War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  Unperturbed, MacArthur then radioed his wife, Jean, in Brisbane describing the operation as “a honey.”29

  —

  On September 6, C-47s began landing at Nadzab and unloading infantry troops. All day long, in General Kenney’s words, “we ferried troops of [General] Vasey’s 7th Division from Marilinan [Tsili-Tsili] to Nadzab, while twenty-four heavy bombers plastered Lae with 82 tons of 1,000-pounders and forty-eight B-25s dropped 61 tons of bombs and fired 75,000 rounds of ammunition in support of Wootten’s advancing troops of the 9th Division.”30

  By September 10, the entire Australian 7th Division had been airlifted into Nadzab and elements had started their trek east along the Markham River toward Lae. They battled pockets of Japanese defenders but steadily drove them back. The enemy forces at Lae were bombed relentlessly, shelled from the ships offshore, while pincers of infantry troops pressed in on them from the east and the west. On September 14, soldiers from the 7th Division reached the outskirts of Lae.31 To the south, American and Australian forces were hammering Imperial Army and Navy troops at Salamaua.

  Meanwhile, the Japanese commander at Lae radioed Rabaul with a frantic call for help. General Imamura responded by sending eighty-one planes to attack the Allied landing zones. At first delayed by fog across New Britain, the planes were spotted by radar on board the destroyer Reid. They flew in three large groups and included twelve Betty bombers, eight Val dive-bombers, and sixty-one Zero fighters. To counter these invaders, the fighter direction staff aboard Reid called out forty P-38s and twenty P-47s. These included fighters from the 80th Fighter Squadron flying cover along the routes being used by Seventh Amphibious ships and craft traveling back and forth between the two Lae beachheads and Buna with supplies. The destroyer also called out planes that were on “standby” at Dobodura airfield near Buna. As the fighters engaged in running dogfights, a few of the enemy’s bombers and dive-bombers managed get through and attack several landing ships returning to Buna, causing several dozen casualties.32

  On September 8, as four American destroyers bombarded Lae from offshore, General Adachi, commanding officer of the Eighteenth Army, headquartered at Madang, radioed General Nakano at Salamaua to withdraw his forces to Lae. Realizing his position was defenseless, Nakano, who had once ordered his men to “die fighting,” had already shipped his wounded and his remaining artillery to Lae. Now Imperial forces lingering at Salamaua began to abandon the town and head north. Nearly five thousand men moved to Lae, using seventy-three barges that hugged the shore in an attempt to avoid patrolling Allied aircraft. Six hundred naval troops boarded submarines bound for Rabaul, while a rear guard of about 250 men walked toward Lae.33

  Fearful of having the 51st Division surrounded at Lae, Imperial Headquarters instructed General Imamura to withdraw all troops from Lae and have them move overland to the north coast of the Huon Peninsula. Tokyo was determined to remain in control of the Ramu Valley and the base at Finschhafen. A regiment from the 20th Division, stationed at Madang, rushed south to Finschhafen to cover the withdrawal of the 51st Division. On September 15, the last Japanese troops left Lae for an extremely difficult overland withdrawal that would be repeated several times in the coming months as Allied forces pushed the Japanese farther north and west across New Guinea.34

  When Allied commanders realized the enemy had withdrawn for Lae, leaving behind only a small volunteer force to fight a delaying action to buy the fleeing troops time, a battalion from the Australian 29th Brigade circled around the town and pursued and harassed the fleeing enemy up the coast as far as possible.

  Meanwhile, on September 11, Australian troops from the 3rd Division, along with the American 162nd Regiment, had taken control of the Salamaua airfield, which they found virtually useless. Two days later, they occupied what remained of the town. When General Herring, commander of the Australian I Corps, arrived by American PT boat on the fourteenth to determine Salamaua’s usefulness as a potential air and naval base, he rejected the idea entirely. The high point of the occupation of Salamaua took place on September 16, when a chaplain serving with the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles raised the same Australian flag the NGVR had lowered and taken with them when the Japanese invaded in March 1942.35

  Salamaua, which war and Japanese occupation had transformed into what members of the 162nd Regiment called “a filthy, rat-ridden, pestilential hole,” ceased to exist. Once the scene of a thriving 1930s social life for wealthy Australians living in Lae, with weekend dinner parties at their summer houses and numerous tennis courts, nothing remains of it today.

