Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943

by Bruce Gamble

  The organizer of the coastwatching organization, Lt. Cmdr. Eric Feldt, particularly hoped to rescue Kyle, his closest friend. An aging S-class sub was sent to pick up Kyle as well as Benham, but although it surfaced off New Ireland for two nights in a row, neither man was found.

  Learning that more submarines had arrived in the Southwest Pacific, Feldt traveled to Brisbane for a conference with Rear Adm. Ralph Christie, USN, commander of submarine operations in the theater. Feldt explained the value of the coastwatchers and appealed for one more attempt to save the stranded men, adding that he had an agent available to put ashore. Christie approved the plan, and on July 8 the S-43 departed Brisbane carrying Cecil John Trevelyan Mason, a thirty-nine-year-old flight officer in the RAAF.

  After making a slow, careful transit of the Coral Sea, the S-boat reached New Ireland on July 18. The next night, Mason paddled ashore in an inflatable boat and questioned a local islander, then noticed that the native wore a Japanese arm band. The man was obviously collaborating with the enemy. His answers were evasive, and he refused to divulge any helpful information about Kyle or Benham. (Both men, it turned out, had been captured less than twenty-four hours before the first sub was to pick them up.)

  Thwarted on New Ireland, Mason rendezvoused with the S-43, which then moved seventy miles east to Anir Island. There, Mason hoped to contact yet another coastwatcher, leading telegraphist Roy Woodroffe, RAN. Mason went ashore on the night of July 21 but was subsequently captured along with Woodroffe. Unaware of this, the sub’s crew elected to remain offshore for several consecutive nights while attempting to contact Mason. After ninety-six frustrating hours, the S-43 departed for Brisbane.

  The string of bad luck on New Ireland and nearby islands was one of the darkest hours for Feldt’s coastwatching program. Not only were all of the early volunteers swept up by the Japanese occupation, the agent sent to rescue them was also captured. The Japanese extracted all the information they could get from Benham, Kyle, Page, and Talmage, then took them to Nago Island in Kavieng Harbor for execution. Page and Talmage were killed on or about July 21, followed by Kyle and Benham on September 1.

  For unknown reasons, Mason and Woodroffe, along with two natives who had been captured with them, were transported to Rabaul. They were already in the POW compound, therefore, when Pease and Czechowski arrived during the second week of August. Approximately a month later the prisoners were joined by Father George W. Lepping, a newly captured Roman Catholic priest, who noted a disparity in the treatment of POWs and internees. Years later he wrote: “The military prisoners were held in much tighter security than the missionaries and other civilians, being handcuffed and roped to their beds at night.”

  During daylight hours the prisoners were allowed to mingle. Although talking was supposedly forbidden, Lepping and the others “found ways around that.” Harl Pease entertained them with stories of the 19th Bomb Group’s adventures in the Philippines and Java. He explained how the B-17s flew at night using celestial navigation, and he invented humorous nicknames for the guards based on their physical traits and personalities. Self-assured, a natural leader, Pease earned the admiration of his fellow prisoners. The guards also liked him, according to Father Lepping. “The Japanese looked up to Pease because they were in awe of the B-17. The Fortresses were semi-gods to them, and to have a Captain of a ‘Boeing,’ as they called them, was something to be remembered.”

  THE CAMP GUARDS may have admired Pease but they had no control over his fate. In late August, the 81st Naval Garrison Unit began to periodically eliminate small groups of prisoners and civilian internees. The first such event occurred on August 29, when six Australian civilians captured the previous month near Kokopo were led away under the guise of a work party. Two German priests saw the men taken from the camp. Later that day the prisoners’ possessions were brought back and buried, but the six Australians were never seen again.

  At approximately this same time, a Chinese civilian named Timothy Mak, a former clerk at the Burns, Philp & Company store in Rabaul, observed a truck carrying eleven or twelve captured officers heading toward Lakunai airdrome. Mak wasn’t able to identify the prisoners, nor did he witness what happened to them, but he was later informed that they had been executed. He “seemed sure” that some of the prisoners were American airmen and believed they were killed in retaliation for a bombing raid on Rabaul.

