Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Despite all the persecution, the vast majority of POWs remained indomitable in spirit if not in body. There was nothing the Japanese could do to completely crush their resolve or their natural sense of humor, in part because the Australians took pleasure in stealing whatever they could carry off and sabotaging what they couldn’t.

  Best of all, for those few memorable days in March, the prisoners at Rabaul enjoyed an unexpected lift from Lex Fraser, Arthur Gullidge, and the other musicians who played their favorite anthems and popular songs right under the noses of the Japanese.

  * Hutchinson-Smith had miscounted slightly. The Air Echelon Combat Log of the 4th Kokutai shows that the the 1st Chutai, normally a nine-plane division, was short one bomber.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CRUEL FATES

  “They marched out with cheerful grins and banter…”

  —Captain David Hutchinson-Smith, 17th Antitank Battery

  At dawn on February 23, 1942, exactly one month after the Japanese invaded Rabaul, American bombers attacked the harbor for the first time. The mission had started before midnight, when six B-17E Flying Fortresses of the 14th Reconnaissance Squadron (RS) took off from Garbutt Field outside Townsville and flew north toward Rabaul. One bomber became lost in a heavy squall and turned back. The remaining five, led by Hollywood-handsome Major Richard H. Carmichael, reached Simpson Harbor in two separated groups and dropped their bombs from thirty thousand feet. Due to an almost solid cloud cover, made worse by large quantities of steam from Tavurvur, the bombardiers had a difficult time picking out targets. Thus, the raid did no material damage.

  The Fortresses were intercepted by several Zeros that zoomed up from Lakunai, and although both sides claimed aerial victories, no planes were actually shot down. One B-17, low on fuel, crash-landed in a swamp near the New Guinea coast. The crew survived and spent five torturous weeks in the jungle before they reached Port Moresby on foot. The other bombers returned safely to Australia, but within a matter of days more than half the squadron’s aircrews were grounded by an outbreak of dengue fever. Weeks passed before another attempt to hit Rabaul was made.

  In the interim, the RAAF continued their haphazard night raids. The next occurred before dawn on February 24, as noted by Private Hisaeda of the 1st Field Hospital: “3 enemy planes dropped two bombs in the sea and one on the Sakigawa unit; there was no damage and one enemy aircraft was shot down.” His information matches RAAF records exactly. On that night, three Catalinas attacked Rabaul at 0500, and the aircraft piloted by Flight Lieutenant Ernest V. Beaumont failed to return.

  By the middle of March, the fortunes of Carmichael’s B-17 squadron had not changed. An attempt by five Fortresses to raid Simpson Harbor on Friday the 13th was a dismal failure, with only one aircraft reaching the target because of foul weather. The next day, the outfit was redesignated the 40th RS and transferred into the 19th Bomb Group, which was being re-formed at Townsville. The squadron’s luck finally began to improve during the second half of March. Two B-17s picked up General Douglas MacArthur, along with his family and important staff members, at Del Monte Field on Mindanao and delivered them safely to Australia on the 17th.

  The day after MacArthur’s arrival in Australia, the 40th RS flew its next mission to Rabaul. Led once again by Carmichael, four B-17s took off from Port Moresby at dawn to attack shipping in Simpson Harbor. All four aircraft dropped their bombs over the target area and returned safely to Port Moresby, but the plane piloted by First Lieutenant James R. DuBose was grounded, its number four engine having disintegrated in flight.* Carmichael led the other three B-17s to Townsville, where he reported that they had sunk a Japanese cruiser. The lead bombardier initially argued against the claim, but Carmichael refused to back down, and credit was duly given. (The Japanese suffered no such loss that day. The simple truth was that many a bombardier was fooled by the formation of rocks called “the Beehives” that jutted from the middle of Simpson Harbor. From five miles up they looked just like a ship, particularly when the wind and tides created the illusion of a wake.)

