Target: Rabaul: The Allied Siege of Japan's Most Infamous Stronghold, March 1943 - August 1945

by Bruce Gamble

  Unfortunately, everyone was forgetting a cautionary rhyme repeated since the dawn of flight training: There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

  Too many aviators ignored the ditty’s message, or believed it did not apply to them. On April 30, when the 90th Squadron moved over the mountains from Port Moresby to Dobodura, Larner took off from Schwimmer airdrome in his B-25, Spook II. The bomber was crammed with passengers, baggage, and supplies, yet Larner decided to show off with a low-level, high-speed pass at Dobodura. As he pulled up sharply into a tight chandelle, the overloaded B-25 stalled, fell off on one wing, and plunged into the ground. The real tragedy was that Larner’s mistake cost not only his own life, but seven others.

  The New Guinea graveyards held far too many men like Larner, as did the slopes of the Owen Stanley Mountains and the unexplored depths of the surrounding seas. Many victims had only themselves to blame. That didn’t sit well with Kenney.

  The general and his subordinate commanders needed planes and pilots. Without both, the road to Rabaul wasn’t getting any shorter.

  *Bomb craters were supposedly found in Tavurvur after the war by Australian volcanologist Dr. Norman H. Fisher. However, unless they were unusually large blast craters, they were likely the result of stray hits from almost any period of the 44-month bombing campaign.

  *The circumstances of McCullar’s brawl and subsequent disciplinary action were described by Kenney in his diary, but went unmentioned in his popular memoir, General Kenney Reports. Ostensibly this was done to protect McCullar’s reputation.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Heart of Darkness

  ANY GLANCE AT a map will show that aviators shot down or forced to abandon their aircraft in the Southwest Pacific had a high probability of ending up in the water. Neither the Allies nor the Japanese had a formal air-sea rescue organization in place during the first years of World War II, so aircrews on both sides expected a difficult ordeal if they ditched or bailed out. If a pilot or crew were not rescued within twenty-four hours, the probability of survival diminished rapidly. Getting back alive required not only resourcefulness but a hefty measure of luck.

  When Jim McMurria’s B-24 was forced down at sea on the morning of January 20, 1943, the crew’s outlook was almost hopeless. Two men died. The eight survivors clustered around a single raft designed to hold five men and floated with the currents seventy miles off the New Guinea coast. Deep in enemy territory, more than five hundred miles from the nearest friendly base, they knew there was little possibility of rescue. Their only hope would be a random encounter with a submarine or a flying boat.

  By the end of the first day, the survivors’ skin was blistering from exposure to seawater and sun. All of them had bumps and bruises, but Tom Doyle, the bombardier, lay in the center of the raft with bloody wounds. Most of the survivors hung onto a rope attached to the outside of the raft. To help their buoyancy, they removed their shoes and threw them away, a decision they would later regret. Their next concern was fresh water. A rain squall brought relief that evening, but then developed into a terrific storm that tossed and drenched the men throughout the night.

  By sunrise the sea had calmed. Later that day, spirits soared as a Liberator from their bomb group came within a few miles. McMurria fired two flares, but the B-24 droned by. Shortly before sunset, the sighting of a distant island raised hopes again. Other small islands came into view on the third day, January 22, and the survivors realized that the currents were pushing them toward New Guinea. As darkness fell, they passed through the outer reef of Wokeo Island into a lagoon, where heavy waves tossed them onto a rocky shore. Bruised and bleeding from coral cuts, the crewmen crawled a few feet before collapsing from exhaustion.

  The next morning, sympathetic natives found the Americans and took them to a local village. The eight men caused a stir across the island, and the top two native leaders became involved in the castaways’ welfare. Maligum, the luluai (headman), was a widely respected chief across the entire island cluster. His deputy, Mot, was a “doctor boy” who had learned rudimentary medicine from a missionary. Mot took over treating Doyle’s wounds, which were badly infected, using poultices made from herbs and mud. The ingredients stopped the infection and promoted healing.

