With their bombs expended, the planes came back at tree-top level, strafing across the runway and pouring their slugs into every building within sight. We dashed back for the craters and huddled miserably. The enemy bullets sprayed the field like bursts of hail. Somehow none of the pilots was hit. Then the planes were gone, working over the other end of the field. I crawled from the crater and dashed for the Command Post. There was little time to lose in crossing the field. With all our planes held down, it seemed only a matter of seconds or minutes before another wave would hit us. The open crater was no place to linger during a strafing attack.
The Command Post was still intact. But now the bombers had swung around and were spraying the tower and the shack with machine-gun bullets. Sailors entrenched in the barricades around the CP threw a storm of bullets into the air from their guns, but succeeded only in wasting ammunition. The men knew nothing about leading a plane, and the tracers arced away in the night behind the speeding bombers.
Their lack of accuracy astounded me. I forgot about the shelters and ran for the gun positions. I shoved one man away from his gun, telling him that I would take over. The man clung grimly to his weapon, refusing to abandon his post, shouting he had no authority to leave. I wasted no time arguing with him, but knocked him out of his seat. He rose to his feet, muttering curses, but another pilot who had come up behind me shoved him out of the way and picked up the ammunition belts. The sailor departed in a hurry.
The second wave of six B-26s hit the field at that moment. I jerked back on the trigger and held it down, watching the tracers flaring into the air. A Marauder passed almost overhead, and I walked the flaming shells from the nose back to the tail. But the bomber never wavered, and came roaring down at the gun position in a shallow dive, the nose gunner answering my fire.
This was my first experience on the ground with a plane coming straight at me, and fear of the ripping shells engulfed me. The vision of the bombs hurtling down and exploding directly on the gun position was both startling and fearsome. Fright overcame every other emotion and I abandoned the gun, running as quickly as I could for the sandbag shelter behind me. I didn’t even run all the way, but I leaped in a flying tackle for the shelter. For a few seconds I sat there, feeling like an idiot and an unreasonable coward. The B-26 roared overhead, passing by without bombing. I cursed my own quaking body and returned to the gun I had deserted. Slowly I stopped shaking and regained my presence of mind. This time, as I squatted behind the gun, I swore I would not run like a rabbit.
The bombers were back, the sound of their motors from only 150 feet overhead a thundering, pounding crescendo which smashed against my eardrums. They were great black shapes darting out of the darkness, spitting flame from their turrets, their exhausts piercing the gloom in flickering blue fire. I caught the trailing bomber with a burst, holding the gun steady as the plane flew into my line of fire. A thin streamer of smoke appeared, but the plane flew on steadily and then disappeared in the distance, still in formation.
Dawn broke after more than one full hour of continuous bombing and strafing attack by the enemy planes, which had swept over Lae with impunity. Not a single plane was shot down, although many thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired by the antiaircraft weapons. The pilots were so demoralized by the attack that even after the last bombs had fallen no one ran out to the fighters to take off in pursuit, as we had always done before.
Most of the installations on the field were burning. Deep craters had turned the runway into a shambles which would have prevented any flying, even had we attempted it. It seemed impossible, but the twenty fighter planes parked on both sides of the runway were safe, holed only with stray bullets and bomb fragments. We assembled at the Command Post for further orders. The pilots were bewildered and enraged by the pounding we had suffered. One flier in particular, NAP 2/C Mitsuo Suitsu, recently assigned to Lae, fairly choked with anger. He swore he would get a bomber on the next raid, even if he had to ram the plane. However, few paid much attention to him.
Before the enemy planes were out of sight, nearly 200 men were on the field, working furiously with shovels and wheelbarrows to fill in the many craters, and to clear the stones and pieces of steel from the runway.
Suddenly several orderlies came running from the Command Post, shouting hysterically: “Another attack is on the way! More than one hundred enemy planes are approaching the field!” One hundred planes! That was an incredible number; we had never heard of an attack of such magnitude. There was a flurry among the staff officers, and then shouted orders for every plane to get into the air at once. We ran to our fighters and as soon as the engines were warmed up started to taxi to the runway, which had now been prepared sufficiently for safe take-off.
