Top 20 Travel Destinations: Rabaul When the Japanese were on Rabaul during WWII, they faced heavy bombing from the Allied forces. To escape this, they dug over 700 km of tunnels around the town.

Many of them served functions like hospitals or for hiding artillery.

After the war, these tunnels were completely abandoned and mostly with all of their contents.

You can still see tanks rusting away in these war tunnels. One of the more spectacular sites we saw was a cave with a tank which had been covered in volcanic ash.

Our hotel offered a tour of tunnels but we actually found some local kids to lead us around.

I guess a tour guide would have been nice, but the kids seemed to know of all of the really hidden places. This experience was a mixture of awe and eerie but a must do while in Rabaul.

Make sure you don’t miss out of the famous Karavia tunnel where five Japanese barges are lined up.

If you want to see more of WWII history in Rabaul, you should also check out these places: -Yamamoto’s war bunker -Bitapaka War Cemetery -Kopoko War and Cultural Museum