Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  Japan’s outposts were soon disturbed. The Allies struck at the Outer South Seas bases. On February 20, an American carrier unit, Vice Admiral Wilson E. Brown’s Task Force 11 with the Lexington, attempted a carrier raid on Rabaul. The fleet was nearing its intended launch position that morning when a JNAF plane appeared on radar just thirty-five miles away. The Lexington launched fighters and caught that snooper, then another, but a third search plane escaped. That afternoon two bomber formations led by Lieutenant Commander Ito Takuzo streaked toward Brown’s task force, which dispatched combat air patrols to intercept them. With most of the ship’s fighters engaging the first wave, a second was detected, and just two fighters were positioned to oppose it. Pilot Edward H. (“Butch”) O’Hare became the sole interceptor when his wingman’s guns jammed. Butch O’Hare pressed his attacks and shot down two Japanese aircraft, damaging a third so badly it crashed. O’Hare had also been in on the fight that morning, making his score five planes. Butch O’Hare became America’s first Pacific war ace. In all, thirteen of seventeen JNAF bombers and three flying boats were destroyed (by Japanese sources), against the loss of two U.S. planes. Lieutenant Noel Gayler, a future U.S. Pacific commander and head of the National Security Agency, was saved when a Japanese bullet failed to penetrate his windshield. Admiral Brown, surprise lost, broke off. Starting a few days later, B-17 bombers hit Rabaul in the first strike of what became a sporadic aerial campaign.

  Still the Americans were not done. Brown recommended fresh efforts. At Pearl Harbor, U.S. Pacific commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz agreed and sent Task Force 17, led by Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher, to join Brown, with orders to attack in the Solomons–New Guinea region. The combined force was headed there when the Japanese executed their next landing, on the north coast of New Guinea, capturing Lae and Salamaua from weak Australian units on March 8. These towns became the American targets, with a strike of 104 aircraft against them. The warplanes had difficulty climbing high enough to cross the Owen Stanley mountain range, but managed that feat and found the Imperial Navy in their sights. A fierce battle ensued. U.S. intelligence initially exaggerated the results, including two heavy cruisers among assorted other victims. But Japanese losses were serious enough: four merchant vessels blasted, plus damage to light cruiser Yubari, the seaplane tender Kiyokawa Maru, and light damage to three destroyers and other merchantmen. Pilot Nemoto Kumesaka of the Kiyokawa Maru recorded this as “our biggest loss since the beginning of the war.” Captain Ban Masami’s Yubari had to repair at Truk, out of action for a month.

  Japan’s landings on New Guinea completed the agreed Outer South Seas offensive so far as the Japanese Army was concerned. Despite U.S. air attacks, General Horii Tomitaro’s South Seas Detachment regrouped at Rabaul, replaced on New Guinea by naval troops. But the Imperial Navy continued eyeing the Solomons, and began raids on Port Moresby. By mid-March it had moved a detachment of Zero fighters forward to Lae, where they flew counterair missions against Moresby. A unit of Type 1, or “Betty,” bombers followed. Lae also functioned as a recovery station for bombers damaged in the Moresby raids. On April 1 there were nearly a dozen Japanese aircraft at Lae—but ten more under repair. That day there were only twenty-four planes at Rabaul, all of them at Vunakanau field. JNAF aircraft photographed Port Moresby and, in the Solomons, the island of Bougainville.

  Allied air reconnaissance detected construction at Rabaul as early as March 9. At the end of that month the headquarters of Rear Admiral Yamada Sadatoshi’s 25th Air Flotilla arrived to take closer control of the several JNAF air groups now flying from Rabaul. Conditions were primitive. Only improvised officers’ clubs served the Japanese cadres. One of the several volcanoes surrounding the town had erupted in 1937, and others were semiactive. Rabaul was subject to debilitating vapors and rains of volcanic dust, especially in summer. Ash from Vulcan volcano mountain eroded aircraft fuselages at Vunakanau, and fumes from Tavurvur ate away at fabric wing surfaces at Lakunai, major headaches. Vunakanau had fifteen fighters and nine medium bombers. At Lakunai field on April 10 there were six Zero fighters but twenty-four under repair. A couple of days later an equal number landed from the aviation ship Kasuga Maru. They had to be modified for tropical service. Yamada also lacked crews, especially after the one-sided fight with the Lexington. The JNAF often maintained only a one-to-one ratio of crews to aircraft, low by the standards of many air forces, and tropical diseases took a toll as great as enemy action. More than a dozen fresh crews were called up from Japan and the East Indies to make up shortages. One section of the flotilla’s bomber group was still training in Japan and had to be called to the front.

