Mike
Interesting Lae footage.
Lae is not landlocked it is on the beautiful Huon Gulf.
Some of those large tin buildings can still be seen around town. It is PNG second city. The area was a huge base of operations (Nadzab, the biggest WW2 airstrip complex in the Pacific at that time was just down the road and supplied through Lae). The outlying areas were stripped of their buildings after the war to set up elsewhere for commerce or scrapped - few structures were overtaken by the jungle.
The non-clothing is standard in such a humid climate and the dangers of disease are very low if people keep normally clean (not possible for jungle fighters). The "duty mosquito" does not come on the job until nightfall.
I lived with my family in Lae for 6 years, much of it shirtless like everyone else and a better period of my life would be hard to identify.
In the 70's we spent all our spare time wandering in the bush looking at dumps of vehicles and aircraft around the area. The eyes had been picked out by the scrappies in the 40's and 50's but there was still lots to be seen.
Unfortunately the urban drift from the villages has changed Lae from a tropical paradise into a city of crime and run down infrastructure.
Lang
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