Target: Rabaul: The Allied Siege of Japan's Most Infamous Stronghold, March 1943 - August 1945

by Bruce Gamble

  The third bombardment began on February 29, as destroyers from Squadron 22 took up positions east of Praed Point, six and a half miles from Rabaul. Concealed by a rainstorm, they fired soon after midnight on March 1, lobbing seven hundred rounds over Crater Peninsula into Rabaul and the wharf area. Because of the rain and the mountains, damage was unobserved.

  At the Kempeitai compound, now crowded with POWs, the occupants listened fearfully as the barrage drew closer. Jim McMurria would never forget that night, a harbinger of worse to come:

  We heard shells coming in from the sea. One series of shells walked up to within a hundred yards of the prison with the final salvo exploding a hundred yards behind us. Every Nip gun in the area was returning the fire. We stayed paralyzed until five Kempeitai soldiers rushed over to us, unlocked the doors, handcuffed us, and marched us out to … the huge bomb shelter… . It didn’t take any prodding to get us down in that hole.

  By then the number of POWs at the Kempeitai compound had swelled to fifty-five or sixty men. A few had been transferred to the prison recently from the 81st Naval Garrison Unit, including coastwatcher John Murphy. The move saved his life and those of several other POWs, for he would prove to be an indomitable force during the terrible months to come.

  One of the captives who arrived in mid-1943 greatly interested the other POWs, if not the Japanese. Lieutenant Walter T. “Tiger” Mayberry, a Corsair pilot in VMF-123, had been an All-Southeastern Conference football player and captain of the University of Florida Gators in 1937. Shot down near Bougainville on August 30, 1943, Mayberry greatly impressed McMurria (a graduate of archrival University of Georgia) with his size and physical strength. But Mayberry adjusted poorly to confinement and the diet. “Mental attitude was the criteria for survival,” McMurria later observed. “The biggest, healthiest guys were often the first to decline.”

  Lieutenant Douglas N. Bedkober, a coastwatcher in “Z” Special Unit, and Cpl. John Fenwick, the survivor of an RAAF Catalina crew, were captured on Bougainville in mid-June 1943 and later arrived at the Kempeitai prison. Bedkober was six feet, four inches tall and in excellent health, but he “became morose from the first day,” recalled McMurria, and refused to eat. Bedkober was just twenty-five when he died on January 4, 1944.

  Many of the POWs were new arrivals. Lieutenant John J. Fitzgerald, a squadron mate of Bob Hanson in VMF-215, had been shot down on January 30, the day that Hanson got his last victory. With the huge expansion in combat sorties against Rabaul, Allied planes fell near Rabaul virtually every week, and the prison population grew rapidly. The capture of Colonel Unruh and his crew in early January, for example, had boosted the number of POWs by nine.

  Unruh, held across the street from Kempeitai headquarters in the former “special purpose house,” was a valuable prisoner. The highest-ranking captive at Rabaul, he had instant leverage with the Japanese. Unruh was also clever. In one of the great intelligence dupes of the Pacific war, he convinced his interrogators that he had been flying a B-29 on the day he was shot down. Matsuda would later write:

  Colonel Unruh, on the day he made the emergency landing, was in charge of the first battlefield testing of the B-29 and was on board to lead the test run himself. After completing the bombing run, he was supposed to go back to the States with the actual battle data. For him, it turned out to be a terribly unlucky day.

  Befitting his high rank, his attitude showed little fear, and he would not open his mouth for a long time; however, by the wit and resoluteness of MP Commander Kikuchi and his men, details concerning the B-29 were obtained and were immediately sent to Imperial HQ. This caused one big ruckus between the two commands, and even the staff officers of the Army and Navy at Rabaul crowded in upon the MP headquarters. It was finally decided to send Colonel Unruh to Imperial HQ, and after a month’s imprisonment, in early [February], MP Master Sgt. Mitamura received the assignment to take him there.

  Unruh had not flown a B-29 over Rabaul, of course—the first combat mission of the Superfortress was still several months in the future—nor did he divulge actual secrets. But the Japanese eagerly swallowed his misinformation and sent him to Japan, where he survived the war. The only unfortunate aspect, from Unruh’s perspective, was that he could not similarly influence the fate of his eight crewmembers.

