Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Another large group of 160 ragged-looking prisoners, all captured on the north coast of New Britain, arrived at Rabaul aboard the Duranbah on February 16. Among them was Captain Hutchinson-Smith, who would later write a marvelously detailed account of his experiences as a POW. Although never published, it stands alone as the only comprehensive narrative among the many prisoners from Lark Force. The manuscript contains a wealth of detail, such as the fact that the volcano Tavurvur welcomed the prisoners’ return to Rabaul “by roaring and emitting large columns of smoke.”

  Ferried from the Duranbah in Daihatsu landing craft, the POWs were met by a committee of Japanese officers wearing “magnificent swords, white gloves and acres of service decorations.” The eight Australian officers were then taken by truck to the former residence of William Phillpott, manager of the Burns, Philp & Company store, who was now among the civilian internees. They were ordered to sit outside on the lawn, but after an hour or so they were led across the street to Harold Page’s bungalow. Here they were ordered to write down their name, rank, and serial number, after which a guard called for the senior officer. Hutchinson-Smith stepped forward and was immediately escorted into the house for interrogation.

  He soon discovered that he had much to learn about Japanese customs:

  Behind the table sat a wizened worm of a man, in the full uniform of a Lieutenant, and at his left was another Nip who proved to be an interpreter.

  The interpreter opened the proceedings by losing his temper when, through ignorance, I failed to bow, and he experienced much difficulty in explaining my lapse in the etiquette department. A deft cuff or two clarified his meaning unmistakably, but my execution of this formal Japanese greeting was, I am afraid, perfunctory and gauche. The stooge then said, “Senior Officah? So you are Scanlan?” I hurriedly explained that I was not the Officer Commanding, New Guinea Area, but merely the senior officer of my group. The interpreter was very, very disappointed.

  During the course of the interrogation, the interpreter asked Hutchinson-Smith point blank if he wanted to die. He ordered the Australian to kneel on the floor. Hutchinson-Smith shivered when the blade of a sword was laid across his neck, but it was merely a warning to not stray “from the narrow path of veracity.” Afterward he was allowed to sit in a chair while the Japanese questioned him about his background, military career, religion, and family.

  Suddenly the questioning became more direct. The Japanese wanted to know why he didn’t commit suicide from shame; they asked about “women for the use of the officers and soldiers” and wondered why the Australians didn’t have them; and they especially wanted to know where Scanlan was. Hutchinson-Smith didn’t have the answers they were looking for, but he found the questions “easy to stall.”

  A few minutes later, in a different room, he was interrogated by a Japanese captain named Harada, who said he had taught English literature at a university in Tokyo. Hutchinson-Smith stated that he was “shockingly tired and weak from hunger,” so Harada obliged him. A bottle of iced beer was brought in along with a plateful of delicious food: a meatball covered with onion sauce and “the biggest pile of white rice” he had ever seen.

  When the interrogations ended, the Australian officers were driven to their former AIF camp. The barracks and storerooms previously used by B Company and the antiaircraft unit were now fenced with barbed wire, forming a separate compound. The newcomers were searched, then ordered to report to the officers’ hut. They were introduced to Major Edmonds-Wilson, the ranking Australian, who briefed them on the current situation.

  For starters, the officers held no status among the Japanese because they “had not done the decent thing and committed suicide.” Instead, the prison staff recognized Mac McLellan, the forty-one-year-old warrant officer, as the senior Australian. During roll call, he always tried to frustrate the guards by making it nearly impossible for them to get an accurate count of prisoners. At any given time there were men in the hospital, or sick in their huts, or helping in the cookhouse. Even the benjos were always busy, thanks to a high rate of dysentery and other intestinal ailments. The Japanese never seemed to allow for such absences when taking roll call, and McLellan, much to the delight of his fellow prisoners, invariably got them to start over again when the numbers didn’t add up.

  The newcomers were dismayed by the small helping of rice they received that first evening. It wasn’t the clean, white variety Hutchinson-Smith had eaten earlier that day, but “Kanaka issue plus weevils, stones and rat-droppings.” Accompanying the meager portion was a cup of watery soup, and a number of prisoners became sick after eating it.

