Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Other civilians were similarly helpful. Alfred Creswick, an engineer retained by the Japanese to maintain the cold-storage plant, known as the “Freezer,” smuggled two dozen oxtails into the stockade on July 4. He hid the meat on a Japanese supply truck, and the prisoners working in the cookhouse found it. Stewart Nottage, out on a foraging party that same day, brought in a forequarter of beef. That evening the prisoners binged on stew and steaks, and there was more stew for breakfast the next morning. Nottage then began cooking the rest of the beef to keep it from spoiling, but at 0930 the officers received an unexpected order: “Pack up and assemble at the gate.” The tennis court had worked its magic.

  In the cookhouse, Nottage was among the first POWs to hear of a place called Zentsuji. Soon the whole camp was abuzz. The officers were being sent to Japan.

  Fifteen miles away at Vunapope, a nearly identical scene had unfolded on July 4. An interpreter arrived from Rabaul in company with several naval officers and called for the Australians being held there. Eighteen women lined up in ranks: seven civilian nurses, six AANS sisters, four Methodist mission nurses, and a widowed plantation owner. They were introduced to Captain Mizusaki, who surprised them by saying, “Please, just call me Michael.”

  The Japanese went upstairs and inspected the women’s dormitory, after which the interpreter announced: “You have been handed over to the Imperial Japanese Navy and these officers will visit you every month.”

  The following day, however, Mizusaki returned to Vunapope and ordered the nurses to pack their belongings. As word spread throughout the mission that the women were leaving, some of the nuns and other members of the staff came forward with a collection of towels, dresses, linens, and even several bottles of wine. Mizusaki, spying some rolls of mosquito netting in the growing pile of goods, told the women, “You will not need those. You are going to Paradise.” His words sounded ominous, but no one had the courage to ask him what he meant.

  The women were ordered to load their possessions on a truck, which took them to a familiar swimming beach near Rabaul. They boarded a Daihatsu landing craft and were taken to the middle of Simpson Harbor, where the 7,000-ton cargo ship Naruto Maru rode at anchor. A wooden gangway was suspended over the side near the stern, and a small boarding platform bobbed vigorously on the swells. Taking the lead, Kay Parker hopped on and said, “Come on girls, it’s not as bad as it seems.” The women followed her up the ladder to the aft cargo deck, where they were met by a nonplussed naval guard.

  Though not expecting females, the armed guard recovered quickly from his confusion and pointed to a hatch over the aft hold. “Down there,” he said in English, and one by one the women descended another ladder into the empty compartment. It was dark and grimy, but Parker put everyone at ease with her characteristic good humor: “Ladies, welcome to this spacious cabin which has been put at our disposal by the kind Japanese. Ventilation could be better, there is no water, there are no sea views, the beds will be rather uncomfortable and there is only just the remotest possibility that the lights will come on later. The galley is closed for the time being, as the cooks have gone ashore for a few beers!”

  A FEW MILES AWAY AT THE MALAGUNA ROAD STOCKADE, SIXTY OFFICERS hastily threw together their belongings. Stewart Nottage collected the foodstuffs and utensils authorized by the Japanese, and at midday on July 5 the POWs boarded several trucks for the ride to the waterfront. In their excitement over leaving, they didn’t realize the civilian internees were not coming with them. Al Creswick, Gordon Thomas, and ten others were outside the camp doing odd jobs, and there was no time to say farewell.

  As with the women from Vunapope, the officers were ferried out to the Naruto Maru. They were met by several armed naval guards, one of whom barked commands at the POWs until they lined up in formation. The pretentious Captain Mizusaki then climbed onto a hatch cover to make a speech. Holding a baton and posturing “like an orchestra conductor,” he warned the officers to obey all regulations and watch after themselves, and then ordered them down into the hold.

  Douglas B. Millican, a captain from the 1st Independent Company, started down the ladder first with David Hutchinson-Smith right behind him. They had descended partway when they heard shrieks from below. It was the nurses, whose joy at seeing the men alive bordered on hysteria. One by one the Australian officers descended into the hold and joined a growing melee, everyone shouting and hugging and shaking hands as they exchanged heartfelt greetings. The women looked basically the same as the men: thin, haggard, their clothing in “pretty bad shape,” but no one seemed to care. They were simply happy to see each other after more than five months of separation.

