In dismissing the threat of a land-based assault on Port Moresby, Willoughby, MacArthur and his advisors, and the Australians were forgetting the lesson of Malaya. There, British forces had relied on a vast jungle to the north to defend Singapore from a Japanese incursion. The Japanese overcame that jungle through sheer force of will, once again proving themselves capable of enormous daring, and forced the surrender of eighty thousand British troops.
The “ghost” in the modern Japanese army that allowed military strategists to forgo caution and field officers to push their troops beyond what was considered humanly possible was the samurai spirit. Around the ninth century, as feudalism evolved in Japan, samurai, or “those who serve,” were a small, elite warrior class within the feudal system. The samurai emphasized the twin virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice and evolved an ethic known as bushido, the “way of the warrior.” In the first half of the twentieth century, the Japanese military resurrected bushido, and distorted it as a way to transform Japan’s entire male population into willing warriors. In fact, at the time, the whole of Japanese society was being systematically indoctrinated and militarized. Slogans were omnipresent: “Ichoku isshin” (One hundred million [people], one mind) “Hoshigarimasen katsu made wa” (Abolish desire until victory). Dissent was aggressively suppressed. Unwavering dedication to the emperor, to Japan, to a culture that considered itself morally superior to the degenerate West became the norm. In fact, by World War II, the average Japanese citizen had been instilled with a master race mentality that was every bit as dangerous as the German conception of the Aryan race.
Many Japanese soldiers who came ashore at Basabua in July and August carried with them a copy of the famous Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors. The Imperial Rescript, which was promulgated by Emperor Meiji in 1882, articulated a series of virtues similar to the traditional samurai code of bushido. Bravery and loyalty were seen as the ultimate manifestations of a soldier’s commitment. He was encouraged to relinquish all personal initiative. Consequently, Japanese soldiers carried out orders unquestioningly. To become an officer, a cadet had to pass through the military academy at Ichigaya, where absolute obedience was inculcated during every waking hour, originality and individuality were stifled, and death was glorified as a transcendent act that brought honor to oneself and one’s family. A good soldier was said to die with the “Emperor’s name on [his] lips.” And death, even a grisly one, was preferable to surrender. Surrender was the consummate disgrace, a humiliation that would forever haunt not only the soldier, but the soldier’s family, too. Mothers, bidding farewell to their sons, were said to encourage them to commit suicide instead of being taken prisoner.
On August 19, as the morning burned into midday and the tropical sun bore down on them, General Horii and his men marched with all the confidence of invaders certain of victory. Soldiers led the way. Then came more troops lugging mortars, machine guns, and field pieces, followed by Rabaul natives carrying ammunition.
Horii believed that his campaign was a sacred one: “To extend the light of the Imperial power” over the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” and to eliminate the “White Race from Asia.” A popular regimental song reflected similar sentiments: “Of Heavenly Japan / The Emperor’s power is clear / We must build a new World Order…/ While we have this weighty Mission / Even if in the waters, grass-grown corpses soak / Let us go, Comrades, with hearts united.”
By the time Horii, whom a lieutenant described as an “unsympathetic man,” reached the village of Soputa ten miles inland and set up camp in a coffee plantation, he was already frustrated with his troops’ progress. He feared a protracted struggle and worried over the reliability of his supply line, which extended by ship from Rabaul to Buna and, eventually, as he advanced, by carrier into the mountains. He had hoped that they might be able to navigate the trail on horseback, but by the time he got to Soputa, he realized that the terrain was far too rugged for horses, and that he had seriously underestimated the difficulty of the advance.
As little as Allied Headquarters in Brisbane knew about New Guinea, the Japanese may have known even less. Yokoyama and Horii had no maps or geographic surveys and no conception of the topographical hurdles and medical problems their troops would encounter. Horii’s faith in the inevitability of Japanese victory was illustrative of a broader Japanese conceit—“victory disease.” Encouraged by Japan’s stunning successes in Southeast Asia, “victory disease” caused its military leaders to ignore warning signs.
