Invasion Rabaul (37 page)

With the exhaust from her diesel engines burbling softly, the
Sturgeon
moved off in the darkness to resume the hunt.

*
The author’s uncle, 2LT John J. Steinbinder, was the navigator aboard DuBose’s aircraft. During eleven months with the squadron, Steinbinder flew forty-three combat missions, eight of them against Rabaul.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE LONG WAIT

“Oh, the hunger and the cold …”

—Lorna Whyte Johnson, Australian Army Nursing Service

T
he stockade on Malaguna Road seemed desolate after the exodus of more than a thousand men on June 22. Only sixty Australian officers and fewer than a dozen civilians remained. Some of the officers were ordered to clean up the vacant barracks. Although eerily quiet, the Fibro huts yielded many prizes: scraps of food, extra clothing, and even enough tobacco for a few hand-rolled cigarettes.

After they cleaned up the camp, the officers wired off a smaller compound consisting of four huts in the northeast corner of the stockade. Food was more plentiful, and instead of laboring outside the camp, the remaining POWs passed the time doing domestic chores.

Without permission, a few energetic officers built a platform for deck tennis between two of the huts. They hoped it might precipitate a change in fortunes, and the 2/22nd Battalion certainly had a strange history when it came to tennis courts. The first had been built at Trawool, but as soon as it was finished the battalion received orders to Bonegilla. The soldiers built a new court, and were transferred to Rabaul. Later, as POWs, they built yet another court, this time for Japanese officers at the naval headquarters building, and after it was finished the enlisted POWs and civilians were taken away. Some of the officers had become superstitious, and half-jokingly decided to tempt their own fate by building the deck tennis platform in the middle of the stockade. At first all it got them was
“an ear-bashing”
from Captain Mizusaki, who was irate that they built it without permission; but they had faith in their latest effort.

The days passed quickly as the officers continued working on the tennis platform and doing chores. Two more civilian internees arrived on July 2, bringing news about events on the outside. Robert Evenson, the plantation manger at Pondo, and his assistant, William Korn, had supposedly been “paroled” when Pondo was captured in early February. For a few months they had been allowed to continue overseeing the plantation, but recently the Japanese had taken over the lucrative operation and sent both men to Rabaul. They revealed the stirring news that hundreds of Australian soldiers had escaped from New Britain.

Other civilians were similarly helpful. Alfred Creswick, an engineer retained by the Japanese to maintain the cold-storage plant, known as the “Freezer,” smuggled two dozen oxtails into the stockade on July 4. He hid the meat on a Japanese supply truck, and the prisoners working in the cookhouse found it. Stewart Nottage, out on a
foraging party that same day, brought in a forequarter of beef. That evening the prisoners binged on stew and steaks, and there was more stew for breakfast the next morning. Nottage then began cooking the rest of the beef to keep it from spoiling, but at 0930 the officers received an unexpected order: “Pack up and assemble at the gate.” The tennis court had worked its magic.

In the cookhouse, Nottage was among the first POWs to hear of a place called Zentsuji. Soon the whole camp was abuzz. The officers were being sent to Japan.

Fifteen miles away at Vunapope, a nearly identical scene had unfolded on July 4. An interpreter arrived from Rabaul in company with several naval officers and called for the Australians being held there. Eighteen women lined up in ranks: seven civilian nurses, six AANS sisters, four Methodist mission nurses, and a widowed plantation owner. They were introduced to Captain Mizusaki, who surprised them by saying,
“Please, just call me Michael.”

The Japanese went upstairs and inspected the women’s dormitory, after which the interpreter announced: “You have been handed over to the Imperial Japanese Navy and these officers will visit you every month.”

The following day, however, Mizusaki returned to Vunapope and ordered the nurses to pack their belongings. As word spread throughout
the mission that the women were leaving, some of the nuns and other members of the staff came forward with a collection of towels, dresses, linens, and even several bottles of wine. Mizusaki, spying some rolls of mosquito netting in the growing pile of goods, told the women, “You will not need those. You are going to Paradise.” His words sounded ominous, but no one had the courage to ask him what he meant.

