Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  Captains Redman and Wenger had the ear of Admiral King. Op-20-G officials saw the COMINCH almost every day. Over time Wenger convinced Ernie King the FRUPAC chief was a disruptive influence. At any rate, King got sick of the backbiting. If Rochefort had to be sacrificed to promote comity, those were the fortunes of war. With the reorganization going on perhaps Rochefort’s departure would be more understandable. In October 1942, Admiral King summoned Commander Rochefort to Washington on temporary duty. He ended up as skipper of a floating dry dock. Jasper Holmes recorded that Rochefort “became the victim of a Navy Department internal political coup.” Commander William B. Goggins succeeded him at the head of FRUPAC. His deputy would be Jasper Holmes. In later years Negat partisans claimed that 75 percent of the biggest breaks had happened there. FRUPAC veterans insist that 80 percent of the significant breakthroughs were made at Pearl Harbor.

  Behind the scenes of the codebreakers’ secret war, another conflict raged between the Office of Naval Communications and Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) over control of the Ultra empire. John Redman’s brother Joseph, already a rear admiral, was director of naval communications. Admiral Redman coveted Op-20-G and wanted Ultra for himself. Others maintained that Negat’s function was intelligence and it should be within the ONI bailiwick. This dispute triggered continuing friction and reduced effectiveness to a degree, but since it continued past our period here, it will be noted only as a persistent problem.

  As contentious as were issues between Washington and Pearl Harbor, those in General MacArthur’s command were equally thorny. MacArthur wanted primacy for his SOWESPAC G-2 staff, yet he had to contend with the Australian government, with its own intelligence services, including such special services as the coastwatchers, a Dutch special services unit, and support to guerrilla forces in the Philippines. The organizations multiplied. SOWESPAC created an Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, which specialized in reporting on captured Japanese documents, and incidentally became a major employer of Japanese-American Nisei. Also established in 1942 was the Allied Intelligence Bureau, which handled special warfare activities like support to the Filipino partisans. Commander Feldt’s coastwatcher organization Ferdinand became Section C of the Bureau. SOWESPAC also served as locus for another intelligence fusion center, the Seventh Fleet Intelligence Center (SEFIC), up and running by 1943 under Captain Arthur McCallum. Meanwhile, the Australian government’s codebreaking unit, the Central Bureau, became yet another part of this constellation. And, of course, there was Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne (FRUMEL), officially existing since March 12, 1942.

  Under Major General Charles A. Willoughby, G-2 was an Army shop, and that brought trouble with the naval codebreakers of FRUMEL. Lieutenant Commander Rudolph Fabian, its chief, crossed swords with Willoughby on numerous occasions. With Ultra, Fabian’s practice was to relate the information in decrypts but not permit access to the documents except to the top commander, General MacArthur. On one occasion, when Willoughby demanded to see a dispatch, Fabian carried a copy to the G-2’s office, took out his cigarette lighter, and burned it in front of the enraged general.

  Security was a top worry for Fabian. At the time of Coral Sea, Fabian had briefed MacArthur—as he did daily—and found the general unconvinced when the FRUMEL expert informed him that the Japanese were really going to go for Port Moresby. That did not surprise Fabian much—His own notion of the enemy strategy had been that they would go for New Caledonia first, to isolate Australia. Commander Fabian launched into an explanation of the entire Ultra process, and the SOWESPAC boss ended up diverting a transport scheduled for New Caledonia to Port Moresby instead. General MacArthur seemed so excited, the Navy officer worried the SOWESPAC leader would reveal his source. Meanwhile, British codebreakers laboring as part of the Allied common effort complained that Fabian and FRUMEL were denying them appropriate access. On the Australian side, Commander Eric Nave was a big player in Royal Australian Navy codebreaking and came aboard at FRUMEL. Fabian repeatedly upbraided Nave for lax security discipline until the latter left for the Central Bureau. Commander Fabian felt relieved to see him go.