  The new prisoners were also briefed regarding the camp personnel. The commandant, a heavyset former banker nicknamed “Tubby,” boasted of beheading an American officer on Guam with one stroke of his sword. Although only a lieutenant, he wielded absolute authority.

  Another key figure was the chief interpreter, known only as Matsui, who claimed he had worked in a Tokyo shirt factory before the war. His speech had an impressive range of inflection, often zooming down to a deep pitch and then rising back up as he struggled with the English language. His gravelly voice sounded somewhat like an airplane, and he was therefore nicknamed “The Dive Bomber.”

  A second interpreter, Kawaguchi, spoke with a distinctly American accent. The quartermaster, “a tiny, delicate-looking army lieutenant with hands like a young girl,” wore boots that were several sizes too large. He liked to stand on the back of a truck and read propaganda bulletins to the prisoners. “He was very bitter towards Britain and America and was loud in his praise of Hitler and the Nazis,” recalled Hutchinson-Smith, who referred to him as “Puss in Boots.”

  The guards were equally colorful. One lance corporal wore comical-looking glasses with blue lenses, and was nicknamed “Four Eyes.” Like all the guards, he demanded that the prisoners bow low at every encounter. Those who failed to show respect discovered that he had a volatile temper and was “a fiend when roused.”

  The prisoners were awakened at 0500 every day for muster, or tenko. “Hurry! Hurry,” yelled Matsui. “All men come with running.” After they gathered on the parade ground, McClellan made certain they were counted several times. Breakfast for the working parties was served at six, after which the officers ate. The meal was not only the same as the night before, but had obviously been prepared at the same time. Flies swarmed over the food and the rice was coated with pumice dust. Despite its unappetizing appearance, there was no option but to eat what was served, primarily because the Australian officers received only two meals per day, while the troops got three.

  The reason was simple. Edmonds-Wilson, a firm believer in the Geneva Convention, insisted that the officers would neither work nor assist the enemy in any other way. It was a gallant gesture of defiance, but the Japanese had the final say. One day, as Matsui struggled to translate Edmonds-Wilson’s latest refusal to work, the commandant got the impression that the officers were mutinous. Outraged, he singled out Edmonds-Wilson for execution. The other officers kept their composure, and after several tense moments the commandant calmed down. “The atmosphere was electric,” remembered Hutchinson-Smith, “and we realized that they would have no compunction in executing anyone if they desired. Their local record in recent weeks had proved that beyond all doubt.”

  Edmonds-Wilson was spared, but from that day on the officers labored alongside the rest of the men. Work parties were sent out daily to the wharves, various storage dumps, and the Imperial Navy headquarters building (the former Crown Law office); others chopped wood for the camp kitchen or mowed grass. The dockside labor was especially heavy, and although the workers received three meals a day, the measly rations provided only a few hundred calories a day rather than the thousands necessary for sustained physical effort. Not surprisingly, the POWs’ health declined steadily.

  Dressed in the shaggy remnants of their uniforms or civilian clothing, the Australians unloaded an astonishing amount of war material in the ungodly heat of t
he caldera. Cargo ships brought thousands of bombs, drums of gasoline and aviation fuel, all sorts of weapons and ammunition, food, vehicles, tools, and numerous aircraft components, from complete engines to replacement wings. The vehicles alone numbered more than four thousand, including trucks, light tanks, staff cars, and even captured American vehicles such as a GMC truck and a pink Studebaker brought from Guam. When the ships were empty, the prisoners loaded them with copra, lumber, crates of empty bottles, and booty from Rabaul. The prisoners were amazed at the array of pilfered goods sent to Japan, including furniture and even the glass countertops from the downtown stores.

  But the art of scrounging worked both ways. The prisoners’ health and morale would have been much worse were it not for their ability to filch supplies, especially foodstuffs. The dockworkers had by far the best opportunities to steal food, and it was alleged that they sometimes enjoyed “gargantuan meals” at the wharves. Prisoners kept an eye out for Australian army rations-tropical fruit salad was even back in favor—and they invented clever ways of sneaking it into the stockade to share with the sick men. Dry goods were the easiest to acquire. Countless handfuls of sugar and coffee were hidden in pockets and the insides of shoes.

