War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  The landing at Cape Gloucester met so little opposition that the official Marine Corps history records that “not a shot of any sort greeted the onrushing assault waves.”32

  Over the next few days and weeks, as Marine and Army troops pushed their way through the swampy terrain, fighting would grow in intensity and frequency, but it never reached the level that Allied planners had expected. The Japanese launched several counterattacks, but all were driven off at considerable cost in Japanese lives. The arrival of tanks would soon give the Americans a great advantage in overrunning prepared defenses.

  At noon on December 31, General Rupertus raised an American flag at Cape Gloucester airdrome and radioed General Krueger that the airfield was in Allied hands. Krueger passed the good news on to MacArthur, who quickly sent a congratulatory message to the Marine general: “Your gallant division has maintained the immortal record of the Marine Corps and covered itself with glory.”33

  MacArthur was anxious to make full use of these experienced amphibious landing troops while they were still under his control for operations along the New Guinea coast and the Admiralty Islands. He even attempted, without success, to have them permanently transferred to his forces. Lieutenant General Alexander Vandegrift, who was about to be named commandant of the Marine Corps, opposed MacArthur’s plans for future deployment of the Marine Division. Once the operation was completed, Vandegrift wasted no time in getting the division out of SWPA. He felt if the Marines spent too much time in New Britain fighting an infantry campaign, they would “no longer be a well-trained amphibious division.”34

  With the Japanese 17th Division decimated by Allied forces and facing complete annihilation, on February 23, 1944, Eighth Area Army commander General Imamura ordered General Sakai to withdraw all his troops and attempt to return to Rabaul. In early May, the 1st Marine Division returned to control of the U.S. Navy and was replaced by the Army’s 40th Infantry Division. MacArthur continued his attempts to retain the Marines, but Admiral Nimitz was adamant that he required this experienced amphibious force for his planned assault on the Palau Islands.

  Even as the fighting in western New Britain continued, MacArthur was planning his next move in isolating Rabaul.

  Part Three

  1944

  CHAPTER 15

  The General and the Admiralties

  The envelopment of the enemy bases at Rabaul was MacArthur’s paramount concern at the beginning of 1944. A plan prepared by MacArthur’s staff in mid-1943 called for an invasion of the Admiralty Islands on April 1, 1944. This would help close the ring around Rabaul and effectively reduce the ability of Eighth Area Army commander General Imamura to communicate with and send supplies and reinforcements to his soldiers battling Allied forces along the New Guinea coast.

  The Admiralties are eighteen islands located at the northern reaches of the Bismarck Sea that cover approximately 810 square miles. Situated 360 miles northwest of Rabaul and about 200 miles from the New Guinea coast, the islands are covered in thick tropical rain forests, the product of 154 inches of annual rainfall, extremely high humidity, and average daytime temperatures of around ninety degrees Fahrenheit. When war in Europe began in 1939, the indigenous Melanesian population was thirteen thousand, while fewer than fifty Europeans lived on the islands.

  The first Europeans to visit were Dutch explorers in 1616. In 1767, a famed Royal Navy explorer named Captain Philip Carteret rediscovered the islands and gave them the name that remains today. In addition to their geographical location, the islands’ chief military value in 1944 was in several large tracts of hard-packed, relatively dry land that could provide the basis for several airstrips. In addition, there was Seeadler Harbor, located on Los Negros, the second largest of the eighteen islands. Protected by a large, curved stretch of land, this anchorage was four miles wide and over fifteen miles long. Reaching a depth of 120 feet, it was large enough to accommodate an entire naval task force.1

  War had come to the remote Admiralty Islands in April 1942 with the arrival of a Japanese force of three destroyers and six light cruisers escorting three transport ships carrying several hundred troops. The invaders swarmed ashore on Manus Island and quickly began work on a four-thousand-foot runway. At the time, a platoon-sized unit of Australians from an independent company occupied Manus. After several skirmishes, the outnumbered and outgunned Aussies evacuated the island in two small boats.2

  During the following year, the Japanese built a second airstrip, and the garrison was increased to slightly more than four thousand men. The Imperial invaders brought with them a large number of POWs to work as slave labor. Many of these were Sikh soldiers captured at Singapore.