  Rudy Fabian’s headaches only began there. At FRUMEL some of the language officers, including his Australian Navy deputy, Commander Jack B. Newman, as well as U.S. lieutenant commanders Swede Carlson and Gilbert M. Richardson, actually outranked him. Commander Newman was content to let Fabian take the lead. The others had been with Fabian in the Philippines during the desperate siege of Corregidor, and they had escaped with him by submarine. At the old Station Cast, they had had an informal understanding: Fabian would be in charge, freeing them for practical work. Both Carlson and Richardson preferred translation and code work to administration, so they were happy with the arrangement. On the British side, despite the problems with coordination, a Japanese linguist who had escaped from Singapore, Lieutenant Commander Meriman, became one of FRUMEL’s best translators. Relations with the Central Bureau were always delicate. Both did the same kind of work. Once Eric Nave started a small naval codebreaking cell within Central Bureau there was a danger of direct competition. Mostly the two Ultra units went their own ways.

  Unlike Rochefort, Commander Fabian did not fall victim to internecine squabbling. He served out a full term. When Captain McCallum arrived to set up the SEFIC intelligence center, he drafted Fabian to help him with the key players. Then, for his sins Fabian was sent to Colombo as U.S. intelligence liaison to the British. Fabian continued to earn British ire there. In mid-1943, FRUMEL, Station Belconnen in the Copek network, had 203 personnel on staff, with a projected need for 300. Fabian was followed by Commander E. S. L. “Sid” Goodwin. By then most of FRUMEL’s work—Sid Goodwin estimated 90 percent—concerned Japanese submarine messages. Of course, that was after the year of Guadalcanal and the big naval battles. In early 1943 some of the fiercest engagements were yet to be fought.

  STOCKTAKING

  Both sides tried to measure themselves against the enemy. At CINCPAC, Chester Nimitz put his staff to work on a variety of studies, and put his impressions in a letter to Ernie King on December 8, 1942, when COMINCH was debating the Joint Chiefs of Staff on war strategy. Neither side had any advantage in determination to fight, Nimitz observed. The Japanese were full equals in that department. In terms of surface naval units, Nimitz went on, the sides were roughly equal save that U.S. fire control radars seemed to be a lot better under low-light conditions. He also found American antiaircraft batteries considerably better than Japanese. Allied air forces were superior in quality. American ground forces had proved themselves more skillful, but Nimitz was not willing to bet on this and wanted to be in greater numbers whenever battle was joined. The CINCPAC admitted to perplexity on the question of torpedoes. American ones just seemed not to work, while Japanese torpedoes wreaked havoc time after time. Solving that technical problem required patience and hard work.

  Admiral Nimitz’s opinions provide a good point of departure for a review of the balance in the Solomons. Guadalcanal had been secured. Henderson, now a complex of several airfields and about to operate heavy B-17 aircraft, became an offensive base once SOPAC fed in enough airplanes to perfect its striking power. The island furnished the stepping-stone for the implementation of Cartwheel. Naval forces were strong enough that after the Chicago episode Halsey felt able to detach the Enterprise to return to the U.S. for real repairs to her deck elevators and aircraft hangars. Negotiations with the British for the loan of an aircraft carrier had been completed; the Royal Navy had selected the HMS Victorious, and by January 1943 she was being refitted at Norfolk Navy Yard. This included replacing her antiquated Swordfish torpedo bombers with modern Grumman TBF Avengers. Disguised in radio messages as the USS Robin (for Robin Hood, the wags had it), the Victorious transited the Panama Canal and reached Pearl Harbor by March. A month later she went to the South Pacific. Captain L. D. MacIntosh’s Victorious became a crucial SOPAC asset in a critical category at an important time.

  At the moment troops were the wor
st problem. Expectations were that the 1st Marine Division would not again be ready to fight until March 1943. That was tentative and depended on restoring the Marines’ health and retraining the units. The 2nd Marine Division, now mostly at Guadalcanal, had been projected late in 1942 to be on hand by February, but after the exhausting finish of the battle, it too needed rest. No Army troops beyond those already present were ready or even assigned to the South Pacific, and the Americal and 25th Infantry Divisions were worse off than the 2nd Marines. The 43rd Infantry Division, pulled together from various island garrisons that were no longer required, presently became available, but it was green and needed experience. A 3rd Marine Division would materialize later in the year. In short, the paucity of ground forces required an operational pause.