The impetuousness of the Japanese plan was in keeping with the Japanese Imperial army’s modus operandi. “Fighting spirit” was valued at the expense of strategy and planning. Patience and prudence were antithetical to the most revered of all of Japan’s martial virtues: action. Supply considerations were given little attention; troops were forced to make do with inferior weapons. In many cases, infantrymen carried a Type 38 bolt-action rifle that shot only five rounds. Grenades were left over from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and were highly unreliable. The Japanese did have two exceptional weapons, a wheel-mounted artillery gun (carried in pieces), and the Juki heavy machine gun. For the most part, though, the Imperial army relied on speed, surprise, and courage. Never concerned with heavy casualty rates, the Japanese regularly employed suicide squads and night attacks to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies.
On August 26, as the first rays of dawn cut through the enveloping night fog, General Horii began his advance from Kokoda down the track. His orders to his enthusiastic troops reiterated basic Japanese battlefield tactics. “Lay in wait,” Horii advised them, “and then go around the flank…Harass them and exhaust them by ceaseless activity. Finally, when they are completely exhausted, open the offensive…The enemy must never be allowed to escape.”
Lieutenant Hirano’s company commander had issued his enigmatic message days before. “In death there is life,” he said. “In life, there is no life.” Hirano, however, required no encouragement. “I will die at the foot of the Emperor,” he wrote in his diary. “I will not fear death! Long live the Emperor! Advance with this burning feeling and even the demons will flee!”
Before Horii could march on Port Moresby, however, his Nankai Shitai would need to conquer a whole succession of villages, beginning with Isurava, roughly six miles south of Kokoda. Anticipating only feeble resistance from the Australian 39th Battalion, and certain of his troops’ superior skills, Horii held Yazawa Force in reserve at Kokoda and dedicated only three of his battalions to the attack.
At Isurava, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner and his men were under orders to “stand and fight.” If any man could hold, it was Honner. He was widely regarded as the best company commander in the Australian army and his unit, the 39th, was the top unit in the Australian militia.
Honner’s men watched the approach of Horii’s troops. Adorned with leaves and branches they marched “as purposefully as soldier ants.” As the Japanese neared Isurava, they divided: One group scrambled up Naro Ridge, which overlooked Isurava; another moved to the east in the vicinity of the Abuari waterfall; the third, advancing from Deniki, stuck to the track.
At 7:00 a.m. on August 26, the battle for Isurava commenced with the crack of rifles, the insistent pounding of Juki heavy machine guns, and mortar and mountain-gun fire.
Despite the dramatic beginning to the battle, General Horii was actually biding his time, waiting for nightfall. Twelve hours later, when darkness descended over the mountains, Horii’s troops began to move out. Once in position, they began to rhythmically chant, beginning in the rear and rising to the front lines like a crashing wave. Then, the cries of the Nankai Shitai soldiers tore through the jungle: “Banzai! Long live the Emperor!” Suddenly “all hell broke loose,” wrote Honner. Horii’s troops were “shooting, stabbing, hacking, in a…surge of blind and blazing fury.”
It was a suicidal assault, and the ensuing battle was a blur. Men screamed, bayonets flashed, bullets ripped through flesh. Separated by only a few yards
of jungle, they lunged for each other’s vital areas like wide-mouthed animals. Honner’s men had never encountered such rage. They fired haphazardly into the tangle of onrushing soldiers. Japanese fell by the dozens, but still they came.
If not for the timely arrival of elite AIF soldiers, Isurava might have fallen that evening. But together Honner’s men and the fresh AIF forces beat back the Japanese. According to Honner, the reinforcements were a “providential blessing.” Honner’s men were “gaunt spectres with gaping boots and rotting tatters of uniform hanging around them like scarecrows…. Their faces had no expression, their eyes sunk back into their sockets. They were drained by [disease], but they were still in the firing line…” One AIF soldier wrote that he “could have cried when [he] saw them.”
The morning of August 27 dawned quietly, and the Australians began to search the jungle for what Honner grimly called the “jetsam of death.” Lacking litters, medics draped bloodstained men over their shoulders and floundered back to camp.
