Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Unlike Fisher, Selby was in no hurry to move on once he reached Lemingi. He had fallen several times on the jungle track and painfully wrenched his knee. Thus, he decided to convalesce for a few days while conferring with Scanlan and other officers about their options. Rumors of rescue by the RAAF still dominated everyone’s thoughts. “We discussed plans until late in the night,” Selby remembered, “deciding that the best course was to push on with all speed for the coast where we thought there was every chance of being picked up by plane.”

  Meierhofer urged the Australians to take the northern trails to Open Bay. The terrain was less rugged, and the weary travelers would encounter more villages along the way. “He gravely doubted whether any of us would be able to make the south coast without guides, food and carriers,” recalled Selby, “and warned us that even should we reach the coast, habitation was so sparse that we might all starve. For good measure, he told us that malaria, hookworm, elephantiasis and leprosy made this coast a most unattractive proposition.”

  Despite the warnings, Selby believed the south coast was the logical place to go, especially considering the possibility of an airlift. Others disagreed. Roughly half of the troops who passed through Lemingi followed the missionary’s advice and walked north to Open Bay. Those who went south, including Selby, would later regret their decision to ignore the kindhearted priest.

  After resting a full day at Lemingi, Selby teamed up with Scanlan (who still had Tovokina to carry his kitbag), Captain John R. Gray of the Royal Australian Engineers, and a few other soldiers to begin the walk to Adler Bay. Within an hour of leaving, they made a near-vertical descent, sliding nearly two thousand feet down to the bank of a raging river. The mud-colored torrent was frightening to behold, and the thin cable someone had stretched across it for a handhold gave them no confidence.

  Days earlier, Dick Hamill’s party had reached the same river, whereupon Perce Pearson almost lost his resolve. “My first view of it,” he remembered, “was to see a man hanging [from] the wire by his hands, and stretched out on the top of the water like a sheet in the wind.” Pearson successfully crossed the river, but others evidently did not. “It was rumored,” he continued, “that two committed suicide here. If true, I can quite realize their feelings.”

  Scanlan’s party also made it across, each man “hanging on like grim death” and each experiencing at least one close call as the water pounded at their legs. The men rested for an hour, then started up the far side of the gorge, its slope just as steep as the one they’d descended. “Only by grasping vines and saplings and hauling ourselves up,” Selby recalled, “could we avoid slipping back faster than we climbed.”

  At the top, the weary men shared a cold can of bully beef. The next day their only meal was a can of beans. After that, there was nothing to eat except moldy biscuits.

  Later, Selby described the party’s collective suffering:

  Each day we felt ourselves growing weaker from lack of food and the strain of climbing those towering mountains and crossing the racing rivers. Time after time we would miss our footing and fall, or a vine by which we were pulling ourselves up would give way, and we lay on the ground too weak to haul ourselves to our feet without the assistance of another member of the party. Our hands, never dry, were now cut and torn—it was painful even to close them to grip the rough vines—and our bodies were bruised and stiff from our innumerable falls. Our clothes, too, were never dry, for during the brief spells when we were not soaked to the skin by rain or river crossings we would be dripping with sweat.

  The men lost count of the days as they struggled across the Bainings. At times it seemed as though the jungle had swallowed them in foul darkness; at others, they could not help admiring the spectacular views from atop tall mountains. Sometimes those same vistas depressed them, because they revealed many more ridges yet to be crossed.

  The final leg of the journey was the most challenging. Having climbed to a high plateau, the men could see the ocean on the horizon. Far below, a slow-moving river appeared to lead toward the coast, but they could not find a way down. “Wherever we tried,” Selby remembered, “we were stopped by sheer cliff faces with a drop of several hundred feet.” Finally, someone discovered the cut of a watercourse in the face of a cliff, and they began a frightening descent. No one had mountaineering experience, let alone the proper equipment, so they simply lowered themselves from one precarious handhold to the next. Selby considered it “the most terrifying part” of the entire journey.

