The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (11 page)

MacArthur ended the conversation on a note of self-pity—a quality that he had revealed on other occasions, and one that was as much a part of his enigmatic emotional make-up as his extravagant self-confidence. “Must I always lead a forlorn hope?” he asked the Australian prime minister.

On September 18, only hours after speaking with Curtin, MacArthur mobilized two of the 32nd’s three regimental combat teams—the 126th and 128th U.S. Infantries. The plan was to send the 126th minus its artillery team by ship to New Guinea. The 128th would leave Australia via the airfield at Townsville in what would be the first mass movement of troops by air in Would War II. Originally, MacArthur was opposed to the idea, but General George Kenney, MacArthur’s Commander of Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, convinced him that in the time it would take to move the men by ship, the Australians might already “be behind barbed wire at Port Moresby.”

While his buddies were building the coastal road, Lutjens arrived in Gabagaba. It had taken him, Edson, and Baxter five days to cover the thirty-five miles from Tupeselei. When they reached Gabagaba (which the soldiers mispronounced as Kapa Kapa), a beautiful village of hibiscus-and bougainvillea-lined walkways, tall, graceful coconuts, and thatched huts built on stilts over the shallow water of a small protected bay, they set up temporary headquarters near the village’s wooden wharf.

Although Gabagaba was a small coastal village, the people were familiar with the war. Less than forty miles from Port Moresby, the villagers heard the frequent Japanese bombing raids on the town, and had been buzzed by Zeros. Just weeks before Lutjens arrived, a village elder and his wife were working in their garden southeast of the village when they saw a plane drop into the sea. The old man and woman left the garden and paddled out to the wreckage in an outrigger. There they discovered an American pilot hanging on to a piece of the plane, trying to stay afloat. The old man dove in, grabbed him, swam to the dugout where he and his wife managed to lay him in the narrow boat, and then they paddled back to the village. After a week of convalescing in the village, the pilot made his way to Port Moresby on foot and by boat, and two weeks later flew over the village and airdropped food as a thank-you.

The war also had a much more tangible effect on the village. ANGAU officers who were organizing carrier teams for the Americans were already in Gabagaba preparing for the possible American march over the Owen Stanleys. Hundreds of native carriers would be needed, and the officers would eventually recruit all able-bodied men from Gabagaba and area villages. They considered any male with hair under his arms—the ANGAU officers literally lifted the arms of a boy to see if he qualified—old enough to work. Those who balked at the prospect of carrying for the Americans were conscripted at gunpoint. Often, the only people left in the villages were old men, women, and young children.

Gabagaba was not as primitive as Lutjens had expected. An Australian expatriate ran a bakery out of the village, and had Lutjens and his men wanted to, they could have enjoyed fresh-baked bread every morning. Far from being the murderous headhunters that Lutjens must have expected, the villagers of Gabagaba—a Motu word meaning “small drum”—were shy, gentle, and kind-hearted.

Though Lutjens does not mention it in his diary, while he and Privates Edson and Baxter waited for the road builders to reach them, they probably had time to enjoy village life. Gabagaba was part of a world they had never even imagined. When the tide was in, children paddled around the bay in little outriggers, chattering and singing, or used the wooden ladders to their houses as diving boards. The Motuan women, unashamedly bare-breasted, wore grass skirts and bore striking face and arm tattoos. When they were not nursing their babies, young mothers carried them in colorful, beautifully woven string bags, which they fastened to their heads with tumplines. The bags hung to their hips, so that when they walked the babies swung gently back and forth. When not tending to their children or working in the garden, the women spent much of the day cooking over fires on open-air porches.

Until they were pressed into duty as carriers, the men went off each morning on fishing excursions. When they were not fishing, they accompanied the women to the jungle, where they tended small garden plots with long wooden sticks. As fascinated as Lutjens would have been by the people of Gabagaba, the villagers, especially the children, were surely drawn to the Americans. Frank Gabi was four or five at the time the first Americans came and remembers them passing out biscuits and lollipops in return for papaya, sugar cane, and coconuts. In the short time the American’s were there, the villagers grew accustomed to them and began to call them their
tura
—friends.

Lieutenant James Hunt, who, along with a platoon of men, went ahead of the roadbuilders to guard the growing supply depot, describes the scene at Gabagaba:

Although the plan was to build the road suitable for truck traffic, supplies were already being moved to Kapa Kapa by small coastal boats which could not come close to shore but were unloaded some distance at sea onto native outrigger canoes, which transported their load to shore. Some items, such as oil drums, were merely dumped into the water and pushed to shore by the natives. A large group of natives were assembled for this purpose and made their camp near the beach. The village consisted of native huts built on pilings or stilts in the ocean, all connected by narrow walkways.