The women were ordered to load their possessions on a truck, which took them to a familiar swimming beach near Rabaul. They boarded a Daihatsu landing craft and were taken to the middle of Simpson Harbor, where the 7,000-ton cargo ship
Naruto Maru
rode at anchor. A wooden gangway was suspended over the side near the stern, and a small boarding platform bobbed vigorously on the swells. Taking the lead, Kay Parker hopped on and said,
“Come on girls, it’s not as bad as it seems.” The women followed her up the ladder to the aft cargo deck, where they were met by a nonplussed naval guard.

Though not expecting females, the armed guard recovered quickly from his confusion and pointed to a hatch over the aft hold. “Down there,” he said in English, and one by one the women descended another ladder into the empty compartment. It was dark and grimy, but Parker put everyone at ease with her characteristic good humor:
“Ladies, welcome to this spacious cabin which has been put at our disposal by the kind Japanese. Ventilation could be better, there is no water, there are no sea views, the beds will be rather uncomfortable and there is only just the remotest possibility that the lights will come on later. The galley is closed for the time being, as the cooks have gone ashore for a few beers!”

A
FEW MILES AWAY AT THE
M
ALAGUNA
R
OAD STOCKADE, SIXTY OFFICERS
hastily threw together their belongings. Stewart Nottage collected the foodstuffs and utensils authorized by the Japanese, and at midday on July 5 the POWs boarded several trucks for the ride to the waterfront. In their excitement over leaving, they didn’t realize the civilian internees were not coming with them. Al Creswick, Gordon Thomas, and ten others were outside the camp doing odd jobs, and there was no time to say farewell.

As with the women from Vunapope, the officers were ferried out to the
Naruto Maru
. They were met by several armed naval guards, one of whom barked commands at the POWs until they lined up in formation.
The pretentious Captain Mizusaki then climbed onto a hatch cover to make a speech. Holding a baton and posturing
“like an orchestra conductor,” he warned the officers to obey all regulations and watch after themselves, and then ordered them down into the hold.

Douglas B. Millican, a captain from the 1st Independent Company, started down the ladder first with David Hutchinson-Smith right behind him. They had descended partway when they heard shrieks from below. It was the nurses, whose joy at seeing the men alive bordered on hysteria. One by one the Australian officers descended into the hold and joined a growing melee, everyone shouting and hugging and shaking hands as they exchanged heartfelt greetings. The women looked basically the same as the men: thin, haggard, their clothing in
“pretty bad shape,” but no one seemed to care. They were simply happy to see each other after more than five months of separation.

The women, having heard through the grapevine about the sailing of the
Montevideo Maru
, were anxious for any news about the men who had gone aboard. The Methodist sisters were especially concerned about Linggood, McArthur, and Poole, and Alice Bowman wanted to know if her fiancé, Noel Mulvey, was with them. Kathleen Bignell, the plantation owner, learned that her twenty-two-year-old son had been taken aboard. Born at Tulagi and raised in the Solomons, Private Charles E. Bignell had enlisted in the 2/22nd Battalion a week after Pearl Harbor. In response to the women’s many questions, the officers replied that they had seen the men walking out of the stockade on June 22, but there was nothing more to tell.

The aft hold of the
Naruto Maru
had no ‘tween decks, and the compartment was crowded with seventy-eight men and women. The Australians sweltered in the below-deck heat for the remainder of the day and throughout the night. No one managed to get much sleep, mainly because numerous
“benjo-
runners” were active after eating too much stew the previous day. To give the women some privacy, the forward part of the hold was cordoned off by draping blankets over a cord stretched across the compartment.

In the morning the Australians discovered that their floating prison was still anchored in Simpson Harbor. Their nerves frayed each time an aircraft was heard overhead, but the
Naruto Maru
finally got underway on
the afternoon of July 6. Unable to see what was happening, the last remnants of Lark Force were denied a parting glimpse of Rabaul as their ship began the long voyage to “Paradise.”