  The latter detail adds credibility to his statement. Shortly after 1000 hours on August 29, eight Flying Fortresses struck the dispersal area at Vunakanau airdrome. Little is known about the damages caused by the raid, but the Japanese were troubled, especially because of the heavy losses they had endured at Guadalcanal during the past few weeks. Mak’s observation adds to the likelihood that the Allied prisoners he saw on August 29 were executed as a reprisal. Two of the aviators may have been the remaining members of Keel’s crew, Sergeant Marsh and Lieutenant Reed, but their bodies were never recovered.

  ANOTHER GROUP of prisoners was led away from the compound on the morning of October 8. Father Lepping watched as guards of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit handed out picks and shovels to Pease, Czechowski, Massey, and King, as well as to the two Australian coastwatchers, Mason and Woodroffe. Captain Mizusaki, the English-speaking commandant, told the POWs that they were going to work on a new airdrome near Kokopo. He then pointed at Lepping and said, “You go tomorrow.” Before Pease and the rest of the work party left the camp, the other prisoners took up a collection and provided them with spare articles of clothing. But that afternoon, recalled Lepping, the tools and extra clothing were returned. “We never saw the six men again,” he wrote.

  After the war, WO Minoru Yoshimura, a platoon leader in the 81st Naval Garrison Unit, provided detailed testimony about the executions of Pease and the other POWs. The six men of the so-called “work party,” along with the two native islanders who had been captured in July with Mason and Woodroffe, were transported to the crematorium near Tavurvur crater. Several officers were already in attendance, including Mizusaki and his adjutant, Lt. Shiro Nakayama. Yoshimura was also somewhat surprised to see a young army doctor arrive aboard a motorcycle with a sidecar attached.

  The prisoners, wearing blindfolds and with their hands tied behind their backs, were lined up at the edge of a large hole that had been dug beforehand by native laborers. Yoshimura issued commands to several recruits to bayonet the eight prisoners, but several of the sailors were timid or hesitant with their thrusts. Only one of the POWs and the two natives fell into the hole; the other five captives lay on the ground, writhing in agony.

  At this, the medical officer moved forward, saying something to Yoshimura about singling out the healthiest survivors. Yoshimura later stated:

  I asked him what he was going to do. He did not reply, but laughed and produced some medical instruments. I then realized he was going to carry out a dissection and had possibly obtained permission from Lieutenant Nakayama or 8 Naval Base Force, so I ordered the sightseers who had crowded around to disperse and those who had work to do to go back to their unit. This doctor then cut the jugular vein of the suffering prisoner of war before opening his abdomen. He then took some dark-looking object out, which … he handed to the NCO. He then quickly stepped over to the next prisoner of war who was still alive and writhing on the ground, so the doctor cut his jugular vein, opened him up and took a dark-looking object out. This whole process took about 5 or 6 minutes. The doctor was wearing surgical gloves. I saw the doctor, NCO and driver get on their autobike afterward; the NCO was carrying a shallow white tray containing whatever objects they had removed from the two prisoners of war.

  As soon as all the prisoners of war were placed in the hole I gave the coup de grace by stabbing each one in the throat.

  For all its gruesomeness, the testimony given by Yoshimura was fairly objective, making his description of the doctor’s demeanor all the more chilling. Possibly this was Chikumi, the same medical officer who had dissected Capt. John Gray in February. If so, the docto
r may well have been a psychopath.

  The Japanese military in World War II had a reverence for cold steel. On the island of New Britain alone, literally hundreds of Allied prisoners were murdered with bayonets or katana swords. And the systematic killings continued. On November 4, 1942, exactly six months after their capture in the Coral Sea, Allan Norman and the other members of his crew were taken to the usual place near Tavurvur crater. Two other Australians—one unidentified, the other probably Sergeant Brown of 75 Squadron—accompanied the Catalina crewmen. The Japanese blindfolded them, bound each man’s arms and legs with wire, and then forced them to kneel at the edge of a common grave. All eleven men were decapitated by members of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit.

  OF ALL THE Allied aviators and coastwatchers known to have been captured in the Southwest Pacific in 1942, only those who were transported to Japan for further interrogation, namely Sergeant Lutz and Corporal Reed, survived. Likewise, Bob Thompson and four other crewmen of his downed Catalina were fortunate that an Imperial Navy cruiser plucked them from the sea and took them straight to Japan.

