War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  During the last week of August, American code breakers uncovered the fact that enemy submarines had formed a picket line across the entrance to Milne Bay, a typical Japanese preinvasion tactic. General MacArthur met with General Kenney, his recently appointed air chief, to discuss countermeasures, including increased air patrols over likely sea routes from Rabaul to Milne Bay.15

  The Japanese invasion of Milne Bay was to be a pincer movement. The main landing was to take place inside the bay at a place called Rabi, some three miles east of Gili Gili along the north coast. From there the invaders were to attack along the coast directly into the Allied base. This force was composed of 612 members of the Kure 5th Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF), 197 men from the Sasebo 5th SNLF, and 362 men from the 16th Naval Pioneer Unit. The second force, which was coming down along the northern coast from Buna, was made up of 353 men from the Sasebo 5th SNLF. This group would move in barges during nighttime hours; its orders were to land at Taupota in Goodenough Bay, directly north of Milne Bay, and march overland less than ten miles to attack the Allies from the rear. In all, 1,524 Japanese would strike what they believed were a few Australian militia companies. In reality, they faced ten thousand men, over half of whom were combat veterans.16

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  On August 23 and 24, aircraft from the Japanese 25th Air Flotilla conducted several bombing raids that appeared to be targeting No. 1 Strip, between Gili Gili and Rabi. General Kenney, interpreting these raids as a prelude to an invasion, decided to reduce the enemy’s air cover before the action even began. He sent eight B-17s with incendiary bombs to attack the Rabaul airdromes, and a squadron of P-39 Bell Airacobra fighters to attack the Japanese fighter base at Buna. Ten enemy fighters were put out of commission during the strike. Kenney’s goal, as he reported, was to “keep the Jap air force whittled down so that it couldn’t support their landing operation.”17 He succeeded.

  The Japanese main invasion force, under Rear Admiral Mitsuharu Matsuyama, commander of the 18th Cruiser Division, departed from Rabaul at seven a.m. on August 24 and headed south through St. George Channel. Troops were packed aboard two transports, Nankai Maru and Kinai Maru, which were escorted by two light cruisers, Tenryu and Tatsuta, as well as the destroyers Tanikaze, Urakaze, and Hamakaze. For additional protection, two submarine chasers joined the convoy, CH-22 and CH-24.18

  The Imperial Japanese Navy had sixty-three of these purpose-built subchasers. At 167 feet long, they were half the length of the three destroyers. Not especially fast, they had a maximum speed of eighteen miles per hour, roughly half that of the U.S. Navy PT boats. They carried a crew of sixty-eight, and in addition to three antiaircraft guns, each was armed with thirty-six depth charges and special depth-charge launchers. To fulfill their primary mission, each subchaser was equipped with active sonar.19

  In less than two hours, an RAAF Hudson patrol plane spotted the convoy as it rounded the Trobriand Islands in the Solomon Sea. A short time later, three Australian Coastwatchers stationed on the islands confirmed the sighting. It was obvious the fleet was destined for Milne Bay.

  At the same time the convoy left Rabaul, seven large motorized barges departed from Buna and headed along the coast toward Taupota, where several Australian Coastwatchers quickly spotted them. The invasion plan called for the convoy’s landing to take place during the late evening, but the barges made excellent time. Arriving too early, Commander Torashigue Tsukioka decided to land nearby to allow his men to eat a meal and rest. He selected a small offshore location called Goodenough Island.

  As word of the approaching Japanese forces passed through the Allied communications chain, fighters and bombers took flight unless, as was the case at Milne Bay, the driving rain and thick cloud cover were so bad that visibility was almost nil. Although some minor attacks were made on the Rabaul convoy, inclement weather hindered the B-17 pilots whom General Kenney had sent from airfields in Queensland, along with Kittyhawk pilots from Port Moresby.