A
FEW DAYS AFTER THE
N
ARUTO
M
ARU
SAILED, WORD REACHED
R
ABAUL OF
a terrible disaster. Jiro Takamura wrote the pertinent details in his diary on July 9:
“Navy men say that the ship with the [POWs] which headed for Hainan Island was sunk by an enemy submarine on the way. Probably all of the [prisoners] have been killed. Their compartment was locked, so none could have been saved.”

Gordon Thomas also learned about the sinking.
“On July 11,” he recalled, “we heard in Rabaul that ‘Montevideo Maru’ had been sunk, and all on board had perished. Such tragic news was unbelievable; but, unfortunately, it proved to be only too true.” Gordon’s information wasn’t completely accurate: not everyone aboard had perished. Some of the Japanese crewmen and guards had reached the coast of Luzon, which is how the story came to light so soon after the sinking.

In addition to the prisoners, the
Montevideo Maru
carried an Imperial Navy
crew of eighty-eight officers and men plus the embarked guard detachment of sixty-four ratings commanded by an ensign. According to the Osaka Shosen Kaisha line’s official loss report, twenty Japanese personnel were drowned or missing after the torpedo attack. Therefore, more than 130 got into the lifeboats. Maritime historian Peter Cundall, one of the foremost Western authorities on Japanese ships and wartime losses, believes that two lifeboats headed east and reached Luzon; another went west and was found by a Japanese warship. The number of survivors per boat has never been determined.

For the two boatloads that reached Luzon, the hardships were just beginning. The survivors landed near the Cape Bojeador lighthouse on the evening of July 2, rested overnight, and then walked five miles the next day to the village of Bubon. They planned to set off in the morning for a Japanese army camp at Laoag, about twenty miles south, but at 0900 Filipino guerillas attacked them.
“The party was absolutely defenseless,” stated one official account, “and although clubs and rocks were used for what they were worth, the majority of the personnel were either dead or missing after the attack.” Fifty-five members of the crew, including the
ship’s captain, were slain along with an unknown number of guards. The latter were unarmed, having lost their weapons when the
Montevideo Maru
sank.

One crewman eventually walked to Laoag, where an army patrol was organized to bring in the rest of the survivors. Three other crewmen walked in under their own power, and over the next few weeks an additional twenty-eight survivors were located, all described as
“starved, fatigued and near death.”

Reports by various agencies in Japan contained conflicting information about the number of survivors. Whatever actually happened, only a small number of crewmen lived to tell about it. Moreover, the Japanese maintained silence about the sinking until the end of the war, which is why only a few Australian POWs at Rabaul heard about the disaster. Three more years would pass before the rest of the Commonwealth learned the awful truth.

F
OR THE
A
USTRALIAN OFFICERS AND WOMEN ABOARD THE
N
ARUTO
M
ARU
, those same years would seem extraordinarily long. Little did they realize that during their time in Japan, they would never have as much food as they did during the sea voyage.

For nine days they shared the hot, steel-walled hold of the
Naruto Maru
, the floor of which was strewn with old straw. Steel rings mounted along the bulkheads gave clues to the identity of the previous occupants: draft animals. At night, when the deck hatches were locked, the hold was stuffy and foul-smelling. During the day, the prisoners were occasionally allowed topside. Two oil stoves made from forty-four-gallon drums were available for cooking on the aft deck. With the supplies brought from Rabaul, the Australians ate well during the voyage. Their rations included rice, pumpkins, taro, bananas, coconuts, and pineapples, plus tins of bully beef, butter, peaches, and cheese. There was even food left over when they reached the port of Yokohama on July 14.

After disembarking in the industrial heartland of Japan, the women were taken to the Bund Hotel, an establishment that had catered to Western tourists before the war. Inside they met sixty-two-year-old Etta Jones, an American who had been confined to the hotel for more
than a month. She and her husband, Foster Jones, had been captured on June 7 when the Japanese overran Attu Island in the Aleutians. Etta, a schoolteacher with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was shipped to Japan, but Foster, a radio operator and weather observer, was dragged away and executed.