  At the bottom, the group followed a path through the jungle to a village on the shore of Eber Bay. There they found John Mollard, whose party numbered about thirty men. Their camp was well stocked, including a supply of rice obtained from a nearby plantation, and the new arrivals were thrilled to receive a hot lunch. “It was our first real meal since leaving Rabaul,” Selby explained, “and the feeling of satisfaction and delight with which we lay back and rested afterwards is quite beyond description.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Peter Fisher and his group walked into the village later that afternoon. They had left Lemingi at least twenty-four hours ahead of Scanlan and Selby, but such was the maze of trails through the mountains that Fisher’s group took a full day longer to navigate the unmapped terrain.

  Arriving with Fisher, David Bloomfield learned that most of the gunners from the antiaircraft battery had gathered up the coast on Adler Bay. He and several friends continued walking and reached the abandoned plantation just as darkness fell. The additional effort was worthwhile. Compared with the conditions they’d endured on the trail, the situation at Adler Bay seemed idyllic. Approximately two hundred soldiers lounged among the huts of a large coastal village. A general store contained sacks of rice and flour, chickens and goats wandered about the plantation, and bananas and pawpaws grew in abundance. Bloomfield and the other newcomers enjoyed a large helping of stew, then fell asleep in a native hut.

  Early the next morning, February 1, Bloomfield ambled to the beach to bathe in the ocean and wash what little was left of his tattered clothing. His shirt was rotting apart, his socks were in shreds, and his khaki shorts were ripped. “My underpants,” he wrote later, “were the only garment intact.” Bloomfield enjoyed a brief swim, but it ended abruptly when he spotted a white cloth tied to a length of bamboo. Returning to his hut, he asked what the flag was about. The answer caught him completely off-guard: everyone at Adler Bay had decided to surrender.

  Bloomfield announced defiantly that he was not giving up, and pleaded with his friends to join him. None could be persuaded. Subsequently, Bloomfield learned that Scanlan, Mollard, and the large party down at Eber Bay were preparing to continue south to Wide Bay. He decided to follow them, and departed Adler Bay that afternoon with several civilians, including the Norwegian skipper of the Herstein, Captain Gotfred Gunderson.

  Before leaving their campsite at Eber Bay, Scanlan and the others debated whether to order the troops at Adler Bay to join them. Nobody had a specific plan, and they knew that their rescue was far from guaranteed. As Selby later explained, “It seemed unfair to order the men to leave their food supplies, and their prospects of being repatriated after the war, for the uncertainties and privations which were all we could offer them if they came with us.”

  Walking southward along the coast, the Australians found the going somewhat easier than in the mountains, though not by much. Coral outcroppings tore at the soles of their boots, and every few miles the men were forced to climb one of the many ridges that ran at right angles to the shoreline. At the completion of one such climb on February 2, Bloomfield’s group enjoyed a broad view of the sea. In the distance they could see a line of Japanese barges heading south. Someone speculated that they were en route to Gasmata, an old RAAF grass strip farther down the coast.

  The next morning, catching up with a small group of soldiers near Wide Bay, Bloomfield learned that Scanlan’s group was only a few hours ahead. To know the officers were breaking the trail made him even more eager to rea
ch Tol plantation.

  Up ahead, David Selby elected to follow a narrow track that meandered toward the shoreline. Just north of Wide Bay, he stepped into the open, hoping to get a glimpse of Tol.

  That seemingly random decision probably saved his life:

  The plantation was plainly visible—a palm-covered tongue of land jutting out into the bay—but what I saw made me call to Fisher. A mile or so offshore were five barges towed by a steam pinnace. Through my binoculars I saw at the stern of each a Japanese flag, and they were crammed with troops. This was a cruel disappointment. For days Tol had been our goal, Tol was the word most often on our lips and at Tol we had anticipated the end of our wanderings [and] good food while we awaited the Catalinas which must surely be sent to our rescue. By a few short miles the enemy had beaten us to it.

  The barges that Bloomfield had seen a day earlier were not headed for Gasmata, but for Tol. By a stroke of luck, Selby was in the right place at the right time to see the barges enter Wide Bay; otherwise he and the men behind him would have walked into a trap. He rushed ahead to warn Scanlan and Mollard, catching them just before they crossed a narrow river on the eastern border of the plantation.