The Zeros were moving into take-off position when the staff officers dashed out of the Command Post, waving their arms wildly in the air, shouting and running down to the strip. They crossed their arms in the air, the signal to cut our engines. When they came up to the fighters they explained. “The alert is called off. Our spotters made a mistake.” One officer even laughed. “The one hundred enemy planes turned out to be a formation of migrating birds!” Everyone burst into laughter. The entire episode seemed ludicrous after the tension under which we had labored.
We ate lunch as we sat around the Command Post, ready to take off in event of any further attacks. The enemy was busy today; we were still eating when the orderlies ran to us with news that Salamaua had reported six B-17s on their way to our base. No one wasted a moment. Our mess kits went flying in all directions as we raced for the fighters. Salamaua was only several minutes by air from Lae, and the bombers would soon be upon us. I never got off the ground. The other fighters were racing down the runway while I cursed an engine which refused to turn over. I tried again and again, kicking the starter. The engine was dead, and by the time I climbed in disgust from the airplane all the other fighters were in the air.
I ran across the strip for the shelters. Commander Nakajima was waving his arms furiously, shouting for me to hurry. He kept pointing to the sky. I was twenty yards from the shelter when the shriek of a falling bomb split the air like a great knife. I flung myself the last few feet through the air and crashed onto the back of men already huddled on the ground in the dugout.
In that same second the world seemed to blow up. There was a deafening roar, and the earth heaved wildly below me.
I felt something heavy pressing on my body from all directions, a terrible pressure, and then absolute blackness. I saw nothing and heard nothing. It was as though I had been cut off from the world around me. I tried to move my arms and legs, but without success. I was gripped solidly.
It may have been seconds or minutes, it was impossible to tell, when I heard a voice calling from far off. It was Commander Nakajima. “Sakai! Sakai! Where are you?” Silence for a while. Then the shouting again. “Where is he? Did Sakai make it? Look for him, damn it!”
I tried to shout back in reply. I thought I had shouted but, strangely, I could not hear my own voice. My mouth, my lips had not even moved. Something heavy was pressing against my chin.
Again Nakajima’s voice came, dimly, far away. “He must be buried. Start looking for him. Don’t waste a second. Dig!”
Buried? Of course! I was beneath rocks and sand. I opened my eyes slightly. Blackness. Then fear swept over me. I felt I was choking, that the sand was suffocating me. I tried to writhe, but I could not move an inch. The terror was choking.
Nakajima’s voice came again, a little louder this time, “Dig with anything you can get your hands on. Come on; use sticks. Use your hands and your fingernails if you have nothing else! Hurry!”
Then the sounds of scratching, of shovels digging in the sand. I waited, trying to keep from squirming. Then they were through. A hand brushed my face, felt for my skin, then brushed the sand away from my mouth and nose. Sunlight burst about me suddenly as my rescuers broke through and pulled me out.
I was not the only one buried. A
t least a dozen men were caught in the sudden collapse of the dugout when a bomb exploded nearby. But not a single man was injured! We were covered from head to foot with sand and mud which had, fortunately for us, cushioned the shock of the shelter’s collapse.
The Command Post was scattered wreckage, and a gaping crater nearby attested to our good fortune in escaping a direct hit. Most of the planes still on the runway had been smashed into small pieces, and the fuel tanks of several were flaming. Nearly an hour later, the fighters which had taken off returned to the base. The men were glum. The six Fortresses had fought off their attacks with apparent ease.
It took us two days to restore the air base after the July 2 attacks. By the fourth we were ready for a retaliation raid against Moresby. It was still July 3 by the Americans’ calendar, but we felt we could add to their celebration of their Independence Day with a few fireworks of our own. Twenty-one Zero fighters hit Moresby to find a welcome committee of twenty enemy fighters waiting for us. We attacked while the Allied planes were still diving. Our pilots claimed nine fighters definitely destroyed, and three others as probables.
