Invasion Rabaul (9 page)

Further evidence of Canberra’s position regarding Lark Force appeared on December 12, a mere four days after Pearl Harbor. On behalf of Prime Minister Curtin, the War Cabinet transmitted another secret cable to Washington in which they acknowledged not only the likelihood of the
garrison’s defeat, but that there would be no rescue for survivors: “It would appear under present circumstances that the proposed plan [for American Lend-Lease support] will be greatly delayed or even impossible to fulfill…
Under the foregoing circumstances, and as reinforcements and subsequent supply would be hazardous without United States cooperation, it is considered better to maintain Rabaul only as an advance air operational base, its present small garrison being regarded as hostages to fortune.”

Hostages
, no less! Weeks before the first shot was fired in the Bismarcks, Canberra essentially washed its hands of Lark Force on New Britain, the 1st Independent Company on New Ireland, and hundreds of civilians living in the region. Only a few days had passed since Pearl Harbor, yet the government was already willing to condemn the garrisons to whatever fate the Japanese had planned for them. The War Cabinet evidently wanted to appear resolute, but their actions in this case could hardly have looked more feeble.

The great irony was that the Japanese did not plan to invade Rabaul any sooner than the middle of January, more than a month away. The timing no longer mattered, however. Lark Force had already been given up for lost.

I
N ALL FAIRNESS TO THE ECONOMICALLY STRAPPED
C
OMMONWEALTH, THE
War Cabinet did make two concessions on behalf of the Rabaul garrison. The first was the transfer of a Royal Australian Air Force composite squadron from its base in Queensland to Vunakanau airdrome. A trio of twin-engine Lockheed Hudsons from 24 Squadron landed on the grassy strip on December 7, and another arrived the following day. Next, ten CA-1 Wirraways landed at Vunakanau over a period of days, the last arriving on December 12. Employed as fighters by the RAAF, the two-seater CA-1s were actually duplicates of the North American AT-6 trainer, built in Australia under license by the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation.

Commanded by Squadron Leader John M. Lerew, a veteran with eleven years of service in the RAAF, the pilots at Vunakanau were dismayed to find only a few structures in place. The most substantial was a piece of galvanized roofing on poles which served as both hangar and workshop. Flight Lieutenant Wilfred D. Brookes, the squadron’s second in command, groused that
“no facilities existed for operations, stores,
medical section, armament, photographic, or parachute sections. Messing was provided by the army some distance from the aerodrome and left much to be desired.”

In truth, just about everything at Rabaul fell short of expectations. The conditions that 24 Squadron experienced were simply consistent with the limitations which plagued Lark Force and almost every other Allied unit in the Pacific.

Canberra’s second concession was a last-minute decision to evacuate the women and children from the mandated territory: European women and children, that is. Asians and Melanesians would have to fend for themselves. The evacuees were allowed one suitcase per person, and some families received only one or two days’ notice to proceed to the nearest embarkation point. One passenger ship was dispatched to Port Moresby and two others were sent to Rabaul, where most of the European families outside New Guinea were instructed to gather.

Not all women were able to leave. The six civilian nurses at Namanula Hospital were considered essential public servants according to the local health director, who denied permission for them to evacuate. Harold Page, still the senior government authority at Rabaul, intervened and permitted the nurses to decide for themselves. One elderly nurse elected to sail for Australia, but the other five stayed, and the vacant position was actually filled by a retired nurse.

No such options existed for the six army nurses: they remained with the staff attached to the 2/10 Field Ambulance at the Government House hospital. Similarly, the nuns and female staff at Vunapope considered themselves duty-bound to remain at the mission, as did many women among the Protestant missions. Other strong-minded, independent women living among the islands—including several widowed plantation owners—ignored the evacuation notices and vowed to never give up their hard-earned properties. A few didn’t have much choice. Alfred A. “Ted” Harvey, a former coastwatcher, chose to move his wife and eleven-year-old son to a camp hidden in the jungle near their plantation on the north coast of New Britain.

