Three books have proved essential to this account of the fighting on New Britain. Lieutenant Colonel Frank O. Hough, USMCR, dealt at length with the campaign in The Island War: The United States Marine Corps in the Pacific (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947). With Major John Crown, USMCR, he wrote the official Marine Corps historical monograph: The New Britain Campaign (Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC, 1952). The third of these essential volumes is Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul—History of U. S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol 2 (Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC, 1963.)

Other valuable sources include: Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, August 1942-July 1944—The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol 4 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, reprint 1983); George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of the First Marine Division in World War II (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1949); John Miller, Jr., The United States Army in World War II; The War in the Pacific: CARTWHEEL, The Reduction of Rabaul (Washington: Office of Chief of Military History, 1959); Samuel Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 22 July 1942-1 May 1944—A History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol 6 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1950).

The Marine Corps Gazette printed four articles analyzing aspects of the New Britain campaign: Lieutenant Colonel Robert B. Luckey, USMC, "Cannon, Mud, and Japs," vol 28, no 10 (October 1944); George McMillan, "Scouting at Cape Gloucester," vol 30, no 5 (May 1946); and Fletcher Pratt, "Marines Under MacArthur: Cape Gloucester," vol 31, no 12 (December 1947); and "Marines Under MacArthur: Willaumez," vol 32, no 1 (January 1947).

Of the Marine Corps oral history interviews of participants in the New Britain fighting, the most valuable were with Generals Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., and Edwin A. Pollock and Lieutenant Generals Henry W. Buse, Lewis J. Fields, Robert B. Luckey, and John N. McLaughlin.

Almost three dozen collections of personal papers deal in one way or another with the campaign, some of them providing narratives of varying length and others photographs or maps. The most enlightening commentary came from the papers of Major Sherwood Moran, USMCR, before the war a missionary in Japan and during the fighting an intelligence specialist with the 1st Marine Division, who discussed everything from coping with the weather to understanding the motivation of the Japanese soldier.