  Admiral Halsey recognized that, but he wanted to retain the momentum gained at Guadalcanal. He needed a close-in target with some intrinsic value. The Bull and Nimitz had already discussed the Russell Islands, and now Halsey settled on that. Like the Japanese with their barge base there, the Americans could put down a PT base. Such a base could project PT boats up The Slot to blockade New Georgia and the Japanese airfield at Munda. Air bases on the Russells could extend AIRSOLS power to and past Munda. Halsey decided to go ahead. Coastwatchers scouted the Russells. So did a party of American and New Zealand officers. They found nothing but abandoned Japanese equipment and the roughly 350 islanders who before the war had cultivated the coconut plantations for Lever Brothers. Operation Cleanslate, the invasion of the Russells, took place on February 21. Major General John Hester of the 43rd Infantry Division, Halsey’s only fresh formation, led the landing force, composed of a few of Hester’s units, some Marines, plus engineer and construction troops. For all practical purposes, Cleanslate proved a routine landing. Ironically, in view of the Japanese withdrawal from Guadalcanal, one of the worst headaches in Cleanslate turned out to be failures of the outboard motors on rubber assault boats.

  Once ashore the Americans turned to their main purpose: converting the Russells into a base area. Banika, one of the Russells, actually seemed free of malarial mosquitoes, so the engineers concentrated there. The 118th Engineer Battalion of Hester’s division built roads and fortifications and installed water pumps. The 37th Seabees were the airfield specialists and began to lay runways and PT boat base facilities. The Japanese tried their best to slow progress with air attacks, starting March 6. In spite of every obstacle, by late April, Banika was available for emergency landings, and a month later the Russells opened for business. Remarkably, its first denizens would be Marine Air Group 21, among the stalwarts who had pioneered at Henderson Field.

  Bull Halsey continued trying to suppress the Japanese on New Georgia. His main instruments were air strikes from Guadalcanal, now rebranded “Mainstay,” and naval bombardments. On a March 6 excursion to shell Vila, Rear Admiral Aaron S. Merrill caught a pair of Japanese destroyers returning from an Express run. Seaman Fahey was aboard the Montpelier, which led the cruiser line and was first to open fire. In moments the lead destroyer, Murasame, transformed into a mass of flames and explosions. Minegumo put on speed and tried to flee but was smashed in her turn. “It looked like the 4th of July,” Fahey noted. Two Japanese seamen were rescued and questioned by intelligence; some 175 survivors reached the Kolombangara shore and eventually the Vila base; the rest of the sailors went down with their ships. Merrill proceeded to execute his bombardment. Montpelier alone lashed out with 1,800 five-and six-inch shells in a mere quarter of an hour, producing a spectacle: “There were many big explosions from the shore as our guns hit their targets…. We did an awful job on the Japs, we left the place in shambles, we hit troop barracks, ammunition dumps, radio towers, airfield planes, and broken bodies were everywhere.” Halsey then switched Rear Admiral Ainsworth’s task group for Merrill’s and kept up the pressure. Ainsworth adopted the novel approach of splitting his cruisers and destroyers into two units so he could alternate sending them up The Slot, attempting to keep the Tokyo Express away from New Georgia. Pug Ainsworth led the combined force back for another bombardment of Munda and Vila on April 2.

  Meanwhile the top brass hammered out their strategic approach in memos, dispatches, a Pearl Harbor staff conference, and Joint Chiefs of Staff deliberations. Halsey wanted to assault Munda, or at least neutralize it, in April. MacArthur insisted the SOPAC advance on New Georgia be held back pending his next offensive jump in New Guinea, projected for May, which would include a landing in the Trobriand Islands to install an airfield at the virtual doorstep of Rabaul. The Joint Chiefs accepted MacArthur’s strategy, but also Admiral Nimitz’s proposal that operational command throughout the Solomons would continue to be exercised by SOPAC and Halsey. Cartwheel assumed its ultimate form at the end of March. Though MacArthur’s offensive would be delayed for six weeks while amphibious forces assembled, the directions of action and lines of command had finally been set.

