Nimitz sent out a message that read, "Once again radio intelligence has enabled the fighting forces of the Pacific and the Southwest Pacific to know where and when to hit the enemy." He added, "My only regret is that our appreciation, which is unlimited, can be extended only to those who read this system."
Bull Halsey liked to think of the islands of the Pacific as a ladder, with each newly won island a rung in the climb toward Tokyo. Guadalcanal, now finally and irrevocably in Allied hands, was the first rung of the ladder to be ascended.
Hitting the Japanese Where They Weren't
In the division of Pacific war responsibilities dictated by the Joint Chiefs, Nimitz was required to provide MacArthur with naval support. In another of his smart decisions, Nimitz sent Halsey to work with The General. The two of them hit it off swimmingly, forming an ardent mutual admiration duo. In his MacArthur biography, American Caesar, William Manchester has told how MacArthur, after his first meeting with Halsey, clapped the admiral on the back and said, "If you come with me, I'll make you a greater man than Nelson ever dreamed of being."
Together they put into practice the strategy of finding out from intelligence where the Japanese were most expecting an attack and then striking their weaker spots somewhere else. For example, Halsey found out that the Japanese, after losing Guadalcanal, anticipated that the next target in the Solomons would be the island of Kolombangara, and they armed the island with ten thousand troops. Instead, Halsey bounded past them and seized Vella Lavella, garrisoned by fewer than a thousand. Outflanked, the Japanese had to evacuate Kolombangara, giving it up with scarcely a shot being fired. Similarly, on the large island of Bougainville, Halsey leapfrogged past the most strongly fortified base, at Buin, and sent his troops ashore at Empress Augusta Bay, farther along the coast. So he and Nimitz began climbing the island ladder.
MacArthur planned similar tactics on New Guinea. His first try, however, did not work out as he had hoped. When the Japanese had been stopped short of Port Moresby and their disease-ridden remaining troops were ordered to withdraw back over the Owen Stanleys, he directed that a pincer attack be made at Buna, on New Guinea's northern coast. His idea was to have a newly arrived American infantry division press from the land while an amphibious force came in from the sea. The General expected a quick victory over a weak garrison. The importance he attached to the Buna offensive is indicated by his final words to his field commander, General Robert L. Eichelberger: "Bob, take Buna or don't come back alive."
His twin attacks did surprise the Japanese, but then MacArthur encountered his own surprise. Instead of facing a few jungle-weakened, battle-weary survivors, his troops faced a large cadre of fresh reinforcements. The battle for Buna turned into a protracted, costly campaign.
Buna taught MacArthur several lessons. One was that he could not afford never going to the battle sites himself. By staying back at his spacious, elegant quarters at Port Moresby and letting his field commanders direct the fighting at Buna, he strengthened his GIs' estimation, and for many their detestation, of him as "Dugout Doug." Second, he learned not to allow his field officers to send their troops in direct frontal assaults if any other course was possible. On Buna these tactics cost almost twice as many men as were lost on Guadalcanal. And he might well have learned not to deepen the common soldiers' antipathy by issuing more of his grandiloquent communiqués, one of which at Buna claimed, in the face of what every GI knew to be false, that "probably no campaign in history against a thoroughly prepared and trained army produced such complete and decisive results with so little an expenditure of life and resources." This last lesson, though, was probably more than his imperial character could absorb.
Although Buna was a low point for him, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese there did force them finally to abandon any lingering hope of taking Port Moresby. It gave MacArthur a foothold to begin his daring moves up New Guinea's northern coast. And yes, Eichelberger did come back alive.
After Buna, The General corrected his image by becoming almost too visible to his combat troops. When his paratroopers were making their first landing on the New Guinea coast, he insisted on going along in the lead plane. When his troops made beach landings, he arrived while the fighting was still intense, striding forward helmetless, in his pushed-up gold-braided cap and noncamouflaged khakis, smoking his corncob pipe, and persisted in walking so near the front lines that he could poke with his toe at the still-warm bodies of snipers shot out of the trees. When others in his entourage dived for cover, he remained upright, presenting a target that, miraculously, never got hit.