  Otherwise, none of the military prisoners held by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit at Rabaul were allowed to live. By the end of the year, the soft volcanic soil near Tavurvur held dozens of corpses in common graves.

  And in the years to come, many more would be added.

  CHAPTER 21

  A Shift in Momentum

  GEORGE KENNEY HAD BEEN a busy general for the past few months. On August 7, the day of the big raid on Rabaul, he sent a message to Washington requesting authorization to form a numbered air force—an all-American one at that. General Marshall had already shared with Kenney that “he didn’t think much of mixing nationalities in the same organization,” and Kenney agreed. After barely a week in Australia, he had already made up his mind that the multinational directorate system established by his predecessor, General Brett, was ineffective. His request for a new organization was approved by Marshall on August 9, and the Fifth Air Force was officially activated at Brisbane on September 3.

  Kenney used the intervening weeks to select the principal members of his staff. He admired the leadership and organizational abilities of Brigadier General Whitehead, who was still at Port Moresby, and named him deputy commander. A new headquarters, the Advance Echelon, or ADVON, was created to give Whitehead direct control of day-to-day operations in New Guinea. The assignment suited both men perfectly. Kenney, who still commanded all Allied air forces in the SWPA, would run the Fifth Air Force administratively from Brisbane while Whitehead managed combat operations from his new headquarters at Port Moresby.

  Kenney’s top priority was to build up the bomber force. When he arrived in Australia and told MacArthur that his first goal was to “knock out the Jap air strength,” he was referring primarily to Rabaul. The stronghold was the major source of enemy air power in the region. Every Japanese plane and airman arrived at Rabaul from points north—either directly from Japan, via Truk, or via the Central Pacific. Some planes and crews remained at Rabaul, but most were shuttled immediately to New Guinea or the Solomons. A bomber man at heart, Kenney intended to neutralize Rabaul and its satellite bases using established methods of bombing as well as new innovations, including low-level parafrag attacks and skip bombing.

  His choice to lead this force, known as V Bomber Command, was easy. Brigadier General Kenneth N. Walker had arrived in Australia with Whitehead back in July. Kenney had known both men for twenty years and was impressed with their style and ethics. As he later put it, they possessed “brains, leadership, loyalty, and liked to work.” The forty-four-year-old Walker, one of the youngest generals in the air force, was a zealous proponent of strategic air power. His name was practically synonymous with high altitude formation bombing, for he had been a principal member of the team that developed the tactics and techniques currently in use.

  Kenney’s choice for V Fighter Command was likewise easy. He had heard plenty of praise for the performance of Lt. Col. Paul B. “Squeeze” Wurtsmith at Darwin, where his 49th Fighter Group stoutly resisted numerous Japanese attacks. Summoned to Kenney’s office in Brisbane, Wurtsmith made a good first impression. “He looked like a partially reformed bad boy,” wrote Kenney. “He believed in himself, was an excellent thief for his group, took care of his men, and they all followed him and liked him.” Wurtsmith was informed that he was being given the fighter command. If he failed, Kenney would send him back to the States “on a slow boat.” But if he succeeded, Kenney promised him a general’s star—a jump of two ranks.

  When it came to motivating people and getting results, Kenney had few peers. MacArthur had given him carte blanche to clean house, and he quickly got rid of personnel he considered “deadwood.” Many an underperforming senior officer—especially those who had served under Brett—were posted back to the States. Kenney replaced them with people whose abilities he admired: problem solvers, tactical experts, and, most importantly, men with a desire to smash the enemy.

  Now that he had his own air force and a cadre of talented individuals, George Kenney kick-started the aerial program that had languished since the opening days of the Pacific war. Initially, however, he was sidetracked by the enemy’s campaign to invade Port Moresby by crossing the Owen Stanley Mountains. The fighting in New Guinea was fierce, both on the ground and in the air, as battles raged around Buna, Kokoda, and Milne Bay during the second half of 1942. In addition, Port Moresby itself continued to suffer frequent heavy raids from Japanese units stationed at Lae and Rabaul.

