War at the End of the World

by James P. Duffy

  While valuable time was lost sorting out the two regiments, the correct beaches had been located and additional troops and supplies, including the tanks and artillery, began coming ashore. The fact that the landings encountered little opposition fooled the Americans—from the lowliest soldier wading through the surf to the commanding general himself—into thinking that the enemy had in all likelihood abandoned Biak. They learned differently that night when Colonel Kuzume launched an attack using two battalions from the 22nd Infantry against what he hoped would be the entire beachhead. The overwhelming force of the Americans, who were still bringing men and equipment to shore, drove off the attackers.19

  After the landing-site foul-up was corrected, the 3rd Battalion of the 162nd Regiment moved west along the coastal road toward Mokmer. As it approached a place where the coral and limestone cliffs reached almost to the sea, about seven hundred yards west of Bosnek, the soldiers were forced into a narrow passage called the Parai Defile on American army maps, where they came under heavy fire from enemy troops. The defile was only five hundred yards wide and one and a half miles long. The ridgeline above it reached to over two hundred feet high and accommodated numerous caves and other places for Japanese troops to hide and fire down on the Americans.

  One company of American soldiers got within two hundred yards of the Mokmer Airfield on May 28, but was driven back by a powerful attack by Japanese infantry. As the Americans withdrew, they came under intense fire from the caves to their north. Soon, most of two American battalions were pinned down from both directions by fire that included a great number of machine guns, mortars, and even field artillery pieces. Several companies were cut off and isolated from their battalions. The Japanese had an unobstructed view of the Americans below, while they themselves were both protected and concealed by thick undergrowth. Return fire from American field artillery units and even shelling from destroyers stationed offshore failed to penetrate the caves and halt the firing.20

  Four Sherman tanks from the 603rd Tank Company rescued the isolated men, including Colonel Harold Haney, commander of the 162nd Infantry Regiment. A second Japanese attack at two p.m. included several of the Japanese light tanks, but their 37mm guns and thin armor proved no match for the Shermans’ 75mm cannons and heavy armor. This was the first tank-versus-tank battle fought in the SWPA. When the ships offshore added to their misery, the Japanese tank drivers decided they had had enough and retreated toward the airfield where they had been hidden. Two hours later, 41st Division commander General Fuller ordered all American troops to pull back as enemy infantry attempted to cut off their escape. Eighty-seven Americans had been wounded in the fighting, and sixteen killed. Enemy losses were unknown but suspected to be greater.21

  Frustrated in his efforts to drive the Americans out of the Mokmer area, Colonel Kuzume ordered a more powerful attack just after dawn the following morning, May 29. Led by nine tanks, the Japanese succeeded in driving the remaining Americans east toward their beachhead. Although Kuzume’s attack succeeded in regaining control of Mokmer village and nearby Parai, both of which the Americans had occupied, seven of his tanks were destroyed by Allied aircraft and artillery.22

  General Numata and Admiral Senda, who were still on the island, realized the Biak Detachment was not going to drive the invaders out as long as the Allies dominated the air and sea. Several air raids by Japanese army bombers and navy fighters had inflicted only minor damage on the Americans at a high cost of planes and pilots. Following the loss of the tanks, they sent a jointly signed message to their respective navy and army headquarters asking for “the immediate commitment of our air forces and, if possible, some fleet units,” to turn the tide against the enemy.23

  —

  By now, the invasion of Biak had done just what MacArthur expected: caught the enemy off guard and created confusion. While the island and its three operational airfields were of high importance to the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Army had already written it off and moved the Empire’s defense line back, leaving Biak as a sacrificial lamb whose primary use was to delay the Allied advance. Now two ranking army and navy officers were requesting additional support for the Biak defenders from both services. The result was several attempts over the next two weeks to deliver reinforcements to Biak, using warships, but each was turned back by either Allied air attacks or the unexpected arrival of a U.S. Navy task force.