  AS EARLY AS October 1943, captives had warned the Japanese of a pending bomber blitz. The Kempeitai interrogators reported this to the high command, which authorized construction of underground shelters beginning in November. Captured airmen occasionally helped dig the shelters, which they used for the first time during the naval bombardment three months later. The physical work was good for morale as well as fitness—prisoners received extra rations if they participated—but Indian conscripts did most of the heavy labor.

  The underground shelters near the Kempeitai compound were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Around the rim of the caldera, major tunneling projects commenced as Indian and Asian captives, digging with hand tools, built extensive underground bunkers. No one knows how many cubic yards were excavated, but the linear dimensions of the tunnels are mind-boggling. Between late 1943 and early 1945, three hundred miles of tunnels and underground storage caves were dug. Entire hospitals, command posts, headquarters facilities, and barracks were reinforced against cave-ins and finished for habitability.

  Yoshio Okawara, paymaster lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, had arrived in Rabaul in 1943. As a member of the naval staff, he worked and lived in one of the largest tunnel complexes:

  Once the air attacks became severe, headquarters encouraged us to construct caves to accommodate soldiers and also supplies. In February or March of 1944, the city itself was completely destroyed, and all our daily lives were spent completely in caves—not only the headquarters, but regular troops. Everyone was accommodated in caves. At the western part of the bay there’s a range we called the Sister. Under that mountain we built caves. Our cave was like a big tunnel. The offices of the fleet commander and his senior staff and others were all accommodated inside the cave, and also we had our living quarters inside the cave. We had generators and lighting all the time, so we were able to work, and we also slept inside the cave.

  From an engineering standpoint, the tunnels were easily excavated, hence the speed with which the facilities became fully functional. The reason was the soil composition. For many miles around the caldera, excepting the tall mountains, the landscape was covered to a depth of many yards with layers of volcanic matter. One particularly huge volcanic event, perhaps six centuries ago, had disgorged approximately ten cubic kilometers of magma and debris. Other eruptions added more layers of ash and pumice, in places a hundred feet or more deep.

  By late February 1944, nearly all of the aboveground hospitals in Rabaul had been razed by bombs. Their destruction was not deliberate, but neither were they off-limits as targets. In any case, the hospital bombings may have caused reprisal killings. On January 14 an estimated seventeen prisoners—mostly captured Beaufort crewmembers but also up to five American fliers—were beheaded by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit. One of the American victims was probably Art Teall, the SBD pilot from Saratoga captured on November 11.

  The Japanese subsequently moved their medical facilities into tunnels. Everything except one army hospital, well-hidden in the jungle, went underground. Eighteen Imperial Army hospitals and aid stations, with a total of four thousand beds, were dug from the volcanic soil. The Imperial Navy, with fewer personnel to treat, constructed two underground hospitals totaling one thousand beds. The main hospitals had extensive entrance portals with blast doors, from which a main corridor extended straight into the mountain for hundreds of feet. Perpendicular wings stretched up to fifty yards on either side, each measuring about six or seven feet wide and up to eight feet high. Used as wards, the wings featured double-decked wooden sleeping platforms, much like those used by Japanese soldiers and airmen in their barracks. The underground hospitals also boasted large central spaces for operating rooms, pha
rmacies, and laboratories. One of the navy hospitals, with an entryway near a stream, had a small millwheel system and sluice to provide fresh water inside the facility.

  Some of the largest and most intriguing tunnels housed neither personnel nor supplies. With an Allied naval and air blockade established, Rabaul faced a critical shortage of shipping and transportation options. In response, the Japanese rapidly expanded their fleet of small boats and powered barges, the most common being the fifty-foot Daihatsu multipurpose craft that featured a high prow and a loading ramp. Capable of crossing open water, the diesel-powered boats were used by the thousands to move men and supplies between coastal stations or even between distant islands. They moved at night, hiding by day in sheltered coves, as Joe Nason had learned during his two-week journey around the coast of Bougainville.