We were still many miles from Lae on our return flight when I noticed a haze of black smoke drifting before the wind. As the air base came into sight, we saw that the smoke came from flaming installations directly on the field. Sheets of fire soared into the air, spilling boiling clouds of black smoke over the jungle and the beach. What had happened was obvious; in our absence enemy bombers had struck our fuel dumps.
We were still gliding in on our landing approach when seven Marauders roared in low over the jungle. We failed to see the bombers before they were over the field, their black bombs tumbling through the air to send geysers of flame and dirt high above the runway. Even as we wheeled in pursuit several fighters shot into the air from the field, and more than twenty-six Zeros in all went racing madly after the seven fleeing B-26s. For several moments there was near chaos in the sky as everyone rolled madly to get away from the other pursuing planes. Collisions were averted by only a few feet.
One fighter which had taken off from Lae pulled away from the main group. The Zero passed the bombers and then swung up and around in a sharp 180-degree turn, and plunged with terrifying speed toward the lead bomber. What appeared to be a fearless head-on attack exploded into a terrifying moment of carnage. The Japanese pilot was not firing his guns; he was going to ram! In a blur of movement, with a closing speed of nearly 600 miles an hour between the two planes, the Zero barely missed the Marauder’s right propeller, slipped along the fuselage and with its wing razored off the bomber’s vertical fin and rudder.
The Zero continued flying straight and level, apparently unharmed. Then it began a series of slow rolls, gradually losing altitude. It plunged into the sea at full speed. Seconds afterward the B-26, without its vertical fin, yawed and rolled crazily, flipped over on its back, and plunged into the water with a blinding explosion. Less than five minutes later, with at least six fighters pouring a torrent of cannon shells and bullets into its fuselage and wings, another B-26 plummeted into the waves. The five other bombers escaped.
Back at Lae, I found that the pilot who had rammed the Marauder was the same man who, on July 2, had sworn he would take an enemy bomber down with him. Suitsu had made good his threat.
We hit Moresby again on the sixth. Fifteen fighters escorted twenty-one bombers, and our planes claimed three fighters destroyed.
From July 7 through the 10 it was the enemy’s turn. For three successive nights we cowered like rats in our shelters. Lae became a nightmare of exploding bombs, of tracers raking the air base from one end to the other, of geysers of flame and smoke, burning planes, wrecked buildings, and hundreds of bomb craters. There was no doubt that the enemy intended to try to blast the Lae installation into a smoking ruin. But despite his attacks, he never achieved his main purpose—we always had fighters available to fly.
On the eleventh we made another maximum bomber effort against Moresby, with twelve fighters escorting twenty-one bombers from Rabaul. We were en route to the enemy base when Lieutenant Sasai discovered six B-17s on their way to hit our field; he broke off from the escort formation, taking five other fighters with him. It was poor judgment on Sasai’s part. He signaled Nishizawa, Ota, and me to join his flight, and the six of us attacked the big bombers in a long series of firing passes. But the Flying Fortresses proved as formidable as their name implied. We damaged three bombers, but failed to down any of the enemy planes. Their gunners were improving; one Zero went down in flames, and the other fighters, including my own, were holed with enemy bullets.
With only six Zeros flying escort, the formation which hit Moresby was scattered by enemy fighters; consequently, their bombs fell over a wide area and caused little damage to the enemy installations.
Sasai received a severe reprimand for leaving the bombers with such slight protection. He made no attempt to vindicate his action and accepted his rebuke silently. There was no doubt that he had violated the cardinal rule of escort fighters: never leave the bombers unprotected. His pilots, however, sympathized with Sasai. The B-17s were a painful thorn in our side. Their ability to ward off our attacks with such success both baffled and enraged us.
We entered a new phase of fighter operations on July 21 when a Japanese army division landed at Buna, no miles south of Lae. The troops at once worked their way inland on a frantic march through wild jungle toward Port Moresby. On a map the proposed maneuver appeared simple to execute. Buna seemed but a stone’s throw away from Moresby, across the neck of the Papuan Peninsula.
