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Extracted from Royal Australian Navy News, 13th October 1972.

When Japan entered into WW2, Cornelius Lyons Page was living on Tabar Island in the Bismark Archipelago with his native wife, Ansin. He was already a civilian Coastwatcher before hostilities commenced with a government supplied radio. Civilian Coastwatchers were advised late in 1941 that they were under no obligation to continue transmitting if an area was occupied by the enemy as they could be treated as spies, but they were not definitively told not to - the decision and risk would be theirs. He was the first to report the sighting of a Japanese plane ahead of the invasion of Rabaul.

After the invasion, he stayed on Tabar Island reporting on Japanese movements. The Japanese were aware of his general location and he was hastily commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant on 02 Apr 1942. Authorities hoped this would provide him treatment as a POW instead of as a spy in case of capture.

By March 1942 he was in a difficult situation. He was maintained by air drops but declined to leave Tabar Island where his wife was a local. The last message received from him was on 5th June 1942.

The diary of a Japanese soldier who was a member of Kure No 3 Special Landing Party, April to August 1942 refers to the capture of Page and a fellow planter, Talmage in June 1942. According to this document the Japanese searched for the Coastwatchers between 13 and 20 June so they were probably not actually captured until after the RAAF conducted an unsuccessful search. Following capture, he was taken to Kavieng on New Ireland.

He is believed to have been executed in the company of two other Coastwatchers (and other POWs) at Nago Island, near Kavieng on 21st July 1942. His body was one of 7 identified from 13 bodied recovered there after the war. He was reinterred at Bita Paka War Cemetery on New Britain.

Sub-Lieutenant Page was posthumously, Mentioned in Despatches for gallantry and distinguished service.

Two years after Page's death, Sub-Lieutenant Stanley Bell RANVR visited the Tabar group which was then on the outskirts of Japanese-held territory under siege from the Allies. Page's wife/companion, Ansin Bulu, just released by the Japanese came to Bell with a crumpled and dirty scrap of paper she had managed to carry during her years of imprisonment. In, by then, barely legible, pencilled scrawl Page had written:The Japanese invaded the islands and took Con a prisoner.

To CO Allied Forces

For Lieut-Commander E. A. Feldt, R.A.N.

From Sub-Lieutenant C.L. Page R.A.N.V.R.

9th July. 

Re the female Ansin Bulu,

Nakapur Village,

Simberi Island.

This female has been in my service 7 years. Has been of great value to me since Jan. Japs looted all she owned value £50, put her in prison and God knows what else. Her crime was she stuck. Sir, please do your best for her.

Sub-Lieutenant C.L. Page