A legend of Australian law, Webb, with his large brown eyes, Roman nose and impassive smile, was noted for being ‘the model of polite, courteous behaviour’. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘he was patient and understanding; he did not easily ruffle’. Nothing, however, could have prepared him – nor anyone else – for the findings of the commission he accepted in June 1943 from Prime Minister John Curtin ‘to conduct an enquiry into whether there had been any atrocities or breaches of the rules of warfare by the Japanese in the Australian territory of New Guinea and Papua’.
It was not to be a trial of any individual, but a report of the testimony of those witnesses he found reliable. Many of the soldiers who had served throughout the battle were called, such as Sergeant Albert Ramsden, who had been aboard the Elevala on the first night. Evidence was also heard from the now Major Charles Bicks, DSO, of the 61st Battalion. Many Papuans from tiny Milne Bay villages such as Lilihoa and Wandala West were also asked to travel to the court and tell Justice Webb what they remembered of the Japanese during the battle.
The findings would shock not just His Honour, but the entire civilised world, which for the first time would come face to face with the true depravity of Japan’s military machine.
Many months were spent, both in Australian courts and in visits to Milne Bay itself, interviewing hundreds of Papuan and Australian witnesses, before Justice Webb’s report was released in July 1944. Even today it makes for difficult reading; various historical sources state that its details of Japanese atrocities were considered so revolting that, despite its obvious use as a propaganda tool to inspire even greater loathing for an already hated enemy, the public was shielded from them for years.
Webb began his long summary: ‘I find that the Japanese Armed Forces, between August 26 and September 6, 1942, at Milne Bay, without justification or excuse, killed the following natives under the circumstances stated …’
From the moment the marines of the Special Naval Landing Force stepped ashore at Milne Bay on 26 August 1942, a storm of unspeakable suffering was unleashed on the Papuan people. Having little or no idea where they actually were when they landed at Wahahuba Beach, the SNLF marines stormed into the surrounding coastal hamlets, demanding intelligence. Nonsensical maps were thrust into the faces of bewildered villagers, with officers demanding, ‘Where is Rabi?’ Any hesitation was met with immediate and savage violence. Men were roused from their beds and, at bayonet point, ordered to lead the way down the tracks towards the Australians. ‘Take us to the airstrip!’ they shouted in garbled English. When the going was not fast enough, or the Japanese felt they were being led in circles, they turned on their guides with brutality.
Justice Webb began his long catalogue of Japanese crimes with a list of fifteen Papuan names:
(1) PAKALASI, who was tied to a tree and bayoneted.
(2) ODA TOM, who was bayoneted.
(3) TIMOTEO, who was bayoneted through the chest as he sat up after waking …
Some are described in more detail, such as number twelve:
(12) KININURI, was one of the crew of the BRONZEWING and was caught by the Japanese at Moteo village, they tied his hands behind his back and bayoneted him through the stomach.
The next section of Justice Webb’s report begins:
I ALSO FIND that the Japanese armed forces at Milne Bay between the dates aforesaid without justification or excuse killed the following natives whose names are unknown and under the circumstances stated …
It then outlines a true catalogue of horrors. As the battle wore on, and the expected victory eluded them, the Japanese seemed determined to vent their fury on the local population with escalating barbarity, even sadism. Women, in particular, were brutalised. Webb describes:
(17) A native female near Moteo whom they tied to the ground and mutilated. Each wrist and leg was tied to a stake with signal wire. She was naked and lying on her back. She had been ripped from the stomach upwards and there was a knife slash across her stomach … (20-21-22) Two native females and a native male whom they tied to trees with their hands tied behind, and killed with a bayonet or sword … (26) A native girl whose breasts they cut off … (27) At Rabi, a native male whose hands they tied behind his back and tied [to] a native house-pole and whom they slit across the stomach X-wise … (33) Near Wagu Wagu, a native, sex unknown, whose arms they stretched out and whom they cut up the crutch … (34) Between Rabi and KB and about five hundred yards from KB a native whose hands they tied behind his back with signal wire and bayoneted in the anus … (47) A thousand yards east of KB a native woman in her early teens whom they stripped and staked out and whose breasts they cut off … (6-9) The Japanese came upon four men whilst they were seated. The Japanese spoke to them, but they did not understand what was said. The Japanese then bayoneted HINANULI in the right side, and, when he fell, they bayoneted him again. The Japanese then bayoneted IAOKI in the chest. DIABEOEO and SAKARAISI were shot.
