War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  In one of the worst episodes of the war in New Guinea for the Japanese, fewer than ten thousand of the fleeing soldiers and sailors ultimately reached Madang. Some arrived as late as the first week of March. Over four thousand perished along the way from ambushes by Allied patrols; bombing and strafing attacks from General Kenney’s B-25s flying at treetop level seeking them; or from hunger, disease, and exhaustion. One of those survivors, Sergeant Eiji Lizuka, remembered seeing many dead and dying soldiers stripped of their uniforms and shoes by passing comrades who desperately needed them. The worst, according to the sergeant, was when canteens containing water were taken from dying troops who would cry out, “Don’t take my canteen away from me. I’m still alive.”24

  In September 1949, eight Japanese soldiers who were among the four thousand that never reached Madang were discovered living with a small tribe in an isolated mountainous region some sixty-two miles inland from the coast. The tribe’s chief had taken pity on them due to their emaciated condition and allowed them to live in the tribe’s village. Taken into custody by local police officers who had learned of their existence, the men were eventually placed aboard a British ship taking released prisoners of war to Japan. They landed at the port of Nagoya on February 13, 1950. One of the former soldiers was quoted as saying, “It’s like a dream. I never thought we’d be able to return.”25

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  As additional troops and equipment arrived at the Saidor beachhead, Army and Air Force engineers went to work repairing the bombed Saidor airfield. By January 9 they had widened the narrow strip to 250 feet and lengthened it to 2,500 feet. It was now capable of handling heavily loaded transport planes, yet work continued so that by March its length exceeded six thousand feet and its surface was hardened so that rainwater ran off instead of sinking it in mud.26

  On February 10 American patrols from Saidor made contact with Australian patrols from the 5th Infantry Division, which had relieved the 9th Division after the fall of Sio. Unfortunately, by the time the “loop” closed, most of the enemy forces had escaped the trap and were desperately making their way to Madang.27

  The successful landing of American troops at Saidor caused the staff of the Japanese Eighth Area Army headquarters at Rabaul to question their original orders to defend Sio by rushing additional troops. Following a heated debate, General Imamura decided it was important to save as many troops as possible to defend against MacArthur’s likely next target, Wewak. He ordered General Adachi to have the troops fleeing Sio bypass Saidor and move inland to Madang. Adachi, meanwhile, was convinced Madang was the next Allied target, so he moved troops from Wewak to Madang and pulled in from the surrounding mountains small defensive posts that were unlikely to halt the Australian forces moving overland. Imperial General Headquarters, perhaps dissatisfied with the way the defense of the Huon Peninsula had been conducted, removed Adachi’s Eighteenth Army from the Eighth Area Army and transferred it to control by the Second Area Army. This accompanied instructions to Adachi to withdraw from Madang and move his forces to Wewak, Hollandia, and Aitape. As a result, Australian troops entering the once-powerful Japanese stronghold on April 24, 1944, found Madang mostly abandoned except for a small rearguard detachment and a horse-drawn artillery gun. The landings at Saidor and the subsequent attempted envelopment of the Japanese forces in the region had evidently convinced the powers in Tokyo that the Huon Peninsula was lost for the last time.28

  Time magazine hailed the Allied successes on the Huon Peninsula by calling it “The General’s Little Blitz” and declaring that MacArthur “demonstrated in New Guinea that he is a great offensive commander. In less than three weeks he gobbled up most of the Huon Peninsula.” It then referenced Chief of Staff General Marshall’s comment that “New Guinea had become unhealthy for the Japs.”29

  CHAPTER 14

  Invasion Across the Straits

  For General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey, Rabaul remained the elusive and most desirable target. Since the Japanese invasion of New Britain in January 1942, Imperial forces had turned the once-sleepy town and surrounding region into the most powerful military base in the South Pacific. It contained one of the best natural harbors in the region in Blanche Bay. When combined with three other nearby harbors, Rabaul was anchorage to dozens of large warships, and its seven wharves could serve a wide variety of vessels. Its seven airfields were home to more than three hundred warplanes of all descriptions. On top of this, more than a hundred thousand troops were stationed in and around the Gazelle Peninsula on which Rabaul was located.