  Finally, at midday the clouds over Milne Bay lifted enough so that ten Kittyhawks of 76 Squadron took off after the troops on Goodenough Island. By three p.m., twelve more Kittyhawks and an available Hudson lifted off from No. 1 Strip to attack the main convoy. Again, only minor damage resulted from that attack, but when the ten Kittyhawks arrived over Goodenough Island, they found clear skies and saw the seven barges pulled up on the beach. As Kittyhawks came in low with guns blazing, the naval troops ran for the tree line for cover. The raid killed eight Japanese and destroyed all seven barges, along with the communications equipment, food, arms, and ammunition they contained. The entire force was stranded, and without the ability to communicate, the troops were completely isolated. RAAF Pilot Officer John Petter, who took part in the attack, described it as a “massacre.”20

  Named for a nineteenth-century British commodore, Goodenough is an oval island measuring thirteen miles wide and twenty-one miles long. At its center rises the eight-thousand-foot Mount Vineuo. The island’s five-mile-wide coastal belt is covered with swamps and grasslands, while the interior and western edges contain jungle and rain forest. Unbeknownst to the stranded Japanese, also on the island was a small American group operating a fighter-control station to provide advance warning to Milne Bay of approaching enemy aircraft. Ships and planes traveling between Buna and Milne Bay had to pass Goodenough, making it a valuable watch station. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Americans quickly destroyed their radio equipment and left before the Japanese discovered them.

  Imperial Headquarters knew nothing of the fate of the SNLF troops until one of them found a canoe and paddled his way back to Buna, arriving there on September 9. The following day, two destroyers left Buna to pick up the survivors. A flight of five B-17s sighted the two ships and succeeded in sinking one, Yayoi. Survivors from the destroyer managed to make their way to nearby Normanby Island, where they, too, were stranded. Two destroyers later rescued them.

  Several times during September, messages and food supplies were dropped to the Japanese on Goodenough, but all attempts to rescue them were driven off by Allied aircraft. Meanwhile, the men subsisted on limited rations and coconut milk, and struggled with an outbreak of malaria. On October 3, an IJN submarine arrived carrying a forty-six-foot waterproof landing barge along with a cargo of food, ammunition, and a wireless radio. The barge managed to take about fifty wounded and sick men aboard and transported them to Buna. Ten days later, the submarine returned and off-loaded additional supplies, but when a Hudson patrol bomber dropped a flare over it, the captain took his boat down and rushed away.21

  On October 1, General MacArthur issued new orders that sealed the fate of the SNLF troops on Goodenough. “Occupy and hold Goodenough Island and the north coast of Southeastern New Guinea south of Cape Nelson in such force as to deny these areas to the Japanese forces.”22 On October 22, two destroyers put ashore more than six hundred Australian soldiers from the 18th Infantry Brigade at two locations on Goodenough Island. In the fighting that ensued, thirteen Australians and at least thirty-nine SNLF sailors were killed. The exact number of Japanese dead could not be determined because they buried many of the bodies. During a lull in the fighting on the night of the twenty-fourth, two landing craft took 261 Japanese off the island to safety.23

  The fate of the main Japanese invasion force was even worse than that of the troops who landed at Goodenough Island, due in large part to their lack of knowledge concerning the strength of their enemy. Lieutenant Chikanori Moji, paymaster of the 5th Kure Special Naval Landing Force, later wrote that during a meeting of the officers prior to leaving Rabaul, the commanding officer, Commander Masajiro Hayashi, who was also overall commander of all invasion forces, “said that nothing was known yet about the enemy situation in the relevant area. When I glanced at him, I saw in his eyes, as he said this that he seemed near tears. He had been unable to recce the area by air, nor could any special aerial photographs be taken . . . enemy strength was not known.”24

 
; At 9:50 p.m. on August 25, with the entire fleet inside Milne Bay, the Japanese invasion forces, including two light tanks, began going ashore. They faced no opposition. As they unloaded their equipment, somebody realized they were in the wrong place. Perhaps due to bad navigating or inaccurate charts, they had arrived not at Rabi but several miles to the east, at a village called Waga Waga, putting them farther away from their target, No. 3 Airstrip.

  As reports from reconnaissance patrols poured into his headquarters at Gili Gili, General Clowes, the Australian commander on the scene, decided to wait. He knew several enemy ships had arrived in the bay but had no idea how many troops they had brought, or where or when they would be landed. He assumed that after daylight he would have a better opportunity to assess the situation accurately.

