by Bruce Gamble
Also the coconuts helped us tremendously. We were able to produce coconut oil, which helped our nutrition a little bit, even though we had to rely on the potato. Some of the groups that were located near the seashore tried to get fish by netting and other means. However, because of the air attacks, it was a difficult and dangerous operation. From one unit to another, the supply situation varied.
The Japanese substituted barley for rice in the prisoners’ diet, which the latter believed was more nourishing, but the improvement may have been only wishful thinking. Starving, sick, and desperate, the captives could not help fighting amongst themselves. Personality conflicts and even ethnic differences led to bickering, distrust, and eventually a breakdown in their mutual support system. It was no longer a matter of captives versus captors, or Allies versus Japanese; the prisoners turned on each other, their feuds culminating in at least one incident of fisticuffs, according to Holguin.
An Imperial Army doctor intervened, unintentionally, when he paid a visit to the camp in mid-July 1945. Captain Enosuke Hirano was a member of the notorious Unit 731, officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Unit, which had its origins in the prewar Kempeitai. A front for chemical and biological warfare as well as human medical experimentation, Unit 731 was run by the army’s chief medical officer in what is now northeast China. Hirano, as a member of the Rabaul detachment of Unit 731, had visited the POW camp in April and drawn blood from all ten prisoners then extant.
On his return visit, approximately July 19, Hirano arranged for five of the remaining prisoners—Don Atkiss, Joe Holguin, Dick Lanigan, Jim McMurria, and Joe Nason—to be brought to an outbuilding. Each prisoner, having supposedly tested negative for malaria in April, was given an injection of tainted blood drawn from infected Japanese soldiers. Hirano boasted to Holguin that he was attempting to develop a serum. If his experiments proved successful, he said, he would “become a very famous man.” Holguin naturally objected to the guinea-pig experiment, but was restrained and injected against his will. “Don’t worry,” Hirano promised. “If you contract malaria, I will see that you get the required medicine.”
Within two days, all five captives had malaria, three of them with acute infections. The symptoms, recalled Holguin, were agonizing:
Our bodies shivered and trembled as if we were freezing to death; our teeth chattered uncontrollably and our body temperature skyrocketed. Atkiss, Lanigan, and Nason became prostrate. They lay on the floor unable to stand up or do anything except shake and moan.
Dr. Hirano’s medical orderly conscientiously took temperatures, pulses, and samples of blood readings which he recorded in a book. I asked him for the anti-malarial medicine that Dr. Hirano had promised. He said nothing.
Holguin and McMurria possibly were in better health than the other three at time of the experiment. Their infections were less debilitating, and within a week they recovered. But the other three continued to weaken. Kepchia was distraught as he watched Atkiss and Lanigan, with whom he had flown more than thirty combat missions, slowly die before his eyes. “I tried to rouse them, he remembered. “I’d say, ‘Come on! What the hell’s wrong with you guys? Come on, perk up!’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, I just don’t feel like it. I’m tired; maybe later.’ I begged, ‘Come on, Dick. Get up. You know you have to walk this off.’”
But the two young navy fliers were beyond recovery. Lanigan, only twenty-one years old, died on the night of July 29. Atkiss, known affectionately by his friends and even his crewmen as “Doo Doo,” lost his battle the next morning.
Two weeks later, the war ended.
Sergeant Ronnie Warren was brought to Banana Plantation sometime around the beginning of August. He had received no medical attention while the Kempeitai held him at Nangananga, so his broken leg had healed at an odd angle. Otherwise his health seemed good to the other prisoners, as he had been in captivity for less than six weeks.
Around the seventh of August, the guards began to display what Holguin called “visible apprehension.” Message traffic increased, as did the activity level of the Japanese, and finally Holguin asked a guard what all the excitement was about. “The Americans are destroying the cities of Japan with their bombs,” he was told. “Tokyo has been burning for days.” That the Japanese already knew about the atomic blast that had leveled much of Hiroshima is unlikely—and they probably would not have believed such news anyway—but as the days progressed the guards expressed concern about an invasion of their homeland.