But for every holdout, hundreds of women and children did converge on Rabaul. By the afternoon of December 22, the Burns-Philp liners
Macdhui
and
Neptuna
were ready to embark passengers. The skies, dark
with rain, reflected the somber mood throughout town as the evacuees filed aboard the two ships and found their assigned cabins.
“There was a hushed atmosphere as the mothers and children gathered,” remembered Diana Martell, then eleven years old. “Most of our fathers were still at work. When at last they came aboard, our parents were all talking earnestly, and there was the feeling that something really serious was happening. It was dark when I was called into our cabin to say goodbye to my father. I was not really distressed, as I could hardly imagine that I would never see him again.”

Similar scenes were repeated in almost every stateroom. The bespectacled Rev. Laurie McArthur, the senior Methodist missionary in New Britain, said goodbye to his family; and John Poole, the missionary who had traveled the mountains with Bill Harry, bid farewell to Jean. The couple, married only two years earlier in the Rabaul Methodist church, had been happy at their mission at Kalas, and she was extremely reluctant to leave everything behind. But so it went, among hundreds of families aboard both ships.

That afternoon, a schooner sailed into the harbor carrying twenty rain-soaked women and children from Bougainville. The cabins aboard the two liners were already filled, so the newcomers were ushered into one of the
Macdhui’s
salons just as darkness fell. The men were called ashore, and families said their last goodbyes, everyone trying to mask their concerns with lighthearted quips and other acts of bravado. The atmosphere that night seemed altogether foreboding, and for good reason. Within months, virtually every family present would be touched by the worst maritime disaster in Australian history.

I
N THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE EVACUATION, THE MOOD IN
R
ABAUL GREW
even more somber. The few Japanese families in the area were rounded up, but unlike their counterparts in America, only the
men were interned. The Burns-Philp liner
Malaita
delivered them to Australia while the women and children tried to subsist on their own.

Many of the two-hundred-odd Australian civilians who remained on the Gazelle Peninsula stayed busy by digging slit trenches in their gardens. They also participated in air raid drills under the watchful eye of longtime territorial official Robert L. “Nobby” Clark, the chief warden. A civil
engineer by trade, he organized the construction of a community air raid shelter just outside of town. The facility, located in a small valley dubbed
“Refuge Gully,” featured thatch-roofed huts named in jest after famous hotels. Arrangements were made to have various civic groups provide valet parking and serve afternoon tea, but the frivolous notions were abandoned after the women and children departed for Australia.

By late December, Rabaul seemed like a ghost town. The Christmas season—normally the start of the summer holidays for Australians—was gloomy. The only thing that held anyone’s interest for long was the war
news, especially the propaganda broadcasts from Tokyo. The army camp became a breeding ground for all sorts of wild rumors, including one that had the town’s Chinese laborers making hundreds of grave markers, ostensibly for the men of Lark Force. Concerned about the effects such tales would have on morale, Captain Selby wrote detailed notes of the next radio broadcast, then typed out the particulars under the heading: “A.A. News Bulletin.” The information sheet was passed around, and quickly gained such popularity that daily updates were distributed to all units.

Despite Selby’s upbeat approach, an atmosphere of misgiving was kindled in Lark Force, primarily by Colonel Scanlan. On New Year’s Day, 1942, he posted two ominous-sounding
proclamations. “Every man will fight to the last,” he wrote, followed by the boldly underlined announcement: “THERE SHALL BE NO WITHDRAWAL.” Perhaps he had learned of the War Cabinet’s position regarding the garrison, but if so, he kept the grim facts to himself. As a result, the abruptness of his declarations both puzzled and disturbed the garrison.

Scanlan’s posturing may also have resulted from his perception that certain officers in Lark Force lacked fighting spirit. During a staff meeting, Captain Selby made the mistake of asking whether there was a contingency plan in the event that a withdrawal became necessary. Scanlan snorted, “That is a defeatist attitude, Selby!” In a different incident, the 2/22nd’s supply officer recommended hiding some of the massive quantities of canned food—two years’ worth had been stockpiled at Rabaul—in several strategically placed caches in the jungle. Scanlan’s response was similar: he gruffly denied permission.