  MacArthur and Halsey both realized, as did the Joint Chiefs in Washington, that Rabaul could not be captured by a direct assault. It had to be isolated and worn down. For MacArthur, this meant continuing up New Guinea’s northern coast and extending his forces out into the Bismarck Sea, thereby cutting off seaborne supplies and reinforcements to and from Rabaul. For his part, Halsey had to continue his climb through the northern Solomons, pushing enemy forces he could not destroy back toward Rabaul.

  When ULTRA intercepts on September 13, 1943, revealed that the Japanese 1st Carrier Division stationed at Truk had moved some of its aircraft to Rabaul to reinforce the land-based 25th and 26th Air Flotillas stationed there, General Kenney decided the time had arrived to launch a massive air raid on the enemy stronghold, focusing on airfields and shipping. Kenney now had three airfields added to his arsenal that made such an attack possible: Lae, Finschhafen, and Nadzab. From these fields, as well as from Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands, long-range twin-engine P-38 Lighting fighters could escort bombers all the way to Rabaul and back.1

  On October 12, Rabaul was struck by the biggest air raid to date in the Pacific. Seventy B-24 bombers, 117 B-25s, 12 Australian Beaufighters, and 117 P-38s darkened the skies above the airfields and anchorages. Kenney, who ordered the raid after photoreconnaissance showed nearly three hundred planes at Rabaul’s airfields, later wrote that he threw in every aircraft he had that was in commission and could reach the target.

  First in were the B-25s and Beaufighters, which swept low over the three main airfields, setting dozens of planes ablaze, as well as fuel dumps and bomb and ammunition supplies. The B-24s then pummeled Rabaul Harbor. Kenney reported that his aircrews sank three large ships and forty-three smaller ones, damaged several others, and destroyed a hundred planes on the ground and another twenty-six that had engaged in combat. The Japanese claimed substantially fewer losses. While there remains some dispute over the damage caused by this raid, Japanese officers who were present and interrogated after the war called it one of the most effective attacks on Rabaul.2

  Anxious to keep the pressure on the enemy stronghold and reduce his own losses during air raids, Kenney had taken the advice of General Whitehead, his deputy, to forgo night bombing raids in favor of daylight attacks. Whitehead had pointed out that Allied aircraft and crew losses had grown to nearly 5 percent of the planes sent on a mission—an intolerable loss for an air force short of planes and receiving only minimal replacements. Whitehead blamed the losses primarily on night missions: a combination of accidents, the enemy’s improved use of searchlights, and the performance of their antiaircraft crews. The October 12 raid was one of the first against Rabaul made during daylight hours.3

  During the rest of October, severe thunderstorms and fog hampered air operations over New Britain and the New Guinea coast for both sides. The Allies did succeed in several devastating attacks against the buildup of aircraft at Wewak, and Japanese dive-bombers and their fighter escorts struck at Finschhafen and Oro Bay. Throughout the air war in New Guinea, weather conditions were always a factor in deciding when planes would fly and what their targets would be. The loss of aircraft and crews to thunderstorms and powerful winds prompted Whitehead to tell Kenney, “Weather is still our greatest enemy.”4

  Whenever weather permitted, Allied bombers and fighters attacked Rabaul. This was part of a plan to cripple the Japanese air forces as much as possible prior to A
dmiral Halsey’s landing of troops at Empress Augusta Bay on the island of Bougainville in the northern Solomons. The plan, worked out between MacArthur and Halsey, was to capture control of this area on the west coast of Bougainville and build an airfield there from which Halsey’s aircraft could reach Rabaul. The area around the bay was selected because it was known to be lightly defended, and preliminary investigation suggested that several airfields could be constructed there. Imperial forces had occupied the 3,500-square-mile island since March 1942. It was home to forty thousand soldiers of the 17th Army, but they were concentrated in what army commander Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake considered the strategic locations at the northern and southern ends of the island. The 3rd Marine Division hit the beaches at Cape Torokina inside Empress Augusta Bay on November 1, and quickly drove off the three hundred Japanese stationed there.