  In groups of four, the airmen spent the next several weeks with Maligum and Mot in adjoining villages. At first, those who had discarded their shoes had difficulty moving about, but gradually their feet toughened. The Americans went native in other ways, too. They became proficient at Pidgin English, and when their khaki clothing was reduced to tatters, they adopted lap-laps (traditional sarongs). Most let their hair and beards grow long.

  Island life seemed idyllic, but it could not last. The eight white men not only strained the island’s limited resources, but they put the entire population at risk from the Japanese. Realizing that they could not remain, McMurria and his crew began to investigate the alternatives. More than a month after their arrival, they were excited to learn of a Catholic mission on Kairiru, just a few miles off the New Guinea coast. The island was rumored to be under enemy occupation, but the possibility of assistance from neutral missionaries was too tantalizing to ignore. After much imploring by the Americans, Mot and a small crew of natives set off in a sailing canoe to investigate. Absent for about a week, they finally returned to report that the island was indeed garrisoned by the Japanese, who were mistreating the people at the Catholic mission. Mot had managed to deliver a note from McMurria to an American priest, Father Arthur Manion, who recommended that the airmen surrender.

  Mot had performed one other deed: when he left Kairiru, he brought back several natives who had been stranded there. He meant well, but the methodical Japanese undoubtedly discovered the absent villagers.

  McMurria and his men refused to give up. Their only option was to get to the mainland somehow, then walk to Port Moresby. In their early- to mid-twenties, they naively believed this was possible. They had no concept of the challenges, which included roving patrols of Japanese soldiers, crocodiles, poisonous snakes, hostile natives, disease-carrying insects, and treacherous terrain—to say nothing of the imposing Owen Stanley Mountains. And between the eight men, they had only two pairs of shoes.

  Despite the odds, they set off within a few days with help from the islanders, who would transport the crewmen by canoe to New Guinea. They planned a roundabout route, with stops at several outer islands, until they reached a point seventy miles south of Wewak. They would land below the Sepik River, so its broad mouth would provide a barrier between the Americans and the enemy stronghold. At each stop, they would invoke Maligum’s name to assure assistance from the local population.

  Accompanied by Maligum himself for the first leg, the Americans set sail on March 7 after an emotional farewell with the generous Wokeo Islanders. Unfortunately, with each stop at a new island, the local inhabitants seemed more sullen and malnourished—and less willing to help. McMurria and his crew reached the New Guinea coast on the night of March 12.* But by then they had been betrayed, evidently by the last crew of natives. Put ashore north of the Sepik River, the Americans were kicked awake the next morning by bayonet-wielding soldiers. Seven weeks after being forced down at sea, the crewmen were taken prisoner. Some were actually relieved: they would no longer have to cross New Guinea on foot.

  So began another journey, including a trip of several miles up the Amazon-like Sepik River in a decrepit motor launch. A few days later the prisoners and their captors went the opposite direction, making a choppy run out to sea in a landing craft. It then turned north and followed the coast to Wewak, arriving the third week of March. Any relief the Americans may have felt about becoming prisoners quickly evaporated. They were held in awful conditions at Wewak, first in cramped caves for several days, then in two deep, muddy pits for a week. Finally the prisoners were moved to a hilltop enclosure.

  Living conditions improved, but in early April, a noncommissioned officer of the 6th Field Kempeit
ai arrived from Rabaul with a military police squad. Interrogations commenced. Several Japanese army officers asked questions through an interpreter. Perhaps because of the officers’ presence, the interrogations did not include beatings or torture, although threats of execution were frequent.

  After approximately a week of interrogation, the Kempeitai sergeant and his squad escorted the Americans across the narrow channel to Kairiru—the same island reconnoitered earlier by Mot. His report turned out to be accurate: the 2nd Special Naval Base Force occupied the former Catholic mission. During their brief stay, the American captives saw only a few Europeans and wondered anxiously about Mot, hoping his communication with Father Manion a few weeks earlier had not led to trouble.

