War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  Fearing the loss of the men trapped atop Lone Tree Hill, General Sibert resorted to a maneuver that he had rejected when he took command of the task force: an amphibious landing to reach the back side of the hill. The operation involved two companies from the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Regiment, ten landing craft to ferry the troops, and thirteen other landing craft armed with 37mm guns to act as escorts and transport heavy equipment. The plan was to have these troops capture the beach and surrounding territory to the west of Lone Tree Hill. Unfortunately, the plan failed on at least two points. The planners were unaware the area directly inland was too swampy for the four tanks the escort vessels brought along, or even for the men to advance more than a few yards from the beach. They also failed to consider that the entire beach-landing zone was well within range of the 75mm artillery pieces the Japanese had in the hill. No progress was made through this maneuver.25

  While it is true the Americans could have bypassed Lone Tree Hill and left the Japanese stationed there to starve or die trying to escape, the enemy’s control of the hill gave them an ideal location from which to launch artillery barrages along the nearby shore of Maffin Bay. Since both MacArthur and Krueger saw the bay as an important staging area for five future operations—the invasions of Biak, Noemfoor, Sansapor, Morotai, and Leyte—they had no choice but to annihilate the Japanese on the hill who refused to surrender.26

  On June 25 General Tagami, recognizing the futility of continuing the defense of Lone Tree Hill, ordered the troops to withdraw. By nightfall all that could slip away had done so. Others fell victim to search parties using flamethrowers and demolition charges to seal them inside their caves. Japanese body counts by the Americans vary widely, from five hundred to a thousand, with an unknown number buried in the caves. Approximately 150 Americans died taking Lone Tree Hill, and another 550 were wounded. The exhausted 6th Division was replaced by the 31st Division, whose soldiers continued mopping up remnants of the hill’s defenders who remained behind. The division would record killing nearly three hundred more Japanese before it, too, was relieved at the end of August.

  Of the two primary goals General Krueger hoped to achieve by expanding the original landing site, Maffin Bay Airdrome fell to the Americans quickly. His other objective, Sarmi, would remain in Japanese hands until the end of the war.

  CHAPTER 18

  Bloody Biak

  The news from Wakde was not very good. Poor drainage made it nearly impossible for heavy bombers such as the B-24 to land on the airfields. This would be especially true during the rainy season, which would begin in September, roughly two months away. The airfields around Hollandia had the same problem. Fighters and B-25s might be able to use these fields, but MacArthur needed airfields from which to launch his heavies. He had promised Admiral Nimitz that his heavy bombers would be available to support the Navy’s invasion of Saipan, scheduled for June 15.

  General Kenney kept up his pressure on MacArthur to keep pushing forward in search of airfields from which he could launch his B-24s. The next obvious target for Allied planners—as well as for enemy planners—was Biak Island, 180 miles northwest of Wakde.

  The largest of the Schouten Islands that dominate the approach to Geelvink Bay, Biak is roughly forty-five miles long and twenty-five miles wide. The official U.S. Army history of the war describes it as looking, from the air, similar to an old-fashioned high-topped shoe. Lying off its northwest corner, separated by a narrow strait that was little more than a small creek, and about one-third the size of Biak, is Soepiori Island. To the southeast, below the shoe’s sole, is a group of small islands and islets known as the Padaido Islands. Mostly uninhabited, the Padaidos would play no role in the coming fighting, with the exception of the largest, Owi Island, which would earn a reputation among Army engineers as an “island of death.”