  Despite the distractions, Kenney tried to send B-17s to Rabaul as often as possible. After the big strike on August 7, several follow-up raids were conducted in the hopes of disrupting Japanese counterattacks against Guadalcanal. Six bombers attacked Rabaul on August 9, causing little appreciable damage for the loss of two more B-17s. One was shot down with no survivors over New Britain; the other crash-landed on a coral reef near the New Guinea coast, and all crewmen got out safely. Eight Fortresses returned to Rabaul on August 12, this time to hit Simpson Harbor. Prior to reaching the target they met stiff opposition from Zeros but still dropped forty-eight 500-pounders. The bombs supposedly “sank or badly damaged at least three transports,” but only one ship, the seven-thousand-ton oiler Matsumoto Maru, sustained minor damage.

  Two days later, a brand-new B-17E of the “Kangaroo Squadron” took off shortly after 0600 on a reconnaissance mission over Rabaul and Kavieng. Named Chief Seattle from the Pacific Northwest, the bomber had been paid for entirely by the citizens of Washington, many of them schoolchildren, who raised more than $280,500 during a bond campaign sponsored by one of Seattle’s newspapers. The popular effort, culminating with a special christening ceremony, generated enormous publicity for the B-17. But a happy ending was not to be. Piloted by Lt. Wilson L. Cook, a veteran of forty-five missions, Chief Seattle failed to return from just its second mission. That evening, squadron member John Steinbinder wrote in his diary: “My roommate [Lt. Hubert S. Mobley] and crew left this morning to attempt shadowing empty ships as they left Buna. They haven’t returned yet. I’m afraid they were caught or something. I sure hope they return somehow.”

  Steinbinder and the other members of the 435th Bomb Squadron would not see their comrades again. No distress calls or any other messages were ever received from Chief Seattle, and more than sixty-five years later, the fate of the bomber and its crew remains a mystery.

  RABAUL WAS HIT twice more in August, including the aforementioned mission on the 29th that may have led to the retaliatory murder of a dozen prisoners. In contrast there were only five raids in all of September, mainly because MacArthur’s forces were compelled to counter the Japanese offensive in New Guinea. By mid-September, enemy troops on the Kokoda Trail had pushed across the Owen Stanley Range to within thirty miles of Port Moresby. They were even closer to the airstrip being built at Laloki, where the construction workers were extremely nervous. Rumors that Japanese troops infiltrated the camps at night prompted many of t
he work crews to carry side arms, and those who lacked a weapon were anxious to obtain one. Sergeant Carthon P. Phillips, a crewmember in the 30th Bomb Squadron, had an unexpected encounter after landing at Laloki on September 12.

  I no sooner got down off the ladder and started getting my gear together when this black fellow came running across from a cleared area a good two hundred yards away. As he kept coming toward our B-17, I got to thinking: “What in the hell is he doing?”

  He ran up and had a roll of Australian pounds worth some two hundred dollars in his hand. He said, “Sergeant! I’ll give you this whole roll for your forty-five.”

  I said, “Man, you’re crazy. I can’t sell it to you. We’d both get in trouble.”

  He said, “Oh, yes you can—I’ll give you this whole thing for it. The Japs are coming in on us at night and I want to be able to shoot one.”

  The proximity of enemy troops to Port Moresby had everyone concerned. Kenney concentrated on attacking the Japanese supply convoys and beachheads with the Fifth Air Force as well as the RAAF, but the efforts were usually piecemeal. On September 14, just as the fighting on the Kokoda Trail reached a critical stage, the commander of SOPAC requested help for his predicament on Guadalcanal. Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley wanted the Fifth Air Force to “beat down the Jap air strength at Rabaul” so that he could land a convoy of reinforcements and supplies. MacArthur conferred with Kenney, who, in turn, called Ken Walker and told him to send his B-17s. Kenney knew the last-minute change of plans would be unpopular—the bombers had already been loaded for a mission against Buna—but the marines on Guadalcanal were in “real trouble.”

  Once again the 19th Bomb Group undertook a series of hazardous raids against Rabaul. By this time the crews could practically conduct the two-day missions in their sleep. Port Moresby was still being bombed on a regular basis, which meant the routine of safeguarding the B-17s had not changed. The crews flew from Australia to Seven Mile airdrome, where they gassed up before conducting the thousand-mile round trip to Rabaul and back. Various squadrons of the 19th flew three exhausting raids beginning September 15, but the missions yielded negligible results.