On the Australians’ eastern flank, the scene was just as grim. Unable to stop the oncoming Japanese, Australian soldiers lunged into the overgrown jungle, leaving behind ammunition, food, clothing, and weapons. Soon, according to Honner, “Mortar bombs and mountain gun shells burst among the tree tops or slashed through to the quaking earth…. Heavy machine guns…chopped through the trees, cleaving their own lanes of fire to tear at the defences…bombs and bullets crashed and rattled in unceasing clamour.”
Day and night the Japanese kept up the bombardment, while patrols tested the Australian perimeters, sneaking in to bayonet soldiers distracted by the mortars. At the Naro Ridge Front, Horii’s troops dispensed with stealth. Honner wrote: “Through the widening breach poured another flood of attackers…met with Bren gun and tommy gun, with bayonet and grenade; but still they came, to close with the buffet of fist and boot and rifle-butt, the steel of crashing helmets and of straining, strangling fingers.” Corpses, according to Honner, “soon cluttered that stretch of open ground.”
August 28 came and went, but on the evening of August 29, Horii assembled his troops for what he hoped would be the coup de grâce, an attack so ferocious it would “shatter the Australian resistance beyond hope of recovery.”
That night, after again being beaten back by the Australians, Lieutenant Hirano wrote that one of the company commanders, a friend of his, had been killed. “Only this morning,” wrote Hirano, “he and I…were gaily conversing over a cup of ‘sake’ from his canteen. Now it is only a memory. How cruel and miserable this life is!” Despite their personal sadnesses, the Japanese army did not relent. Facing a torrent of fire from the Australian Bren and tommy guns, Horii’s troops kept coming, preferring death to the dishonor of staying back.
At noon, the Japanese threw caution to the wind. Scaling a steep hill, they ascended straight into the throat of the Australian defense, breaking through. The Australian troops withdrew down the track. Isurava was now General Horii’s.
The four-day battle for Isurava was a bloodbath. The Australians lost 250 men. Hundreds more were wounded. One battalion was reduced to half its initial size. For the Japanese, the victory was Pyrrhic at best. Horii lost over 550 men, and had more than a thousand wounded.
After Isurava, Horii’s army continued to chew up ground. With each new conquest, Horii would symbolically raise the Japanese flag. For Damien Parer, an Australian war photographer, it was a terrible sight.
Parer and the Australians could not know, though, the price Horii was paying to fly the white Japanese flag with its dazzlingly red sun. In each village it seized, Horii’s men were forced to build great, pyramid-shaped funeral pyres to cremate their dead. “Our casualties are great,” a Japanese officer wrote in his diary. “The outcome of the battle is very difficult to foresee.” Lieutenant Sakamoto, a machine gunner with Horii’s advance force, wrote somberly of corpses “piled high.”
As General Horii’s desire to take Port Moresby took on a quality of stubborn fanaticism, his preoccupation with his supply line grew. Thanks to relentless bombing by U.S. Fifth Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force units, the line was hanging by a thread. “It is humiliating,” wrote Sakamoto, “to see enemy planes strafing us, and not a single plane of ours to assist us.”
As the Nankai Shitai approached Eora Creek, Horii demanded that his commanders “exercise the most painstaking control…so that every bullet fells an enemy and every grain of rice furthers the task of the Shitai.” He then cut the daily ration of rice to one and one-half pints per man. According to Sakamoto, men were already slashing through the jungle to search for “taroes and yams to satisfy our hunger.”
Still, by early September, the Japanese attack on Port Moresby had acquired an air of inexorability. Horii’s men had fought their way over the divide. They had climbed “breath-taking cliffs” and waded through “muddy swamps,” and seized the vital Australian dropping grounds at Myola on the southern slopes of the Owen Stanleys. Now, in addition to trying to stop the Japanese, the Australians had to contend with their own supply problems. With Myola in Japanese hands, carriers had to lug huge loads on their backs all the way from Port Moresby. To make matters worse, frightened native carriers, sensing that the Australian army’s defeat was imminent, dropped their supplies and fled into the jungle.
While Horii’s army was routing the Australians on the Kokoda, other Japanese soldiers were attempting to capture Milne Bay.