  The officers held back, but for almost two hundred others, the warning came too late.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TOL

  “Those who resist us will be killed one and all.”

  —Major General Tomitaro Horii, South Seas Detachment

  In the days that followed the invasion, Major General Horii became increasingly frustrated. Like all officers in the Imperial Japanese Army, he was accustomed to instant obedience, yet hundreds of Australians had ignored his order to surrender. And they showed every sign of continuing to evade, despite the explicit warnings contained in his airdropped leaflets. Even more infuriating, thousands of his troops were incapacitated by an outbreak of malaria while chasing the Australians.

  Within the South Seas Detachment, Lieutenant Colonel Kuwada’s 3rd Infantry Battalion had been the least affected. During the first few days of mopping up, they collected more than two hundred Australian prisoners between Vunakanau and the Warangoi River. Some, like young “Norrie” Kennedy, were captured despite elaborate attempts at evasion. After escaping into the jungle with Lieutenant Dawson on January 23, Kennedy made his way to a native hospital near Kokopo. Nurses tried to hide him among the other patients by covering his skin with black shoe polish, but the Japanese saw through the disguise and took him prisoner.

  After their initial successes, however, the 3rd Battalion was reluctant to pursue the Australians beyond the Warangoi River. Again, the deciding factor was malaria. Although the disease had not ravaged Kuwada’s troops as badly as the 1st and 2nd Battalions, the mere threat of it was enough to deter Kuawada from conducting a prolonged overland pursuit. Instead, Major General Horii implemented a change in tactics after Kuwada’s men returned to Kokopo at the end of January. Relying on floatplanes, ships, and foot patrols for reconnaissance, Horii monitored the Australians’ progress toward the south for several days. When he learned that a large force of Australians had gathered “in the forests north of Wide Bay,” he ordered Kuwada “to carry out a pursuit by boats.”

  On the morning of February 2, approximately 150 soldiers of the 8th Company, led by Lieutenant Tadaichi Noda, boarded five Daihatsu landing craft at Kokopo. The boats were fitted with benches, canvas awnings, and facilities for cooking, and one of them even had a 75mm field gun lashed to its floorboards. Towed south by a larger vessel, the landing craft reached Wide Bay at dawn the next day. After rounding a promontory called Tongue Point, the small convoy turned north into a smaller inlet called Henry Reid Bay. In the middle of the bay, the landing craft cast off their towlines and surged ahead under their own power. As the Daihatsus approached the beach, Noda’s men fired a few rounds from the field gun and sent several bursts of machine-gun fire into the branches of the palm trees.

  DAWN ON FEBRUARY 3 FOUND MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED MEMBERS OF LARK Force in the vicinity of Wide Bay. Approximately seventy were living in the plantation house at Tol or at nearby Waitavalo, a smaller plantation approximately a mile beyond Tol on Henry Reid Bay. The rest were either camped in small groups among the vast coconut groves or were approaching Tol on native trails.

  Those who had been at Wide Bay the longest were disheartened. Having struggled for days to reach Tol, where they had high expectations of rescue, they were bitterly disappointed that no had come for them. Little did they know that the War Cabinet had decided weeks ago not to attempt any relief missions.

  The rabble had not posted lookouts. When the Japanese suddenly appeared and began shooting from their landing craft, the Australians were caught completely by surprise. Some ran into the jungle, but most were too demoralized to put up resistance. Twenty-two men, evidently led by Sandy Robertson, walked out to the beach carrying a white flag as soon as the firing stopped. They waited patiently near the water’s edge, and within minutes were surrounded by Noda’s soldiers.

  Other Japanese troops fanned out and began rounding up the Australians. A few managed to escape, the largest group made up of four young privates who hid in the jungle for several hours, then started walking northward through the jungle. They crossed the mountainous spine of New Britain and walked all the way to Open Bay, where they were eventually rescued. They were the exception, however. Almost all of the hungry, unkempt Australians at Tol were captured with little or no difficulty.