Nonetheless, members of the staff continued to quietly consider the alternatives to a pitched battle against the Japanese. The most logical idea
was to pull back into the jungle and harass the enemy with guerilla-style warfare. Several men possessed considerable knowledge of the terrain, especially Private Harry, but when members of the NGA staff brought up the supply officer’s suggestion again, Scanlan would not budge.
“You will fight on the beaches,” he told them brusquely. He may have intended to exhibit the sort of stalwart defiance that Winston Churchill showed before the Battle of Britain, but his attempt fell short. This was not England.

The colonel’s stubbornness revealed a critical shortcoming: Scanlan was apparently still fighting the last war, at least in his mind. The weapons had not changed, and his own record for combat bravery was beyond question, but most of the conventions of that war were long outdated. Scanlan possessed other idiosyncrasies as well. A devout Roman Catholic, he sometimes went off to Vunapope for “retreats” that lasted days. At other times he just seemed out of touch, not only with the coming war but with his own troops.

To cope with his supercilious manner, Scanlan’s subordinates held their tongues and hoped for the best. Few, if any, realized that they had already been cast off by their own government.

CHAPTER FOUR

PRELUDE TO AN INVASION

“We who are about to die salute you.”

—Squadron Leader John Lerew, RAAF 24 Squadron

L
ark Force and 24 Squadron were terribly disadvantaged. Not only were they expected to defend an enormous region with inadequate weapons and equipment, they knew very little about the enemy they would have to face. Few people in the Western world did.

Only a few decades earlier, the island nation of Japan had been a feudal state, developmentally backward compared to the world’s industrialized countries, and almost completely closed to foreigners. In a remarkably brief period, however, a central government radically overhauled the empire. By the conclusion of World War I, Japan had emerged as one of the five most powerful nations on Earth. Her people, believing they were linked by common mythical and spiritual origins going back almost 2,600 years, had never been defeated by outside invaders. Brimming with nationalistic fervor, the Japanese believed themselves superior in virtually every way to other races, especially those of the Eastern hemisphere.

The Japanese were determined to rule a much larger empire, but their own tiny islands lacked sufficient natural resources. Therefore, they created a program called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, under the guise of which they intended to occupy territories rich in oil, rubber, and other resources important for continued industrialization. The expansion began in September 1931, thanks to a trumped-up clash with Chinese troops that Japan used to justify the occupation of Manchuria.

Almost ten years later, Japan “peacefully” entered French Indochina in the summer of 1941, after first sending a note to the Vichy regime demanding the right to occupy their country. Alarmed by the takeover, the American government responded by freezing all Japanese assets in the United States and placing an embargo on exports to the Japanese, particularly oil. Great Britain, the Philippines, and the Netherlands quickly followed suit by cutting off Japan’s access to oil supplies in the Far East. The Tokyo leadership was infuriated. Many Japanese had hoped to avoid war against the coalition of countries in the Pacific, but as petroleum stockpiles dwindled to dangerously low levels—less than two years’ worth for the empire’s fleets and armies—the government and Imperial General Headquarters were pushed into a belligerent position from which there was no turning back.

Tokyo had already started preparing for war. Military planners completed their outline for the Southern Offensive, a massive, multi-pronged strike across the Pacific. On November 6, Imperial General Headquarters mobilized the Southern Army for the invasion of the Philippines, Malaya, and parts of Burma and Thailand; simultaneously the South Seas Detachment, an independent organization under the direct command of General Headquarters, was formed for operations against Guam and the Bismarck Archipelago.

The acquisition of strategic islands was a key element of the overall plan. Once fortified, the island bases would allow the military to secure a perimeter around the newly occupied territories, thereby forming an empire of truly hemispherical proportions. From the Kurile Islands, the line would extend southward to the Gilberts and the Marianas in the Central Pacific, then southwest through the Solomon Islands and the Bismarcks to New Guinea, and finally around Java and Sumatra to Burma—a total of more than twelve thousand miles. As a major component of that strategy, the South Seas Detachment had specific orders to capture Guam in cooperation with the 4th Fleet, after which the combined forces were to
“occupy Rabaul at the earliest opportunity and establish air bases on New Britain.”