During our stay in Kapa Kapa, the natives discovered that a slap on an empty oil drum made a drum sound very pleasing to them. They assembled one evening at the beach and put on quite a show using several oil drums with some impromptu dancing and merry making which we enjoyed very much.

When the men of Company E and the 91st U.S. Engineers arrived in Gabagaba, they were exhausted from their road-building exertions, and took a day to recuperate before Captain Schultz gave them their new orders: MacArthur wanted the road extended from Kapa Kapa to a rubber plantation four miles inland at the village of Gobaregari on the Kemp Welch River.

After Company E and the 91st U.S. Engineers set up camp in the village of Gabagaba, it did not take long for trucks and jeeps carrying supplies to rumble in from Port Moresby. The Americans had suddenly transformed a quiet village of four hundred into a major operations base. The people of Gabagaba were frightened at first by the big trucks and the roaring noise. Soon, though, emboldened by their relationship with Lutjens, Baxter, and Edson, the villagers mingled with the new arrivals, doing their wash for them, gathering food, and teaching them a few basic Motu phrases like “Good morning”—
Dada namona
—and “Good night”—
Hanuaboi namona.
In return, the Americans good-naturedly gave away their remaining Australian shillings, reasoning that where they were going the money was worthless to them anyway.

As interested as the villagers of Gabagaba were in the men of Company E, they were fascinated by the black men of the 91st Engineers. The people of Gabagaba had been living under the imposition of the Australian colonial administration for over three decades, an era known still as “
taim bilong masta.
” Although the Australians governed less harshly than other colonial administrations, the divisions between white and black were clearly defined—natives were laborers and white men were their bosses. The natives were expected to work when told to. When they saw the men of Company E and the black engineers working side by side, they imagined that in America black men and white men lived in a kind of harmonious equality. What they did not know, of course, was that the U.S. Army units were racially segregated and racial tension ran high, much as in American society in general. While black men were allowed to serve as engineers, they were not allowed in the infantry.

While the rest of his company and the engineers took a much-needed break from their road building efforts, Lutjens and Sergeants Henry Brissette and Hubert Schulte made a reconnaissance upriver. Word was that MacArthur wanted a road to Gobaregari in order to convert what was a rubber station into an advance base for the overland invasion. It was Lutjens’ job to figure out if it could be done.

After scouting the area, Lutjens, Brissette, and Schulte were eager to get back to Kapa Kapa to deliver their report. The notion struck all of them at the same time—why walk two days to the coast when they could use the river? If they could build a raft and float down the Kemp Welch, they might be able to make Kapa Kapa before nightfall.

The raft was not a thing of beauty, but the question was, Would it float? When they shoved it into the water, the river was flat and calm, and once Lutjens got over his astonishment that the raft had not sunk, he found himself admiring the scenery. That is when he felt a jerk. His muscles tensed and his pulse raced. The raft rounded a bend, and the current quickened. Up ahead, the course was studded with boulders.

The three men frantically tried to pole their way to the riverbank, but the raft spun round and round, out of control. Lutjens grabbed for a log, and then they heard it—Crack! They had hit a large rock. The collision shot the raft into the air, and hurtled the men into the river. Schulte surfaced first and swam to safety. Brissette grasped a floating log and was kicking for the riverbank when he saw Lutjens caught between two rocks in the middle of a powerful whirlpool. Laying his chest on the log, Brissette straddled it, and pushed himself back into the current. When he passed the whirlpool, he caught Lutjens by his helmet. Gripping Lutjens’ helmet as tightly as he could with one hand, he used his other arm to paddle. When he reached the bank, he pulled Lutjens out of the water and they both collapsed in the mud at the river’s edge.

It was night by the time the men regained their strength. Now they had to confront the reality of their situation: They were weak, wet, and growing cold, and their only choice was to walk. Plunging into the jungle, they used the sound of the river as their guide. They had not been walking for long when they spotted the light of a campfire tended by a lone native hunter. The Americans approached him carefully, and Lutjens, who had the most experience with natives, mimed their experience, the building of the raft, turning over, swimming to safety. Then Lutjens asked the most important question—could the man guide them to the coast? Somehow Lutjens was able to get his point across. He offered to give the man his pocketknife if he would be willing to lead them back to Kapa Kapa. The native hunter agreed.