  At Rabaul, the shoreline of the vast caldera provided no natural concealment; therefore, numerous barge tunnels were excavated there. Most tunnels opened near the water and were equipped with short runs of steel track. The eight-ton barges would be driven onto a wheeled dolly and then winched inside the cave. One tunnel, built two hundred feet into a mountainside, could accommodate five landing craft. Because it sat two hundred feet above sea level, the barges had to be rolled down nine hundred feet of track to the harbor.

  By the end of February 1944, anticipating the next phase of the Allied aerial campaign, the Japanese had completed a large percentage of the underground facilities. Deaths among the Chinese and Indian laborers ran into the thousands. Some died of malnourishment, neglect, or disease; many were simply overworked and left to die; others paid for infractions with beatings, amputations, or execution.

  THE TOWN OF Rabaul was only forty years old. Designed as the capital of a protectorate claimed by Imperial Germany, it was built from scratch on former swampland. European engineers cleared and drained mangrove swamps soon after 1900, and constructed a wharf in 1904. Next they added handsome, substantial buildings that combined solid European architecture with sensible features for comfort in the tropics. Fast-growing shade trees were planted in neat rows along the wide boulevards. Almost every bungalow in the residential neighborhoods boasted lush gardens festooned with colorful flowers.

  Rabaul officially became the capital in 1910, but the Germans enjoyed their town for only four years before World War I came along. In September 1914, an Australian expeditionary force captured Rabaul and a nearby radio station. After the Great War, Australia gained the former German protectorate, and Rabaul became the capital of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. It was a big town by World War II, with 330 homes and commercial buildings. After the Japanese invasion, construction crews crammed another 600 structures into backyards and along alleyways. By the end of 1943 the original bungalows were shabby, packed with billeted soldiers. The once-lovely gardens had become jumbled with supply dumps and crudely built sheds. Despite almost two years of sporadic bombing, 90 percent of the town was still intact.

  Until the beginning of March, that is. Within just a few days, Brigadier General Mitchell’s heavy bombers, medium bombers, and strike aircraft would obliterate almost everything.

  THE JOINT CHIEFS of Staff had determined months earlier that an invasion of Rabaul was unnecessary. By encircling the stronghold and maintaining a naval and aerial blockade, Rabaul could be neutralized without the enormous cost of a frontal assault. On February 29, 1944, the noose drew much tighter as MacArthur’s SOWESPAC forces invaded Manus Island in the Admiralties, about 275 miles west of Rabaul. MacArthur himself went ashore on the afternoon of D-day.

  Desperation set in among Gen. Imamura and his Eighth Army Group staff, who still anticipated an invasion. After the withdrawal of the Imperial Navy’s warships and aircraft, Imamura and the army pledged to resist alone. “All the troops,” he added later, “made up their minds to fight to the end.”

  That was the Bushido line, but other officers were more realistic. At the beginning of March, within hours of the third destroyer bombardment of Rabaul, a senior member of Imamura’s staff attended a conference with 38th Division personnel regarding the defense of the stronghold. The results were discouraging. “It is evident,” Maj. Gen. Masatake Kimihira wrote in his diary, “that it will be extremely difficult to hold Rabaul.”

  Similar doomsday meetings were held at practically every headquarters. Hours before the third shelling, on the evening of February 29, the Kempeitai staff discussed moving to a safer location. That the current compound had not been hit was pure luck, and Captain Matsuda urged an immediate relocation into some caves near Tunnel Hill, west of Rabaul. The discussion became heated. “With few military personnel and a huge amount of material to move as well as fifty to sixty POWs, it is impossible to start moving early tomorrow morning,” stated Col. Kikuchi. “Capt. Matsuda’s opinion is unrealistic and absurd. I myself will guard the present base to the death.”

  Had Kikuchi known of Allied plans, he probably would not have uttered the vow. Days earlier, Mitchell and the staff of Thirteenth Bomber Command had formulated a new offensive designed specifically to obliterate the town of Rabaul. The strategy, as stated in a SOPAC summary, was frighteningly simple: “The town was divided into 14 target areas, each further subdivided into two or three parts. One by one they were rubbed out.”