ON AUGUST 15, as Japanese cities smoldered from weeks of firebombing and the detonation of two atomic bombs, radio stations across the country broadcast a prerecorded speech by Emperor Hirohito. The Empire, he intoned, was surrendering to the Allies. It took hours for the shocking news to set in. At distant locations like Rabaul, with remote outposts in New Guinea, New Ireland, and Bougainville, days elapsed before confirmation of the cessation of hostilities was obtained.
Surrender pamphlets were hastily printed and dropped by Allied planes. Tens of thousands rained down on the Gazelle Peninsula, although not a single former POW ever mentioned such announcements in their memoirs. Meanwhile, Allied communications operators monitored all of the known Japanese frequencies, waiting for an announcement from General Imamura. Finally, on August 22, a full week after the formal surrender announcement, Imamura broke his silence: “Officers and men of the Japanese Forces. For the sake of the Japanese nation and humanity as a whole, the Japanese government on August 11 announced its willingness to cease fighting and accept the terms offered by the Allies.”
THE MILITARY POLICE had informed the prisoners days earlier. Holguin and McMurria were outside the enclosure on the morning of August 16 when the camp commandant, Warrant Officer Torataro Matsumoto, appeared in full uniform. He instructed the guards to unlock the enclosure and bring the other captives outside. Nason was not able to walk, but the other half-naked, mostly starved prisoners shuffled outside.
Sitting behind a small table that some guards had placed for him, Matsumoto addressed the Allies. They could scarcely believe their ears:
The war between Japan and America is finished; America has won. From this moment you are no longer prisoners of war. You are gentlemen.
Your friends have been told you are here and they will come for you soon, although I don’t know exactly when.
Matsumoto ordered the lock on the door thrown away. He told the ex-prisoners they were free to leave, but recommended that they stay under the care of the Japanese until the Allies arrived. Overwhelmed by the turn of events, the men did exactly that. “We did not cheer or openly rejoice,” Nason wrote. The prisoners were fearful of reprisals, he explained. “There was a lot for the Japanese to cover up.”
As the news sunk in, the captives realized that they did not have to return to the enclosure, but the urge was practically a reflex. “We looked at each other and grinned at each other and McMurria did a soft-shoe shuffle,” Nason wrote. “I wanted to jig, too, but I couldn’t stand up, damn it.”
There was little for the ex-captives to do but wait. The former captors became solicitous with tea, cigarettes, and candy, but did not overfeed the men. Within a few days they were moved south to a house near Kempeitai headquarters at Nangananga. The bungalow offered a clifftop view of the sea. Having lived for many months in a prison down in a gully surrounded by jungle foliage, the freed men rejoiced at the expanse of blue sky, the aquamarine ocean, and the lush green landscaping. “The outside world with all its beauty was still out there,” noted McMurria, “still waiting for us.”
The ex-prisoners still ate rice for every meal. The only difference was that the Japanese provided plenty of it, along with side dishes. McMurria, having lived on little else since January of 1943, calculated that he had eaten almost three thousand consecutive meals of rice.
The Japanese provided baths, fresh bedding, clean clothing, and even sharp scissors for grooming. The men soaked off months of filth, trimmed their hair and beards, and felt some of th
e tension and anxiety slip away. The old phonograph reappeared, as did the scratchy German recordings. Once again the former prisoners wept unashamedly. “Uncontrollable emotion,” recalled McMurria, “lapsed into deep meditation and not a word was spoken for hours as we played the music over and over.”
Whether the Japanese were brilliant psychologists or merely provided the music as a well-meaning gesture, the hours of solace and the accompaniment of gentle music were exactly what the men needed. Before they could move on, before they could to come to grips with the nightmare they had lived through, they needed to reflect on the many comrades whose slow, miserable deaths they had witnessed.
Sitting in the warm sunshine, reveling in a soft ocean breeze, the former prisoners gazed out over the caldera at the blue sea and let the music wash over them. Infinitesimally, the healing began.