  In Washington, the Joint Chiefs called for dual invasions on April 1, 1944. MacArthur’s SWPA forces were to land at the Admiralties simultaneously with Halsey’s South Pacific assault at Kavieng on New Ireland. In early and mid-February, pilots on bombing runs over the Admiralties began reporting an absence of antiaircraft fire. General Whitehead, second in command of the Fifth Air Force, decided to try to draw out enemy fire in an attempt to determine the size and strength of Japanese forces on the islands. On February 23, he ordered three B-25s to circle Manus and Los Negros at slow speed and low altitude. On their return, the three crews reported no enemy antiaircraft fire and no sign of Japanese troops anywhere. In fact, the airstrip the enemy had constructed on what was called Momote Plantation was filled with bomb craters, and weeds were growing through cracks in its surface. Buildings nearby appeared abandoned.3

  Based on this information, MacArthur, seeing no reason for delay, decided to move the invasion of the Admiralties up to February 29. He believed waiting was a waste of time, and that he might be able to move the timetable for the entire war up a few months by occupying the Admiralties sooner rather than later. No one was quite sure what the enemy’s strength was, or even if Japanese soldiers remained on the islands, so he decided to launch a “reconnaissance in force.” Using this method, he could launch an offensive against Los Negros using a sizable force that would be able to elicit a reaction from any Japanese hidden there, but not too large that it could not be quickly withdrawn if the enemy proved to be of serious strength. On the other hand, should this force succeed in establishing a foothold, it could be quickly reinforced by troops waiting along the New Guinea coast and immediately move to capture the apparently unused airfield at Momote.4

  General Krueger was charged with leading the invasion. Krueger was unhappy with the new invasion date, which gave him five fewer weeks to prepare. On top of that, a debate raged over the number of enemy soldiers his men would face. The Fifth Air Force intelligence staff was estimating only five hundred Japanese, while the intelligence officers of the 1st Cavalry Division, whose one thousand men were to be the “reconnaissance in force,” estimated enemy strength at 4,900 men. Major General Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence officer, who based his estimate on intercepted enemy radio traffic, claimed between 3,250 and 4,000 troops were stationed there.5

  Krueger thought it would be too easy for the enemy to fool reconnaissance aircraft, and that the local commander might be crafty enough not to fire on Allied planes and reveal his strength and locations. With this in mind, the general ordered a team of Alamo Scouts to slip onto Los Negros and report back what they found. Lieutenant John R. C. McGowen led the six-man team. A Catalina PBY dropped them and their rubber boats off the coast of Los Negros in the early-morning hours of February 27. Throughout the day, as the Scouts reconnoitered the area, they not only picked up numerous signs that the enemy was dug in and awaiting an invasion—the Americans spotted several machine-gun positions and trenches for use by riflemen—they also came within yards of a Japanese patrol. From their well-pressed uniforms and larger-than-average size, McGowen noted that they were not ordinary troops. He later learned they were the Japanese equivalent of U.S. Marines. The following morning, before evacuation, McGowen radioed that “the area is lousy with Japs.
”6

  Unknown to the Americans, however, the Japanese had seen the Scouts landing. Colonel Yoshio Ezaki, commander of the garrison, proved to be a wily adversary. Having earlier ordered his men not to fire at enemy aircraft to give the impression there were no forces on the islands, he now sent out patrols to keep an eye on the six Americans and capture them if possible. McGowen and his men did not realize that the enemy soldiers they had encountered were actually looking for them, and not simply on routine patrol. Nevertheless, Ezaki proved too wily for his own good when he interpreted the landing team as scouts for a larger force coming behind; he transferred troops from the southeastern end of the island to the northwest, where McGowen’s team had landed. It was Ezaki’s logical conclusion that when the Allies came it would be in large numbers, and that the only area that could accommodate a large fleet and massive numbers of men was Seeadler Harbor. The invasion, when it arrived, would actually be in the southeast, a location named Hyane Harbor.7

  —

  MacArthur was reluctant to take McGowen’s report at face value since the lieutenant had not actually seen a large number of enemy troops. Besides, General Willoughby’s intelligence had already estimated that there were at least four thousand Japanese on the islands. Additionally, photographs taken by reconnaissance flights clearly indicated that at the very least the major airstrip in the islands, Momote, was not being used. This reduced the possibility of Japanese aircraft attacking the invasion fleet and troops.8 Counting on what he saw as “temporary confusion and weakness” in the enemy’s absence of effective defense against Allied operations in the air and in the Bismarck Sea, MacArthur’s determination to invade did not waver.