  Biak itself was like a coral fortress that had pushed up from the ocean floor during prehistoric times and dared an enemy to attempt to capture it. Most of the island is composed of rough-cut piles of sharp-edged coral that built upon itself, forming hundreds of caves, many with connecting corridors, high ridges that reached nearly 2,500 feet in height, and flat terraces. Japanese commander Colonel Naoyuki Kuzume used all these natural formations to build what MacArthur later described as a “brilliant defense structure.” Unlike other coral islands, Biak was covered with thick rain forest and tangled undergrowth that often grew more than four feet high. The island’s major drawback was an almost complete absence of freshwater. Rainwater quickly ran down to underground streams, leaving very little moisture on the surface.1

  Biak had no natural anchorages or even a decent harbor. The island’s perimeter was a coral reef that made landing troops dangerous and in some areas impossible. What made the island so valuable to both the Allies and the Japanese were the three airfields Japanese engineers had constructed along the southern shore, where the terrain was flat for several miles. A fourth airfield had been surveyed but work had not yet begun on it. The largest and most important was Mokmer Airfield. Two and a half miles west was Sorido Airfield. Both were near the coast. Between them and nearly one mile inland was Borokoe Airfield. All three names derived from nearby villages. Built on the coral, all three were capable of handling heavy bombers such as the B-24.

  Allied intelligence was of mixed value to the invasion planners. Air recon photos revealed the presence of antiaircraft guns around the airfield at Mokmer, and possibly coastal guns near the Japanese supply base at Bosnek, the planned site for the American landings. Navy planners considered this and planned for a heavy shore bombardment before any landing craft went into action.2

  The one piece of missing information was the number of enemy troops defending Biak. Photos showed hardly any, probably because they remained inside their caves and caverns during the daytime, when planes were overhead taking photographs. General Krueger decided not to send in his Alamo Scouts before the landings because he did not want to reveal to the Japanese how soon the invasion was coming. Some at MacArthur’s headquarters were estimating the defenders at no more than two thousand. General Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence officer, was apparently uneasy with the low estimates, even though he himself had put the number at 4,400. Willoughby’s second thoughts concerning the number of defenders on Biak are clear in an intelligence summary he issued on May 22, in which he wrote that it was “probable that it will be defended very strongly.”3

  At the time of the American invasion, May 27, 1944, there were roughly thirty-six thousand people on Biak. The local population was about twenty-five thousand, while the Japanese forces consisted of eleven thousand men making up the Biak Detachment. Over one-third of these men were experienced combat veterans of three battalions from the 222nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Infantry Division. Others included a company to crew nine Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks, a Formosan Special Labor Group, and several Imperial Navy base units. Immediately following the invasion of Wakde, Kuzume had terminated all construction work and turned every man he had into a combat soldier. He ignored orders he had received during April that he was to stop an invading force at water’s edge, deciding instead to allow the Americans to come ashore and catch them in traps as they made their way to the airfields. The Allied control of the air and sea made halting assault troops on the beaches highly unlikely in the face of offshore bombardment and aircraft attacks.4

  Kuzume concentrated his defenses in the hills overlooking the airfields. Inside their large caves, many of which could house over a thousand men, he installed machine-gun emplacements, mortars, and field artillery pieces that could be rolled out, fired, and retracted inside, safe from attacking enemy planes and shells fired from ships offshore. Extensive supplies of ammunition, food, and freshwater were stored inside. Several caverns even had electric generators in use. Kuzume had wisely focused his defenses so that his forces could dominate the airfields and their approaches, and turn them into killing fields.5

  Biak represented
a new defense strategy for the Imperial Japanese Army. Until then, it had relied heavily on massed banzai attacks. The high casualty rate and lack of genuine success in dislodging American forces during these attacks resulted in this new strategy, called fukkaku. It was defined as making extensive use of underground, honeycombed defensive positions such as the caves and caverns on Biak. By the spring of 1944, with many ranking Imperial Army officers recognizing that Japan could not win the war, this new strategy was designed to prolong each battle as long as possible and increase the American casualties so that at some time in the near future Japanese negotiators could get better terms from the victors. They also referred to them as “endurance engagements.” It was to prove successful on Biak.6

  Control of Biak was as important to the Imperial Japanese Navy as it was to MacArthur and Kenney. Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, commander of the battleships of the powerful Combined Fleet, wrote in his diary on the very day the American landings took place that “Biak Island is the most critical crossroad of the war.”7