At the extreme southeastern tip of New Guinea, Milne Bay is strikingly beautiful. On both sides of the bay, four-thousand-foot jungle-clad mountains rise precipitously out of the blue-green tropical waters. Between the mountains and the bay lies a thin coastal strip of swamp, sand, and dense, dripping rain forest.
The Japanese had never even expected to be at Milne Bay. Their initial plan was to seize the island of Samarai, southeast of Milne Bay, and launch a seaborne invasion of Port Moresby from there. However, when Japanese planners discovered that the Allies were constructing a garrison and an airfield at Milne Bay, they switched gears, choosing at the last minute to invade.
The Allied base was located at the head of the bay, on the only dry ground in the area. Though one airfield was in use, engineers were constructing two more. They were also building corduroy roads and improving the existing wharf.
Milne Bay was a vital piece of real estate. In Allied hands, it would allow them to guard the Coral Sea and Port Moresby against seaborne attacks from the east. It would also enable Allied pilots to hit Japanese bases in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands without having to fly over the Owen Stanley Mountains.
Although Japan’s strategists in Rabaul chose an elite naval landing force to lead the invasion of Milne Bay, and followed up with reinforcements, by the end of August it was obvious that Milne Bay was a losing effort. On the nights of September 4 and 5, Japanese troops were evacuated.
Having secured Milne Bay, MacArthur could now turn all his attention to the Kokoda. What he saw there in mid-September 1942 alarmed him. Surely he had ordered enough fighting men to the front. Why then could the Australians not hold back Horii’s army? Chafing at MacArthur’s insinuation that the Australians were not fighting, Lieutenant General Sydney Rowell, head of New Guinea Force, a position that put him in command of all Australian and American troops, tried to set the record straight. His men were exhausted, sick with dysentery and fever and, despite the reinforcements, outnumbered.
The Japanese were hardly better off. One of Horii’s section leaders kept a diary of the campaign. On September 9, he wrote, “We are in the jungle area…. The jungle was beyond description. Thirsty for water, stomach empty. The pack on the back is heavy…. My neck and back hurt when I wipe them with a cloth…the sweat still pours out and falls down like crystals…the sun of the southern country has no mercy…. The soldiers grit their teeth and continue advancing quiet as mummies…. ‘Water, water,’ all the soldiers are muttering to themselves…. We reach for the canteens on our hip from force of habit, but there isn’t
a drop of water in them. Even yet, the men still believe in miracles…. The men sleep while they walk and sometimes bump into trees…planes fly above the jungle and repeatedly attack.”
When later in the day the Japanese troops spot a stream tumbling through a valley, the section leader writes again. “Water! Water! The soldiers forgot their fatigue and ran. The water we were longing for was now flowing in front of us…Indeed there is a blessing from above! They bent down and put their mouths to the stream…. That water was not just plain water. It was the water of life and the source of energy. It was a gift from heaven for soldiers.”
Seemingly indifferent to the suffering of his men, General Horii initiated a series of savage attacks over the course of the next few days and on September 17, his troops ascended Ioribaiwa Ridge and celebrated with loud, triumphant shouts of “Banzai!” and tears of joy. Three weeks after landing at Basabua, Port Moresby was within their grasp. The Japanese had done exactly what Allied General Headquarters had said they would not, could not, do.
Chapter 5
CANNIBAL ISLAND
BEFORE THE NANKAI SHITAI clambered up Ioribaiwa Ridge, General MacArthur was confident that the reinforced Australians would be capable of halting Horii’s progress on the Kokoda track, and made plans for an offensive on “three axes.”
On the first axis, the Australians would engage Horii’s army in a “frontal action” on the Kokoda. The third consisted of “large-scale infiltrations from Milne Bay along the north coast of Papua.” But it was the second axis that was so bewildering. This one called for an American flanking movement that would penetrate and cross the Owen Stanley Mountains. In other words, MacArthur proposed to send a large group of American soldiers over the very mountains that a month earlier he believed would prevent the Japanese from reaching Port Moresby. The basic blueprint was for American troops to duck in behind the Japanese line on the Kokoda track, catching the enemy army by surprise. Then the combined American and Australian force would converge on the Buna coast with the third axis.
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