  The campaign for Salamaua cost the Japanese over eight thousand casualties, including nearly three thousand killed. Australian losses were 1,120 wounded and 470 killed. The American 162nd Regiment of the 41st Infantry Division suffered 76 killed and 396 wounded.36 The Japanese never realized that the battle for Salamaua was a diversion for the Allies’ real target, Lae. Fooled by this, General Adachi had transferred too many men to Salamaua, thereby weakening Lae’s defenses.

  Battling a small but determined opposition, the Australian 25th Infantry Brigade, the part of the 7th Division that had landed at Nadzab, entered Lae on September 15. Later that day, the 24th Infantry Brigade that had landed on the beaches as part of the 9th Division, joined the 25th. The campaign for Lae ended, and remnants of the Japanese 51st Division along with other enemy forces rushed northwest along the coast, seeking safety. Lae would eventually serve MacArthur’s forces as Lae Fortress, with both an Australian base and an American base.

  The Nadzab landing zone was soon converted into a busy air base, with four all-weather airfields four thousand to seven thousand feet in length. It would serve as the main base for the Allied air forces in New Guinea for the remainder of the war, but it was especially important for the next campaign: the fight for the Huon Peninsula.

  CHAPTER 13

  War on the Huon Peninsula

  The Japanese army that fled from Lae was a shadow of the force that had landed the year before. Sick, wounded, and dispirited, the army and accompanying naval troops had blown up all supplies and weapons they could not carry. Their remaining food stores, already greatly reduced by the Allied blockade of the sea routes, limited each man to a maximum of two weeks’ supply. The Imperial soldiers fell into two primary categories: first were the survivors of the 51st Division from Salamaua, all of whom were worn down by nine weeks of almost continuous combat against an enemy growing daily in size and power. Second was what remained of the Lae garrison itself, which had been stripped of most of its combat effectives who had been sent to Salamaua.

  These nine thousand men struggling to make their way to safety faced many difficulties. Australian units that had landed at Nadzab were often ahead of the Japanese, laying ambushes for harassing attacks. Allied aircraft bombed and strafed the retreating columns whenever they moved into open country. The most obvious escape routes, especially those through the Markham and Ramu Valleys, could not be used because Allied troops had so completely infiltrated the areas and Allied planes had total control of the airspace over them. Forced to improvise their own path, the Japanese spent days exhausting themselves even further by hacking trails through the dense jungle. When they approached a wide or rapidly moving stream, such as the Busu River, everything came to a halt while engineers felled trees and constructed rough bridges.1

  The route behind the retreating Japanese was littered with the decaying corpses of men who had succumbed either to wounds or to the malaria and dysentery that swept through their ranks. There was also a long trail of abandoned rifles, packs, and helmets, mostly discarded by men of the 51st Division who had become so disheartened about reaching safety that they could barely gather the strength to continue trudging through the jungle and swamps. Men of the 1st Battalion of the 20th Infantry Division, which had been sent to Salamaua to support the 51st Division, were generally in better shape. They had spent less time fighting the Allies, and their commanding officer
, Major Shigetoshi Shintani, threatened to put to death any soldier who abandoned his weapon. As a result, all the soldiers of the 1st Battalion who would reach their destination still carried their weapons.2

  When their food ran out about September 25, the retreating men raided local villages for anything to eat, even pulling half-grown potatoes from native gardens. Grass and roots quickly became the mainstay of their diet. On that same day, the soldiers began climbing the Saruwaged Range, whose peaks reached thirteen thousand feet. The intense cold at the higher elevations made life for the men, most of whom were wearing tropical uniforms, even more miserable. Those who survived the mountain cold descended into the sweltering heat of the insect-infested jungle and swamps of the valley formed by the Kwarna River.3

  Troops began arriving at Kiari, on the north coast of the Huon Peninsula, by the second week in October. Most were sent on to a rest camp near Hansa Bay farther up the New Guinea coast, while the small number who appeared fit for service were assigned to units guarding the coast. Of the 9,000 soldiers and sailors who retreated from Lae, barely 6,500 survived.

