War at the End of the World Read online

  A plan developed by Imperial General Headquarters in November 1941, known as the First Operational Stage, had identified Rabaul as the key element in the defensive perimeter around Truk. Japanese planners believed that Truk, Japan’s most important base in the South Pacific, would not be safe from enemy attack as long as Rabaul was in Allied hands.3

  In the crowded wardroom, the army and navy officers shared intelligence reports gleaned from photographic reconnaissance flights and on-the-ground spies. They discussed several possible landing sites, but finally selected the town’s waterfront inside Simpson Harbor as offering the best access to the airfields. Intelligence reported that the port and town were lightly defended, with fewer than two thousand troops, including volunteer militia.4

  Nonetheless, Horii planned for an overwhelming invasion. A fleet of bombers would destroy any enemy aircraft before the 5,300 men of the South Seas Detachment launched a three-pronged attack. Two prongs would head toward the two airports outside Rabaul in an attempt to limit sabotage and secure landing sites for carrier-based aircraft. The center prong would go directly into the town itself. Orders from Tokyo were that all defenders were to be “annihilated.”5

  The officers assumed that Rabaul’s shore batteries could keep some of their ships out of the harbor. Fifty-one-year-old Rear Admiral Kiyohide Shima, whose warships were to escort the invasion’s troop transports, expressed concern over reports that the Australians might have as many as ten coastal guns defending Rabaul. To lessen the danger to ships that would be clearly visible in daylight, the navy decided on a night assault. Several army officers, including General Horii, were unhappy about landing on a mostly unknown shore in the dark, but the final decision was the navy’s.

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  With a population of five thousand, composed of fewer than a thousand of European ancestry, a thousand Asians (mostly Chinese), and three thousand members of local Melanesian tribes, Rabaul had once been a cosmopolitan town, with several hotels, a movie house, department stores, a well-stocked public library, a variety of restaurants, several druggists, a baseball field, and a cricket field. Simpson Harbor had boasted modern wharves, warehouse facilities, and a seaplane base. Yet in May 1937 a series of volcanic eruptions had buried the entire city under several inches of wet ash, destroying many of its buildings. These eruptions had transformed a formerly flat island in Blanche Bay into a seven-hundred-foot-tall conical mountain within which volcanic rumblings continued. Rabaul was just starting to reestablish itself when the war started.

  The town’s defenses were slim, numbering only fifteen hundred men and women, even less than the figure reported to Horii. Some were civilians—clerks, planters, miners, bankers, lawyers, and government employees—who had enlisted for training with the recently formed New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. They had signed up expecting to serve in support of regular Australian Army forces, not as frontline troops. However, a few had experience from the Great War, and most took to their training with enthusiasm and energy.

  New Britain’s main defense was Australia’s 2/22 Infantry Battalion, known as Lark Force, under the command of fifty-two-year-old Colonel John Scanlan from Tasmania. Scanlan was a decorated veteran of the Great War and a holder of the French Legion of Honor. His Lark Force was a mixed bag of infantry and artillery units, along with a medical detachment that included female nurses and a twenty-five-member band.

  The defenders’ weapons were out-of-date and inadequate. Among them were two old three-inch antiaircraft weapons—one deeply cracked—that gunners had dragged up the slope of a nearby sixteen-hundred-foot mountain following the attack on Pearl Harbor. They looked like two huge, grotesque lawn ornaments. Of the fifty-three members of the antiaircraft battery, only six had ever witnessed a shot fired by an antiaircraft gun. Their drills consisted of having one person, usually someone who had violated a rule and been dubbed the “pilot officer,” run back and forth in front of the guns holding a long bamboo pole with a model airplane attached to one end.6

  Two outdated six-inch breech-loading Mark VII coastal guns constituted the Rabaul shore battery. Made in 1901, they bore the marking VR, dating their manufacture to Queen Victoria’s reign. The infantry carried mostly Lee-Enfield rifles manufactured before the Great War. There was also a mix of Bren guns, light machine guns, some mortars, and numerous handguns. Such was the force the Australian government had supplied Rabaul to defend the fifteen-mile-long coast on either side of the town.

