In Our Jungle Road to Tokyo Eichelberger writes of his meeting in Port Moresby with MacArthur. General Kenney has a slightly different version, but the essence of the encounter is largely the same. Geoffrey Perret also details this meeting.
E. J. Kahn wrote, “The men at the front in New Guinea were perhaps among the most wretched-looking soldiers ever to wear the American uniform.”
In 1942, Groom, too, writes of the men’s suffering.
Eichelberger’s account of their meeting differs slightly from Jastrzembski’s.
Accounts of the meeting with the “brass” can be found in Smith’s books. Other historians describe the scene, too.
Harding defended Mott. The situation at Buna favored the Japanese. It was hard on the troops. In 1936 Harding wrote in Infantry Journal, “Flesh-and-blood troops don’t conform to Leavenworth and Benning ground rules.”
In a letter he wrote to MacArthur on December 7, 1942 (after he was relieved), which Tom Doherty quotes in his article “Buna: The Red Arrow’s Heart of Darkness,” Harding stated, “I cannot agree with General Eichelberger’s conclusion that the ‘men were licked.’ The impression I got was that the men still had plenty of fight left but had no stomach for another go at a position which had beaten off four attacks. They felt, and with good reason, that the bunkers and the strong fixed defenses that had held them up should be blasted out before they went at it again.”
Eichelberger writes of the flood in Our Jungle Road To Tokyo: “Various personal items floated around like chips in a millstream. I waded knee-deep to get my shaving mirror…. In Buna that year, it rained about a hundred and seventy inches.”
The incident with the soldier in the hospital is taken from Anders’ Gentle Knight.
Phil Ishio wrote an article for the American Intelligence Journal in 1995 on the Japanese-American contribution to the Allied victory in the Pacific.
Kahn writes of Swede Nelson and Ned Meyers in “The Terrible Days…”
In The Fight for New Guinea, Patrick Robinson details the enemy’s tactics. So do a number of other authors, including John Vader in New Guinea: The Tide Is Stemmed and John Ellis in The Sharp End. In Burma, according to Ellis, British soldiers referred to Japanese infiltration attacks as “jitter raids.” The intention was to draw fire and cause soldiers to give away their positions.
Lutjens decribes the incident and Schultz’s calm in shooting the sniper out of the tree.
The details of Colonel Yokoyama’s order to soldiers without weapons to defend the garrison with anything they could find are from ATIS documents and Ham. Hospital conditions are also described by Ham and by various Japanese soldiers in translated documents.
Yamagata’s speech is from ATIS documents.
Details of the conditions at the roadblock are from Milner, George Weller’s articles, the Detroit News, Medendorp’s memoirs, and veterans of the Sananda Front whom I interviewed.
The details of Roger Keast’s time in Marquette, Michigan, are derived from Harry Keast’s collection of biographical information on his father.
Captain Peter Dal Ponte said of Roger Keast, “He excelled in every mission that confronted him…. His heroic actions and gallantry instilled confidence in and maintained the high morale of his men constantly.”
Details of Keast’s and Shirley’s deaths are from Medendorp and a series of articles in the Grand Rapids Herald and the Detroit News.
Chapter 16. Breaking the Stalemate
Smith includes a description of Grose’s imperiousness in his books.
E. J. Kahn described this attack and Lutjens’ injury in detail.
Odell mentions this incident in his diary. In his correspondences with Milner, Grose relates the details, too. In a letter to one of the historians working with Milner (Colonel Kemper), Odell writes bitterly, “We unanimously condemned higher headquarters for wholly inadequate recognition of the Buna situation, particularly with regard to intelligence…higher commanders constantly ordered attacks without any conception of the situation.”
Details on Sergeant George Pravda, including the articles he filed for the Daily Tribune, are from George Pravda Jr.’s collection. Details of specific attacks are from interviews with George Jr.
Details on Bottcher’s Corner are from interviews with DiMaggio and Jastrzembski, Moorad’s article “Fire and Blood in the Jungle,” and Sufrin’s story for Historical Times.