  Next to food, cigarettes were also in huge demand. Thanks to an active theft ring, “fags” were available for almost everyone who wanted to smoke. “The cigarette racket was really extraordinary,” wrote Hutchinson-Smith, “and revealed the stupidity of our captors.” The Japanese confiscated all tobacco and cigarettes when they brought in new prisoners, and there was no place in camp where the POWs could purchase cigarettes—yet most of them smoked incessantly. “It did not dawn on the Japanese for almost five months,” added Hutchinson-Smith, “that we were smoking their cigarettes.”

  The Australians might have continued to get away with the stealing, but eventually the thieves took so many cigarettes that there weren’t enough left for the guards. The commandant threatened to execute anyone caught in the act and had a cage built to store the cigarettes in. But the tobacco continued to disappear. The prisoners quickly discovered that the cage’s wooden bars were far enough apart for an arm to fit through, making it easy to grab a handful of cigarettes when the guards weren’t paying attention.

  Keith M. “Shorty” Berwick, a twenty-four-year-old antitank gunner from New South Wales, was reputedly the best scrounger. Despite being a “rather nervous little fellow,” he smuggled impressive amounts of loot into the camp. One night, as he returned from a work party with four other soldiers, his clothing positively bulged with cigarettes and cans of food. A Japanese NCO pulled him aside at the gate and ordered him to stand near one of the huts to await a more thorough search—but as soon as the guard wasn’t looking, Shorty bolted around the corner. He made it safely to the enlisted men’s quarters and delivered his “groceries” to the men who were sick.

  A few Japanese admired the captives’ efforts to help each other. Jiro Takamura oversaw several prisoners who were sent to his shop to repair broken communications equipment. He liked their ability to fix things, but was even more impressed by their solidarity. “They work hard with little rest,” he wrote in his diary. “I felt sorry for them. They probably do not get much to eat in the stockade. At least while they are here I do all I can for them, and they appreciate it and work harder. They stay till about 1600 hours, eat and then go back. They put the food that is left over into empty cans and take it back to their comrades. That feeling of brotherly love is the same everywhere. Tears welled up in my eyes.”

  Softhearted overseers were the exception. Most of the Japanese guards were, at best, indifferent to the terrible conditions endured by the POWs. In turn, the Australians extracted some revenge and boosted their own morale through minor acts of sabotage. They tossed tools and equipment into the harbor, loosened the plugs on drums of fuel to let the contents leak out, and soaked bundles of copra with seawater in the hope that the wet material would spontaneously combust in the jam-packed hold of some merchantman.

  The Japanese never seemed to notice the prisoners’ meddlesome behavior, but the POWs could never relax their own vigilance, mainly because the guards were completely unpredictable. For days on end they would seem almost friendly, entering the prisoners’ huts to share cigarettes and try a few words of English; then, with shocking fury, they would commence “beating, bashing and bludgeoning everyone in sight.” Just as suddenly, the Japanese would stop their brutish behavior and act as though nothing had happened.

  History would later reveal that their behavior, especially the bullying, was the same at virtually every POW camp. It usually came on the heels of military setbacks, even minor defeats that occurred in far-off places, because the Japanese were embarrassed at losing face. In response, they took out their frustrations on the POWs, not unlike some curmudgeon who kicks his dog.

  At Rabaul, the prisoners saw several such cracks in the Japanese façade of invincibility. The stockade was practically in the center of the fortress, giving the POWs a ringside seat to the night strikes conducted by the RAAF. It was worth the beatings the POWs received to see the Japanese react nervously. During the first raid, conducted by a handful of Catalinas on the night of January 24, antiaircraft fire from warships in Simpson Harbor landed among Japanese positions on the plateau, resulting in casualties. As additional strikes followed—generally every other night for the next two weeks—the prisoners themselves began to feel the strain, sleeping fitfully on nights when there was a “bomber’s moon.” When the attacks came, they spent hours lying in slit trenches while the antiaircraft guns blasted away at shadows.