  Officially launched on February 28, the campaign was more than just a continuation of the almost daily attacks. However, it got off to a slow start. Kimihira’s diary made no mention of a raid that day, and on February 29, he noted only that a “freight depot” suffered bomb damage. The effort made no progress on March 1, either, as Kimihira noted gratefully that “unfavorable weather” kept the bombers away “for the first time in a long while.”

  The offensive escalated dramatically on the morning of March 2, when Rabaul was subjected to carpet-bombing. Sticks of heavy bombs exploded across the eastern neighborhoods, particularly the Chinatown district. Major General Kimihira noted that bomb fragments damaged the walls of his residence, and the Eighth Area Army headquarters building received a direct hit on the chief of staff’s section. But all of that was minor compared to what the Allied POWs experienced.

  Because of a false alarm on March 1, the prisoners had already spent the entire night in the dugout. They had just returned to their cells for a meager breakfast when the alarms sounded again. This time the guards did not waste time with blindfolds, recalled Joe Holguin, as they herded the POWs back into the bomb shelter:

  This time it was the real thing. In about 20 minutes we began to hear antiaircraft batteries going off in the distance toward the south and southwest, the sound of engines becoming louder and louder while more and more guns joined the antiaircraft barrage. We, of course could not see anything except for many of the guards running into the shelter at the very last moment. They were heavily armed. Soon, it was difficult to distinguish between the roar of engines and the roar of the guns. But there was one sound that was unmistakable: the sound of falling bombs, followed by the earth shaking and heaving all around us. One wave of bombers seemed to follow another for a time period that seemed like eternity.

  One bomb fell near one of the entrances to our bunker and tore a water tank nearby, causing a lot of water to flow into the shelter. However, only about a foot of water filled the bunker, causing some damage to the rice bags stored there. Another bomb hit the electrical generator outside, putting the bunker in total darkness. Joyfully, however, we were still alive when the all clear was sounded.

  The guards led us to the surface through the one undamaged entrance, the same one where several months before, I had come to the aid of the little engineer that almost suffocated when he was trapped by a crumbling wall of dirt.

  When we arrived on the surface we beheld a scene of total devastation. Buildings were toppled and there were fires everywhere. The whole town was burning and in ruins. Many Japanese soldiers were making some kind of an attempt to put out the fires, but it was a losing battle. Smoke filled the entire area and tended to obscure the
sun.

  When the attack came, Captain Matsuda was inspecting the caves near Tunnel Hill Road. From his vantage point, he had a spectacular view of Simpson Harbor to the east and the Bismarck Sea in the opposite direction. The hill sat astride an old tunnel, long since collapsed by earthquakes, constructed by German engineers to connect Rabaul with a village on Talili Bay. From the top of the ridge, he had a clear view of the bombing. “I was worried that my headquarters was hit and hurried back,” he later wrote. “There was fire everywhere, and the flames were a terrible sight. Everyone from Colonel Kikuchi on down was covered with soot from head to foot, and seemed surprised to be alive. Kikuchi immediately ordered me to lead the move to Tunnel Hill.”

  Three trucks were commandeered. Handcuffed in pairs, the POWs were roped together with electrical cord in groups of ten or twelve, then crammed aboard the vehicles. The trucks set off, whining in low gear through the debris-strewn streets of the burning town. Holguin, attached by handcuffs to B-25 pilot Ralph Cheli, managed to slip his blindfold partly off. “I was able to see the wholesale destruction that occurred,” he remembered, “toppled buildings and fires everywhere, smoke covering the entire area, and men cursing and shouting as they tried to control the flames.”

  The trucks then headed up Tunnel Hill Road and stopped near a series of gullies hidden by thick jungle vegetation. Blindfolds came off, and some prisoners, weak from malnourishment, stumbled as they climbed awkwardly from the trucks. All had been under tremendous strain for the past twenty-four sleepless hours. A fight nearly broke out when a bucket was accidentally upended, spilling the water intended for the POWs.

  Each captive was fed a single rice ball, their only source of nourishment. Next, still cuffed in pairs, they were led into one of the gullies and shoved inside a manmade cave, more accurately an excavated storage site that had once held drums of fuel. The POWs (approximately fifty-five, according to most sources) were physically crammed into the narrow, unventilated cave, the dimensions of which varied according to the prisoner making the estimate.