  Unfortunately, it had.

  Tipped off that Allied airmen were hiding on Wokeo, the Japanese sent a patrol to the island. The soldiers arrived the second week of March, mere days after McMurria and his men departed. Mot denied all involvement, and the Japanese found nothing incriminating during a cursory search. The patrol moved on after Mot gave them a couple of chickens for their trouble; thus the islanders escaped punishment.

  The same could not be said of the missionaries on Kairiru. Mot’s trip to visit Father Manion may have precipitated a heinous war crime.

  AMONG THE DOZENS of church-based missions in New Guinea, some of the oldest were German organizations established before World War I, when New Guinea was a territory of Imperial Germany. During World War II, Japanese forces in New Guinea did not regard German missionaries as allies, even though Nazi Germany and Japan shared a military allegiance. Instead, missionaries came under the jurisdiction of the minsei-bu as neutral civilians. Soon after the Japanese occupied Wewak, they rounded up the local missionaries and transported them to Saint John’s Catholic mission on Kairiru. At first the civilians were free to move about the island, but the situation soon changed.

  Some missionaries and natives were willing to risk their lives for the Allied cause. At least two clergymen, Father Manion and Brother Victor Salois, members of the Society of the Divine Word, were American citizens. According to postwar testimonies, the Japanese discovered that several downed Allied airmen were not only hiding in the region, but had contacted the mission with the help of “local people who harbored anti-Japanese sentiment.” Mot’s visit to Kairiru fits this description precisely, and the timing of his trip is more than coincidental.

  On the morning of March 17, a few days after the Japanese patrol failed to find the Americans on Wokeo, forty-two civilian men, women, and children were rounded up at Saint John’s and escorted to the destroyer Akikaze, anchored at Kairiru. Included among the mission staff were the two Americans; there were also Chinese nationals, at least one native girl, and two Chinese infants, thought to be orphans. All were treated as neutral civilians aboard Akikaze, which sailed from Kairiru at noon. Late that afternoon the warship stopped at Manus in the Admiralty Islands, where another twenty civilians boarded—again mostly European missionaries, including six women. The next day, Akikaze arrived in Kavieng Harbor, New Ireland, stopping only long enough to receive a message delivered by boat. Akikaze then steamed south, navigating a maze of small islands until it reached the Bismarck Sea. Once safely in open water, the warship headed toward its Eighth Fleet base at Rabaul.

  Akikaze’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. Tsurukichi Sabe, evidently presumed he would deliver the civilians to New Britain. Several hundred missionaries and associates were already interned at Vunapope, the largest Catholic mission in the territory. But the message delivered at Kavieng rattled him. With a pale, somber expression, Sabe gathered his officers and informed them that Eighth Fleet Headquarters had issued orders “to dispose of all neutral civilians on board.”

  No one would dare question the order. In the Japanese military, instructions from a superior were regarded as though issued by the Emperor himself.

  Sabe directed his crew to carry out the orders. First, the civilians were moved to forward berthing spaces below the main deck. Then, within about an hour, a wooden rig was erected over the ship’s fantail. It consisted of a platform covered with mats and a simple hoisting structure. Canvas screens were spread amidships to keep the civilians from viewing the aft third of the ship.

  When the preparations were complete, Akikaze throttled up to her maximum speed of twenty-four knots (approximately twenty-seven miles per hour). One at a time, beginning with the men, the civilians were escorted to the bridge. After an interpreter recorded each individual’s name and nationality, they were led aft. Suddenly, they were seized, blindfolded, and bound at the wrists. With no time to comprehend what was happening, they were led onto the platform, attached to the overhead rig, and then hoisted into the air. At a signal from a junior officer on a nearby gun platform, each victim was shot by four crewmen: one armed with a light machine gun, the other three with rifles. The rig was designed so that the force of the wind from the destroyer’s high speed, together with the impact of the bullets, would swing the victims beyond the platform, where their bodies were released into the churning wake. In theory, at least, this would minimize the amount of gore that collected on the deck. It was also surmised that the sound of gunfire would not carry forward against the wind, thereby reducing psychological stress on the civilians.