  Aside from the occasional night raids, no other attacks on Rabaul were attempted by the Allies for nearly a month after the invasion. Early in the afternoon of February 20, the prisoners were assembled on the parade ground for an announcement by the interpreter, whose boastful words Hutchinson-Smith later parodied: “Matsui came out and said very sympathetically, ‘Ah, so sorry! So sorry! Japan airplane go out—bomb Americah aircraft carriah! So sorry!’ and grinned broadly. Shortly after, eighteen heavy bombers went off and he said, ‘Japan airplane sink carriah. So sorry!’ We did not share his delight…”

  The carrier Matsui referred to was the USS Lexington, flagship of a U.S. Navy task force steaming to attack Rabaul at dawn the next day. However, a pair of Kawanishi H6K flying boats had located the American force while it was still nearly four hundred miles from Rabaul. Shortly after 1400 on the 20th, seventeen Mitsubishi G4M1s of the newly arrived 4th Kokutai took off from Vunakanau for a preemptive strike.*

  Matsui’s glee proved to be short-lived. Fighters from the Lexington shot down both of the Kawanishi flying boats, and the Mitsubishi bombers fared poorly. En route to the target they split into two formations due to heavy weather. All nine aircraft of the first wave were shot down by tenacious F4F Wildcats and shipboard antiaircraft, and the second wave was badly mauled by one pilot, Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare, who was officially credited with five planes destroyed. He earned a Medal of Honor for his remarkable gunnery, though in actuality only four of the eight bombers were shot down, one of which was finished off by the Lexington’s antiaircraft guns. Of the four survivors, one later crash-landed near a small atoll east of New Ireland, another ditched in Simpson Harbor with several dead and wounded crewmen aboard, and only two landed safely at Vunakanau.

  Having lost the element of surprise, the Americans called off the raid. But the Japanese losses had been appalling: fifteen Mitsubishi bombers were shot down with the loss of more than ninety crewmembers; and twenty more airmen were killed aboard the two flying boats. A third H6K failed to return from its patrol that night, which brought the grand total of dead airmen to more than 120, all in a single day. Meanwhile, the Lexington escaped with barely a scratch, having lost two Wildcats and one pilot.

  Oddly enough, although the raid had been a disaster for the Japanese, they did not harass the POWs afterward. The entire camp was distracted the following day by the arrival of t
he most important prisoner of all. An unnamed Kempeitai officer recorded the details in his diary on February 21: “Sergeant Okazaki and others captured Colonel Sukanron, Major Norado, one sergeant and two privates near the Warangoi River. The sergeant was sent to the hospital with malaria. Colonel Sukanron and the other three [were] sent to Rabaul.”

  Although their names were phonetically butchered, the individuals were obviously Scanlan and Mollard, last seen walking toward Rabaul with three enlisted men a week before they were captured. A few days later, Jiro Takamura read Scanlan’s POW file and was impressed by what he saw. “Colonel Scanlan was interrogated. Looked at his record taken by staff officer Tanaka and was surprised at the resolute answers he made, even though he is a reserve officer. After all, if one becomes a commander, one must have considerable ability. He manifested the ideal that the Englishman has of respecting appearance by wearing his service uniform and by requesting special quarters.”

  It is particularly interesting to note that Scanlan asked for private quarters, but Takamura misinterpreted his motives. If anything, Scanlan was ashamed, not arrogant. Undoubtedly he wished to be separated from the men because he was reluctant to face them. Some had been captives for nearly a month already, and most would have held him accountable for their present situation.

  AS NOTED BY THE KEMPEITAI OFFICER, THE SERGEANT WITH MALARIA WAS taken to Vunapope, where the native hospital near the beach was still being used by POWs. A civilian doctor, two orderlies, and thirteen military and civilian nurses treated the ailing captives under the watchful eyes of Japanese guards.

  In early February, Sandy Robertson was brought back to Vunapope after surrendering on the beach at Tol. He was lucky to be alive, but the six army nurses were not happy to see him. Still bitter about being abandoned on the morning of the invasion, they were unsympathetic about his capture. Like Scanlan, he was a pariah. “We just ignored him,” recalled Lorna Johnson. “We thought, we’ll get our own back, this time. He was very put out by that, but he knew he couldn’t expect any other treatment. He would have been very surprised if we’d been delighted to see him.”