NO AIRDROPS OF food and medical supplies were made to the Kempeitai headquarters near Rabaul, unlike the big prison camps in Japan, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Under MacArthur’s orders, the area had been transferred more than a year earlier to Australian authority—and the former prisoners began to feel as though they’d been forgotten. “Actually,” wrote Holguin, “we lived at Nangananga for two long weeks as our ‘friends’ were apparently in no hurry to get us out of there. They should have dropped us some clothing or Red Cross parcels. But they did nothing.”
Lark Force had been forgotten too, some forty-five months earlier.
But eventually liberation day arrived, courtesy of the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy. On Wednesday, September 5, fully three weeks after the surrender announcement, the appropriately named HMAS Vendetta, an old V class destroyer, entered Simpson Harbor to conduct surrender arrangements with representatives of Imamura’s and Kusaka’s staffs. A Japanese liaison party rode out from the shore in a cutter and formalized the necessary details.
The following morning, a Commonwealth task force centered on an even more-appropriately named ship, the light fleet aircraft carrier HMS Glory, arrived off Rabaul. At approximately 0900, steaming in Saint George’s Channel, the flattop launched a flight of Corsairs. They provided watchful cover while HMS Hart, a small warship classified by the British as a sloop, headed into Kabanga Bay to pick up Imamura, Kusaka, and the other members of the Japanese surrender party. (Distrustful of the enemy, the task force commander was not about to take his ships under the guns that ringed Blanche Bay and Simpson Harbor.)
Suddenly the carrier began to shudder violently. “It was as if an unseen hand had picked up the ship and shook it,” recalled Lt. B. A. Harding. “All hands were ordered to damage stations. Momentarily, it was feared that the vessel had run aground on an uncharted reef.”
But Glory had not struck an obstacle. The violence was caused by an earthquake, one so powerful it had rocked the seven-hundred-foot-long, thirteen-thousand-ton aircraft carrier like a bathtub toy. The event was fitting, as though the kaia, the local Tolai natives’ name for the evil spirits that that inhabited the mountains, were having the last word.
But not quite. The last word that day belonged to a robust, fierce-looking Australian, Lt. Gen. Vernon A. H. Sturdee. A veteran of Gallipoli in World War I, Sturdee was set to succeed Gen. Sir Thomas Blamey as the commander in chief of all Australian military forces in a few months. Imamura and Kusaka, with their party of fifteen additional staff, came aboard Glory a few minutes before 1100 hours. One of the aircraft elevators brought them up to the flight deck, where they appeared to be astonished at the large assembly of approximately one thousand Commonwealth soldiers and sailors.
Imamura, dressed casually and described as “short and stubby, hard-faced, with heavy lips and generous girth,” made no attempt to hide a surly expression. Kusaka and his naval staff, by comparison, wore spotless dress whites fitted with brightly gilded rank badges and gold braid. Imamura, as the senior Japanese, appeared almost frumpy as he stepped forward to face Sturdee, whose steel-eyed gaze was every bit as tough as his surname implied.
“You will now place your sword on the table in token of surrender,” he ordered.
Imamura hesitated for nearly a minute, looking surlier than ever, but finally fumbled with the buckles and placed the sword across the table “in a precarious position.”
Speaking into a brace of microphones, Sturdee read the Instrument of Surrender. At 1127 hours, Imamura signed it, officially surrendering 139,000 troops to the Allies. Kusaka also signed the document, representing the Imperial Navy’s capitulation in the Australian area. The ceremony concluded, the Japanese party prepared to depart the carrier. Before they left, they received official instructions for the occupation of Rabaul and New Britain, scheduled to begin on September 10.
Imamura looked shaken. The act of turning over his sword had been exceedingly difficult. In contrast to the thousands of his countrymen who had killed themselves rather than commit such a dishonorable act, he had surrendered quietly.
ALTHOUGH THE OCCUPATION was not scheduled to begin until September 10, someone in the high command decided to go in three days early to rescue the former POWs. Almost immediately after the surrender ceremony, another liaison meeting was arranged in Simpson Harbor. Captain P. Brice Morris, RAN, ordered the Japanese to have the prisoners available for transfer the next morning.
