Luckily for the invaders, Colonel Scanlan had decided that since the bomber attacks had wrecked the two 1901 coastal defense guns, there was nothing in the area to defend, so the landing went unopposed.
Events were radically different at the other two landing sites: At Raluana Beach, Lieutenant Selby and his antiaircraft gunners joined a company he described as “the odds and ends,” made up of men from a postal unit, mess hall waiters, and office clerks. No one, including Selby and his men, had any real experience fighting as infantry soldiers. He had hoped they would not be sent to the beach to act as the first line of defense, but that was exactly what happened. A short time after three o’clock in the morning, the Australians heard the sounds of steel hulls scraping coral and the rumble of diesel engines as the landing craft approached the beach and began unloading their human cargo. Suddenly the beach was full of rifle and machine-gun fire and orders shouted in Japanese. A few minutes later word came for the Australians to withdraw immediately, since the beach was now in enemy hands. The “odds and ends” group, grossly outnumbered and outgunned, and now subjected to fire from the warships, began their long and arduous withdrawal to the rear. It would last weeks for those lucky enough to survive.3
Not far to the north of Raluana Beach, two companies of Japanese soldiers were to land south of Mount Vulcan and race toward the Vunakanau Airfield. However, one group, the 9th Company, missed the proper landing site and put its men ashore north of Mount Vulcan, right in front of a well-prepared defensive position. Major William T. Owen had ordered his reinforced rifle A Company to dig in just beyond the beach, where it had a clear line of fire. Owen’s men then piled thick coconut logs in front of their positions for added protection. About eighty members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, who had been called to active duty two days earlier, joined them. The company’s single Vickers machine gun crew found a good spot from which it could rake the area, and the antitank and mortar teams set themselves up behind the infantrymen. Owen’s company had also stretched barbed wire across the beach to slow down the invaders.
Across the bay several buildings and a boat were burning. It was against the backdrop of these fires that the Australians suddenly caught sight of landing craft heading straight for them. The sound of diesel engines filled the quiet night as the defenders held their breath and waited for what would be for many of them their first combat encounter.
Corporal Kenneth Hale, a printer from Victoria, later described the scene as the invaders swarmed onto the beach: “As they landed the Japanese were laughing, talking and striking matches . . . one of them even shone a torch. We allowed most of them to get out of the boats and then fired everything we had. In my section, we had one Lewis gun, one Tommy gun, eight rifles. The Vickers gun also opened up with us. We gave the mortars the position . . . and in a matter of minutes they were sending their bombs over.”4
Shaken by the intensity of the defense, especially when they had expected none, the Japanese at first fell back, and then made two attempts to breach the barbed wire. Both failed as Japanese soldiers fell by the dozens from the concentrated Australian fire. Unable to cross the wire, they moved south along the beach until they were no longer within range of Company A’s weapons, and then started inland.
Meanwhile, following the unopposed landing at Praed Point, most of the 1st Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment raced toward the Lakunai Airfield, but the 1st Squad quickly moved up the side of the mountain. Its objective was to capture or destroy the ten coastal artillery guns that Japanese intelligence officers claimed were located there. Their orders were to take the battery by four a.m. If this was not accomplished, the ships in the harbor would have to withdraw five kilometers, out of range of the enemy guns, before daylight. The squad commander’s instructions were grim: “If you cannot occupy the battery by four a.m., then you must cut open your bowels and die!”5
Given such an incentive, the squad found the first two guns, but its members frantically searched in vain for the remaining eight. Once the guns were located and either captured or neutralized, the squad was to fire three white flares over the harbor. When this signal did not appear by four a.m., the commanding officer of the invasion fleet ordered his ships to prepare to withdraw. Finally, the men of the squad realized there were no additional guns. There had been only two. The three flares lit up the night sky a few minutes late, but in time for the fleet commander to rescind his order to withdraw.
Meanwhile, Japanese landing craft continued to pour onto the beaches, discharging thousands of troops. Soon there were so many invaders that the small groups of defenders were in danger of being surrounded and wiped out. At every location, Australian soldiers and those fighting with them slowly gave way under the weight of the well-armed enemy.
To make matters worse, most of the radio communications equipment used by the Australian units was destroyed in the fighting, so messengers who often risked death before reaching their goal passed orders by word of mouth. Soon instructions about breaking up into small parties, and every man for himself, began to circulate. These were indicative of a cessation of organized control.6
Despite many examples of heroic defense, the Australians were badly outmanned and outgunned. At dawn, the situation grew worse when the warships began lobbing shells into the small concentrations of Australian soldiers, and the sky filled with Japanese dive-bombers and fighters intent on machine-gunning any retreating Australian.
Nearly out of ammunition and severely short of food supplies, the men of Lark Company withdrew from the town and headed into the jungle in search of a way off New Britain. The Battle for Rabaul was over. Japanese troops occupied the entire town, and units rushed into the nearby jungles to pursue the fleeing Australians.