In March 1943, Allied codebreakers set up another victory. A decrypt warned that the Japanese, determined not to give up another inch of the New Guinea coast, were dispatching to their base at Lae an infantry division of seven thousand troops, transferred from Korea and north China. The soldiers were to be conveyed from Rabaul in eight transports, escorted by eight destroyers.
Major General George C. Kenney, MacArthur's air chief, had already been working closely with the codebreakers in planning his air strikes. He read their decodes about the convoy as a fine opportunity to test out new antiship tactics he'd instituted. Bombs dropped from a great height, he had decided, rarely hit their targets. His alternative was to train his medium-range bomber crews to swoop in at a low level and send their fragmentation bombs skipping over the water like flat stones thrown from the beach. The bombs were timed to detonate only after they had penetrated the ships' hulls.
His skip-bombing techniques won the day in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Told by the cryptanalysts where to look, Kenney's recon planes spotted the convoy. Its ships were first intercepted by Flying Fortresses employing their precision bombing from on high. They sank only one ship. The next day, when the Japanese Zeros were high up in anticipation of another Fortress raid, Kenney's skip bombers sneaked in just above the wave tops—a neat turnaround on the tactics that had won at Midway. All eight of the transports, as well as four of the destroyers, were sunk, with the loss of thousands of Japanese troops. The battle put an end to Japanese attempts to move anything larger than a small barge by daylight when they were within range of Allied aircraft.
In the months that followed, MacArthur made slow, slogging progress up New Guinea's northern coast. By late January 1944, he had still gone only about a third of the way and faced strengthened Japanese defenses along the island's western two-thirds. However, another important cryptologic change had taken place. Previously MacArthur had been largely dependent on decrypts of Japanese naval codes; the army codes resisted penetration. But as the Allied troops pushed back the Japanese in the battles at a place called Sio, an engineer with a mine detector discovered a bonanza. The retreating infantry had buried a steel trunk that contained the division's entire cipher library. Within days Central Bureau was decoding army messages by the thousands.
The army and navy decrypts combined to tell MacArthur that the Japanese were expecting his next amphibious attack to be launched against Wewak and Hansa Bay, not far from his previous advance. They were so sure of what he would do that they had begun reinforcing their defenders at these sites, including shifting troops from their base much farther along, at Hollandia (now called Jayapura). On the strength of this information, The General decided not to take the small, expected step. He would make the big leap to Hollandia.
Most commanders regard military strategy from within the confines of their own particular service. Army officers, for example, are apt to regard water as a hostile environment. Not MacArthur. He, with Halsey in charge of his naval wing and Kenney the air, became adept at what the admiring Churchill called "triphibious" operations. According to Manchester's biography, during the Pacific war MacArthur made eighty-seven end-around thrusts from the water, and all of them were successful.
None was more so than his triphibious operations at Hollandia. Nimitz contributed by supplying carrier-based air support, but, concerned about exposing his carriers to Japanese bombers, he limited their particip
ation to just three days. MacArthur responded by planning an additional landing at Aitape, 125 miles southeast of Hollandia. Capture of the Japanese airfield there would assure him of continuing air cover. His staff also worked out an elaborate series of deceptions. Kenney's planes played to Japanese preconceptions by bombing and strafing Hansa Bay defenses and by conducting highly conspicuous reconnaissance flights. Torpedo boats made themselves obvious in the area. Submarines left empty rafts ashore to suggest that patrols had been there to investigate landing sites. And when the Allied flotilla sailed toward Hollandia, the ships made feints toward the Wewak and Hansa Bay strongpoints, then at night swerved toward their real target.
MacArthur's quantum leap went off with few hitches. The landings at both Aitape and Hollandia were unopposed. Troops of the small Japanese garrisons faded into the jungle, most of them dying of starvation or succumbing to disease while trying to reach the nearest friendly base. The airfields were captured, and Nimitz's carriers retired without loss. A strong Allied force held the ground separating Japanese strength to the west from that to the east.
