The concrete Japanese gun emplacement is quite obvious on the sea edge. They are around 10' high. We climbed on top of this one and I took a photo from inside it looking out to sea. The photo also shows how thick the jungle can be, it it comes right up to the shore here.

Here is a shot of the Japanese gun at Kangu beach. The shot is a bit salt damaged. Taken 29 Oct 1999.

During our Arawa to Buin road reconnaissance we had the chance to visit Kangu Beach which is a fountain of history and relics.

The track from Buin to Kangu Beach needs a four wheel drive to negotiate safely now. The area has been a place of confrontations in many instances throughout time. This area was a Japanese coastal defensive position for the Buin during WWII.

History says PNG troops during the Bougainville "Crisis" left their encampment here at Kangu Beach to raid local villages raping and killing women. Local male villages supposedly slaughtered these troops as vengeance killings soon after. A small hut is still standing where locals say the troops were encamped and slaughtered.

Apon arriving at the beach a huge Japanese anti-naval gun is still standing intact with modern graffiti. An impressive sight to come out of the jungle and sea. Unfortunately I slipped during day and my camera got wet. Some of the photos have Bougainville sea marks on them !! Overall a fantastic day for us at Kangu Beach but yet again not enough time to explore in depth.

Rusted metal on the shore just down from the big gun
at Kangu beach.

View out of on of the concrete Japanese gun emplacements at Kangu
Beach. Can see an island off in the distance.

Japanese iron construction off in the distance. I took the photo with the canoe there to give a little perspective. Obviously the construction is partially buried there in the sand of the beach.

Gun Enplacement
I took a photo looking out of the first fun emplacement to show an island where the locals describe a small Japanese airfield was. They informed us that at times locals have been know to dig up barrels of oil and petrol from this site.

When facing the beach we followed the coast to the left. Within a few hundred feet we came apon rocks and strewn corroded metal. Within the rocks could be seen a stripped six cylinder engine block of unknown origin and no distinguishing marks. A number of other unidentified metal pieces are within the rocks. On the rocks edge within the sea was what appeared to be a WWII vintage small gun trailer.

Around this southern point of Bougainville Island there are a number of Japanese concrete gun and viewing emplacements. I was lucky enough to discover a number of these and get some photos.

We met some older locals at the first gun emplacement who shared the local history for a few minutes. They informed us that there was a large Japanese bunker system a number of hundred meters directly into the Island from these emplacements near Kangu Beach. We had reports of these from other OP BelIsi members who had quickly visited this site.

Another appeared slightly sunk within the sea edge.
I took a photo of this with a local canoe in front to give perspective. In the photo you can see coconuts in the foreground, the local canoe in the middle ground (approx three meters in length) and about the same distance to the canoe again is the top half of the metal object within the sea edge.

Concrete Fortifications
One particular gun emplacement fascinated me as it had sunk on the beach. The emplacements are all around three meters in height but this particular
emplacement had its roof almost sunk down to sand level. It had a hole in the top and I held a one meter stick into it with no resistance.

Portable Emplacements
A number of what appeared to be metal gun emplacements were scattered further along the beach. I personally had never seen anything like this. We found at least three of these. Some had Japanese markings still visible. They were obviously prefabricated cast metal. They had portal holes and were in various states and places. They were quite small probably allowing one to two men to possibly fire weapons from within. One was found on the edge of the jungle and beach overgrown and open. I took a photo of this but because of the thickness of the jungle it appears very dark.