Thus Webb’s list continues, relentlessly detailing no less than 59 innocent Papuan men, women and children whose fate it was to be tortured by these bushido knights of the South Seas, who supposedly followed a noble warrior creed steeped in honour. The sensibilities of the times initially prevented Webb from including the fact that the Papuan women and children were almost always raped, repeatedly and brutally, before their murder.
Then the report listed the 36 Australian soldiers captured at Milne Bay by the Japanese, not one of whom survived.
(1-6) At KB, six soldiers whom they tied up with signal wire and bayoneted in the stomach and whose identity discs and other means of identification they removed … (13) Half a mile inland from Rabi Mission, a soldier whom they tied to a coconut palm with his arms around it, the wire cutting deeply into his wrists, and then shot in several places … (14) Between KB and Wagu Wagu, a soldier whose hands they tied in front and whom they badly bayoneted in the stomach, ripping it out … (27-28) At Wagu Wagu, at the Japanese headquarters, two militiamen (Names expunged) whose hands they tied behind their backs with fish cord made by the natives and one of whom was tied six feet away from the other to a tree … both men were badly bayoneted. The man on the ground had his hands tied in front of his chest below his throat, and was so marked as to indicate that he had been trying to protect himself against bayonet thrusts after being tied. His buttocks and genitals were cut to ribbons. The tops of his ears were cut off. His eye sockets were missing. He had about twenty knife or bayonet wounds in his body …
At the bottom of the last listing, Webb states blandly:
I find that each of these killings constituted a breach by the Japanese armed forces of the rules of warfare to the effect of Article 4 of the Hague Rules and Article 2 of the Prisoners of War Convention of 1929. I also find that each of these killings constitutes an atrocity, as having been savagely brutal.
Only at virtually the last line of the summary does Webb allow his revulsion to seep through the legal language, adding: ‘Only fiends could use men for bayonet practice.’
Herbert Vere ‘Doc’ Evatt, Australia’s attorney-general and a future president of the United Nations, said of the report:
[I]ts contents are such as to shock and dismay the feelings of every decent human being … If those responsible of these outrages are allowed to escape punishment, it will be the grossest defeat of justice and a travesty of principles for which the war has been fought.
Evatt’s fears sadly came to pass. The atrocities committed at Milne Bay eventually blended into the great dark ocean of Japan’s crimes, committed in almost every part of Asia in which her soldiers fought and occupied. At war’s end, after presiding over three war crime commissions, Webb began a long series of trials lasting until the early 1950s. In all, 924 enemy nationals were tried for war crimes in 196 trials conducted by Australian military courts in eight separate locations. Of those found guilty, 148 were sentenced to death and executed, with an additional 496 given prison sentences.
Few of these, however,
pertained directly to the crimes committed at Milne Bay. The final report was rushed and incomplete, signed off hurriedly by Webb the very day he departed in 1946 for Japan after being appointed, at MacArthur’s instigation, as president of the far larger International Military Tribunal for the Far East, whose work became known as the ‘Tokyo Trials’.
On this vast stage, Webb found himself completely out of his depth, and he was unable to manoeuvre through the minefield of global Cold War politics. His fervent desire to see Emperor Hirohito himself indicted as a war criminal was shunted aside in the name of post-war expediency and came to nothing.
The names of the AIF servicemen and the militiamen in Webb’s report are – mercifully for their families – withheld, but the details, overwhelming and heartbreaking, eventually blur into images of young men suffering ghastly, lonely deaths at the hands of fiends.