  A brief firefight erupted in the dark when an Australian patrol in a small vessel accidentally ran into the invaders. The two-masted ketch, more commonly called a lugger, was named Bronzewing, and had once been owned by Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn.25 Eleven Australians died in the encounter.26

  Cloud cover the next day prevented high-level bombers from locating the enemy ships, although one was lucky enough to find a hole in the low clouds and managed to drop at least one, possibly two bombs on the one Japanese transport still at the landing site. The attack did considerable damage to the ship and much of the supplies it carried. The remainder of the enemy fleet had withdrawn from the area to avoid attack.27

  The clouds did little to hinder the Kittyhawks from No. 1 Airstrip. The entire morning of the twenty-sixth, they bombed and strafed the landing zone. In the process, they destroyed virtually all the powered barges the Japanese troops intended to use to move along the coast. The only option left to them was to follow the muddy coastal tracks through swamps and across numerous streams and flooded areas toward Gili Gili.

  Fleeing inland from the air attacks for the cover offered by the jungle, the invaders dragged whatever supplies and equipment they could rescue from the Kittyhawks’ strafing of the beaches. The two light tanks survived the assaults and soon led about a thousand men along the track toward their target. Some of the navy soldiers, with a reputation for extreme cruelty even among regular army forces, spread out and attacked several small villages in the area.

  Battling torrential rains, mud so thick it pulled the boots off their feet, and keeping weary eyes to the sky for enemy planes, the Japanese trudged westward toward their objective, their tanks in the lead. Just before they reached K.B. Mission, an abandoned Christian missionary station, they were ambushed by a company from the 61st Australian Battalion, known as the Queensland Cameron Highlanders. This was the first combat for these militia soldiers, but despite their inexperience, they fought the veteran Japanese to a standstill, and after several hours forced them to withdraw.

  After reorganizing, the Japanese renewed the battle, which continued sporadically all day. Additional troops arrived to support the Australians, but they had nothing large enough to combat the two tanks, which fired shells into their positions. Brigadier Field eventually ordered a withdrawal of about one mile to the Gama River, where a new defensive line was established. They were soon reinforced by the combat-experienced 2/10 Battalion from the 7th Division.

  At eight p.m. on August 27, the Japanese launched a powerful attack at the Gama River line. Their two tanks led the way, with large bright headlights exposing the Australians while the attackers remained behind in the darkness. Over the next few hours, the Australians repelled four frontal assaults but suffered heavy casualties. By two a.m., the exhausted Australian troops were forced across the river. When the Japanese persisted in their pursuit along with the two tanks, the Australians continued to fall back in disorder until they reached the No. 3 Airstrip, which was still under construction.

  The retreating Australians moved through the defense line that had been established on the west side of the incomplete airfield by the 61st and 25th Infantry Battalions, as well as the American 709th Anti-Aircraft Battery and two companies from the U.S. 43rd Engineers. Only partially graded, the one-hundred-yard-wide runway, which ran east to west, provided an ideal defensive position that the enemy would find difficult to cross, offering the defenders a clear killing field. While the runway’s eastern end was buried in deep mud that made the area almost impassible, the western end reached nearly to the water’s edge. The Japanese had no option other than a frontal attack across the strip.

  The two Australian battalions held most of the line. The American antiaircraft battery, with its .50-caliber machine guns, provided support at the eastern end, and the American engineers joined Australian mortar crews in the center with their .50-caliber and 37mm guns at just the spot where the coastal track crossed the runway.28

  At dawn on the twenty-eighth, the Japanese launched their attack as aggressively as possible but found crossing the runway a deadly and fruitless venture. They were swiftly driven back. Unknown to the defenders, who kept a sharp eye out for the tanks, the two-tracked vehicles had bogged down and their three-man crews abandoned them in nearly waist-deep mud. They were no longer a factor in the fighting. Over the next two days, the naval troops continued to attack the defense line without success and with growing loss of life.

