December that Saidor should be seized on or about 7 January, provided that Operation Backhander, the landing at Cape Gloucester, was proceeding satisfactorily.

[4] On 17 December, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, the commander of Alamo Force, received orders setting a target date for Saidor of 2 January 1944.

[9] There was insufficient time and opportunity for ground reconnaissance, so three beaches, codenamed Red, White, and Blue, on the west shore of Dekays Bay were chosen from aerial photographs.

[15] The difficulty of simultaneously supplying operations at Saidor, Arawe, Long Island, and Cape Gloucester was sufficiently daunting for Krueger to request a postponement of the Saidor operation;[16] but the commander of the Allied Naval Forces and the United States Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid assured MacArthur that enough supplies would be delivered, and MacArthur overruled Krueger.

[17] "I am most anxious that if humanly possible this operation take place as scheduled," MacArthur informed him, "Its capture will have a vital strategic effect which will be lost if materially postponed.

"[18] The ships and landing craft were escorted by the destroyers USS Beale, Mahan, Drayton, Lamson, Flusser, Reid, Smith and Hutchins.

[19] The force arrived at Dekays Bay before dawn on 2 January 1944 to find the shore obscured by low hanging clouds and drizzling rain.

[23] Nine Japanese Nakajima Ki-49 (Helen) aircraft, escorted by up to twenty A6M Zero (Zeke) and Kawasaki Ki-61 (Tony) fighters bombed the beach area at 1630.

Enemy forces on the north coast between Sixth Army and the advancing Australians are trapped with no source of supply and face disintegration and destruction.

[26]Since October 1943, the Japanese strategy had been to conduct a fighting withdrawal in the face of MacArthur's advance that would "trade position, to the end that the enemy offensive will be crushed as far forward as possible under the accumulation of losses".

[28] In view of the poor condition of the 20th and 51st Divisions, Imamura relieved the Eighteenth Army of responsibility for the Sio area and ordered Adachi to withdraw to Madang.

At times they had to make ropes out of vines and rattan and adopt "rock-climbing" methods; or they crawled and slipped on the steep slopes; or on the waterless mountain roads they cut moss in their potatoes and steamed them.

Lieutenant General Ryoichi Shoge was swept away by one of these streams on one occasion but fortunately managed to grasp the branch of a tree which was near the bank and was able to save one of his nine lives.

In addition emergency articles such as some food, shoes and clothing were collected near the mouth of the Minderi River, supplied by the Nakai Detachment.

[35] The Australian official historian David Dexter concluded that: The threat of enemy counter-attacks which had been further magnified by native reports, had already delayed the transition from the defensive to the offensive and the torrential rains, which rendered all tracks and rivers impassable caused great difficulty with the movement of troops and supplies to outlying sectors.

A patrol from the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment led by First Lieutenants George J. Hess and James E. Barnett, with 48 enlisted men, set out to reconnoitre the area around Cape Iris.

Meyers informed the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon M. Clarkson, of the situation, and they quickly assembled a party to go to Hess's aid.

At that point, a Japanese machine gun opened fire on the rescue party, killing Staff Sergeant Victor L. Olson and fatally wounding Clarkson.

For this action, four men were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, including Hess and, posthumously, Clarkson, and ten received the Silver Star.

[47] Initially, the ANGAU detachment found it difficult to lure the frightened local people in from the bush, but as the word spread that there was food and safety to be had within the American perimeter, large numbers began to walk in.

The unseasoned local timber used in its construction soon took a battering from heavily loaded barges bumping into them in high seas and had to be replaced with steel piles.

Other construction activities included jetties for servicing PT boats, landings for LSTs, the 250-bed 23rd Field Hospital opened on 11 May, a quartermaster dump, and a staging area for 9,000.