  Unknown to Rabaul’s defenders, the Australian chiefs of staff had already decided to make the town a sacrificial lamb to the greater cause of slowing down the expected invasion of New Guinea. On December 15, 1941, Herbert Evatt, the Australian minister for external affairs, sent a secret cable to Washington, D.C., in which he outlined the decision not to reinforce Rabaul, nor to provide any large ships for its evacuation in case of a Japanese invasion. Evatt wrote that the government recognized that Rabaul was an important target for the Japanese and that any concentrated Japanese attack would be “beyond the capacity of the small garrison to meet successfully.” With most of Australia’s armed forces fighting alongside the British in North Africa, the Middle East, and Malaya, there was little the government could do to defend New Britain.7

  Perhaps to soothe its conscience over leaving the defenders “hostages to fortune,” the government did transfer fourteen Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aircraft to Rabaul. These included four coastal reconnaissance light bombers and ten Wirraway fighter-trainers that were less “fighters” than “trainers.” The bombers were a military version of the twin-engine Lockheed Electra passenger plane made famous by Amelia Earhart, who was piloting one when she vanished in 1937. The Wirraways were the Australian version of North American Aviation’s NA-16 trainer and all-purpose craft. This makeshift air force contingent, given the designation 24 Squadron, was under the command of twenty-nine-year-old wing commander John Lerew, a former race car driver and civil engineer.

  A message distributed to all members of Lark Force on January 1, 1942, concluded with this sentence: “There Shall Be No Withdrawal.” They were to fight to the last man.8

  The situation was even worse on the neighboring island of New Ireland, which the Japanese planned to attack at the same time as Rabaul. One hundred fifty enlisted men and officers of the 1st Independent Company were the sole defenders of the 3,300-square-mile island. Their commander, Major James Edmonds-Wilson, a thirty-five-year-old farmer from South Australia, was instructed to resist an enemy invasion long enough to destroy all fuel supplies and military stores in and around the town of Kavieng, the island’s chief port, and to sabotage the small airport to render it unusable for the Japanese. Edmonds-Wilson’s force was to then escape the island in a small schooner and head for Rabaul. The 1st Independent Company had initially trained, as did many of the defenders of Rabaul, for combat in the open country of the Middle East; none had training in the tropical jungles that covered the islands they were now expected to defend.

  The Australians in Rabaul were not idly waiting for an enemy attack. Following several December high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the town by Japanese flying boats, Wing Commander Lerew set out to accomplish a directive from the RAAF regional headquarters at Townsville on the northeastern coast of Australia: “To strike at Japanese bases and shipping wherever possible.”9

  On New Year’s Day, Lerew led his four bombers on a mission against a Japanese seaplane refueling station on Kapingamarangi, a tiny atoll at the southern end of the Caroline Islands, approximately four hundred miles from Rabaul. It was the only potential target within range of the Hudsons, but only if they cut their thousand-pound bomb loads in half and added extra fuel tanks. The attack resulted in damage to several slipways used by seaplanes and flying boats and set a large fuel storage area aflame. Smoke from the burning fuel rose to about ten thousand feet. The four crews were airborne for five and a half hours.10

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  The plan
in place, General Horii and his staff returned to their flying boat for the 630-mile trip back to their headquarters on Guam. The next day, January 4, 1942, Tokyo issued orders that the simultaneous invasions of New Britain and New Ireland, known as Operation R, were to take place in the second half of January. According to meteorologists, there would be little or no moonlight during the third quarter of the month. General Horii immediately ordered his staff to begin loading vehicles, fuel, weapons, nonperishable foodstuffs, and other supplies aboard nine transport vessels at Guam’s Apra Harbor. Troops and horses would be the last to board.

  That same day, sixteen bombers from the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 24th Air Flotilla took off from Truk and headed south for Rabaul.