  Evidently, the Imperial Navy had not learned the lesson from Midway—once again, it was seeking a “decisive battle” with the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Since it was likely this confrontation would be within bomber range of Biak, Japanese naval brass were seriously concerned that the Biak airfields would fall into American hands and their ships would be subject to attack by land-based bombers flying from there. If the island remained in Japanese hands, Imperial naval aviation could use the airfields in support of the hoped-for naval battle code-named Operation A-Go. Both sides had a lot riding on the outcome of the impending amphibious assault on Biak.8

  —

  Preparatory Allied air strikes against Biak began on May 17, 1944. B-24 Liberators flew hundreds of miles each way from the Admiralties and Nadzab almost every day. Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers flew out of Hollandia in the few days just before the landings, which were scheduled for May 27. Their raids had little effect on the enemy, since the bombing was mostly along the shore, where the landing would take place, and those further inland could not penetrate the coral caves the Japanese now called home. Some antiaircraft fire responded to the attacks, but remained minimal, as the Japanese planned on staying in safety until the enemy troops arrived. Kuzume had by now rounded up almost all the troops on the island and concentrated them in the hills overlooking the airfields.

  The Biak invasion force was code-named Hurricane Task Force. Comprising most of the 41st Infantry Division—less the 163rd Regimental Combat Team, which was still in the Wakde-Arara area—all ground elements fell under the command of Major General Horace H. Fuller. A West Point graduate, class of 1909, Fuller had served two years as a cavalry officer in the Philippines prior to World War I. During that war, he commanded a field artillery unit in several battles, earning a promotion to colonel. In December 1941, Fuller was appointed to command the 41st Infantry Division on the sudden death of the division’s previous commander.9

  In addition to the division’s regular complement, supporting the 41st were two antiaircraft batteries, two field artillery batteries, three aviation engineer battalions for airfield construction, and a tank company driving twelve Sherman M4 medium tanks that mounted a 75mm gun and several Browning machine guns. The Shermans would prove far superior to the nine light tanks Colonel Kuzume had available.

  Rear Admiral William M. Fechteler, Admiral Barbey’s deputy, commanded the Hurricane Task Force, the naval and amphibious component of the invasion. Fechteler’s ships and craft had the dual role of escorting the ground troops across the open waters from Hollandia, shelling the enemy at Biak prior to the landings, and putting the troops and their equipment safely ashore. One of his primary concerns was the coral reef around the island. Although the site selected for the landing, east of the airfields, appeared to have the least reef, he warned his officers to prepare for a sudden and radical change of direction if more was learned about the condition of the reef.10

  Fechteler’s force consisted of two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers. They escorted an array of APDs, LSTs, and other landing ships. Several of the larger landing ships carried smaller vessels to the scene, such as LVTs and DUKWs, the latter being a craft with wheels that, it was hoped, could make its way over the coral reef and onto the beach to discharge its passengers. An all-black unit from the Army’s Quartermaster Corps that usually drove trucks was assigned to drive the DUKWs. Finally, there was a Special Service Unit composed of four subchasers, three LCIs equipped with rocket launchers similar to those used at Wakde, and a seagoing tug. Since, as was the policy in SWPA, the Navy was in charge until the ground forces were all ashore, there was a naval beach party to control the landings and get the men and equipment off the beach as quickly as possible to make room for each succeeding wave.11

  Admiral Fechteler had been warned earlier that a large Japanese fleet believed to comprise six battleships, nine aircraft carriers, eleven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and thirty destroyers had been sighted by both the U.S. submarine Bonefish and an Australian Coastwatcher stationed on the remote southern Philippine island of Tawi-Tawi. Fechteler’s instructions were that if this force headed to Biak, which it could reach in thirty-one hours, and he was confronted by a superior force, he should engage in a fighting retreat in order to draw the Japanese warships within range of Allied land-based bombers from the Admiralties and Nadzab. As it happened, this large naval force was intended for the “decisive battle” with the U.S. Pacific Fleet that the Imperial Navy was so fond of seeking.12