Edward Drea's MacArthur's Ultra summed up the Hollandia offensive as the codebreakers' "single greatest contribution to The General's Pacific strategy." Drea also saw it as a masterpiece of integrating signals intelligence "into operational planning to deceive, outmaneuver, and isolate an opponent."
By this one daring leapfrog of an attack, MacArthur had extended his control to halfway along New Guinea's fifteen-hundred-mile northern coast—and a lot farther toward his goal of stepping again on Philippine soil.
Perhaps the most telling commentary on MacArthur's tactics was that given after the war by Japanese intelligence officer Colonel Matsuichi Juro. He called The General's envelopment techniques "the type of strategy we hated most." Juro described how, repeatedly, MacArthur, "with minimal losses, attacked a relatively weak area, constructed airfields and then proceeded to cut the supply lines. . . . Our strong points were gradually starved out. . . . The Americans flowed into our weaker points and submerged us, just as water seeks the weakest entry to sink the ship. We respected this type of strategy . . . because it gained the most while losing the least."
While these land and air battles were proceeding satisfactorily, the Allied and Imperial navies were battering each other in a series of engagements. Although in these battles the Japanese generally sank more ships than they lost, the factor of fleet attrition was coming to the fore. The fighting in the South Pacific claimed far more warships, especially destroyers, than Japan's production could replace, while American shipyards were sending veritable armadas of new vessels down the ways. Also, Yamamoto had expended much of the cream of Japan's experienced fliers in ill-advised attacks, many of which were tipped off by Allied codebreakers, against strongly fortified targets. Well-trained airmen were another resource Japan was not replenishing.
It was in these waters that John F. Kennedy, skippering patrol torpedo boat PT-109, had his close call with early death. Patrolling off the Solomons on August 2, 1943, Kennedy had his boat rammed, split in half and set afire by a Japanese destroyer. Two of the crew of thirteen were killed outright and a third was badly burned. Towing the injured man by clenching the ties of his life jacket in his teeth, Kennedy led the others on a four-hour swim to Plum Pudding Island, well within the Japanese area of control. Fortunately the destruction of PT-109 had been sighted by a coast watcher. After six days of hiding out and of desperate recon swims by Kennedy, who had been on the Harvard swim team, the eleven survivors were found by natives who were pro-Allies, and a rendezvous was arranged with another torpedo boat. Kennedy's life was spared probably by the impotence of Japanese cryptanalysts. The codes used by the coast watcher in reporting the loss of his boat and arranging his crew's rescue were ones that even a moderately skilled analyst should have solved. But only Allied receivers read the messages, and the rescue operation went off without interference.
Codebreakers Plot Yamamoto's Fall
One of the most thankless but necessary tasks of intelligence units was the deflation of exaggerated battle reports. Allied codebreakers could set the records straight, but Admiral Yamamoto had no comparable service to correct his fliers' overoptimism. His spirit was buoyed, therefore, by the inflated claims of success by his aviators in their series of raids meant to blunt any planned offensive the Allies might try after Guadalcanal. The admiral came south to Rabaul to begin a tour in which he would review operations and encourage his men. Allied cryptanalysts intercepted messages that offered a tempting possibility: Yamamoto's itinerary would bring him within range of planes lifting off from Henderson Field. Since Yamamoto was known to pride himself on his punctuality, he and his retinue could be expected to follow a precise schedule. Did the Americans dare an aerial ambush?
It was a vexing question. Japanese confidence in their code systems still held. But if American planes suddenly appeared in the correct time and place to intercept Yamamoto's tour—wouldn't that convince the most diehard believer that the Japanese system had been compromised?