  B-17s conducted three more raids during March and finally got the attention of the POWs, whose reactions were considerably different from those of the Japanese. Alice Bowman recalled, “[In] March, giant planes appeared in the sky over Rabaul and caused a great deal of frenzied activity among the Japs. We had never seen anything like them before; previous raids were with Catalinas. From the excitement created among the Japs these planes were quite definitely something new to them as well. They were the magnificent American Flying Fortresses and this was the greatest air raid on Rabaul since the invasion. It was a wonderful boost to our morale …”

  The women at Vunapope needed all the psychological advantages they could get. Despite the army’s edict, they still endured physical and verbal harassment from the Japanese. A favorite punishment among the guards was slapping, but this actually gave the women something to laugh about—at least in private. One of the officers was so short that in order to get eye-to-eye with Kay Parker, he had to climb onto a stool before slapping her. Whenever the Japanese were out of earshot, the women jeered them as “little monkeys.”

  At both Vunapope and the Malaguna Road stockade, the guards and prison staff continued to be unpredictable. During the last week of March, the POWs were pleasantly surprised when they received permission to write letters home. They became skeptical when an officer told them the letters would be dropped over Port Moresby “instead of a bomb,” but the prisoners were eager to let their families know they were alive.

  Not surprisingly, the Japanese told them what to write. Virtually every letter began with a phrase such as, “I am a prisoner-of-war … and am very well treated.” Most of the men added very little else, because any additional information had to pass strict censorship. Arthur Gullidge, however, wrote about his loneliness and included a poignant message about his faith journey: “We must trust in the Heavenly Father … I am confident in Him now more than ever and am experiencing an inward peace that amazes me … I am so happy to be able to write at last and hope that soon letter-writing will be needless…”

  Several bags of letters, dated between March 22 and 24, were dropped as promised over Port Moresby a month later. One bag allegedly fell into the sea, but approximately four hundred letters were delivered to grateful families in Australia.

  Two weeks after the POWs wrote home, their safety was again threatened, this time by American medium bombers. On April 6, aircraft of the 22nd Bomb Group attacked Simpson Harbor in what proved to be the combat debut of the Martin B-26 Marauder. The attackers claimed a transport as sunk, but no corresponding loss was recorded by the Japanese. One B-26, badly damaged by antiaircraft fire, crash-landed in the water near the Trobriands, killing the flight engineer and wounding the bombardier. An RAAF Catalina picked up the survivors in one of the first documented air-sea rescues of the Pacific war.

  A week and a half later, a POW work party was sent to the Government Wharf to begin the long task of unloading the Komaki Maru, an 8,500-ton navy transport that had arrived from Bali on April 16 with a mixed cargo of bombs and aircraft parts. The ship also carried the Zero pilots and ground personnel of the Tainan Kokutai, transferred from the Netherlands East Indies to Rabaul as part of a major reorganization of naval air groups.

  The day after the Komaki Maru s arrival, eight olive-drab Marauders took off from Townsville and flew to Port Moresby. Armed and refueled, six of them launched early the next morning for the group’s second strike on Simpson Harbor. Although half of the bombers turned back for various reasons, two of the B-26s that reached the target made straight for the Komaki Maru.

  By a stroke of luck, the POWs unloading the ship had been ordered off the Government Wharf only five minutes earlier. They were seated on the ground for lunch when the two B-26s swept in low over Tunnel Hill Road at 1059 and released their bombs. Some landed forward and aft of the ship, but three 500-pounders hit the Komaki Maru squarely, starting fires that soon reached the volati
le cargo of munitions. Explosions ripped open the hull, sending a river of burning fuel onto the harbor’s surface. Soon the ship was fully ablaze, and the shrieks of Japanese sailors trapped inside could be heard over the roar of the inferno. Eleven crewmen died, yet by some miracle not a single POW was hurt.

  The attackers did not get away unscathed. A pair of Zeros briefly pursued one Marauder as it pulled away over the harbor; then the fighters shifted their attention to the B-26 flown by Captain William A. Garnett, commanding officer of the 33rd Bomb Squadron. Chased almost fifteen miles, the bomber took fatal hits in one engine and crashed in the water off Cape Gazelle. Only two crewmen managed to bail out. Both were taken prisoner, as recorded by a Kempeitai officer in his diary: “An enemy plane was shot down near Higashisaki [East Point]. No. 9 Company captured a signal sergeant and engineer corporal who had parachuted from their plane … Sent the two captured airmen to Rabaul.”