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  At ten thirty on the clear, bright Sunday morning of January 4, Cornelius Page, known to his friends as “Con,” watched in shocked disbelief as sixteen airplanes passed high over his coconut plantation on the small island of Tabar, twenty-five miles of off the northeast coast of New Ireland. Page was a sublieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserves and an unpaid member of the Coastwatchers, trained to report unusual or suspicious events; sightings of strange ships, aircraft, floating mines; and anything else that might be of interest to the Royal Australian Navy, under whose auspices they operated.11

  Con, whom the Japanese would later hunt down and kill, quickly identified the planes as Japanese bombers, rushed inside his house, cranked up his wireless radio, and reported what he had seen to military headquarters at Port Moresby, on the southwest coast of New Guinea. Port Moresby radio operators instantly transmitted the report to members of Rabaul’s Lark Force, who assumed their town was the likely target. They immediately blasted the air-raid sirens, shattering the Sunday-morning peace. For a few minutes confusion reigned. Was it a drill or the real thing? A few daring souls waited in the open to find out, while others rushed to take cover in air-raid shelters.

  As the bombers finally roared overhead, many of the antiaircraft gunners, most of whom were under nineteen years of age, began pointing skyward, yelling like schoolchildren until one finally asked the commander, Lieutenant David Selby, for permission to fire. Selby, a tall, thin attorney from New South Wales whose pencil mustache and bearing gave him the appearance of an aristocrat, watched the planes for a few seconds as the naive young men clamored around him. He suddenly turned and said, perhaps more harshly than he meant, “For heaven’s sake, shut up. This is war, not a Sunday school picnic.” Momentarily abashed, the young men collected themselves before rushing to the guns, now determined to display their professionalism. To everyone’s surprise, the damaged three-inch gun fired without difficulty. Yet even with the fuses set at maximum height, the shells fell far short of the bombers, which maintained an altitude of eighteen thousand feet.12

  Japanese planes took only minutes to pattern-bomb the Lakunai Airdrome, just outside of Rabaul along the coast, with fifty high-fragmentation bombs the Australians called “daisy-cutters.” These released thousands of pieces of shrapnel intended to maim or kill anyone within reach. Only three bombs hit the runway; seventeen landed in a nearby tribal compound, killing fifteen people instantly and seriously injuring fifteen more. The rest of the bombs fell harmlessly into the sea. Wing Commander Lerew rushed two Wirraways up to try to intercept the bombers, but the Japanese planes were gone by the time the frustrated Australians reached fighting altitude.

  Rabaul’s defense forces remained on alert throughout the day as rumors spread of a possible enemy landing. The rumors finally gave way when reports made clear that there were no Japanese ships in the area. Life was settling back to relative routine when, just before dusk, eleven Japanese flying boats appeared overhead and bombed the Vunakanau Airfield, eleven miles south of the town. One person died, but the runway suffered only slight damage. Once again, the enemy owned the skies.

  Rabaul was quiet on Monday, with only the sound of an occasional Wirraway passing overhead on patrol. Tuesday morning, January 6, the flying boats returned for another devastating attack on the Vunakanau Airfield, destroying a Wirraway and significantly damaging the field, its tiny air force station, and one of the Hudson bombers. Early the next morning a flight of twin-engine bombers flew in for the kill, pelting the airfield with more bombs, this time destroying a Hudson and a Wirraway, and heavily damaging two more Wirraways. Now only eight or nine Australian airplanes remained.

  The tension in Rabaul grew. Few people in the town had any idea of what to do when the enemy arrived. The highest-ranking government official on the island, Deputy Administrator Harold Page (no relation to Con), had arranged a month prior to evacuate many of the women and children to Australia. Unfortunately, the nation’s racial immigration policies had limited the evacuation to those of European descent. Now, as enemy bombers arrived almost daily, Page desperately cabled officials in Canberra, the Australian capital, asking for permission to evacuate the remaining civilians, including males. His requests went unanswered.13

  With no intelligence or help from Australia, the Lark Force defenders decided to launch a reconnaissance flight against the Japanese. On Friday, January 9, a Hudson equipped with extra fuel tanks took off from the field near Kavieng on New Ireland and headed north to Truk. Flight Lieutenant Robert Yeowart, a twenty-seven-year-old accountant from Brisbane, and his six-man crew had volunteered for this dangerous mission. The Japanese dominated the skies over the entire length of the nearly fourteen-hundred-mile round trip. After dodging antiaircraft fire and defending fighters at Truk, Yeowart returned with photographs of a massive ship and aircraft buildup that looked to Scanlan and Lerew like an invasion force soon to be heading south.