  A final attempt to land reinforcements in support of Colonel Kuzume and his Biak Detachment was grand in design. The world’s two largest and most powerful battleships ever constructed at the time, Yamato and Musashi, were to lead an armada of Imperial warships to attack Allied naval forces off Biak and to put several thousand troops ashore on June 15. Three days before the planned attack, the entire fleet was diverted to the Marianas, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet under Admiral Raymond Spruance was engaged in a large-scale bombardment that was an indication the Americans were soon to land there. Japanese admirals were still hoping for their decisive battle, and were expecting it would occur off the Marianas. The two large battleships and their armada turned in that direction. Biak was now without hope of reinforcement.

  The same was not true for the Americans. Troops, including artillery units and two battalions from the 163rd Regiment, poured into the island on May 28, 29, and 30. Unfortunately, little real progress was made. The Japanese defenders were determined to drive out the enemy or die trying. Surrender and withdrawal were not options for most. Meanwhile, General Krueger was having second thoughts about General Fuller’s leadership. He believed, as he later wrote, that sending the battalions from the 162nd along the narrow coastal corridor under the cliffs without “adequate reconnaissance” was “imprudent to say the least.”24

  Krueger was beginning to feel pressure from MacArthur. The commanding general was unsatisfied with the level of progress on Biak, and made those feelings known to the Alamo Force commander. Fuller was anxious to capture Biak’s airfields so that MacArthur could bring in his heavy bombers, but then another option became available. Three miles south of Biak, located roughly between Bosnek and Mokmer, was a small, three-mile-long-by-one-and-a-quarter-mile-wide island called Owi. Although covered with jungle and undergrowth, the island’s interior was mostly flat, with what appeared to be enough space for engineers to quickly build an airstrip. Fuller sent a patrol from the 163rd Regiment to the island to search for signs of Japanese troops. The men reported that no enemy was present. The island’s sole inhabitants were two families who lived in homes constructed on stilts six feet above the beach. One lived on the north end and the other on the south end. Both families soon departed for their own safety.

  On June 1, a survey party of eight men from the 864th Aviation Engineers was transported to the island by an LCI, which then quickly left so that Japanese aircraft, which occasionally bombed and strafed Biak from the nearly two dozen airfields within flying distance, would not detect the American interest in Owi. For the next three days, Captain Per R. Rosen and his men walked the perimeter of the island and mapped a location for a landing strip. With no means of contacting their battalion at Bosnek, they waited to be picked up. It seems, in the confusion caused by the news of the approaching enemy fleet with the two large battleships, the survey party was forgotten. When the enemy fleet turned away on June 12, someone remembered the men on Owi and they were picked up.

  Over the next week, engineers bulldozed trees, bushes, and six-foot-high kunai grass to prepare a landing strip. On June 17, with the strip partially completed, a B-25 with a dead engine made a smooth emergency landing. Later that same day, a flight of six P-38s that had been forced to jettison their belly tanks during a dogfight and hadn’t enough fuel to make it to Hollandia touched down safely. Owi was on its way to becoming an Allied airfield.25

  Meanwhile, still stymied in his attempt to reach and capture at least the airfield at Mokmer, Fuller decided to send Colonel Oliver Newman’s 186th Regiment in a roundabout direction to the nort
h of the enemy cliffs to seize the high ground overlooking the airfield. As Newman’s men rested and prepared to attack the Japanese who were preventing the 162nd Regiment far below from reaching the airfield, Fuller altered their mission and instructed Newman to attack the airfield directly and capture it. Colonel Newman objected strenuously to the change. The enemy in the caves along the cliffs, he told Fuller, would decimate his men if they moved against the airfield and did not wipe them out first. The division’s assistant commander, Brigadier General Jens A. Doe, agreed with Newman, but Fuller would have none of it. He wanted that field taken quickly. He would only agree to allow Newman to reconnoiter the enemy positions on the cliffs for one day.26