  The unnamed officer’s information regarding the crewmen was accurate. The flight engineer/tail-gunner, Corporal Sanger E. Reed, and the radio operator, Technical Sergeant Theron K. Lutz, became the first American airmen captured at Rabaul. They were later sent to Japan for thorough interrogation, presumably because they possessed significant knowledge of the B-26. At war’s end Reed was one of approximately two hundred Americans liberated from Camp 5-B in the city of Niigata, but Lutz’s ultimate fate remains a mystery.

  The POWs, meanwhile, had a ringside view from Malaguna Road as the Komaki Maru burned uncontrollably throughout the night. The massive fire was visible from as far away as Vunapope, remembered Alice Bowman, and “looked to be out of control, threatening Rabaul.” Flaming debris rained down on nearby structures, igniting a warehouse and consuming additional war material. Some of the prisoners cheered, prompting one indignant Japanese to write: “They must all be very happy after seeing today’s bombing. Among them were some who clapped their hands. All the members of my unit who heard this agreed that it was better to kill them off one after another.”

  No prisoners were executed, but two Australians were punished severely for laughing in front of the guards. “That night at muster,” wrote Hutchinson-Smith, “we witnessed the most brutal bashing we had seen to date.” The entire population of the camp was assembled on the parade ground to watch as Lieutenant Jack L. Burns and an antitank gunner were “beaten for half an hour by five or six guards armed with pick handles and battens.”

  Several days after the destruction of the Komaki Maru, the brutalities endured by the POWs at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army finally came to an end. First, all male prisoners were consolidated at the Malaguna Road stockade. The patients from Vunapope, along with John May, Sandy Robertson, and other men being held there, were moved to Rabaul on April 27. Two days later the administration of the stockade was handed over to the Imperial Japanese Navy. It also happened that April 29 was the 41st birthday of Emperor Hirohito. Everywhere across his empire, the Japanese people made a great ceremony of honoring the occasion of Tencho-setsu for His Majesty. They gathered to pay homage in the direction of Nippon and shout “Banzai!” The prisoners also benefited, each receiving a small loaf of bread.

  With the changeover to navy administration came minor improvements in the daily rations. Stewart G. Nottage, a captain in the heavy artillery, was assigned to oversee the preparation of meals. He made it a priority to provide ample food for the sick men, but was forced to give them portions that were “still terribly meager.” Nottage pleaded with the Japanese for more rations, but was told bluntly that the staff was “too busy to be bothered with sick men.”

  The new commandant was fifty-three-year-old Captain Shojiro Mizusaki, the officer in charge of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit. According to Hutchinson-Smith, he “was six feet high, not very Japanese in facial characteristics, immaculately dressed, spoke English carefully but not fluently, and advertised himself as a member of the directorate of Nippon General Electric.” The Australians came to despise Mizusaki, who was not only arrogant and contemptuous, but continued to farm the prisoners out to labor parties on a daily basis.

  TOWARD THE END OF APRIL 1942, THE DOCKSIDE WORKERS NOTICED A tremendous increase in harbor activity at Rabaul. Something big was obviously afoot, but they could only speculate about what might be happening.

  Unknowingly, the POWs were being used to help the Japanese resume the offensive. Pleased that the South Seas Force was “making better progress than expected,” Imperial General Headquarters had ordered Vice Admiral Inoue to “capture various important points in British New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands …as quickly as possible.” The general idea was to gradually expand the Empire’s control over the Southeastern Area, thereby cutting the lines of supply and communication between Australia and the United States and forcing the Commonwealth to sue for peace.

  The orders called for the second stage of the Southern Offensive to begin with MO Operation, a bi-directional thrust from Rabaul. First, a small invasion force would head six hundred miles southeast to Tulagi, the capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate; a few days later, an even larger force would move southwest against Port Moresby. The Japanese had already gained control of the northern Solomons by establishing forward air bases on Bougainville and nearby Buka, along with Faisi in the Shortlands. Once Tulagi was occupied and a new airfield was constructed on the coastal plains of Guadalcanal, twenty miles to the south, the Japanese would dominate the entire Solomons chain.