Lieutenant Commander Minoru Genda, a classmate and close friend of pilot Commander Fuchida, described the conquest of Rabaul as accomplished “with ridiculous ease.”7 While the description was truthful, it is somewhat unfair to the members of Lark Force and the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. Many of them fought gallantly against a much more experienced and better-equipped enemy force outnumbering them by nearly fourteen to one. It was a force supported by an armada of twenty-five ships, and what one historian described as a sky “filled with Japanese aircraft.”8
Having sent most of his gunners to join the retreating infantry, Lieutenant Selby headed toward the wooded area beyond the Vunakanau airfield in search of Colonel Scanlan for instructions. Arriving at what was euphemistically called the Rear Operational Headquarters, which was little more than a small cluster of tents, a sergeant major informed him that the colonel had issued orders that “each man is to fend for himself.”9
Simultaneously with the landings at Rabaul, nearly four thousand Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops went ashore at two places near Kavieng on New Ireland. They arrived aboard several converted merchant ships, escorted by two cruisers and three destroyers. The invaders found that the small force of Australians had already withdrawn into the jungles and fled southeast in hopes of finding a safe way off the island. Within a few hours, the Japanese had fully occupied Kavieng.
On the day following the invasions, January 24, Imperial General Headquarters proudly announced to the world its twin successes. The New York Times reported, “An Imperial Headquarters communiqué late today said Japanese Army and Navy forces conducted successful landing operations on both New Britain and New Ireland, islands off British New Guinea early yesterday.”10
Despite Tokyo’s bragging, the war news from the southwest Pacific area was not all good for Japan. An American naval squadron comprising two cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Admiral William A. Glassford was patrolling the sea between eastern New Guinea and Bali when word was received that a Japanese troop convoy was heading toward the oil-producing center of Balikpapan on Borneo. The convoy consisted of sixteen transports, escorted by the cruiser Naka and seven destroyers. Although the four U.S. destroyers—
Paul Jones, Parrott, Pope, and John D. Ford—arrived too late to prevent the troops from landing, they did succeed in sinking four transports and a patrol boat, and damaging two other transports. Royal Dutch Martin B-10 bombers sank a fifth transport. A sixth met a similar fate when attacked by the Dutch submarine K XVIII. It was the heaviest loss suffered by a Japanese convoy since the start of their offensive into the southwest Pacific. It was also the first surface engagement in the southwest Pacific by the U.S. Navy since Commodore George Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron attacked Spain’s Pacific Squadron on May 1, 1898, in Manila Bay, the Philippines.11
Meanwhile, as Australian forces were fleeing the Japanese across New Britain, events occurring in the Philippines would have a profound impact on the coming war for New Guinea. The Japanese 14th Army, commanded by General Masaharu Homma, had pushed American and Filipino forces back onto the Bataan Peninsula. This resulted in a presidential order to the Allied commander in the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur, to leave Bataan and go to Australia.
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With Rabaul firmly under the control of his troops, Major General Horii instructed his commanders to hunt down the enemy and either kill or capture them. Japanese patrols ran along jungle paths in pursuit of the Australians, throwing hand grenades at them and shooting them. As daylight broke, fighter planes took to the air and circled clearings in the jungle canopy, waiting for Australians to come into the open so they could attack them with their machine guns. Soon dive-bombers joined the search and hundreds of enemy soldiers and civilians fell victim to the chase. By late morning, Japanese planes were covering a large portion of the eastern end of New Britain with leaflets calling on the Australians to surrender. The claim was that if they surrendered they would be treated humanely; otherwise, they would be killed by the emperor’s soldiers or die of starvation in the mountain jungle that lay ahead. Few willingly surrendered. To say that those who did or those who were captured faced less than humane treatment is a gross understatement.
An Australian journalist provides one example, involving ten men, including several from a field ambulance unit wearing Red Cross armbands, indicating they were noncombatants. “A Japanese officer used his sword to cut the first man in the line loose and he gestured to him to get up and go with a Japanese soldier into the trees. A moment later the others froze as a blood-curdling cry of agony came from the man and shortly afterwards the soldier came back alone, wiping blood from his bayonet with a piece of rag. One by one the other prisoners were taken away, each by a different soldier, and butchered.”12 Such a story is emblematic of the fate of so many.
Few Australians survived to return home and tell of the horrors they had witnessed. Most members of 2/22 and the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, as well as civilians and missionaries, died at the hands of the Japanese, or during weeks of attempting to find their way through the nearly impenetrable jungle crossed by numerous rapidly moving streams and rivers, some infested with crocodiles.