  The women, having heard through the grapevine about the sailing of the Montevideo Maru, were anxious for any news about the men who had gone aboard. The Methodist sisters were especially concerned about Linggood, McArthur, and Poole, and Alice Bowman wanted to know if her fiancé, Noel Mulvey, was with them. Kathleen Bignell, the plantation owner, learned that her twenty-two-year-old son had been taken aboard. Born at Tulagi and raised in the Solomons, Private Charles E. Bignell had enlisted in the 2/22nd Battalion a week after Pearl Harbor. In response to the women’s many questions, the officers replied that they had seen the men walking out of the stockade on June 22, but there was nothing more to tell.

  The aft hold of the Naruto Maru had no ‘tween decks, and the compartment was crowded with seventy-eight men and women. The Australians sweltered in the below-deck heat for the remainder of the day and throughout the night. No one managed to get much sleep, mainly because numerous “benjo-runners” were active after eating too much stew the previous day. To give the women some privacy, the forward part of the hold was cordoned off by draping blankets over a cord stretched across the compartment.

  In the morning the Australians discovered that their floating prison was still anchored in Simpson Harbor. Their nerves frayed each time an aircraft was heard overhead, but the Naruto Maru finally got underway on the afternoon of July 6. Unable to see what was happening, the last remnants of Lark Force were denied a parting glimpse of Rabaul as their ship began the long voyage to “Paradise.”

  A FEW DAYS AFTER THE NARUTO MARU SAILED, WORD REACHED RABAUL OF a terrible disaster. Jiro Takamura wrote the pertinent details in his diary on July 9: “Navy men say that the ship with the [POWs] which headed for Hainan Island was sunk by an enemy submarine on the way. Probably all of the [prisoners] have been killed. Their compartment was locked, so none could have been saved.”

  Gordon Thomas also learned about the sinking. “On July 11,” he recalled, “we heard in Rabaul that ‘Montevideo Maru’ had been sunk, and all on board had perished. Such tragic news was unbelievable; but, unfortunately, it proved to be only too true.” Gordon’s information wasn’t completely accurate: not everyone aboard had perished. Some of the Japanese crewmen and guards had reached the coast of Luzon, which is how the story came to light so soon after the sinking.

  In addition to the prisoners, the Montevideo Maru carried an Imperial Navy crew of eighty-eight officers and men plus the embarked guard detachment of sixty-four ratings commanded by an ensign. According to the Osaka Shosen Kaisha line’s official loss report, twenty Japanese personnel were drowned or missing after the torpedo attack. Therefore, more than 130 got into the lifeboats. Maritime historian Peter Cundall, one of the foremost Western authorities on Japanese ships and wartime losses, believes that two lifeboats headed east and reached Luzon; another went west and was found by a Japanese warship. The number of survivors per boat has never been determined.

  For the two boatloads that reached Luzon, the hardships were just beginning. The survivors landed near the Cape Bojeador lighthouse on the evening of July 2, rested overnight, and then walked five miles the next day to the village of Bubon. They planned to set off in the morning for a Japanese army camp at Laoag, about twenty miles south, but at 0900 Filipino guerillas attacked them. “The party was absolutely defenseless,” stated one official account, “and although cl
ubs and rocks were used for what they were worth, the majority of the personnel were either dead or missing after the attack.” Fifty-five members of the crew, including the ship’s captain, were slain along with an unknown number of guards. The latter were unarmed, having lost their weapons when the Montevideo Maru sank.

  One crewman eventually walked to Laoag, where an army patrol was organized to bring in the rest of the survivors. Three other crewmen walked in under their own power, and over the next few weeks an additional twenty-eight survivors were located, all described as “starved, fatigued and near death.”

  Reports by various agencies in Japan contained conflicting information about the number of survivors. Whatever actually happened, only a small number of crewmen lived to tell about it. Moreover, the Japanese maintained silence about the sinking until the end of the war, which is why only a few Australian POWs at Rabaul heard about the disaster. Three more years would pass before the rest of the Commonwealth learned the awful truth.