  The terrain itself made escape unlikely. The Henry Reid River was wide, swift, and deep—too hazardous to cross without a boat or canoe—and it had several winding tributaries that created a labyrinth of channels. About sixty men were trapped there, including Bill Collins of the 2/10 Field Ambulance. He and several other Australians were crawling in a shallow stream when they heard the sound of laughter behind them. Turning around, they saw several Japanese soldiers watching them with amused looks. With simple hand signals, the Japanese directed them to get to their feet and then escorted them to the beach. Shortly thereafter, the captured Australians were put aboard a landing craft and delivered to Tol.

  By nightfall approximately 170 Australians had been locked inside a large hut at Tol that formerly housed native laborers. The prisoners were not abused, and they even received a hot meal of rice. Throughout the night, Japanese guards kept several bonfires going to illuminate the surroundings and discourage any ideas of escape, but the effort was hardly needed. The Australians were too weary and demoralized to mount any sort of organized resistance, and their first day of imprisonment at Tol ended quietly.

  The situation changed dramatically the next morning. According to one account, Noda became impatient while the ration of rice for breakfast was being cooked. With much shouting and gesturing, he ordered the prisoners to line up outside the hut. A young lieutenant, possibly Glenn Garrard of D Company, was singled out and harshly interrogated by Noda, who was assisted by a mean-spirited interpreter known as Sungai. When Garrard failed to provide the correct responses, he was clubbed on the head and torso with a stout wooden stick until he collapsed. Revived with water, he endured more questioning and severe beating. Finally, too dazed to stand on his own, he was left shirtless in the scorching sun, his arms tied around a palm tree.

  The rest of the prisoners were marched to the plantation house, where an attempt was made to identify the twenty-two men who had surrendered on the beach the previous morning. About forty soldiers claimed to have been part of that group, confounding the Japanese, but eventually two officers and twenty others were pulled out of formation and led away.

  Next, the Japanese questioned the remaining captives as to name, rank, and serial number. They were thoroughly searched, and all personal items—identity discs, watches, rings, pay books, and photographs—were tossed in a heap on the ground. Finally, the prisoners’ hands were tied behind their backs, most with their thumbs bound tightly together. The Australians were then arranged in lines of six to twelve men and tied together with assor
ted ropes, cords, or even their own belts. Allowed to sit back down, they received water, and some were permitted to share cigarettes.

  The Japanese set up a two-way radio and established communications with a base unit, presumably headquarters at Rabaul. An exchange of messages generated much excitement among Noda’s men, who then ordered the prisoners back on their feet. In ragged-looking groups, they were marched away from the house in different directions, each closely escorted by several soldiers armed with rifles and long bayonets.

  In 1942 the great majority of Japanese troops carried the 6.5mm Arisaka Model 38, a long but relatively light rifle that boasted almost no recoil. The weapon also had another important attribute, as described in a U.S. Army intelligence bulletin: “The length of the Model 38 makes it particularly suitable for bayonet fighting. When the Japanese infantryman is armed with this rifle and the Model 30 (1897) bayonet, which is also unusually long, he feels that in close combat he is a match for his larger and taller enemies.” The Imperial Army placed a heavy emphasis on bayonet fighting. Recruits spent hours practicing such moves as the “side-step thrust,” the “low body thrust,” and the “body contact thrust.” At this point in the war, few members of the South Seas Detachment, if any, had personally experienced hand-to-hand combat. They didn’t know what it felt like to pierce a man’s body with the thin, fifteen-inch-long blade affixed to the end of their rifles. But on the morning of February 4, many of Noda’s men would find out.

  RIFLEMAN ALFRED L. “ALF” ROBINSON, THIRTY-EIGHT, A RESIDENT OF Rabaul who had joined the NGVR only three days before the invasion, found himself in a column of prisoners being marched single file into the coconut groves. For some reason the former clerk was not roped to the other captives, though his thumbs were bound tightly together behind his back. Observing the bayonets on the Japanese soldiers’ rifles and the short-handled spades they carried, he suspected that the Australians were about to be executed. A terrible noise from a nearby grove confirmed his hunch. “An agonized scream was heard,” he later remarked, “and the whole line halted to listen.”