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who ultimately commanded MO Operation from his headquarters in Tokyo, did not like the concept of dividing his forces for the two-pronged attack. However, he viewed it as an opportunity to lure the carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a decisive battle, and reluctantly gave approval to commence the operation. Vice Admiral Inoue dispatched the Tulagi Invasion Force from Simpson Harbor on April 30, after which the next fleet of transports began loading men and equipment for the assault on Port Moresby.

  Laboring at the wharves for days on end, the Australian POWs were duly impressed by all the harbor activity. The Port Moresby Invasion Force included twelve transports carrying a total of six thousand troops, and on May 4, “a sleek Jap aircraft carrier” was seen sailing down St. George’s Channel in company with four powerful cruisers. This was the light carrier Shoho and her escorts, part of the Close Support Force. In all, the Australians counted twenty-seven Japanese ships leaving Rabaul on the 4th, known thereafter as the “Day of the Armada.” That evening, one of the guards at Rabaul boasted, “Japanese take Moresby, then Australia, you go home.”

  The Tulagi Invasion Force achieved its objective with relative ease, but the invasion of Port Moresby was foiled by the American carriers. The Battle of the Coral Sea began on the morning of May 7, when Japanese planes crippled the American oiler Neosho (later finished off by friendly torpedoes) and sank the destroyer Sims. A few hours later the Shoho was sunk by dive bombers and torpedo planes from the Lexington and Yorktown.

  The following day, American planes damaged the heavy carrier Shokaku, scoring two bomb hits on her flight deck and another on the bridge. She withdrew from the battle after sending forty-six aircraft to land aboard the Zuikaku, whose own pilots were simultaneously attacking the American task force. The Lexington, struck by two torpedoes and two bombs, seemed initially to have weathered the damage. However, fumes from leaking high-octane aviation fuel tanks ignited a few hours later, gutting the carrier with massive internal explosions. Torpedoes fired by the American destroyer Phelps finally sent her under that night.

  Meanwhile, the Yorktown’s flight deck had been damaged by a heavy bomb. The Japanese, thinking both American carriers were sunk, congratulated themselves on yet another victory. They had scored a tactical win, sinking three American ships in exchange for the Shoho, but both the Zuikaku and the damaged Shokaku were withdrawn, leaving the transports of the Port Moresby invasion force without aerial protection. Inoue had no alternative but to postpone the invasion for the second time in as many months.<
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  At Vunapope, the captive women noticed that the guards had suddenly become quiet. Some even looked depressed. The reason soon became clear as “a battered and dirty replica” of the fleet returned to Rabaul. Watching from the shoreline, Alice Bowman was mesmerized by the sight of the Shokaku—her superstructure blackened and the flight deck empty—as she limped slowly past Kokopo.

  SOON AFTER THE SEA BATTLE, PLANTATION OWNER TED HARVEY AND HIS family were arrested by the Kempeitai and charged with espionage. For the past three months they had been hiding in the hills above New Britain’s north coast, but suddenly they became scapegoats. Ted, a former coastwatcher, was charged with signaling the enemy “by radio telegraphy and fires.” No specifics about the alleged espionage were given, nor did the charges state why his wife Marjorie and his eleven-year-old stepson, Richard, were also arrested. Perhaps the Kempeitai discovered that the Harvey plantation had been used earlier by Australian soldiers, but the more likely explanation is that informers revealed the family’s hideout. Whatever led to their arrest, the Harveys were no threat to the Japanese.

  At the time of Ted Harvey’s recruitment as a coastwatcher in 1940, he was given a military-channel crystal for his two-way radio. A few months later, his supereriors deemed him unreliable and repossessed the crystal, terminating his assignment. However, he continued to use the transmitter on a commercial frequency. After the Japanese invaded New Britain, Harvey continually sent what one AIB officer described as “all sorts of silly reports” from his jungle hideout. Considered an oddball by the AIB, he ignored repeated warnings to stay off the air, and probably contributed to his own downfall.