Eichelberger writes of his emotions in Our Jungle Road. He also recalls Captain Edwards’ wound. The bullet entered his belly and blew a “gaping hole near his spine.” A doctor told Eichelberger that Edwards would never make it, that there were no “facilities that far forward to take care of a man so severely wounded.” The situation was hopeless, he said. If moved, Edwards would die. “Right then and there,” Eichelberger wrote, “I decided to take Edwards back to the field hospital. If he was going to die, he might as well die on the hood of my jeep. We carted him out like a sack of meal, lashed him to the hood, and started down the trail. Much of it was corduroy road…Edwards took a terrific and painful jolting but he offered only one protest…the operation saved his life.”
Smith writes of his injury in his books.
Milner and Mayo write of Odell reaching Bottcher’s Corner. Odell describes it in his diary.
ATIS documents reveal the extent of Japanese suffering.
Scenes of the roadblock are from interviews with Bill Sikkel and Carl Smestad and a variety of 3rd Battalion members.
Medendorp writes of Horton’s wounds.
George Weller wrote a story—“Bravery and Guile Keep Phone Line Open”—about the heroic American signalmen. Weller writes of Dal Ponte in his article titled “Scene of Gallant Stand Named for Hero.” Milner and Medendorp also write of Dal Ponte’s heroism.
In Medendorp’s memoirs he writes of Father Dzienis.
Details of the fall of Gona are from Paul Ham.
Medendorp includes Horton’s diary in his memoirs. Two articles in the Detroit News also tell Horton’s story—“Hero Writes Letter as He Awaits Death in Jungles of New Guinea,” and “Out of the Jungle a Dying Soldier’s Testament of Faith.”
Chapter 17. Caged Birds
The poem “Caged Birds” is from ATIS documents.
Medendorp writes grimly of what he’s witnessed.
Eichelberger writes of MacArthur’s letter in Our Jungle Road to Tokyo.
Milner and Mayo, among others, describe the horrible scene. The dead bodies and excrement explain the stench the Americans had to contend with. Groom writes that the American soldiers were “repelled to the point of nausea by odors from these positions, blown directly at them by a prevailing onshore ocean breeze.”
Blakeley, Milner, and Anders explain the problems that plagued the American advance.
In Our Jungle Road to Tokyo, Eichelberger includes the letter that he wrote to MacArthur. Could hundreds of men have been saved if GHQ had agreed to send in tanks earlier? In his Buna Diary, Harding writes of a letter that he and E. J. Kahn composed on their way back to Australia in early December and sent to MacArthur. It said: “I shall still not have it on my mind that I let you or the division down. I didn’t succeed in taking Buna with the means at my disposal but I don’t feel that any other commander could have done more.” Anders includes a letter from Colonel Geerds, who toured the Australian hospitals with Harding. “I could have cried,” Geerds wrote, “when they told him that most had been wounded after his relief.”
The details of Boice and Bailey’s advance are from Milner’s and Smith’s books, interviews with veterans, interviews with Katherine Matthews, Sam DiMaggio’s recollections, and from my two trips to Buna, during which I visited the bridge where Boice was killed, and interviewed Buna villagers about the details of Boice’s death.
Insight into Boice’s state of mind comes from interviews with William Boice Jr. and the collection of letters and newspaper articles that Zelma Boice kept.
The story of Chet Sokoloski was told to me by Stan Jastrzembsk
i.
Bob Hartman told me the story of leading his platoon into the Triangle.
Phil Ishio told me about interrogating exhausted, disease-ridden Japanese POWs.
This story is from “Fire and Blood in the Jungle” by George Moorad.
During an interview, Stanley Jastrzembski told me the amusing anecdote about eating the cake with his buddy Chet Sokoloski.
Eichelberger describes the contents of MacArthur’s letters. Back in his Ivory Tower in Port Moresby, MacArthur could not have been more distanced from the reality of what Eichelberger was up against at Buna.
The following day, Eichelberger woke with a renewed sense of optimism. “Daylight,” he later wrote, “is good medicine for the fears of darkness.”