  —

  The Japanese defeats at Salamaua and Lae had an impact on both the Allies and the Imperial government in Tokyo. For the Japanese, the setbacks had wide strategic consequences. The loss of these two linchpins in their defensive line joined two other defeats at the outer edges of the empire. First was the loss of Attu Island in Alaska several months earlier, with the death of the entire 2,900-man garrison (except for 29 taken prisoner), and the Northern Army’s decision to evacuate its troops from a second American island, Kiska. Next came defeat at the hands of American and New Zealand troops in the central Solomons. Now, with the loss of the two New Guinea outposts, the Japanese were convinced they were overextended and a new defensive line would have to be drawn.

  The Imperial Army and Navy planners soon drafted an agreement developing what they called the “absolute zone of national defense.” The perimeter of this zone ran across the western end of New Guinea through the Caroline Islands to the Mariana Islands. This would be where Japan would make her final defense against an enemy increasing daily in numbers and strength who seemed determined to launch an invasion of the Home Islands. The planners anticipated that strongpoints outside the perimeter—such as Madang and Wewak in New Guinea, Rabaul in New Britain, and the northern Solomons—would fight delaying actions to buy time for the empire to build up its forces within the absolute zone for a future counterattack against the Allies.

  An Imperial Conference, only the fourth such conference since the start of the war, approved the Army and Navy agreement, with some modifications, on September 30, 1943. One of the modifications, which demonstrates the absence of reality in Japanese planning, reduced the aircraft production requirement from fifty thousand planes in 1944 to forty thousand. In truth, Japanese industry in 1943 was struggling to produce substantially fewer than two thousand planes per month.

  The speed with which Lae fell surprised everyone at Allied headquarters. General MacArthur now looked ahead to the capture of the Huon Peninsula. Named for an eighteenth-century French navigator and explorer, the Huon is 6,400 square miles of jungle with three mountain ranges crossing it. The peninsula extends east into the Bismarck Sea like a thick finger pointing directly at New Britain, across the narrow Vitiaz Strait and Dampier Strait. These two straits are separated by several small islands, the largest of which is Rooke Island. Control of the two straits, especially the larger Vitiaz, held strategic value because they blocked access from the Solomon Sea to the Bismarck Sea. The Japanese had commanded the straits since their invasion of Lae and Salamaua, and had effectively blocked MacArthur’s plans to move amphibious forces up the New Guinea coast.

  To capture the Huon, MacArthur’s next target was Finschhafen, a small port on the edge of the finger at the place where the straits were the narrowest. Fifty miles east-northeast of Lae, Finschhafen guarded the western side of the Vitiaz Strait. The original schedule called for invading Finschhafen about a month after Lae fell. Yet when Allied intelligence learned that troops from Japan’s 80th Infantry Regiment and the 21st Field Artillery Regiment, both from the 20th Division, were advancing toward Finschhafen to bolster its defenses, MacArthur immediately moved up the date.

  In addition to its location, Finschhafen’s value lay in its two excellent harbors, one at the port itself and the other a little north at Langemak Bay; both served as bases for the increased barge traffic on which the Imperial Army had come to depend for troops and supplies. In addition, a small airstrip that could accommodate fighters and light bombers was nearby. The primary defense of the area was in the hands of the 1st Shipping Group—twelve hundred troops who were mostly barge operators and mechanics—under the command of Major General Eizo Yamada. To support these largely noncombat troops, General Adachi, commander of the Eighteenth Army, decided to rush the rest of the 20th Division south. These troops, many of whom were exhausted from their efforts to construct a road from Madang to Lae, now had to trek two hundred miles from the construction site at Bogadjim to Finschhafen.4