In the dark of the jungle, the native man led the way, expertly navigating through a maze of knee-deep swamps, fallen trees, and a tangle of limbs and vines. Lutjens was amazed by the man’s ability to find his way. Without his guidance, setting off through the jungle might have been a deadly decision. Lutjens and his party, holding hands and single file, made six river crossings that night, and each time the native hunter unerringly found sandbars on which they could walk, avoiding the river’s deep holes and the fast current. When one of the men stumbled, the native man, hardly half the size of Lutjens, would tighten his grip and hold him up. Lutjens later remembered that the man’s hand was “like steel.” In the early hours of the morning, the hunter led Lutjens and others to the army encampment. Lutjens thanked the man for his service and gave him his pocketknife, and the man trudged off into the jungle.

Lutjens, Brissette, and Schulte were exhausted, and their legs were covered with cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Later that morning, Lutjens consulted with Captain Schultz, informing him of the difficulties a road building crew would encounter upriver. Schultz radioed Colonel Quinn, who had just arrived in Port Moresby. Quinn did not deliberate long. Company E and the 91st U.S. Engineers would have to hack another road through the jungle.

Chapter 7

T
HE
B
LOODY
T
RACK

F
ROM WHERE THEY STOOD
on top of Ioribaiwa Ridge, General Horii’s soldiers could smell the salt air. They were “wild with joy,” wrote Seizo Okada, the war correspondent attached to the Yokoyama Advance Force. From the summit, the men looked down on the dusty town of Port Moresby, situated in the rain shadow of the Owen Stanleys, with its treeless, camel-backed hills and native gardens. They knew their long journey was almost over. The “endless waves of mountains,” which Seizo Okada wrote had become a “living animal,” had finally “vanished.” Soon the dying would be over. Horii’s army had marched “with only one objective in view, asleep or awake—Port Moresby,” and now the Allied base was within its grasp.

Seizo Okada effused:

We gazed over the Gulf of Papua from the peak of the last main ridge we had fought to ascend. “I can see the ocean! The sea of Port Moresby!” The officers and men who had endured such bloody conflict embraced on the top of a stony ridge, crying and pointing. There were no longer any deep mountain ranges in front to block their progress. An undulating ocean of verdant green forest fell away before us. In the gaps between the trees, half obscured by the mountain mist, something was glittering. It was undoubtedly the sea. The Gulf of Papua…. Later that evening, we stood on the peak and saw the lights of Port Moresby. We could just make out the searchlights shining over the airfield at Seven Mile to the north of the city.

Captain Nakahashi of the 55th Mountain Artillery was moved to write in his diary: “Over there was Port Moresby, the object of our invasion, which had become an obsession. Officers and men alike embraced one another overcome by emotion…. The line of captured positions more than atones for their blood.”

It had been a hard-won victory for General Horii and the men of the Nankai Shitai. Of the six thousand combat troops that Horii had committed to the invasion of Port Moresby, only fifteen hundred remained, and at least half of these men were wounded, sick, or severely weakened by hunger and disease.

“The only thing that kept up the morale was the thought of Port Moresby,” wrote Seizo Okada. For a moment Horii’s men could forget the loss of so many friends and the hunger that gnawed at their bellies. Their jubilation, though, would not last.

As the Japanese contemplated victory in New Guinea, Guadalcanal thrust itself onto the main stage. Despite the diversion of resources and troops to the Solomon Islands, the Japanese were in trouble there. When U.S. Marines virtually destroyed an entire Japanese detachment in the Battle of Bloody Ridge in mid-September, Japanese General Headquarters in Rabaul once again was forced to amend its plans for taking Port Moresby. Their strategic situation was complicated by another disturbing development—Japanese war planners learned of MacArthur’s intention to attack Buna.

Though news of Japan’s defeat at Guadalcanal filtered forward along the Japanese supply line to Ioribaiwa Ridge, General Horii refused to accept its implications. He and his troops had come too far and suffered too much to turn their backs on Port Moresby. Privately, Horii brooded. But publicly, he proceeded as if the news from Guadalcanal had no consequences for him or his troops. Horii designated September 20 as the day on which his army would resume its attack on Port Moresby, and sent out patrols over the Goldie River, which separated Ioribaiwa from Imita Ridge, to identify enemy positions and to assess the terrain that lay ahead.