  FOR THE AUSTRALIAN OFFICERS AND WOMEN ABOARD THE NARUTO MARU, those same years would seem extraordinarily long. Little did they realize that during their time in Japan, they would never have as much food as they did during the sea voyage.

  For nine days they shared the hot, steel-walled hold of the Naruto Maru, the floor of which was strewn with old straw. Steel rings mounted along the bulkheads gave clues to the identity of the previous occupants: draft animals. At night, when the deck hatches were locked, the hold was stuffy and foul-smelling. During the day, the prisoners were occasionally allowed topside. Two oil stoves made from forty-four-gallon drums were available for cooking on the aft deck. With the supplies brought from Rabaul, the Australians ate well during the voyage. Their rations included rice, pumpkins, taro, bananas, coconuts, and pineapples, plus tins of bully beef, butter, peaches, and cheese. There was even food left over when they reached the port of Yokohama on July 14.

  After disembarking in the industrial heartland of Japan, the women were taken to the Bund Hotel, an establishment that had catered to Western tourists before the war. Inside they met sixty-two-year-old Etta Jones, an American who had been confined to the hotel for more than a month. She and her husband, Foster Jones, had been captured on June 7 when the Japanese overran Attu Island in the Aleutians. Etta, a schoolteacher with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was shipped to Japan, but Foster, a radio operator and weather observer, was dragged away and executed.

  While the women settled in at the Bund Hotel, the officers were taken to the Yokohama Yacht Club. They were surprised to find a lavatory with real Western-style toilets, and with childlike joy some of the men repeatedly pulled the chains, flushing away just for the fun of it. In the upstairs sleeping quarters, fresh tatami mats covered the floors, and thick white Imperial Navy blankets were provided. “Damned good Aussie wool,” exclaimed one officer after feeling the soft material.

  The comforts proved to be temporary. After receiving a medical screening for dysentery and other diseases, all but seven officers were scheduled for immediate transfer to Zentsuji, a large POW camp on the island of Shikoku. The exceptions included Joe Scanlan, John Mollard, Geoff Lempriere, and Ted Best, who were held for additional questioning. They remained “in quarantine” at the yacht club while fifty-three others departed by train on July 18.

  After a journey of thirty hours, which included a ferry trip across the Inland Sea, the majority of Lark Force officers arrived at Zentsuji. The camp already held more than two hundred Americans captured at Guam and Wake Island, along with a few dozen Australian, Dutch, British, and New Zealand prisoners from Singapore. Also present were RAAF pilots Bob Thompson and Paul Metzler, who had been captured six months earlier by the cruiser Aoba.

  The newcomers were pleased to see that their predecessors were in relatively good condition. Indeed, they were among the most fortunate POWs in the empire, for the Imperial Army used the camp as a model for propaganda purposes. The International Red Cross (IRC) and other agencies were conned into believing that all Allied POWs were cared for as decently as those at Zentsuji.

  Toward the end of August, Scanlan and three others arrived from Yokohama with the disturbing news that Mollard, Lempriere, and Best had been sent to Ofuna, a secret camp run by the Imperial Navy. Captives sent there were not recognized by the Japanese as POWs; instead they underwent prolonged interrogation, sometimes for months, which was based on a regimen of physical and mental intimidation. Interrogators used clever variations of the good cop/bad cop method to extract information, and the naval guards had carte blanche to abuse the prisoners at will. Between beatings, the captives were interrogated by well-dressed intelligence officers educated in American and English universities, whose job was to play the sympathetic role. Such methods were highly effective. Contrary to the popular notion that Allied prisoners bravely refused to divulge anything except their name, rank, and serial number, some gave useful information to the Japanese at Ofuna.

  At Zentsugi, meanwhile, the general conditions remained favorable for several months. In late 1942, however, a new supply officer arrived and immediately cut the food rations. The POWs suspected that he was selling rice and other supplies on the black market.