  The fifty-year-old Admiral Yamada had never faced anything like this. He had been a flier for half his life and had skippered two aircraft carriers. In fact, Yamada was the only aviator of flag rank in the Imperial Navy. Not just the aviation headaches, but the South Pacific climate and New Britain volcanoes posed challenges. If not on the bridge of a flattop, Yamada would have been more comfortable on the streets of Paris, where he had been a naval attaché, or Tokyo, where he had served with NGS. A resourceful officer, Yamada devised ways to protect aircraft from the elements. The admiral began pressing for new fields farther from the volcanoes. Unfortunately surveyors did a poor job selecting the first site, Kerevat, where construction began in June. When completed, its drainage was so bad the field could not initially be used. Allied air attacks were rated as “probable” by the 25th Air Flotilla war diary for this period. As raids picked up, Yamada ordered revetments camouflaged. He established new patrol patterns for scout planes to warn of task forces, searching 600 miles out on several vectors from Rabaul and two from Lae.

  On April 16 the last elements of Yamada’s fighter group* arrived aboard the Komaki Maru, sunk by an Allied air raid before she could clear the harbor. Master pilot Sakai Saburo arrived on that ship. The tropical heat had Sakai believing Komaki Maru a stinking old tub, whereas in reality she had been built in 1933. Sakai had made his reputation as a combat ace over the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.

  “Sea eagles” like Sakai filled the ranks of the air flotilla, for the JNAF pilots of this time, if not numerous, were certainly expert. More planes of the bomber group flew in a week later. The last bombers appeared on the first of May. Also arriving in Rabaul at this time were a number of geisha, as well as Korean “comfort women,” whose misery at the front would be enormous. Some accounts put their number at Rabaul in the thousands, but this seems excessive, at least in the spring of 1942, since such a number would nearly have equaled the total of naval and military personnel.

  Meanwhile on Bougainville, excepting the few hardy men and women who decided to take their chances, white civilians had been evacuated in late December. Coastwatchers kept up their reporting. The Japanese looked for the watchers to neutralize them. Several air searches came from Rabaul. On March 6, two Imperial Navy cruisers stopped at a cove to put a patrol ashore. The SNLF found nothing but the whites at a nearby plantation, whom they put on parole. Naval infantry occupied points on Bougainville at the end of March. On Buka, off the main island, there was a 1,400-foot airstrip guarded by two dozen Australian commandos from the unit that had held Kavieng, under Lieutenant John H. Mackie. With no chance against Japanese Marines backed by their fleet, the Australians withdrew. In residence on Sohana, a tiny island in Buka Passage, was coastwatcher Jack Read, who concerted with Mackie to take to the bush and set up a post for his teleradio, the coastwatcher’s most vital equipment.

  An official of the civil administration, Read had been hastily commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy. New to Bougainville, he had a dozen years’ service on New Guinea. With Sohana even more exposed than Buka itself, Read moved to the mainland with the help of natives and some Australian commandos. He made a brief excursion into Kieta town, where, backed by a few native policemen, Read used his official powers to stop looting and rioting by indigenous people that had erupted after the colonials left. The coastwatcher settled do
wn. The Japanese nearly caught Lieutenant Mackie back on Buka planting demolition charges. Read warned him and sent a Fijian missionary, Usaia Sotutu, to rescue Mackie. Sotutu hid him under palm fronds in a canoe and smuggled him across Buka Passage in the dead of night. That marked the start of a game of hide-and-seek that went on for a full year. Japanese patrols visited villages to ask about the whites. The indigenous would pretend ignorance, give false leads, or, when friendly natives provided the Japanese real information, Read, Mackie, and their “missionary boys” would disappear deeper into the jungle.