  MacArthur decided he would accompany the fleet carrying the invasion force so that he could be close enough to the action to make a quick decision whether to send in reinforcements if the 1st Cavalry gained a secure foothold or order an evacuation if things went badly. In an optimistic frame of mind, MacArthur ordered a second force comprising 1,500 combat troops also from the 1st Cavalry Division, along with several hundred men from a naval construction battalion, to stand by at Finschhafen to reinforce the original thousand troops.

  MacArthur’s order to move up the invasion date caused some confusion among his commanders and serious logistical problems for Krueger. First was the question of the Momote airfield. The invasion was to take place at Hyane Harbor, which was close to the airfield. MacArthur indicated in his order that the reconnaissance force should include a fifty-man unit assigned to rehabilitate the airfield and prepare it for transport planes that would bring in airborne engineers. This left Krueger and his staff wondering whether the “reconnaissance in force” was to be responsible for the airstrip rebuilding, or whether that would fall to a group of follow-on engineers and construction crews.9

  A more important and urgent concern for Krueger was how he was going to transport a thousand men along with supplies and equipment from Oro Bay on the New Guinea coast to the landing site. The vessels that would normally be assigned to put the forces ashore were LSTs, LCTs, and LCIs. Unfortunately, Admiral Barbey had not expected that they would be required until April 1, so he had sent most of them to various naval yards for repair and overhaul. They were either too far away to arrive in time for the new invasion date, or in varying states of disassembly to be put to immediate use. In addition, many of their crews had been given liberty in Australia.

  The only troop-carrying vessels Barbey had available were three APDs (transport destroyers). However, all three combined could deliver only slightly more than 510 troops, about half of the invasion force. The remaining cavalrymen would have to be divided among nine regular destroyers that would do double duty as escorts. Due to the crowded conditions aboard the ships, the men would be limited to only the supplies and equipment they could carry. All else, including heavy weapons and even cooking utensils, would have to follow later, provided the reconnaissance in force was able to establish and hold a beachhead. If it were overwhelmed by an enemy counterattack, the destroyers would be standing by to evacuate as many men as possible and to shell enemy troop positions.

  There were several risks associated with this invasion, not the least of which was lack of knowledge concerning how many Japanese troops were on the islands, and what firepower they had. In addition to the open question concerning Japanese defenders, there was the limited timeframe in which the planning, which would normally have required at least another month, took place. In the end, General Krueger, Admiral Barbey, 1st Cavalry Division commander Major General Innis Swift, the reconnaissance in force commander, Brigadier General William Chase, and their staffs managed the feat admirably. Perhaps the greatest risk was MacArthur’s decision to use the 1st Cavalry Division. These men had never been in combat before—this was to be their first encounter with the enemy.10

  The landing presented difficulties of its own. Instead of Seeadler Harbor, the original site for the April 1 invasion, Hyane Harbor had been selected for various reasons, including the potential surprise if the Japanese were waiting for an American invasion in force at Seeadler, and, once ashore, the Americans would be only two hundred yards from their immediate objective, the airfield at Momote. Not actually a harbor, Hyane was more of a fifty-yard-wide beach surrounded by coral reefs that made it impossible for the APDs and other destroyers to get close to shore. Barbey planned to use the four small Higgins boats carried aboard each APD to run the men to shore from not only the APDs but the other destroyers. All this was expected to be done under enemy fire.11

  The invasion fleet of three APDs and nine destroyers left Oro Bay for the five-hundred-mile trip to Los Negros in the early-morning hours of February 28. Two light cruisers and four destroyers, all to serve as escorts for the troop-carrying destroyers, soon joined them. Aboard the cruiser Phoenix was General MacArthur and Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, the new commanding officer of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. General Krueger attempted to dissuade MacArthur from going with the fleet, saying it would be a disaster if anything happened to him. The commander in chief listened to his general’s arguments, thanked him for his concern, but then said, “I have to go.”12

  The fleet arrived off Los Negros the following morning, February 29. A combination of steady rain and the greatly reduced airpower available to Japanese commanders for reconnaissance patrols left the fleet undiscovered by the enemy. The weather also reduced the substantial air cover that had been promised by General Kenney.