Unaware of these developments, or even of the surrender ceremony, the former captives were collected at 0900 on September 7. Colonel Kikuchi and Maj. Matsuda arrived with a caravan of vehicles at the Allies’ bungalow, bringing bottles of sake and small cups with which the former enemies toasted each other. The ex-prisoners then boarded the vehicles, which paused briefly at Kikuchi’s headquarters. There the entire 6th Field Kempeitai came to attention and rendered a formal salute. Finally, the Allies were driven over rough roads to the waterfront, where a pier extended out into Simpson Harbor. The men exited the vehicles with Maj. Matsuda and waited for the arranged pickup.
Soon another truck rolled to a halt near the shore. Eighteen British soldiers climbed down, all wearing Japanese-issued uniforms and appearing—to the Americans—to be in decent shape. There had once been six hundred of them: Royal Army gunners captured in Singapore, and subsequently shipped to Rabaul in late 1942. The great majority had perished on Ballale Island south of Bougainville, and many others had died in captivity on Watom Island in Ataliklikun Bay. The eighteen gunners were all that remained, representing a survival rate of 3 percent.
HMAS Vendetta rode at anchor in the harbor. When its cutter pulled up to the jetty, the former prisoners were surprised—after years with their small-sized captors—to see several gigantic Aussie sailors armed with Sten guns step ashore. The senior Japanese officer, who wore “a crudely constructed peg leg,” balked at turning over the prisoners to the Royal Australian Navy ahead of schedule. Captain Morris ignored him, pointed to the prisoners, and said, “Get these men aboard my ship immediately.” There was a brief standoff, after which the Japanese agreed to the conditions, but only after signing releases of responsibility. Greatly annoyed by the delay, Morris looked at the ragged prisoners, and then ordered his aide to return to the ship and bring food.
While Morris worked through a stack of papers, the cutter returned with tubs of Australian soft drinks, bread, and real butter. No meal had ever tasted finer to the survivors, who devoured the food “in about five minutes,” McMurria recalled.
The ex-prisoners were also offered a treat that nearly brought more tears of joy: real Lucky Strike cigarettes. McMurria was confused, however, when he saw that the packet was white, not the familiar dark green. What had happened to his favorite smokes? The Aussie sailors informed him solemnly that “Lucky Strike green had gone to war and was no more.”
The metaphor was not lost on McMurria. He had been gone a long time. And neither he nor the other emaciated men would ever be the same.
But they had a future. For the rest of his long life, McMurria would remember the elation of leaving that jetty. The discovery about Lucky Strikes, he later wrote, “was
only the beginning of so many revelations that lay ahead for eight reborn souls speeding joyously toward the destroyer and a new world, free at last.”
*The naval designator TDR stands for Torpedo Drone, R being the code for Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Corporation, which assembled the drones in El Segundo, California.
Epilogue
FOUR DAYS AFTER the surrender ceremony aboard HMS Glory, the Allied occupation of Rabaul began. Landing craft shuttled the first troops ashore at 0900, and within hours three battalions were settling into tent cities. A large ANGAU contingent branched out to feed and provide medical care for the civilian internees and native population. RAAF Catalinas taxied into Simpson Harbor, ready to fly out the most urgent medical cases.
While the Australians began occupation duties, three members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force set off to find Vice Admiral Kusaka and arrange the surrender of the Rabaul aerial forces. Flying Officer Douglas H. Vahry, an intelligence officer and aerial photography specialist, knew exactly where they were going. Seconded for several months to the 1st Marine Air Wing, based on Bougainville, he had scrutinized almost every photograph taken over Rabaul during the closing stages of the war.
Driving west and south around the caldera, the New Zealanders saw nothing but splintered ruins and charred timbers where structures had stood. Not one intact building remained at the airdrome. Along the fringes of the dispersal areas, the Imperial Navy’s once-dominant air force lay in jumbled ruins. Dozens of wrecks were scattered among the boneyards of aluminum airframes, broken wings, and pieces of twisted scrap.
The most senior member of the trio was a squadron leader, equivalent to a major, which meant the surrender would be a formality. Still, when the party arrived at the appointed place, they received a surprise. “Their interpreter said that Vice Admiral Kusaka had malaria and could not be present for the surrender,” recalled Vahry. “I shattered all by saying, ‘Get him here immediately,’ and they did!”