  The prisoners were also frustrated by a supposed goodwill gesture in early November 1942. Red Cross parcels were doled out at the rate of one small package per three prisoners, but most of the contents had either spoiled or were pilfered by the Japanese. Later, when the Red Cross delegate made an inspection visit to the camp, he was not sympathetic to the POWs. They doubted his allegiance, for according to their information, he not only had a Japanese wife but had lived in Japan longer than he had lived in his native Switzerland.

  With the onset of cold weather, the expressions of disgust and frustration among the prisoners became more pronounced. The winter in 1942 was brutally cold. The air near the Inland Sea was constantly damp, and Zentsuji was blanketed with heavy snowfalls. The prisoners spent a lot of time dwelling on their discomforts, which only made matters worse.

  Finally, a brief distraction occurred on January 15, 1943. Fifty enlisted men, mostly Americans, departed for other camps, and a few hours later 149 new prisoners arrived. All were American army or naval officers captured in the Philippines. As bad as things had been on New Britain, the new arrivals had been through ordeals the men from Lark Force could scarcely comprehend. Having first survived the infamous “Death March” up the Bataan Peninsula, the Americans had been put aboard a hellship that transported them to Japan. Not surprisingly, they arrived in horrible shape.

  The Japanese refused to provide any help or medical care for the newcomers. It wasn’t long, recalled Hutchinson-Smith, before problems developed within the POW barracks:

  The morale of the new prisoners generally was very low. Many of them were so far gone as to be able to make little or no attempt to help themselves. It was a losing battle for the helpers to keep the rooms clean; many of the men were genuine dysentery patients without any power to control themselves, but others soiled their quarters, bedding and clothes for no apparent reason other than that they were almost completely demoralized. Some were quite capable of washing and keeping themselves clean, but there were others whose long hair was matted with filth and whose bearded faces were stained with the dirt of months of neglect.

  Within a matter of weeks, three of the American officers died. The Japanese turned out in dress uniform for the funerals and made a big show of paying respect to the dead, but their hypocrisy infuriated the POWs.

  On February 16, the camp administrators announced that all officers and warrant officers except those in sick bay would take part in labor services. The healthiest individuals were put in the “agricultural squad,” which grew vegetables and performed outdoor work that was deemed strenuous, at least for the stamina levels of half-starved men. The “gardening squad” cared for the prison grounds, and the “sanitation squad” had the thankless task of cleaning out the benjos and open-line drainage ditches.

  Several m
ore deaths occurred among the American officers during the spring of 1943, and that summer hundreds of new prisoners arrived, crowding the barracks. The Australians from New Britain and Singapore, numbering about ninety by this time, had become the old-timers at Zentsuji, though they barely took notice. The food rations were reduced again, and all of the prisoners grew thin. Hutchinson-Smith quipped, “there was hardly a respectable pair of buttocks in the whole camp.”

  In addition to weight loss, the POWs suffered muscle cramps caused by the lack of salt in their diet. Most could not sit with their legs crossed for more than a few minutes without feeling the prickly sensation of numbness. Blackouts and near-fainting spells were also common, especially during periods of exertion.

  When several more American officers died during the last months of 1943, the camp seemed cloaked in gloom. Another cold winter set in, and the prisoners tried to distract themselves by performing variety shows and plays. The food situation did not improve, but news about the progress of the war, which generally sounded positive, helped to uplift the POWs.

  Sometimes the Japanese themselves inadvertently brought good news. On June 10,1944, the camp superintendent asked Joe Scanlan if he thought the Allies would attempt a landing in Europe. Scanlan, in the presence of several other prisoners, replied that such an invasion was “essential to victory against Germany.” Amused, the Japanese officer asked Scanlan when such a landing might occur. The Australian replied that the weather conditions in June were ideal. At this the superintendent laughed. He then asked, “What would you say if I told you that British and American forces landed in Normandy four days ago?”

  The officer went on to boast that the Americans would be thrown back into the English Channel, but the prisoners paid him no attention. The truth of the great offensive was out. “Needless to say,” wrote Hutchinson-Smith, “everyone was elated at the news but wisely refrained from outbursts that would undoubtedly have provoked the Nips.”