EPILOGUE
TOKYO, 2018
In Jeffrey Grey’s popular 1990 volume, A Military History of Australia, dozens of battles and engagements in which Australia’s armed forces took part are thoroughly and thoughtfully analysed, from the colonial period to the Vietnam War. The information is authoritative and well written, and Grey’s book continues to be reviewed favourably by readers today, with one of the most repeated accolades being ‘comprehensive’.
Yet when it comes to discussing Australia’s fight on its own doorstep against the Japanese in the Pacific, not a single reference – even in passing – concerns Milne Bay. The name does not appear in the index. Needless to say, there is no mention of Major General Cyril Clowes.
In this omission, however, the author is far from alone. Several other revered works on Australia’s wars, particularly those published prior to 1980, likewise lack any reference to the first land defeat of the Japanese in the Second World War.
The reasons for this are mysterious, but perhaps stem from the thankfully waning era of the ‘cultural cringe’, in which our national inferiority complex downplayed and even expunged the virtue of any achievement won by us alone. Even the Kokoda campaign – more extensive and more bloody by far than Milne Bay – took years to come to the awareness of the public, who were finally overcoming their national reluctance to stare honestly into the face of our own accomplishments.
Seventy-seven years on, and with all the participants now passed, it may serve a generation with scant regard for history of any kind to understand just what it was we achieved, virtually alone, in our darkest hours, in the steaming jungles to our north.
Spare a thought, however, for the young people of today’s Japan. A visit to the extremely modern Yushukan War Memorial Museum, near the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, will take the interested visitor past myriad groups of young Japanese schoolchildren admiring the magnificently restored Zero fighter that sits in the foyer. These same children will then be led past superb displays of swords and armour – purportedly the best collection of both in the world – from feudal times and the Sakoku years, when Japan was closed to the world for more than three centuries, until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry forced his way into Tokyo Bay on the USS Mississippi.
Throughout the museum, information is set out on touchscreens and interactive digital displays, with brilliantly reproduced images and realistic displays of heraldry and ancient weapons. The excited children love every bit of it.
Watching the youngsters as they absorb Japan’s early twentieth-century history, however, is far less satisfying. Alongside the illuminated screens filled with Japanese writing explaining the war in China and beyond until 1945, are other screens, identical, but written in English. What one reads on these is deeply disturbing.
Here, the dark crimes of Japan’s mid-century nadir are utterly washed away. No prisoners or locals were mistreated; the gallant soldiers of the Emperor were welcomed lovingly wherever they set foot throughout Asia; and the only crimes committed were by the vengeful Allies. Needless to say, there is no mention of the ghastly fates of 59 Papuans and 36 Australian prisoners of war at Milne Bay.
The children read everything quietly and, as young Japanese do, listen studiously to their teacher-guide, leaving eventually, once more past the old green aeroplane, and emerging again into the sunlight having learned not an iota of truth about their country’s recent past.
It is a shame indeed that the children and grandchildren of the soldiers of the Battle of Milne Bay, on both sides, remain so unaware of the deeds of their forebears, both the good and the bad.
SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In telling the story of the Battle of Milne Bay, I have freely drawn on a number of excellent primary and secondary sources, the most interesting of the latter being Clive Baker and Greg Knight’s Milne Bay 1942, published in the early 1990s, when many of the Milne Bay veterans were still living. While no longer easy to get hold of, this large – at times even rambling – work provides a unique and comprehensive day-by-day account of the build-up, the battle and its aftermath, with a great deal of first-person quotes, biographies and narratives.
Peter Brune’s magnificent canvass of Australia’s involvement in the entire Pacific War, A Bastard of a Place, includes a large section on Milne Bay and was also utilised throughout, as was his earlier The Spell Broken: Exploding the myth of Japanese invincibility. Brune, as always, provides a compelling picture of the politics behind the campaign, as well as the view from MacArthur’s and Blamey’s headquarters in Melbourne and Brisbane. His breakdown of individual engagements, such as that of Gama River, are invaluable.