  The limited reconnaissance undertaken by the 186th failed to discover a large force of Japanese troops who were lying in wait for the Americans. On June 7, two battalions of the 186th Regiment succeeded in capturing the airfield, killing a small number of Japanese troops nearby. Then suddenly they realized they had walked into a trap as the Japanese in the cliffs opened fire down on them with artillery, mortars, and machine guns. American artillery units attempted to silence the enemy, but the Japanese were almost invisible—until a gun flash gave a position away. Over two thousand rounds of artillery shells were fired at the hidden enemy, but had less than their desired effect, as the Japanese continuously moved their guns around or simply withdrew them into caves until they were ready to fire again.

  As the day was ending, Colonel Newman reported that his men were running dangerously low on food and water, and even more ominously, on ammunition. Since it was virtually impossible to reach the 186th over land because of the lethal fire from the cliffs, several attempts to bring supplies were made using landing craft, but these were driven off by heavy fire. During the night, landing craft did succeed in bringing in supplies and took off sixty-eight seriously wounded men and fourteen who had been killed during the day’s fighting. The airfield was now in American hands, but it could not be repaired or used by Allied planes until the cliffs had been cleared of Japanese troops.27

  Little real progress was made to put the three airfields under Allied control. General Fuller blamed the situation on a lack of manpower. He felt that he had gone in with fewer men than the job required. On June 13, he informed General Krueger that he needed another regiment to complete his mission. Although Krueger agreed to send the 34th Infantry Regiment from the 24th Division, he decided that Fuller was carrying too large a burden by remaining as both task force commander and division commander. Now that he was sending troops from another division, Krueger believed it was time to place the task force in the hands of a corps commander. He instructed General Eichelberger, who had performed a similar task at Buna, to proceed to Biak and assume the role of task force commander, leaving Fuller as division commander to deal with the ongoing tactical situation.28

  As Eichelberger was leaving Krueger’s headquarters at Hollandia after being given the Biak assignment, Krueger, whom Eichelberger was not fond of, told the corps commander, “Now don’t go and get yourself killed.” It was a play on the instructions MacArthur had given Eichelberger when he sent him to Buna in November 1942.29

  Eichelberger arrived at Biak on June 15, three days ahead of his corps headquarters. Fuller took what he considered his demotion badly and immediately resigned as commander of the 41st Division. He blamed Krueger for what had happened and vowed never to serve under him again. One of Eichelberger’s staff officers attempted to dissuade Fuller from resigning, explaining that the battle for Biak now involved more than one division, and it was natural for a corps to take over the task force. Fuller told him he had been begging for one additional regiment, and with that regiment, he claimed he could have taken all three airfields a week earlier.30

  Fuller left Biak and met with MacArthur a few days later. The commander in chief awarded him a Distinguished Service Medal. Fuller later transferred to the South East Asia Command of British admiral Lord Mountbatten, where he served as a deputy chief of staff.31

  Eichelberger moved quickly to appoint Fuller’s assistant, Brigadier General Jens A. Doe, as division commander. Doe was an aggressive combat officer with whom Eichelberger had worked earlier in the war. The new task force commander quickly became acquainted with the same pressure from Krueger that his predecessor had suffered, but resisted the Alamo Force commander and ordered a halt to all offensive action to allow time for his exhausted men to rest and recuperate. He also toured the battle areas to get a clear understanding of the combat terrain and the location of Japanese units. It soon became clear to him that many of the caves were connected with underground corridors, allowing the Japanese to move quickly from one site to another without detection.

  The key, as Eichelberger saw it, was not in direct frontal attacks on the cliffs, but in getting as many men as possible around back of the enemy to cut off his supply lines and attack from the rear. He then planned a three-pronged assault on the caves, using three battalions from the 163rd Regiment. The newly arrived troops of the 34th Regiment from the 24th Division moved farther west, where they easily captured the other two operational airfields that were only lightly defended.32

  The new American strategy worked so well that Colonel Kuzume reportedly burned the 222nd Regiment’s colors in a ceremony in one of the caves during the night of June 21–22. He followed this by committing ritual suicide, but before doing so he ordered all soldiers capable of fighting to launch a final attack on the Americans outside the cave at daylight. Those unable to participate were given grenades to end their lives.