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  Back on Guam, General Horii continued to oversee the final loading of his men and horses aboard the transport ships. Flying boats overhead kept a watch for enemy submarines. In the early afternoon of January 14 the transports sailed from Guam with Horii and his staff aboard the Yokohama Maru, a 6,143-ton armed passenger and cargo ship. The 5,300-man invasion force consisted of three infantry battalions, a regiment of engineers, three battalions of sailors from the Special Naval Landing Forces, a cavalry company, and a battalion of antiaircraft guns. There was also a fully staffed field hospital, a signals company, and a transportation company to monitor and repair the detachment’s hundreds of vehicles. Finally, there was a veterinary unit to care for its five hundred horses.

  As protection, three light cruisers, nine destroyers, and two minelayers steamed with the transports, while planes swept the seas in advance of the fleet in search of enemy ships and submarines.

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  In Rabaul, life settled into a tense monotony. The last bombing raid had been on January 7, and the only enemy spotted since were daily Japanese reconnaissance aircraft, presumably taking photographs. These planes flew beyond the maximum altitude of the Wirraways, frustrating the courageous pilots who took off in pursuit. Deputy Administrator Page continued to send urgent pleas to Canberra for an evacuation of civilians, but his pleas were left unanswered.

  On January 8 an event occurred that should have alerted Page, and the others in authority at Rabaul, that the Australian government had all but abandoned them. Almost immediately upon arriving, the cargo vessel M.V. Malaita, carrying a full shipment of military supplies for Rabaul, received orders from Canberra to leave and return her cargo to Australia.

  More frustration followed the next week, when six PBY Catalina bombers from Port Moresby flew into Kavieng to refuel before setting off to bomb Truk. Strong swells buffeted one of the planes when it tried to lift off the water, and somehow its bomb load ignited. The plane exploded and quickly sank. Another pilot, Lieutenant George Hutchinson, a U.S. Navy officer on loan to the RAAF, set his plane back down on the water to look for survivors. His efforts were in vain; all eight crew members perished. Of the remaining planes, only one actually found Truk in the bad weather that blanketed the Carolines. The single bomber dropped i
ts sixteen bombs, but poor visibility prevented the crew from seeing whether they hit anything.14

  Five days later Lieutenant Hutchinson became the first American combat casualty in the war for New Guinea. Hutchinson was flying a patrol along the north shore of New Guinea when he encountered a flight of Japanese fighters. He immediately radioed the Port Moresby operator that he was “being attacked by five fighters.” In the uneven battle that followed, Hutchinson’s Catalina, despite being riddled with bullets, managed to remain flying on autopilot. The last signal received from the American pilot was the ominous “On fire!”15

  Hutchinson’s tail gunner, Corporal T. H. Keen, discovered that the entire crew of ten was dead. With no knowledge in piloting the aircraft, Keen realized his only chance of surviving was to parachute out before the plane exhausted its fuel. He did not know if he would be landing in enemy territory, but jumping over land was safer than over the open sea, where he would likely become lunch for some sharks. Luckily, the Catalina was over the main island of New Guinea when Keen dropped out of the hatch. On the ground, local villagers took him to a nearby mission station.16

  On January 14 the townspeople of Rabaul were surprised when a ship steamed into their harbor. It was the Norwegian-owned Herstein, now under charter to the Australian government. At the main dock, the crew unloaded her cargo, which included two thousand bombs for the now nearly nonexistent bomber force. Captain Gottfred Gundersen then moved the Herstein to another wharf to begin loading as quickly as possible several thousand tons of copra, the meaty inner lining of coconuts used primarily to make coconut oil. Gundersen scanned the sky for Japanese airplanes; the faster he could load his ship and get out of there, the better. Government officials in Canberra had refused him permission to leave Rabaul without a full load of copra.17