New Ireland is an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, of which it is a part. Home to 120,000 people and an eponymous province of PNG, New Ireland is northeast of the island of New Britain, and the two are counted among the Bismarck Archipelago, named for Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck by the German Empire during its rule over the islands. In January 1942, Japan took the island from Australia during World War II, and the capital of Kavieng served as an Imperial Japanese Navy base until the war's end in 1945.