Confirmation of the invasion had reached the Australian capital by midday on the twenty-third, prompting Australian prime minister John Curtin to include the following in a cablegram to British prime minister Winston Churchill: “The heavy scale of the Japanese attack on Rabaul, where including other parts of the Bismarck Archipelago there is a force of 1,700, and the probability of its occupation, if such has not already occurred, presage an early attack on Port Moresby. The strength of Australian troops at Port Moresby is 5,500. Great importance is attached to this centre by our Chiefs of Staff as it is the only base in this region from which control can be exercised of the Torres Strait, which is the most direct line of supply to Darwin, the Dutch East Indies and Malaya, for which it is extensively being used.”13
Curtin was angry that he had been unsuccessful in obtaining Churchill’s agreement to release some of his forces to return to Australia. Three of Australia’s best divisions were fighting the Germans and Italians in North Africa, and a fourth was engaged along with British and Indian troops in trying to stop the Japanese advance down the Malay Peninsula toward the fortified island of Singapore. With their country virtually defenseless, the Australian cabinet feared a Japanese invasion of their own country if both the Philippines and Singapore fell to Imperial troops.14
The Australian prime minister alluded to this situation when, in the same cablegram, he said: “The trend of the situation in Malaya and the attack on Rabaul are giving rise to a public feeling of grave uneasiness at Allied impotence to do anything to stem the Japanese advance. The Government, in realizing its responsibility to prepare the public for the possibility of resisting an aggressor, also has a duty and obligation to explain why it may not have been possible to prevent the enemy reaching our shores.” Curtin’s message was clear: the Australian people feared invasion while their own army fought elsewhere. They were angry at having to wait for the return of their forces to defend Australia after “having volunteered for service overseas in large numbers” in defense of the British Empire.15
For his part, Churchill was angry with Curtin, and had been since the day after Christmas, when the Australian prime minister publicly acknowledged that his government understood that Australia was not critical to the survival of Great Britain and might be considered expendable. Curtin added that his government was determined that Australia would not fall to the enemy. To prevent this, the government “shall devote all our energies towards shaping a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which will give to our country some confidence of being able to hold out until the tide of battle swings against our enemy.”16
The Australian prime minister was cutting his nation’s historic ties with Great Britain, which was obviously unable to help defend his country, and establishing a new relationship with the United States. He had taken the first step on December 10, 1941, when he cabled both Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, proclaiming that Australia would gladly accept a United States officer as commander in the Pacific area.
It is clear who Curtin had in mind, since he had already established radio communications with General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines.17
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The situation on New Britain had gotten worse since the successful Japanese invasion. The following month witnessed the massacre of about 160 men—military and civilian—at a place called Tol Plantation, after the Japanese gathered them there. Hundreds more were killed as they either surrendered or were captured while in flight. About four hundred members of the military force at Rabaul managed to escape. The RAAF sent two flying boats to a secret coastal position and removed about 120 members of 24 Squadron and a handful of army engineers who had joined them. Colonel Scanlan eventually surrendered after receiving a message from the enemy that he would be responsible for the deaths of any remaining soldiers unless he did so. Taken to Japan, he spent the remainder of the war in POW camps. He was so embittered that the government had abandoned his force with no real chance of escape that upon his return to Australia he refused to contribute to the official history of events.18
On June 22 approximately 209 civilians and 849 military prisoners left Rabaul on board the decrepit Japanese cargo ship Montevideo Maru and headed toward Japan. The ship had recently arrived with a load of soldiers and war supplies. The Montevideo Maru had no markings that it was a POW vessel, so when on July 1 it sailed into the crosshairs of an American submarine off the Philippine coast, it looked like any other enemy ship. The ship’s starboard hull was ripped open by the first of four torpedoes, and in just over ten minutes, the vessel went down, taking the entire prisoner population with it. While some of the crew and the guards managed to escape in lifeboats, there is no indication that any of them unlocked the hatches to the holds where the prisoners were held so that some might have a chance of surviving.19
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Selby, refusing to surrender, led the remaining members of his gun crews and an assortment of other soldiers through the swamps and across the mountains of New Brit
ain. Throughout February and March, they battled malaria, hunger, and the fear of capture by roving patrols of Japanese soldiers. At last, they arrived at what looked to be a safe haven, a plantation at Palmalmal on the south coast of New Britain. After days of anxious waiting, on April 9 a yacht arrived from Port Moresby and took aboard 137 troops and 20 civilians. Designed to carry eight passengers in its four cabins, it was quickly overcrowded. Four days later, the yacht arrived at Port Moresby, where its passengers transferred to the M.V. Macdhui for the final leg of their trip home to Australia. The ship was one of two from Burns, Philp & Co. that had evacuated hundreds of women and children from Rabaul on December 22. It now delivered the remnants of the survivors from that doomed town to safety.20
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Within hours of the invasion, thousands of Imperial soldiers and sailors began pouring into Rabaul. Construction battalions immediately set about repairing the two airfields and building others. Buildings were converted to barracks and officers’ quarters. Once the target of Japanese bombers, Rabaul quickly became the target of Australian bombers. Virtually every other day a small group of Catalina flying boats from Port Moresby attempted a bombing run on the Rabaul harbor and military installations. Based five hundred miles southwest of Rabaul, the American-built Catalinas were the only aircraft the Australians had that could carry a full bomb load, usually four thousand pounds, on that long a journey with any hope of returning to base. Unable to cross the mountains of New Guinea with such a heavy load, they had to fly around the island and across the Solomon Sea to reach their targets.21
War at the End of the World Page 4