Grose, writes Mayo, was stunned by the orders. Eichelberger wanted to take Buna in front of MacArthur’s “eyes and ears”—in other words, he wanted Sutherland to witness it.
In his correspondence with Milner, Grose wrote of the general’s rage.
Wada and other Japanese soldiers’ diary entries are from ATIS documents.
Milner and Mayo comment on Eichelberger losing the 163rd.
The scene of the Japanese soldiers taking to the water to flee north up the coast is included in Milner, Mayo, and Blakeley. Many of the veterans that I interviewed remembered it. Those who did not witness it firsthand had heard the stories.
Mayo relates the story of Yasuda’s and Yamamoto’s deaths.
Seppuku, or hara-kiri (literally “cutting the belly”) is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was used by warriors to avoid falling into enemy hands. World War II Japanese officers, steeped in bushido, would have used the word seppuku.
In his book The Samurai Way of Death, Stephen Turnbull writes:
Seppuku…could take place with preparation and ritual in the privacy of one’s home, or speedily in a quiet corner of a battlefield. In the world of the warrior, seppuku was a deed of bravery that was admirable in a samurai who knew he was defeated, disgraced, or mortally wounded. It meant that he could end his days with his transgressions wiped away and with his reputation not merely intact but actually enhanced. The cutting of the abdomen released the samurai’s spirit in the most dramatic fashion, but it was an extremely painful and unpleasant way to die, and sometimes the samurai who was performing the act asked a loyal comrade to cut off his head at the moment of agony.
James Clavell writes in the novel Shogun that seppuku may have originated not as a positive good, but as the lesser of two evils. The code of bushido, unlike the European codes of chivalry, didn’t forbid mistreatment of prisoners. For this reason, a Japanese soldier had every reason to suspect that he would be tortured. Therefore, he would often choose seppuku instead.
Eichelberger’s letter to MacArthur is from Our Jungle Road to Tokyo.
Details of Buna’s fall and the various correspondences are taken from Milner, Mayo, and Our Jungle Road.
Medendorp writes of those remaining on the Sanananda Front.
Wada’s diary entires are from ATIS translations, Ham, and Raymond Paull.
Milner’s version of Oda’s death differs from Ham’s and Mayo’s, both of whom write that Oda committed suicide.
Winston Groom writes, “Two types of cannibalism were practiced by the Japanese. The first, and most common, was simply to stay alive when Imperial troops were abandoned by their supervisors on far away islands with no food to speak of. The second, and more disgusting, was the custom of ranking Japanese officers who, in the spirit of Bushido…deliberately ate the livers and organs of fallen enemies in the belief that it made them strong and brave.”
Paul Ham claims that Wada was not killed but was rediscovered floating on a raft and handed over to Allied forces. According to Ham, Wada went on to write something called “Painting over my shame,” which is contained in a document called The Signals Company Records: 144th Infantry Regiment. In all my research, Ham is the only historian I discovered who says that Wada survived.
Simon Warmenhoven’s daughters generously (and courageously) gave me access to all their father’s letters. Details of Warmenhoven’s death are from interviews with Jack Hill, Edward Doyle, and Bill Sikkel. Hill held Warmenhoven in his arms after the colonel shot himself. The official army version of his death (the report from the commanding general) stated that his death was the result of a gunshot wound received while in the Southwest Pacific Area. Over a decade later, Mrs. Henerietta Warmenhoven received the “Official Statement of the Military Service and Death” of her husband. It stated that “death occurred in the line of duty.”