  The combination of horrific flying conditions, improved enemy antiaircraft, desperate fighter defenses, and mechanical breakdowns had a serious impact on Kenney’s Fifth Air Force. By the end of October, Kenney reported having only about fifty serviceable P-38s available for combat—a severe drop from the 117 that had taken part in the October 12 raid on Rabaul. Kenney’s attempts to acquire replacement P-38s and P-38 pilots ran into the higher priority accorded to the European theater. Air chief General Arnold informed Kenney it would be at least two months before he could receive any more of these invaluable fighters.5

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  From the massive naval base at Truk, Admiral Mineichi Koga, who assumed command of the Combined Fleet following Admiral Yamamoto’s death, reacted to both the landings at Empress Augusta Bay and the massive air raids on Rabaul by sending reinforcements. He ordered seven heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, four destroyers, and several supply ships from the Second Fleet to Rabaul. As the Imperial Army air service was now virtually nonexistent in the area, he also sent between 250 and 300 aircraft from the 11th Air Fleet, and alerted planes from the 12th Air Fleet in Japan to prepare for transfer to Rabaul. Obviously, the Imperial Navy, which had a long-standing love affair with Rabaul, had decided to defend it at all costs.6

  The Allies did not know that so many veteran naval fighter pilots had arrived at Rabaul until they suffered what General Whitehead called “a real brawl” on November 2, when General Kenney, seeking another hugely successful raid, sent seventy-five B-25s escorted by fifty-seven P-38s against the town. The Americans, expecting to be challenged by 50 to 60 fighters, were instead overwhelmed by between 125 and 150 of Japan’s most experienced and toughest fighter pilots in sleek Zeros. The defenders swept into the oncoming B-25s, immediately sending three down, and then fought a grueling series of dogfights against the outnumbered P-38s. When the battle—which Kenney called the toughest his air force had fought during the course of the war—was over, nine B-25s had been shot down or reported missing, and nine P-38s were lost.7

  Two days later, an air patrol caught sight of the Japanese fleet heading from Truk to Rabaul when it was roughly one hundred miles north of its destination. When Admiral Halsey learned of the nineteen enemy warships, he decided he had to act quickly. Reaching General MacArthur by radio, he explained that he planned to send Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman’s fast carrier force, based around the heavy carrier Saratoga and the light carrier Princeton, in a surprise attack on the enemy ships. MacArthur agreed to have General Kenney take advantage of Sherman’s attacks by staging a raid of his own against Rabaul and its airfields, timed for when the enemy’s planes were expected to be racing to defend the approaching Japanese fleet from Sherman’s carrier aircraft.

  Admiral Sherman’s task force, which included two antiaircraft light cruisers and nine destroyers, rushed from its refueling stop south of Guadalcanal to a location 230 miles south of Rabaul and prepared to launch every available airplane at daybreak. At nine a.m. on November 5, the two carriers began sending ninety-seven aircraft aloft. The American planes speeding toward the enemy fleet now at Rabaul included twenty-three Avenger torpedo-bombers, twenty-two Dauntless dive-bombers, and fifty-two Hellcat fighters.8

  The Navy planes rushed into the Rabaul’s Simpson Harbor anchorage area in tight formations that left no room for defending fighters to pick them off. Pilots trained in bombing moving vessels found those tied up or anchored relatively easy targets. Although none of the Japanese warships were sunk, most received some damage. Several, including the heavy cruiser Maya, had to be towed out of the area for repairs that took as long as five months. Two other heavy cruisers were out of commission for several months as they returned to Japan for repairs. The light cruisers suffered light to moderate damage, as did several destroyers.9