But the maps of the jungle islands are altogether different from the fierce conditions below in the dense foliage. The Japanese high command made a terrible and fatal error in committing our troops to the Moresby attack. Before the battle was ended, Japan had suffered one of her most tragic and humiliating disasters.
The Owen Stanley Mountains are nearly as high as the fearsome Alps. To describe the wild jungle on the mountain slope merely as dense growth is to indulge in understatement. The profusion of plant life is unbelievable. If there were no swamps underfoot, nor bogs, nor mud, nor soft, yielding dead plant growth, then there were razor-sharp rocks, precipitous slopes, all manner of vines and insects, oppressive heat, and diseases which struck men down mysteriously.
Crossing the Alpine glaciers is a simple task in comparison to the heartbreaking and brutal struggle of breaking through the Owen Stanley Mountain jungles. It was virtually impossible to supply the troops once they were swallowed up by the jungle morass. The injured and wounded found their wounds festering in the sweltering heat and sodden humidity. Water drained from men’s bodies from every pore. Equipment rotted away, clothes fell off in tatters, feet were cut to pulp by rocks and razor-sharp jungle grass and leaves.
For several months our troops struggled doggedly through the worst enemy they had ever faced, an enemy which did not fire guns or sow land mines or strafe, but which swallowed up hundreds of men with a single gulp, and never again released their captives. Through superhuman feats, several elements actually managed to close within a few miles of their coveted goal, the Moresby bastion. But even these successful troops met only heart-breaking failure. Almost is not enough, and before the operation was over—or, more properly, before it simply dissolved—every man perished, the majority from starvation deep within jungles from which they could find no escape.
The overland attack was a move of desperation. Originally our high command scheduled a massive amphibious assault against Moresby, but this move was eliminated on May 7 and 8 during the Coral Sea Battle, when two Japanese carriers encountered two enemy carriers in the first sea duel in which no surface ship fired at an opponent. Each force used its planes to pound the other with constant aerial bombing. We won the battle, but the enemy achieved his objective; the amphibious assault was canceled.
With our troops ashore at Buna, Rabaul headquarters ordered our attacks against Moresby discontinued, and called for constant air support
of the beachhead. The Buna landings were but a part of a larger operation, which was doomed to defeat even as it got under way. Not only did the jungle pose a threat of enormous magnitude, but our men were hobbled by a thorough lack of understanding of the problems of logistics on the part of their leaders. These weaknesses, combined with brilliant moves on the part of the enemy, assured a disaster from the very first.
Simultaneously with the Buna landings, a commando unit raced ashore at the easternmost tip of New Guinea. Working day and night, the men hacked a new airstrip out of the jungle at Rabi, which was intended to safeguard the flow of overland supplies to the men moving across New Guinea from the Buna beachhead. Strangely, the enemy failed to bomb the construction work at Rabi, but remained satisfied with photographs taken from reconnaissance planes. However, almost as soon as the men completed the new Rabi field, enemy troops burst onto their unsuspecting ranks in a surprise attack and overwhelmed the Japanese garrison. It was a brilliant stroke. We built the field, the Americans and Australians used it for their own planes!
They were not content with merely this one new field. It was evident to all of us that the Allies were building up their air strength for an all-out interdiction of Lae and Rabaul. Their engineers hacked out new airstrips from the jungle with amazing speed. Medium bombers and fighters moved onto the new runways even as their construction equipment kept working. And the attacks against Lae continued to increase in weight of aircraft and bombs. Rarely did a night pass when their Mitchells and Marauders failed to appear, bombing and strafing at will.
During the day Lae juggled its twenty to thirty operational fighters to keep six to nine Zeros always in the air over Buna, as well as a standby force to protect the field. The air cover at Buna was far below our needs, but the fighters managed to prevent any large-scale attacks from destroying the beachhead facilities.
Samurai! Page 16