Horii’s soldiers were too busy foraging in the jungle and among the scattered native gardens to contemplate the aftermath of Japan’s defeat at Bloody Ridge. Despair, though, filled their diaries. On September 11, hoping to conserve his food supply, Horii had cut the daily rice ration to less than a pint per man. Yet by September 17, the rice was nearly gone.

Horii’s supply situation was desperate. Allied pilots pounded Rabaul with 1,760-pound bombs and attacked transport ships bound for Buna. Those supplies that made it to the north coast and were marked for the front line rarely made it that far forward—starving soldiers and carriers pilfered them along the way.

On Ioribaiwa Ridge, sick and wounded men were left to die because there was not enough food to nurse them back to health. When malnourished native carriers crumbled under their loads, Japanese soldiers beat them. The celebrated Japanese “seishin” was being tested as never before. Back in Kokoda, at the Japanese field hospital, the sick and the wounded languished. They were “packed in like sardines.” Those without beds lay on leaves. Soldiers screamed out in pain, but doctors had no morphine to help them. They performed operations and amputations without anaesthetic. A newly dug graveyard sat just outside the hospital’s entrance, so that the dead would not have to be dragged too far.

Horii’s candid section leader, who earlier wrote of the soldiers’ quest for water, wrote in his diary on September 18 of the shortage of food. “How long is this state of affairs going to last…? My eyes have sunk in. Who would take me for a man of this world…. No one has any strength to work and if you lie on your side you stay that way. You cannot help feeling weak on 5 SHAKU of rice a day…. We are taught in the training manual to overcome any hardship or obstacle, but are there any battles as difficult as this? I’m keeping my diary, but even holding a pen tires me. How I’d love to eat something! Anything to fill my stomach!”

Lieutenant Sakamoto despaired: “Dreamed all night of lost subordinates…. Hurried on with the construction of positions. Detailed men from remaining TAI [unit] to dig for yams and taros…. How will we live in our present position without food? In another few days, we will have to eat roots or tree bark.”

On September 19, Sakamoto laments the scarcity of food and medicine. Then he comes as close to disloyalty as a Japanese soldier dared. “Wonder what General HQ are doing? Patients will die and we will soon starve. How can we fight against this?”

On September 20, as the dark clouds emptied themselves of rain, he continued, “Not a single grain of rice left. Taros sufficient for only another day. From tomorrow, we will have to chew grass or bark.” Then Sakamoto, as if recognizing his near-mutiny, rallies and regains his soldierly composure: “The battle we are fighting now is an important one,” he writes. “The eyes of the world are upon us.”

That same day, September 20, Horii had hoped to resume the attack on Port Moresby. His army, though, stayed put. Recognizing the need to boost his soldiers’ morale, Horii assembled his troops and read to them a message he had prepared:

More than a month has elapsed since the Shitai departed from Rabaul. Following in the footsteps of the gallant Yokoyama Advance Tai, we have crushed strong positions at Isurava, the Gap, Eora, Efogi, etc; advanced swiftly, and after a fierce battle, destroyed the enemy’s final resistance at Ioribaiwa. We now hold securely this high hill, the most important point for an advance towards Moresby.

Each Tai has tramped over mountains and through dark valleys…and pursued the enemy for over 20 days. We have waded through knee-deep mud, climbed breath-taking cliffs, uncomplainingly carried heavy weights of guns and ammunition, overcome the shortage of provisions, and thus accomplished a break-through of the so-called impregnable Stanley Range.

Words cannot describe the hardship…. The enemy at Tulagi and Guadalcanal have not yet been annihilated….

Then Horii continued his deception. “The reason we have halted,” he lied, “is to regain our fighting strength, in order to strike a crushing blow at the enemy’s positions at Moresby…. Realize the value and importance of your mission. Bolster your morale and make your preparations complete, so that we can throw in the full fighting strength of the butai….”

Four days later, as the sun evaporated below Imita Ridge, Tomitaro Horii sat “solemnly upright on his heels, his face emaciated, his grey hair reflecting the dim light of a candle, that stood on the inner lid of a ration can.” Lieutenant Colonel Tanaka sat across from him. To Seizo Okada, they looked like “two lonely shadows.”

Horii and Tanaka were pondering a series of wireless messages sent earlier in the day by the commanding general of the Southern Army in Rabaul. For Horii, who harbored the illusion that he and his army might still deliver a “crushing blow” to the Australians, the contents of the messages were troubling. “Stop attacking Port Moresby, and wait for further instructions,” the first one said. Then came a second, less ambiguous message. “Withdraw from present position to some point in the Owen Stanley Range which you consider best for strategic purposes.”