  General Yamada realized that his base was the next likely target of the enemy. The arrival within days, mostly by barges, of the additional four thousand combat troops of the 20th Division gave him the opportunity to prepare his defenses. Anticipating that the Allies would send most of their troops overland from Lae, Yamada stationed three thousand men in defensive positions south and west of Finschhafen, facing the trails from Lae. This left slightly more than a thousand soldiers to defend the town itself. He also sent a small number of men to prepare defenses along a beach six miles north of Finschhafen, which appeared to be the only likely place for an amphibious landing.5

  —

  The day after the first troops of the Australian 9th Division entered Lae, September 15, 1943, General MacArthur called a conference in Port Moresby with the intention of moving up the date for invading Finschhafen. In attendance were Australian General Herring, General Kenney, and Admiral Barbey. MacArthur, mindful of intelligence reports that large groups of enemy troops were moving toward Finschhafen by barge and land, asked Herring how quickly troops could be made available for a landing there, and asked Barbey if he could assemble enough ships and craft to deliver those troops to the beaches off Finschhafen. Barbey claimed the ships could be ready in seventy-two hours but expressed concern about air cover for the convoy and the landing, pointing out that the target was on the Vitiaz Strait and that enemy bombers were based at several airfields on New Britain, just sixty miles away.6

  Kenney was reluctant to offer any guarantees about air cover over the narrow straits. He had originally opposed additional amphibious assaults, favoring instead an “interior option.” This called for moving troops up the Markham and Ramu Valleys and the construction of additional airfields for Kenney’s pilots to use in attacking Madang, Wewak, and other powerful and important enemy air bases in northern New Guinea. Under pressure from MacArthur, he relented and agreed to provide air cover for Barbey’s convoys and over the landing beaches as soon as daylight made it possible for his pilots to fly. He pressed once again, as he had with the Lae landings, for the amphibious assault to take place after sunrise to give his planes time to reach the beaches and bomb and strafe them prior to the landing, but Barbey once again held out for what he considered the benefit of surprise in a predawn landing. General Herring said he could have his troops and supplies ready to load on Barbey’s ships in four days. That settled it for MacArthur; he decided on a predawn assault to take place on September 22.7

  On September 21, the soldiers of the 20th Australian Infantry Brigade from the 9th Division, commanded by Brigadier Victor Windeyer, boarded Barbey’s landing craft at Lae and were joined by eight LSTs that had been loaded with supplies at Buna. In addition to the landing craft and LSTs, the convoy that was to sail along the coast toward Finschhafen included sixteen LCIs, four destroyer-transports, and ten destroyers as escorts. Five h
undred seventy-five men from the 532nd American Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment soon joined the convoy.8

  On the same day, troops from the 22nd Australian Infantry Battalion marched out of Lae and headed along the coastal road, such as it was, for Finschhafen. Meanwhile, units of the 7th Australian Infantry Division pursued remnants of the Lae garrison up the inland route through the Ramu and Markham Valleys.

  The place selected for the amphibious landing was a nine-hundred-yard-long strip of coral and sand that was only thirty feet deep and backed up to sharply rising mountains of the Kreutberg Range. Its north and south boundaries were marked by coral headlands. It was less than seven miles north of Finschhafen. A scouting party consisting of six men from the 532nd EBSR and four New Guineans had rowed ashore in rubber boats launched from two PT boats during the night of September 11 to reconnoiter the area. Recovered during the night of the fourteenth, the party’s report did not contribute much to the planning, other than to confirm there were several machine-gun emplacements near the north end of the beach.9

  It was the habit of U.S. Navy planners to identify a main landing beach as Red Beach. At Lae there was a Red Beach and a Yellow Beach, and advance parties from the 532nd had gone ashore at both beaches and raised colored screens to make it easier for the landing craft to put in at the correct beach. This had caused some confusion about the Finschhafen landing, since the site there was referred to as Scarlet Beach. An erroneous story persists that the name came from a scarlet flag that a native supposedly raised on a hill at the back of the beach. Brigadier Windeyer, who led the troops ashore, explained in 1947 that the name actually came from General Herring, who suggested it to avoid confusion with Red Beach, which was still in use at Lae. Although the banners marking the beach at Finschhafen would be red, scarlet was the closest color Herring could think of.10