The Second World War had been raging for three years when it first came to Ian Jijiro's Papua New Guinean village in the form of a crashing plane.

An American bomber slammed into a swamp not far from the small Oro Province community in 1942, and Mr Jijiro's grandfather was one of the villagers who saw it.

"He was scared because they had heard nothing about the war before that,"

Mr Jijiro said.

"After that though, they knew."

Papua New Guinea became one of the main theatres of the Pacific War that year, and the conflict lived on in the province's oral traditions long after.

But tales of the war — once passed down the generations at village campfires — are being lost as it recedes further into the past.

And experts fear the loss of historical knowledge is playing out in dangerous ways

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