  As chief on Bougainville, Jack Read assigned Paul Mason to work from Kieta. Mason had been an islander for over two decades and, a radio hobbyist, he joined the coastwatcher organization soon after Australian Navy Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt set it up. Mason prepared his ground carefully, caching supplies widely. In early March, Japanese warships put in at Kieta. A former Japanese resident, now employed by their base force at Rabaul, landed with the troops and threatened the indigenous people. Japan had come to stay, he warned; the whites were through. Afraid of betrayal, Mason moved to one of his hide sites, only to be felled by malaria. He recovered slowly, joined by four Australian commandos who had fled their position at Buin, at the southern tip of Bougainville, when the SNLF arrived there. The Buin-Shortland-Faisi complex featured fine natural harbors and had an airstrip. The Imperial Navy coveted it, and Paul Mason realized that it needed surveillance. Having recovered, Mason asked Commander Feldt for permission to relocate there. Australian aerial reconnaissance had already established that the enemy were setting up installations at this Bougainville complex. Feldt, pleased, readily agreed. Mason set up his teleradio and a lookout post.

  From June 7, when the Bougainville coastwatchers received their first supply airdrop from Australia, the network functioned as a pillar of Allied intelligence. This had been envisioned long in advance by the Australian naval staff, which made provisions after World War I for what became the coastwatchers. Eric Feldt, himself a naval reservist and civil official on New Guinea, was recruited by Lieutenant Commander Rupert B. M. Long, the director of Australian naval intelligence, in 1939. More than 800 persons worked in the “Ferdinand” organization, as it was code-named. Commander Feldt set up shop at Townsville on the Australian east coast. When the U.S. Marines were plotting their Guadalcanal invasion, they sent officers to Ferdinand to learn everything the coastwatchers could tell them. In August 1942 there were a hundred teleradios sending to assorted control centers. Some circuits Feldt handled directly. Many reported through a Ferdinand station at Port Moresby. Tulagi was a net control too until it was lost. Once Marines were ensconced on Guadalcanal, station KEN there became a new net control. There were others. When the Allies established a combined command for the Southwest Pacific, an Allied Intelligence Bureau under Colonel C. G. Roberts would be created to manage operations, including the coastwatchers.

  Coastwatchers Read, Mason, and Mackie were by no means Ferdinand’s only principals. Henry Josselyn and John H. Keenan reported from Vella Lavella; Nick Waddell and Carden W. Seton from Choiseul; Arthur R. Evans from Kolombangara; J. A. Corrigan and Geoffrey Kuper from Santa Isabel; Dick Horton from Rendova; David S. McFarlan from Florida; Sexton and William S. Marchant from Malaita; F. A. (“Snowy”) Rhoades, Hugh Mackenzie, and Martin Clemens from Guadalcanal. Snowy Rhoades, Commander Feldt records, was the only one who truly looked the part, though what a coastwatcher should look like he never says. Donald G. Kennedy reported from Santa Isabel and later New Georgia. From time to time replacements or supplementary personnel would be sent to them. Other coastwatchers worked from New Guinea. Their hide-and-seek with the Japanese was more than a game; it was deadly. Thirty-eight coastwatchers perished in their dangerous pursuit.

  The coastwatchers effectively spied on the enemy. Submarines and seaplane patrol bombers succored the watchers when necessary, and sometimes picked up aviators Ferdinand’s people had rescued—at least 118 by the best count. The American sub Gato took in supplies and brought out people. In the summer of 1943 the Japanese made a concerted attempt to wipe out the Read-Mason organization. They captured several, but others were rescued by the Guardfish.

  Japanese commanders not only made efforts to neutralize coastwatchers; they knew a good thing when they saw one. In his secret order for defense and civil policy in the Tulagi area of April 28, 1942, Captain Kanazawa of the 8th Base Force directed that lookout posts be set up on Guadalcanal and other islands, including Florida, San Cristobal, Malaita, and Santa Isabel. Kanazawa also ordained that all Japanese enclaves be hardened for defense. Florida should be occupied if possible. Tulagi would become the seat of Japanese civil administration in the Solomons. White missionaries and others were to be removed, Germans left alone but watched closely (thus the freedom—after questioning—the Japanese had permitted an Austrian planter on Bougainville—and the suspicion with which the Ferdinand spies then viewed him). Influential persons in the community were to be co-opted and used. Captain Kanazawa envisioned Tulagi, with its floatplane base on adjoining Gavutu-Tanambogo, as a rendezvous point for schemes aimed at Australia, “the farthest advanced base for conducting operations in the Coral Sea and against New Caledonia and the New Hebrides.”