  The following morning, the soldiers stormed out of the cave in a screaming banzai attack and ran into twelve Americans standing guard near Colonel Newman’s tent headquarters. Using rifles, machine guns, and grenades, the troops from the 186th Infantry stood their ground and mowed down 109 Japanese. One American died when an enemy soldier leaped into his foxhole and detonated a grenade that killed them both. General Eichelberger, touring the area, arrived minutes later to witness the results of the carnage. Learning what had just occurred, he awarded ten Bronze Stars and two Silver Stars to the twelve men, one posthumously.33

  Although several hundred and possibly several thousand Japanese soldiers remained alive on the island, they were mostly disorganized stragglers who were hunted down in the coming months. Eichelberger and his corps headquarters were ordered to return to Hollandia on June 28. Seven days earlier, U.S. fighter planes had landed at Mokmer Airfield. Army engineers had worked around the clock to clear debris from the runway and make required repairs.

  Fighting would continue on Biak for weeks. Finally, on August 20, General Krueger officially declared an end to the Hurricane Task Force operation. Biak had cost the lives of four hundred Americans, while another two thousand suffered battle-related wounds. The horrific conditions in which these soldiers fought is exemplified by the fact that nearly 7,500 were treated for malaria, dengue fever, and typhoid. The Japanese garrison was virtually wiped out. Over 4,700 bodies were counted and 200 taken prisoner. The rest died inside caves sealed up by detonation teams or assaulted by flamethrowers. Nearly six hundred Indian and Javanese POWs who had been used as slave laborers were liberated by the Americans.34

  To General MacArthur’s great disappointment and anger, the Biak airfields were not available for his bombers to support the Pacific Fleet’s invasion of Saipan, despite his promise to provide such assistance. However, they would be valuable for his future operations on New Guinea and the Philippines.

  CHAPTER 19

  The General, the President, and the Admiral

  In July 1944, MacArthur made his one and only trip outside the SWPA theater of war.

  On June 17, while the fighting raged on Biak and MacArthur planned his next moves, he received a disturbing message from Washington. The Joint Chiefs, under pressure from Admiral King, were considering bypassing the Philippines and targeting either Formosa, off the Chinese coast, or even the Japanese Home Islan
ds themselves. MacArthur understood the implications of this strategy. The United States government would once again ignore his beloved Philippines and its people, as he believed it had when the Japanese invaded the islands in December 1941.1

  Asked for his views and recommendations, MacArthur replied that either of the proposed operations would prove exceptionally risky since they would have to be conducted without land-based air cover. To some, this might have seemed an unusual answer from the man who as Army chief of staff had belittled the airplane. His experience battling the Japanese on and around New Guinea, however, had convinced him of the foolhardiness of fighting without powerful air support, especially from land-based bombers. There was a limit to what fighters and dive-bombers from the Pacific Fleet’s carriers could accomplish on their own.2

  MacArthur laid out his objections to bypassing the Philippines and leaving thousands of American and Filipino POWs in Japanese prison camps, and a population he referred to as “loyal Filipinos” at the mercy of the enemy. He closed by requesting that he be invited to Washington to present his views in person.3

  General Marshall replied on June 24, advising MacArthur not to allow personal feelings to weigh too heavily on vital military strategic decisions. It was clear to MacArthur that Admiral King, who had been pushing for a strictly naval campaign against the Japanese Empire, had a convert in the Army chief of staff. Marshall told the SWPA commander he would speak to the president about MacArthur’s coming to Washington to present his case personally, and expressed the opinion that Roosevelt would have no objection.4