  The process dragged on for three hours as sixty individuals—priests, friars, nuns, staff, and family members—were systematically hauled into the air, riddled with gunfire, and dumped off the fantail. The two infants were simply thrown into the sea. Afterward, sailors unrigged the platform and hosed the bloodstains off Akikaze’s steel deck. Finally, the officers conducted a funeral ceremony for the souls of the dozens of Christians they had just murdered—almost certainly with a Shinto ritual. Perhaps that, too, was in response to orders.

  BY THE TIME McMurria and his crewmen arrived at Saint John’s mission, only a few Europeans remained on Kairiru. One was a German priest, Father Andrew Gerstner, who recalled seeing the eight American captives there. Later, he confirmed some of the events that had transpired, such as the search of Wokeo Island by the Japanese patrol and the subsequent removal of the missionaries to Akikaze. But Gerstner and the Americans were not destined to share the compound for long. Only a few days after their arrival, the eight prisoners of war (POWs) were moved to a higher elevation on the island and held in a concrete structure. Under the supervision of a Korean laborer, they worked during daylight to dig a cave into a nearby hillside. Dirty, unshaven, and shoeless, they wore only the tattered remnants of their uniforms or lap-laps. Soon they became gaunt from physical labor and meager rations. Two of the prisoners, Martindale and Burnette, were incapacitated with malaria, the mosquito-borne scourge of the tropics.

  Martindale vividly described the extreme symptoms of malaria:

  The attacks came at intervals of about three days. I didn’t know which was worse, the chills or the fever. I couldn’t get warm even with every available blanket and piece of clothing piled on my body. My body shook so hard it pounded upon the concrete floor. Suddenly, the chills were gone and fever took over. It was a relief at first, and then it became unbearable. What little clothing remained on my body became saturated with sweat. Soon my mind tormented my body with visions of chocolate malted milkshakes, banana splits, snowstorms, and other icy apparitions. I uttered sounds and words with no meaning or remembrance. Then, weak and exhausted, I was back in the world of reality again, at least for several days. I quit counting after 48 attacks.

  ONE MORNING IN May 1943, the Kempeitai sergeant informed the eight Americans that they were going to Rabaul. They hoped the move would bring improvements, reasoning that such a large base would have a regular POW camp rather than concrete huts or bare pits. If nothing else, the trip would offer a change of routine. With no possessions except the rags that hung from their bodies, the prisoners were escorted down the hill to a wharf. Waiting for them was a small warship, described by both Martindale and McMurria as a “sub-chaser,” which got underway as soon as the pri
soners boarded. Daylight bombing attacks on Wewak had become more frequent, and the Imperial Navy crew had no intention of remaining in the harbor any longer than necessary.

  While the ship sped across the Bismarck Sea, the prisoners remained under guard on the main deck. The warship’s crew seemed disdainful of the army squad, and the sergeant scowled at the sailors for giving the Americans cigarettes, tea, and buttered crackers. Just before nightfall the ship arrived at Lorengau, the main port on Manus Island. The prisoners slept under the stars that night, the conditions far better than those on Kairiru, but they were awakened early. The ship got underway well before dawn, with hundreds of miles still to cover before reaching Rabaul.

  At last the sub-chaser glided into Simpson Harbor, affording the eight prisoners a close look at the enemy’s notorious base. Wisps of smoke or vapor clung to the volcanic mountains surrounding the enormous caldera. The anchorage teemed with activity as auxiliary vessels and work boats scurried among all manner of merchantmen, transports, and warships. After the sub-chaser tied up at one of the many wharves, the prisoners and their escorts boarded a truck that took them into the business district of Rabaul. The vehicle pulled up in front of a two-story wooden building that had once been a Chinese tailor shop, but now served as the headquarters of the military police.