  As the U.S. Navy planes sped off to return to their two carriers, most of the Japanese defending aircraft chased after them. This left Rabaul with virtually no air defense as twenty-seven B-24s and sixty-seven P-38s charged in from their bases in New Guinea and bombed and strafed the town, the airfields, and the harbor.10

  These November 5 raids provoked the Imperial Navy to rethink its commitment to Rabaul. Although the stronghold would remain operational until its forces surrendered in September 1945, it was now no longer considered of great importance. While some warships remained at Rabaul, the surviving heavy cruisers were pulled back to Truk. Yet that great base had its own problems. So many aircraft and pilots had been lost defending Rabaul that Truk was now short of both. This was revealed when Admiral Koga was unable to send his aircraft to help the defenders on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands when the 2nd U.S. Marine Division assaulted its beaches on November 20, 1943.11

  It soon became apparent that Rabaul, along with its 100,000 defenders, faced abandonment by the Imperial forces. During December, nearly fifty cargo ships brought in supplies, including food and ammunition, to keep the Japanese soldiers and sailors, and Korean and Indian forced laborers, alive for an extended time. They also unloaded enough ammunition to sustain the base’s defenses. Over the coming year, large portions of the troops at Rabaul turned to cultivating extensive gardens to grow food, which would never be shipped in again. Subjected to regular bombing raids from Kenney’s Fifth Air Force and Navy and Army air forces in the Solomons, the Japanese waited for what they expected to be a major Allied assault. It never came. Rabaul had been written off as a target of assault at the Quadrant Conference between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Quebec in August 1943. Both leaders concurred with a Joint Chiefs of Staff recommendation that Rabaul be isolated and not assaulted.12

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  Much of the news from the Quadrant Conference was disheartening to MacArthur and Prime Minister Curtin, especially the continued de-emphasis on the South West Pacific Area. Yet there was good news in that Allied planners called for “the seizure or neutralization of eastern New Guinea as far west as Wewak and including the Admiralty Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago.” They also recommended that the Allies press “along the north coast of New Guinea as far west as Vogelkop, by step-by-step airborne-waterborne advances.”13 While the planners still prioritized the central Pacific, they were not about to stop MacArthur from gaining control of New Guinea and moving ever closer to his ultimate goal, the Philippines.

  Meanwhile, on New Guinea, Japanese aircraft were arriving at Wewak. Having recovered from Kenney’s devastating attacks of August 17, the base now went on the offensive. The day following the great Rabaul raid, November 6, aircraft from Wewak struck several Allied airfields, including the one at Nadzab. Caught by surprise, the Americans suffered four P-39 single-engine fighters destroyed and twenty-one damaged on the ground, while the attackers returned to their base with no losses.14

  Once ashore at Cape Torokina in Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville, Admiral Halsey’s Marines and Army troops pushed out a perimeter protecting an area one mile deep and five miles long to permit Army engineers to begin construction of the first of several airfields. For MacArthur, the next step in isolating Rabaul was to gain complete control over the w
aterways between New Guinea and the western end of New Britain. This would give him unfettered access to the Bismarck Sea so that he could move along the New Guinea coast, capture outlying islands such as the Admiralties, and tighten the noose around Rabaul.

  MacArthur’s forces already controlled one of the two straits between the Huon Peninsula and New Britain: Vitiaz Strait, on the western side of Rooke Island, although the island remained in enemy hands. While Vitiaz was the safest for use by larger ships, Dampier Strait, between Rooke Island and the New Britain coast, was convenient for Japanese barge traffic. Since the Allies’ control of the air over the Huon Peninsula’s coast increased the danger to warships sailing through the Bismarck Sea, small, motorized barges were the favored Japanese method for moving troops and supplies around.

  MacArthur wanted to control both straits, as well as to capture limited territory on the western end of New Britain. This would have the added benefit of greatly reducing enemy surface and air attacks on his vessels plying the narrow straits as they moved up the coast. He wanted an airfield from which fighters could protect his shipping, and a base from which PT boats could operate.