  PILLARS IN PLACE

  As the Imperial Navy looked ahead to second-phase operations, it reconsidered the strategic question of the continent down under. At Combined Fleet headquarters, Admiral Ugaki anticipated completing initial operations by March 1942. As early as the New Year he turned to thoughts of the follow-up. Others did too. Baron Tomioka at NGS thought more and more of Australia and developed a plan to invade the continent. His basic idea was to use the newly seized Dutch East Indies to catapult five Army divisions into western Australia and then springboard along the coast grabbing ports and bases. As Tomioka saw it, Australia was really a facade—half a dozen cities along the coast with desert behind them. Had he consulted the Australian general staff in the spring of 1942 they might have agreed. At the time, their defense forces in toto numbered 12,000 regulars (a little more than eighteen battalions of coast defense and internal security troops) backed by 116,500 citizen militia. Not much to defend an entire continent. The brilliant baron thought his plan a practical one.

  The main action took place at Imperial General Headquarters. There, Tomioka’s Army counterpart was Colonel Hattori Takushiro. When his operations section of the Army general staff looked at Australia, the planners gagged. They calculated that an invasion would consume as many as ten to fifteen Army divisions and require 1.5 million tons of shipping for the Army alone. That was a larger contingent than the Army had allocated for the entire Pacific war; in fact almost a third of the full force and nearly a quarter of Japan’s entire merchant fleet. Hattori could not fathom how the Army could fight in China while invading Australia. It simply could not be done. Apart from anything else, the diversion of merchant shipping would reduce raw material imports, affecting production of all manner of war matériel, most disturbingly aircraft.

  Hattori lunched with his naval counterpart at Tokyo’s Army-Navy Club. Tomioka pointed out that the Army had a huge force doing nothing in Manchuria. Hattori countered that those men deterred a Soviet invasion. He raised a cup of tea. “The tea in this cup represents our total strength,” Hattori said. He inverted the cup and the tea puddled on the floor. Of course the puddle did not cover the entire floor. “You see, it goes just so far,” the Army planner continued. “If your plan is approved I will resign.” The Navy would not get its way.

  Admiral Ugaki also did not think much of the plan, although, as already recounted, he also had difficulty with the alternatives, the FS Operation or thrusts into the Indian Ocean. Soon enough the Combined Fleet presented its Midway-Hawaii scheme. But IGHQ had still to reach a compromise, which led to the concept of isolating Australia. The FS Operation had been part of this, but there was another element—to complete the conquest of eastern New Guinea by taking Port Moresby. This became the “MO Operation
,” and both services approved it. On March 13 the Navy and Army chiefs of staff presented their program to the emperor. The MO Operation would solidify the defensive perimeter. Port Moresby would be captured by amphibious landing through the Bismarck Archipelago. The Navy General Staff released its directive on April 16. As in the occupation of Rabaul, the Army’s South Seas Detachment provided the main ground forces, and, with Eighth Fleet not yet created, the Navy’s Fourth Fleet was the executive authority. Admiral Inouye Shigeyoshi would come down from Truk to direct the maneuver. He would have part of the Kido Butai to neutralize the Allied carriers that had revealed themselves. Admiral Inouye issued his fleet secret order number thirteen, which provided for the MO Operation a week later. Inouye’s forces began to gather at Truk and Rabaul.

  As Japan coiled to strike, a new factor entered the equation. For many years the United States, Great Britain, and Australia had all had intelligence organizations intercepting the radio communications of other nations, breaking their codes, including the Japanese. There had been major successes in the 1930s, but as the world moved toward war the Japanese introduced new code and cipher systems. The Imperial Navy changed its codebook. Here is not the place to debate whether the Japanese naval codes were being read before Pearl Harbor—in my view they were not—but by early 1942 the Allies had made much progress.

  A brief description of radio intelligence activities is useful. All the Allied communications units listened to Japanese transmissions and recorded their messages to provide the raw material. The British and Australians separated these specialist radio monitors and knew them as the Y Service, with codebreakers in another entity. The United States ran interception operations as part of the same unit of the Office of Naval Communications—called Op-20-G—that was responsible for actual codebreaking. The U.S. Army had its own organization known as the Signals Intelligence Service. In addition to intercepting radio transmissions, the services took bearings on the emitters to ascertain their locations—called radio direction finding—and counted messages from the emitters to maintain traffic profiles.