  Frustrated by what he saw as scanty reports from General Clowes, and perhaps sensing that Clowes had not yet committed all his forces to the fight, General MacArthur told General Blamey to instruct Clowes “at once to clear the north shore of Milne Bay without delay” and submit daily progress reports.29

  During the night of the twenty-ninth, a Japanese fleet of destroyers and patrol boats entered Milne Bay. On board were nearly eight hundred men from two SNLF units led by Commander Minoru Yano, a gung ho officer anxious for a glorious victory. The troops and the supplies they brought with them were unloaded near K.B. Mission while the escorts shelled the Allied positions. As the senior commander on the scene, Yano took overall command of the operation. Although Yano wanted to attack the Allies immediately, Hayashi prevailed on him to give his men a rest before they resumed combat. Low on ammunition and subsisting on limited rations, Yano’s men, along with the Allied troops, were exhausted from the laborious fighting in the mud. Adding to everyone’s discomfort, malaria was beginning to sweep through both sides.30

  Unknown to the Japanese, General Clowes had finally swung into action. While the enemy rested, several American half-tracked armored vehicles mounting heavy guns arrived just behind the Allied lines. Additional machine guns and mortar crews also arrived to bolster the defense. When Yano ordered his attack across the airstrip before dawn on August 31, in what would be the climactic battle of the fight for Milne Bay, the surprised Japanese met fierce resistance. As tracers lighted their positions, the machine guns cut them down. After three such attacks across open ground, Japanese bodies littered the airstrip.31

  Finally, a bugle sounded retreat and the Japanese attempted a fighting withdrawal. Allied forces rushed across the runway, trying their best not to trip over the dozens of dead Japanese soldiers, and began pushing the dispirited and shocked enemy back. Some retreated along the coast the way they had come, while others scattered into the jungle for safety. Daylight was even worse, for it revealed many of them to the Kittyhawks that filled the skies and strafed the fleeing enemy.

  Over the next few days, as they retreated beyond their original landing zone, Commander Hayashi died and Yano was seriously wounded. Rabaul had no accurate picture of what was happening at Milne Bay until Admiral Mikawa received a message from Yano on September 2: “We have reached the worst possible situation. We will together calmly defend our position to the death. We pray for absolute victory for the empire and for long-lasting fortune in battle for you all.”32

  The following morning the commander of the 4th Destroyer Squadron was ordered to enter Milne Bay and “endeavor to contact the naval landing units, whatever the circumstances, and if at all possible, evacuate them.”33 The Japanese
were giving up the fight and wanted to get whatever troops still surviving out of Milne Bay. On September 5, destroyers evacuated about thirteen hundred men, including Yano.

  Japanese losses totaled nearly 750 dead, scattered around the battle sites. While a small number of Japanese who missed the evacuation survived for some time, they all either eventually perished at the hands of pursuing Australians or from revenge-seeking native villagers, or simply vanished in the jungle.

  Allied losses were 167 Australians and 14 Americans. In addition, 59 Papuans, mostly women who had been bayoneted by Japanese troops, usually after being raped, died.

  Although the battle for Milne Bay lasted only a few days, it had wide-ranging and long-lasting effects. In his book Defeat into Victory, British field marshal Sir William Slim claimed he used the action, which he described as “the Japanese first undoubted defeat on land,” as a “morale raiser” among his own troops fighting in Burma.

  Australian newspapers hailed the victory as a “turning point.” Virtually everyone cheered the performance of the militia members who stood their ground against experienced combat veterans. Strategically, it essentially put an end to Japanese efforts to capture Port Moresby, and allowed MacArthur to focus his mind and his forces on driving the enemy completely out of New Guinea.

  Despite this focus, MacArthur always kept an eye and an ear open for what was going on in the rest of the war. He demonstrated this when he discussed with a British intelligence officer recent flights by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Washington, Moscow, Cairo, and Gibraltar. “If disposal of all the Allied decorations were today placed by providence in my hands, my first act would be to award the Victoria Cross to Winston Churchill. No one of those who wear it deserves it more than he. A flight of 10,000 miles through hostile and foreign skies may be the duty of young pilots, but for a statesman burdened with the world’s cares, it is an act of inspiring gallantry and valor.”34