Two excellent published personal accounts were used, both written by men who served at Milne Bay during the battle. James Henderson’s Onward, Boy Soldiers: The Battle for Milne Bay, 1942 not only takes us through the author’s journey as a Western Australian signaller, but provides a close look at the battle from the Japanese perspective, gained from his unique research and interviews in Japan after the war, particularly with the paymaster of the 5th Kure, Captain Chikanori Moji.
Brian Boettcher’s Eleven Bloody Days is another personal memoir from an eyewitness to the battle. The infantryman’s descriptions of the conditions in which the engagement was fought were invaluable.
Bill Deane-Butcher, 75 Squadron’s redoubtable chief medical officer, self-published his own vivid account of the battle in Fighter Squadron Doctor, which once again proved an invaluable source.
A more recent account is that of Nicholas Anderson, published in 2018 as part of the Australian Army Campaign Series. Being from a military background, Anderson provides a skilful breakdown of the military aspect of the campaign.
The Australian government official histories were naturally used, and, despite being penned in the mid- to late 1950s, possess a surprising freshness and vitality. Particularly useful were: Volume V: South-West Pacific Area – First Year: Kokoda to Wau by Dudley McCarthy, and Volume IV: The Japanese Thrust by Lionel Wigmore. The RAAF official histories proved likewise useful, namely Volume I: Royal Australian Air Force, 1939–1942 by Douglas Gillison.
In regards to the RAAF’s vital role at Milne Bay, Mark Johnston’s Whispering Death and Anthony James Cooper’s Kokoda Air Strikes: Allied Air Forces in New Guinea, 1942 were highly informative. Historian David Wilson was also used, particularly his history of 75 Squadron, Seek and Strike and The Decisive Factor, the first book to thoroughly examine the RAAF’s role in the early part of the New Guinea campaign both at Port Moresby and Milne Bay.
An unexpectedly vivid and detailed article on the battle appears in the otherwise somewhat general The History of World War II by Lieutenant Colonel E. Bauer published by Paul Hamlyn in 1979.
Ivan Southall, himself a former Second World War pilot, brings to life the characters of Peter Turnbull and his successor as 75 Squadron’s commanding officer, Squadron Leader Keith Truscott in his 1958 classic, Bluey Truscott.
Many primary sources were also used. Although all the participants of the battle have now passed, I am once again grateful to the foresight of the archivists at the Austral
ian War Memorial and the National Library of Australia for their efforts to record so many of the voices of the men and women who fought in our wars before their stories were lost. A good number of participants of the Milne Bay battle – particularly RAAF pilots and ground crew – have given long and detailed interviews as part of the Keith Murdoch Sound Archive and the NLA’s Fred Morton collection. An excellent resource, now available to all. I myself was also fortunate in being able to interview some of the veterans before they passed, including Milne Bay pilots Nat Gould and Roy Riddell. Listening once again to the cassette tapes on which I had recorded their voices in their own homes a decade or so ago was a most moving experience.
I have also been greatly assisted by excellent material provided by several family members of veterans, particularly – once again – Peter Tucker, son of 75 Squadron Kittyhawk pilot Flying Officer Arthur Tucker, Richard Deane-Butcher, son of 75 Squadron doctor, Bill Deane-Butcher, and Clive Wawn, whose father, Flight Lieutenant Bardie Wawn flew alongside Turnbull and Truscott in Milne Bay as well as many other engagements, cementing his reputation as a true hero of the RAAF.
Although the sound quality is not the best, Tim Gellel of the Australian Army History Unit provides an excellent lecture on Milne Bay on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJotmqHe57M.
I am likewise most grateful for material provided by Wing Commander Bill Evans, former CO 75 Squadron, and Bruce Whealey and his wife, Margaret, whose father Len Scaysbrook served with No. 10 RAAF Repair and Salvage Unit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allchin, F., Purple and Blue: The History of the 2/10th Battalion AIF (The Adelaide Rifles) 1939–1945, 2/10th Battalion Association, Adelaide, 1958.
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