  As did the Allies, the Japanese reassessed their position. The Guadalcanal campaign had been exhausting, but it at least ended on the positive note of a successful evacuation. Losses had been staggering, the pace relentless. General MacArthur’s U.S. and Australian troops were thrusting ahead in New Guinea and had captured Buna. Halsey’s invasion of the Russells might have followed a minimum-energy trajectory from the Allied perspective, but to the Japanese it seemed like the next step in a continuing onslaught. The IGHQ directive currently in effect required Combined Fleet and the Japanese Army to contest both the Solomons and New Guinea.

  Much had changed at Rabaul. Just before Christmas the Imperial Navy finally created a theater command along lines similar to the Allies. This Southeast Area Fleet controlled both the Eighth Fleet’s surface ships and the Eleventh Air Fleet airplanes. Vice Admiral Kusaka Jinichi led it, and also his air fleet. Rear Admiral Nakahara Giichi, a Navy Ministry bureaucrat, assisted Kusaka as chief of staff in his area fleet capacity. There were new faces. Some old warhorses left. Kusaka’s cousin, Kusaka Ryunosuke, supplanted when Admiral Nagumo turned over command of the Kido Butai, later appeared in Rabaul as air fleet staff boss. Captain Miwa Yoshitake, recently of Combined Fleet staff’s inner sanctum, acted as air fleet senior staff officer. Genda Minoru, having contracted malaria, returned to Japan. Fighter expert Commander Nomura Ryosuke took over the air operations staff slot. Captain Kanai and Commander Kaneko arrived to coordinate the flow of replacement planes.

  Though this would be the admiral’s time, he had not anticipated it. The fifty-five-year-old Kusaka had served more than three decades and had expected to retire as superintendant of Etajima. His war had been China. On December 7, 1941—Kusaka Jinichi’s birthday—his daughter had become engaged. After celebrating he went to bed—and awoke next morning to discover Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Kusaka had known war threatened—temporary duty as staff chief of the Eleventh Air Fleet in 1941 had led to his participation in the tabletop war games that rehearsed the invasion of Southeast Asia—but he had known nothing of Japan’s Pearl Harbor plan. Thoughts of retirement evaporated. Kusaka was a good friend of Yamamoto, who had been on the training ship Soya during Jinichi’s midshipman cruise, notable because their circuit of Australia had been in company with a Russian warship that Yamamoto helped sink in the Russo-Japanese War. Refloated, that vessel sailed with them now, enemies no more. Friendship with Yamamoto was a plus in Kusaka’s selection for the Rabaul command. His assignment to replace Tsukahara Nizhizo had been sudden, and came when the latter fell sick in the fall of 1942.

  Kusaka Jinichi was an unusual choice for an air command. His only exposure to aviation had been that short stint with Tsukahara before the Philippine campaign. A gunner by trade, Kusaka had been gunnery officer aboard the Nagato, skippered the Fuso, and directed the Naval Gunnery School once making his stars. He had also been naval attaché in London. But the compact, careful Kusaka—one historian likened him to the actor Alec Guinness—was a flexible thinker, and no one carped at his skimpy aviation knowledge. Plus he was well supported by
cousin Ryunosuke, a true aviation expert. Kusaka made up for ignorance with evident concern. The aviators saw him often, and he would witness their departures or returns. Once, when JNAF ace Nishizawa Hiroyoshi was late returning from a mission, Kusaka had stood for hours at the runway, an admiral attending a warrant officer. Nishizawa was among those whom Kusaka honored with the award of a ceremonial sword.

  In early 1943 there were a few good elements in Kusaka’s picture. Another airfield had recently been added to the Rabaul complex. Facilities at Buin had been expanded. Meanwhile the arrival of Army air forces increased strength considerably. Another airfield was planted in the New Georgia group, on Kolombangara, and the Army planes soon deployed there. Admiral Kusaka had good relations with General Imamura, his Army counterpart. As for supplying the far-flung bases, the Japanese were now well practiced in barge, submarine, and Tokyo Express activities, and had even developed specialized equipment, for example the submarines that carried their own barges. The first two months of 1943 were very good for the Imperial Navy in terms of losses, with only two destroyers sunk and four damaged, a toll almost sustainable.