Target: Rabaul (10 page)

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 prisoners 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.

THE 6TH FIELD Kempeitai—approximately 280 officers and men—had been established in Tokyo at the beginning of the year. Led by Col. Satoru Kikuchi, the unit departed Japan on February 11 aboard
Aden Maru
, an aging transport described as “a poor excuse for a ship.” It sailed from Hiroshima without escort, which angered the military police. They felt they deserved better.

To call the Kempeitai an elite organization would be an understatement. As a branch of the Imperial Army, the police units wielded extensive power. Arrests could occur on the slightest pretenses. Torture, if not overtly sanctioned, was taught procedurally in the training syllabus. Regular army members showed deference to even the lowest ranks of the Kempeitai. Japanese civilians lived in fear of them. During the 1930s, as Japan’s government became increasingly militant, the duties of the Kempeitai expanded to include matters of state security. This led to comparisons with the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and the KGB in the Soviet Union, though actual links between the organizations were few.

Aden Maru
arrived at Rabaul on March 27. Kikuchi and his officers proceeded directly to Eighth Area Army headquarters to pay their respects to Lt. Gen. Hitoshi Imamura, the commanding general, but his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Rimpei Kato, informed them that Imamura was busy conducting “strategy sessions.” He also said that the navy had jurisdiction over Rabaul regarding police matters; therefore, the unit would fall under the operational control of the Southeast Area Fleet.

Unperturbed, Kikuchi and his men established their headquarters in the center of the business district.

Known in happier days as the Ah Teck tailor shop, the Kempeitai compound overlooked one of Chinatown’s busiest intersections. The site consisted of four buildings arranged around a large central yard. The main two-story building, which fronted Casuarina Avenue, housed the administrative offices, interrogation rooms, officers’ mess, and a small dispensary on the first floor, with officers’ quarters upstairs. A long wooden building on the north side of the compound, with open-air ventilation under the eaves and innumerable pinholes in the rusted metal roof, contained six rectangular cells for detainees—which occasionally included soldiers of the local garrison under arrest for various infractions.

AFTER INTERROGATION BY a Kempeitai officer and a lengthy speech on the weaknesses of the United States, McMurria and his crew were taken to their cell. There was no furniture in the nine-by-eighteen room, except a box with a hinged lid and a large hole in the center. Beneath the lid was a simple bucket, the
benjo
. This was the communal toilet, to be emptied daily by one of the prisoners. The unpleasant chore represented the only opportunity for a POW to leave the cell for a few minutes.

When the door of the cell slammed shut behind the captives, Frank Wynne asked a rhetorical question: “What was all that Bushido shit?”

The answer was slow to come. During daylight hours the prisoners had to sit at attention, their backs to the walls in line with the vertical boards, though they soon learned to slack off whenever the guards displayed a relaxed attitude. There was no bedding; everyone slept on the wooden floor. Aside from emptying the bucket, the only breaks occurred when a small door slid open and eight balls of rice appeared. Occasionally a thin soup was provided, and on Sundays a small quantity of hard
tack and a few lumps of sugar accompanied the rice balls. To pass the time, the men told stories, recited movie lines, and tallied “kills” as they picked lice out of their hair and clothing.

The days blended into weeks. Desperate for any scraps of information about the outside world, the prisoners were excited to learn that two other Allied airmen were being held at the compound. Soon thereafter, they managed to communicate with the newcomers in whispers, and eventually the two men were moved into the same cell. But their appearance was depressing. Members of Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 143, based on Guadalcanal, Capt. Alexander R. Berry and his gunner, Cpl. Cephas L. Kelly, had been shot down over Bougainville on March 1. After three months of beatings, malnourishment, and illness, both were in poor shape. “Kelly was only 18 years old and a walking skeleton,” recalled McMurria. “He couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds and he was 5 feet, 10 inches tall. Small sores literally covered his body. There was hardly a square inch of flesh without a sore, all very visible for us to see as he wore a
fundoshi
, the Japanese name for a loin cloth.”

McMurria and his crew began to break out in sores, too. They teased poor Kelly that he was contagious, but the real culprit was their weakening immune systems. Poor sanitation led to bacterial infections, exacerbated by scratching at insect bites; and with poor nutrition, the prisoners began to show signs of beriberi, a disease caused by severe vitamin deficiency. The condition of the two marines, who had been captives only a little longer than McMurria and his crew, was disheartening.

In late June, another airman came to the Kempeitai compound. Twenty-one-year-old Lt. Jack K. Wisener weighed about two hundred pounds when he joined the other POWs. A bombardier in the 43rd Bomb Group, he thought he was the only survivor of a B-17 shot down over Rabaul on the night of June 13. Captured after nine days in the jungle, he was initially held by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit, an element of the Eighth Base Force, headquartered in the former W. R. Carpenters store on Malaguna Avenue. Later, the navy turned Wisener over to the Kempeitai—and that was lucky for him.

During 1942, before the Kempeitai compound was established, all the Allied airmen captured near Rabaul were confined in the navy prison under extremely harsh conditions. A fortunate few were sent to Japan for further interrogation, but most were eliminated in mass executions conducted with
katana
swords or bayonets. By the end of the year, no captured airmen were believed alive at the compound. More downed aviators were captured during 1943 and beyond, but only a few were held for longer than a month or so. Some were sent to Japan, and a few others were handed over to the Kempeitai. Most were executed. There is no evidence that any Allied airmen were held in the navy compound after early 1944.

For the prisoners in the Kempeitai compound, Wisener’s transfer brought a chance to hear some news. Having listened to enemy propaganda for weeks, the prisoners were convinced that the Japanese were winning. But Wisener thrilled
them with the news that an enemy convoy had been annihilated in the Bismarck Sea, with a dozen ships sunk and thousands of Japanese killed. The information proved immensely uplifting. “Nothing short of a full course meal could have suited us better,” remembered McMurria.

But there was something Wisener
didn’t
know. Ever since the costly Walker mission in early January, the heavy bombers had been attacking Rabaul only at night, primarily because the enemy lacked an effective night fighter. This had held true for almost half a year, but in late May, a new type of fighter had begun stalking the night skies over Rabaul. It was stealthy, giving bomber crews no inkling of trouble until their plane was already shattered and falling in flames.

The paradigm had shifted, and more losses would occur before anyone figured out what was killing the bombers.

*
This was the date of capture according to Martindale, whereas McMurria testified that they were captured in late February. Martindale’s timeline is more logical, based on factors such as the arrival of the 6th Field Kempeitai at Rabaul in late March 1943.

CHAPTER 5

Lethal Moonlight

I
N THE WEEKS
following the conclusion of
I-Go Sakusen
, but before Yamamoto’s death was announced, the routine at Rabaul seemed almost normal. Reconnaissance flights went out to assess the damage to the enemy, and the survivors of the Third Fleet units returned to their aircraft carriers.