Horii refused. “I’m not going back, not a step,” he raged. “I cannot give such an order.” Horii, according to Seizo Okada, then, “grasped his samurai sword,” and held it near Tanaka’s neck and vowed not to “retreat an inch.”

Darkness settled over Ioribaiwa Ridge, and Horii was determined to push on to Port Moresby. How could he retreat, he asked, “after all the blood the soldiers have shed and the hardships they have endured?” Besides, the Japanese army had never retreated before. Horii could not bear the disgrace. Then came a third message, bearing orders from Rabaul, instructing Horii “to withdraw completely from the Owen Stanleys and concentrate on the coast at Buna.”

If Horii was resolved to disobey the order to withdraw, the next message left him no option. It came directly from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo. “The Emperor himself” had authorized it, according to Seizo Okada.

When the order to retreat was circulated, Horii’s troops were in disbelief. Imanishi Sadaharu, who had fought in China for three years and had landed with the Yokoyama Advance Force in July, wrote that Japanese soldiers “didn’t know how to retreat.” Besides, how could they withdraw when Port Moresby was within their grasp? According to Seizo Okada, “Hot-blooded commanders advocated a desperate single-handed thrust into Port Moresby.”

When Takita Kenji, a naval officer, heard the news, he wrote of a “terrible grief” that “cut deep into our hearts.”

“Like a bolt from the blue,” wrote Lieutenant Hirano, who just a week before had walked back to Isurava to bring forward supplies for the assault on Port Moresby, “we received an order to withdraw. It left us momentarily in a daze.” Earlier Hirano had sworn to the souls of his dead friends that he would continue their “aspirations.” Now he wrote of his regret over the futility of their deaths.

In the late morning on September 25, the Australians began an artillery bombardment of Ioribaiwa Ridge. With each roar of the cannon, the Australian soldiers whooped and howled. They had winched, lugged, wrestled, and pushed a cannon thousands of feet up to Imita Ridge and now they were celebrating its thunderous blasts.

Lieutenant Sakamoto described the shelling. “Ten shells landed directly in front of the Okazaki Tai. Spent all day in the trenches…2nd Battalion area pounded with mortars all night.” The following day, September 26, he chronicled the start of the Japanese withdrawal. “Butai to leave present position at 1700…No. 6 Coy [company] acting as rear guard.” That evening, before abandoning Ioribaiwa Ridge “through the woods under the moonlight,” Sakamoto took a moment to record a few lines in his diary. “It is truly regrettable,” he mourned, “having to leave this hard-won area and the bodies of comrades behind. Sleep peacefully, my friends. We will meet again in heaven.”

The following day, he scribbled a few more sentences: “Tired and dizzy. Marched almost unconsciously…Men are searching in the moonlight for food. Sickness increased. Everyone is pale and weak.”

According to Seizo Okada, as the Japanese soldiers retreated, they dug up native gardens “inch by inch.” If at first the natives, who were paid in worthless Japanese invasion currency, were uncertain about which side they would support, the sight of plundered gardens and abused bearers, stumbling with exhaustion, their wounds “crawling with maggots,” convinced them to align themselves with the Allies. Deprived of the prize of Port Moresby, once proud and disciplined Imperial Army troops sank into madness, turning to mindless acts of rage and destruction.

Seizo Okada witnessed the disintegration of the mighty Japanese fighting spirit. “They fled for dear life,” reported Seizo Okada. “None of them had ever thought that a Japanese soldier would turn his back on the enemy…. As soon as they realized the truth, they were seized with an instinctive desire to live…. Discipline was completely forgotten. Each tried for his life to flee faster than his comrades.”

The wounded and the sick, who had clung to life despite being deprived of food and medical attention, were carried out on stretchers by soldiers determined to save them. Soon, though, it became apparent to the company commanders that it was an impossible task. Then the order was given. They shot the wounded lying in their stretchers.

Still General Horii hoped. At some point, he knew that he would halt the retreat and dig in. Then even his sickest soldiers would fight till the end. If they could hold off the Australians long enough, buying time for Japanese forces to retake Guadalcanal, Rabaul would divert troops to New Guinea. A portion of them would seize Milne Bay and then Rabaul would resurrect the original two-pronged invasion plan: A large collection of troops would attack Port Moresby by sea, while the rest would join Horii’s army, resuming the overland assault on the city.