  Air support for the Biak invasion came from General Kenney’s planes at Hollandia and Wakde, with additional support from Australian and Dutch aircraft flying long-range reconnaissance and strategic bombing missions.13

  The landing zone selected by General Krueger himself, in consultation with the naval and air commanders, was near a village named Bosnek, where they thought the coral would be the least destructive. The village was between seven and ten miles east of the airfields. At six thirty on the bright, clear morning of Saturday, May 27, designated Z-Day by MacArthur’s headquarters, Admiral Fechteler gave the signal that all ships were in their assigned positions, and forty-five minutes of bombing and shelling began. Allied planes dropped 317 tons of bombs along Biak’s southern coast, and the ships fired more than six thousand shells into the island. By the time the shelling and bombing ceased, the smoke blotted out the sunlight, hindering the boat drivers’ attempts to locate their assigned landing places.14

  The landing zone encompassed four locations identified as Green Beach 1, 2, 3, and 4. These landing sites stretched from about five hundred yards east of two stone jetties that crossed the coral reef in front of Bosnek to three hundred yards west of the jetties. Eight LSTs and five APDs positioned themselves offshore and began disembarking their cargoes of amphibious vehicles such as DUKWs and LVTs, which carried their own cargoes of tanks, artillery, and wheeled vehicles for use ashore, as well as some troops. Soon the entire area filled with dozens of landing craft of all shapes and sizes moving toward the beaches.

  When Japanese lookouts on the island first spotted the approaching warships in the distance, they reported to Colonel Kuzume that the Imperial Navy was bringing the army reinforcements it had promised. The men were soon shocked when they realized their error.15

  Kuzume was expecting the assault, but both the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army had put the date at mid-June, not late May. In fact, the surprise was so great that two high-ranking officers were caught on Biak at the time of the invasion. Lieutenant General Takazo Numata, chief of staff of the Second Area Army, had arrived on May 25 to warn Kuzume of the impending June invasion and to inspect his defense arrangements. Numata planned to fly out of Biak on May 27, but the preinvasion shelling from the American destroyers had closed the airfields. Also present was Rear Admiral Sadatoshi Senda, commanding officer of the 28th Naval Base Force at Manokwari, on the western end of New Guinea. The admiral, who
had arrived to inspect the naval defenses of Biak, would perish in the coming battle for the island.16 Allied intelligence radio interceptors later that day picked up a message from Numata to his headquarters demanding it find some way to evacuate him from Biak. It was not until June 10 that he would be rescued from the same fate that befell Senda.17

  At first it appeared that the landings would be accomplished with few problems other than those caused by the coral reef, especially since there was no defense firing from the beaches. Yet as the sixteen landing craft carrying the 2nd Battalion of the 186th Infantry Regiment made their way toward their objectives, which were the two stone jetties fronting Bosnek, a powerful westerly current drove them off course. The situation grew worse when the dense smoke caused by the bombings and shelling blinded the coxswains driving the craft, so they had no idea they had drifted astray. As a result, the battalion went ashore at a mangrove swamp two miles west of its assigned beach. A few minutes later, the 3rd Battalion landed several hundred yards to the east of the 2nd, also at the wrong site. Despite the incorrect landing sites, the troops quickly moved inland to secure a road leading from Bosnek to Mokmer.

  The original plan was that the 186th would land and secure the beaches, to be followed by the 162nd Regiment that was assigned to rush toward the airfields. Now the situation was thoroughly confused. The battalions of the 186th were closer to the airfields than the 162nd, so Colonel Oliver P. Newman, the commanding officer of the 186th, radioed General Fuller, the task force commander, requesting that the roles of the two regiments be reversed. Fuller refused to alter the original plan, so as Japanese soldiers watched from their hiding places in the caves high above, the two regiments crossed through each other’s lines.18