  At 7:43 a.m., Rear Admiral William Fechteler, whom Barbey had designated commander of the invasion fleet, gave the order to commence shore bombardment. A few minutes earlier, three U.S. Army B-24 Liberators swept in over the beach and the airfield and dropped their bombs. Of the forty bombers Kenney had sent to the Admiralties, these three were the only aircraft that managed to find Los Negros in the heavy rains that blanketed the entire region.

  With the warship guns booming, the APDs lowered their Higgins boats and filled them with soldiers. The boats then rushed to shore, put the men onto the beach, and turned around to pick up more from the APDs and the destroyers. The troops came ashore in waves. As the guns aboard the ships ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men, each succeeding wave of boats came under increased machine-gun and other heavy-weapons fire from Japanese troops who had fallen back into the nearby jungle to avoid the bombardment and now returned to their prepared defensive positions nearer the beach.

  By ten, General Chase’s troops had control of the airfield. Yet the general was concerned that his thousand men were too spread out to defend against a concentrated counterattack, so he pulled them back to cover the eastern section of the airfield and called for reinforcements. Intelligence reports he was receiving indicated there might be between two and three thousand enemy soldiers on the other side of the airfield, hidden in the deep jungle. If these were true, then his force could be outnumbered by two or three to one.

  At four p.m. General MacArthur and Admiral Kinkaid
landed to inspect the front line in a torrential downpour that turned whatever dry ground there was into thick, soupy mud. Wearing a gray trench coat, khaki pants, and his trademark beat-up gold braided officer’s cap, the commander in chief rode ashore, standing erect in a landing craft so that he could see what was happening on the beach. Newsweek war correspondent Robert Shaplen, who was also in the landing craft, wrote that the scene reminded him of George Washington crossing the Delaware. According to Chase’s G-2 officer, Major Julio Chiaramonte, MacArthur “ignored sniper fire” and was “wet, cold, and dirty with mud up to the ears” when he praised Chase and his men for a marvelous performance. He then told Chase to hold the airstrip at any cost, and he would send in the reinforcements.13

  Accompanied by several nervous officers, including his physician, Colonel Roger Egeberg, MacArthur walked out on the airstrip, despite being able to hear the voices of enemy soldiers in the woods on the other side and the sounds of sporadic gunfire. He wanted to inspect the condition of the landing field personally.14

  When he came across the corpses of two Japanese soldiers who had been killed only twenty minutes before, he examined the bodies to see if they were officers and had any markings on their uniforms that indicated their units. They did not. Walking away, MacArthur muttered, “That’s the way I like to see them.”15

  When MacArthur and Kinkaid returned to the Phoenix, the general immediately radioed orders to send in more troops, supplies, and equipment. He told Krueger to take whatever steps he deemed appropriate to exploit Chase’s foothold as quickly as possible. Krueger ordered the fifteen hundred cavalrymen waiting at Finschhafen to board boats for the trip to Los Negros.

  When word of the Admiralties invasion reached Japanese Eighth Area Army headquarters in Rabaul, General Imamura was not surprised. He had expected the islands would soon be MacArthur’s target and had attempted to have reinforcements sent to support the islands’ garrison. Throughout December, he had tried to convince Tokyo to send the 66th Infantry Regiment to the Admiralties, to no avail. Finally, following the Allies’ successful invasion at Saidor, Tokyo had agreed to send additional troops from Korea. En route, the Denmark Maru, packed with nearly three thousand soldiers heading first to Palau in the Caroline Islands and then on to the Admiralties, was attacked and sunk by the American submarine USS Whale. At least thirteen hundred of the emperor’s soldiers perished with the ship. A distraught Imamura managed to get a few hundred soldiers to the islands during January, but his attempt to transfer a full infantry battalion and a field artillery battalion from Rabaul met with only partial results as another submarine sank a troop transport, killing 350 men. In all, prior to MacArthur’s invasion, the Japanese commander succeeded in getting slightly over a thousand troops to the Admiralties.16