When Admiral Nimitz was presented with the decrypts, his answer was to go for it. The removal of so venerated a leader would count for far more than the possible jeopardy to this one phase of Allied codebreaking. Besides, the coast watchers provided a viable cover story: personnel involved in the mission, and thus vulnerable to capture, would be told that the information came from informants at Rabaul. Nimitz secured the approval of the higher-ups in Washington.
On the morning of April 18, 1943, a flight of sixteen fighters took off from Henderson Field and flew at wave-top height to sneak under radar detection and avoid sightings by pro-Japanese coastal watchers. The American timing had to be precise. Even with drop tanks, the four-hundred-mile distance to the point of interception was at the far edge of the P-38s' limits; they couldn't wait around for Yamamoto and his escorts to appear.
There was no need to worry. The two Mitsubishi bombers bearing the admiral and members of his staff, along with protecting Zeros, were right on time. Part of the American flight soared up to take on the Zeros and provide cover. The other planes slipped in, raked the bombers with fire and sent the one bearing Yamamoto flaming into the jungle.
The admiral's death had the desired effect. When it was belatedly reported to the public in May, the Japanese people were profoundly shocked. Many later traced their disheartenment with the war to that moment. Yamamoto, always a dangerous offensive force, was replaced by a conservative, defense-minded strategist.
As David Kahn summed up the episode, "Cryptanalysis had given America the equivalent of a major victory."
Nimitz Goes Island-Hopping
While MacArthur was making end runs up the long coast of New Guinea, Chester Nimitz was intent on forcing the Japanese to contract the perimeter of their Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere.
He was having to plan without the services of Joe Rochefort. In the autumn of 1942 the credit war claimed Rochefort as victim. His superiors in Washington, regarding him as a prickly obstacle in the way of their earning plaudits for major intelligence coups, continued to be incensed that he had made fools of them in their off-the-mark predictions. In October he received orders to report for temporary duty at the Office of Naval Operations in Washington. His staff thought this would be good for him. He would gain a respite from the hard work and bad air-conditioning at Pearl Harbor that had given him a persistent bronchial cough and caused him to lose a lot of weight. He might, in transit, get to spend a few days with his family in California. He might even be given a decoration or promotion.
Rochefort knew better. Benefits were not what Washington had in mind. By then Naval Intelligence had been taken over by Admiral Joseph R. Redman, who had eased out Laurance Safford, OP-20-G chief and a good friend of Rochefort. In Safford's place, Redman had installed his younger brother, John. For Admiral Redman, a primary personal objective was to gain control over the intelligence network of the U.S. Navy. As Rochefort said in his reminiscences, Redman
wanted "to have somebody on Hypo that would be a creature of his, and this obviously was not going to be Rochefort." Turning over to Jasper Holmes a package of personal papers and the keys to his desk, Rochefort predicted to his doubting colleagues that he would not return to Pearl Harbor.
His assertion was quickly verified when he reached Washington. He was accused of "squabbling" with Nimitz's staff members, opposing a recent reorganization and failing to keep his headquarters informed. After a brief stay in Washington, he was eventually assigned to the Tiburon peninsula in California, where he served as an instructor in the Floating Drydock Training Center. With Rochefort out of the way, the Redman brothers wrote their own history that claimed Midway as an OP-20-G triumph and gave Rochefort only the briefest, most grudging mention.
So mean-spirited were they that when Nimitz recommended Rochefort to receive the Distinguished Service Medal, they saw to it that the award was blocked. In 1958, when Nimitz tried again, he was told that the time had passed for awarding medals in recognition of World War II service. It was not true: Rochefort was granted the medal. The only trouble was that by that time he had been dead for nine years.
The Navy's chief of staff, Admiral Ernest J. King, did salvage some of Rochefort's intelligence skills and knowledge. In late 1944 he recalled Rochefort to join a special group preparing intelligence summaries for him. But Rochefort's time in the Floating Drydock Training Center was a long year lost to Allied intelligence—and what a mockery of an assignment it was for the man responsible, in the words of his associate Holmes, for "the greatest intelligence achievement in the Navy's history."
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