Because atabrine was new and because doctors had not yet determined the proper dosage for malaria treatment, temporary atabrine psychosis was a danger. However, according to Major Lewis Barger, a military medical historian in the Office of the Army Surgeon General, “atabrine psychosis” was not statistically significant. “Military Psychiatry: Preparing in Peace for War” (Bordeu Institute website) gives a 12 percent rate for malaria cases treated with atabrine. There is also the possibility that Lieutenant Colonel Simon Warmenhoven was suffering from what we now know as “posttraumatic stress disorder.” During the Civil War, it was called “soldier’s heart.” The British military psychiatrist C. S. Myers introduced the term “shellshock” in 1915. Still, it was largely misunderstood. Therapies were designed to increase a soldier’s willpower. In 1941, a pupil of Sigmund Freud’s, Abram Kardiner, wrote The Traumatic Neuroses of War, with detailed clinical descriptions of psychoneurotic and physio-neurotic symptoms. Shortly after World War II, psychiatrists noticed what they called “gross stress reactions” among war veterans. In 1945, Commander Leon Saul, a doctor in the U.S. Navy Reserve, coined the term “combat fatigue” to describe a myriad of post-battle symptoms. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the American Psychiatric Association came up with the phrase “post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Epilogue
Bill Sikkel told me this story about returning to Australia during an interview in October 2006.
Quotes regarding the nature of the Buna war are from Our Jungle Road.
According to Gailey, Bergerud, and Anders, the war could have been shortened by weeks had the 32nd Division been properly supplied.
Major Koiwai’s quote is from Milner.
With the exceptions of Bataan and Corregidor, William Manchester would call Buna MacArthur’s “darkest hour.”
Manchester quotes MacArthur about keeping casualities to a minimum at Buna. Eichelberger would later write that Buna was “siege warfare…the bitterest and most punishing kind.”
Eichelberger’s comments about MacArthur are cited in Jay Luvaas’ book, Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945.
Casualty statistics are from Milner.
Milner and Mary Ellen Condon-Rall quote Warmenhoven.
John T. Greenwood wrote, “The 32nd Infantry Division was basically noneffective on account of malaria for four to six months after its return from Papua.”
Stanley Falk comments that “Luzon was a magnificent victory but hardly a cheap one.”
Stanley Falk in his essay “Douglas MacArthur and the War Against Japan” is very critical of MacArthur. Contrary to popular myth (one, in fact, perpetuated by MacArthur), MacArthur did not advocate “bypassing” Rabaul. As Falk points out, he commented to his chief of staff that it “would go down in history as one of the time’s greatest military mistakes.”
Condon-Rall writes at length about what MacArthur learned at Buna.
John T. Greenwood points out that MacArthur told Colonel Paul F. Russell, chief of the Tropical Disease and Malaria Control Branch of the Preventive Medicine Division at the Office of the Surgeon General, and an army expert on malaria, “Doctor, this will be a long war if for every division I have facing the enemy I must count on a second division in hospital with malaria and a third division convalescing from this debilitating disease.”
Eichelberger pays tribute to the 32nd in his book.
In their essay “MacArthur’s Fireman,” Jay Luvaas and John Shortal discuss what Eichelberger learned at Buna.
At Hollandia in late April 1944, Eichelberger and his men had a chance to put much of what they’d learned into action. The landings went off without a hitch and the Americans pushed forward, seizing the Japanese airfields in five days. General Marshall described the operation as a “model of strategical and tactical importance.” Eichelberger enjoyed the same success at Biak a month later. Using the lessons he learned at Buna, he eschewed a frontal asault on Japanese positions. Instead he sent troops in behind, a maneuver that probably spared hundreds of American lives.
Notes on New Guinea’s natives are from Powell’s The Third Force, John Waiko’s A History of Our Time, and numerous interviews with Buna villagers. The Keith McCarthy quote is also from The Third Force. Like Australia, the U.S. government has not compensated the carriers or their families.
Sam DiMaggio’s post-Buna history is from “I Never Had It So Good.” Details in the Gus Bailey profile are from interviews with Katherine Matthews and from Wendell Trogdon’s book. Paulette Lutjens provided me with the information on her father, Paul Lutjens. Herbert Smith discusses his later life in his three books. The details of Alfred Medendorp’s life were provided by his son, Alfred Jr. Herman Bottcher’s story is from interviews with soldiers who fought with him in the Philippines and from Mark Sufrin’s article, “Take Buna or Don’t Come Back Alive.”
Leslie Anders writes at length of General Harding’s life after Buna.
Bibliography
BOOKS
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