The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (8 page)

MacArthur was not ready to send in the 32nd yet. As Colonels Yokoyama and Tsukamoto marched inland, the American division was thousands of miles from New Guinea, traveling by train from South Australia to a tent encampment called Camp Tamborine. Situated in semi-tropical country thirty miles south of Brisbane, Camp Tamborine was fifteen hundred miles north of Adelaide. Rather than launching into jungle training exercises the moment they arrived at Tamborine, the troops had to build the camp from scratch. Soldiers who should have been learning to patrol and to maneuver at night were forced to cut down and clear trees and dig latrines.

It was weeks before the division was able to drill again. Watching the Red Arrow men, Harding remembered that General Marshall had counseled him against taking over the division. The 32nd, Marshall said, was poorly trained and rife with Midwestern small-town politics, enmities, and allegiances. At the time, Harding thanked his old friend for the advice and accepted the division anyway. The chance at his first field command was too attractive to resist.

As soon as he was able, Harding implemented a live-fire infiltration course called the Sergeant York and set up commando, sniper, and tommy gun schools. One of his most capable instructors was a man named Herman Bottcher.

Bottcher was not new to Australia. Though German-born, Bottcher left his native country at the age of 20, bound for Sydney, Australia, in May 1929. As he roamed the city looking for employment, he studied a German-English dictionary. Eventually he found a job as a carpenter on a sheep station in New South Wales. While there he saved his money and nursed a dream of coming to America. In November 1931, when he landed in San Francisco, that dream became a reality.

With sixty dollars in his pocket, he took a room at a hotel on Third Street and searched for work. Jobs were few, so he traveled south to San Diego. Nine months later he had saved enough money to get back to San Francisco, where he took a job in San Francisco’s Crystal Palace markets and attended classes at night at San Francisco State College. Four years later, he was off again, lured to Spain by the Civil War, where he enlisted with the International Brigade. He spent two years fighting with the Loyalists, rose to the rank of captain, and was twice wounded. Attempting to re-enter the United States, he was detained by Immigration officials at Ellis Island. After questioning him about his political affiliations, Immigration eventually let him go. Bottcher returned to San Francisco, where he worked as a cabinetmaker. The day after the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, Bottcher enlisted, and less than a month later he reported to Camp Roberts, California.

No one would have known from watching the 32nd that MacArthur was preparing to transport it to New Guinea. The majority of the division’s training consisted of twenty-five-mile marches through the modest terrain of the Mount Tamborine area; field exercises, where men lived in tents and ate from mess kits; compass and first aid courses; and pulling sentry duty along the coastal beaches. The kinds of small-unit activities that worked in the jungle were not stressed. Harding understood their importance, but how could he teach sudden attacks and withdrawals, infiltrations of the perimeter, and night assaults when the division was lacking in basic field skills and conditioning?

Although the 32nd had earned high marks in the Louisiana Maneuvers, since then it had been on the move—Louisiana to Fort Devens to San Francisco to South Australia and now Camp Tamborine. In twenty months it had participated in only a few night training exercises. The men knew little of stream, swamp, or river crossings. They understood nothing about living and fighting in the jungle, or the effects of extreme humidity on the maintenance of weapons. And they had almost no practice with live fire. Nevertheless, many of the soldiers were under the illusion that they were “tough as nails” and ready to do battle with the Japanese.

In contrast, the Japanese trained for war in what military historian Geoffrey Perret calls “tropical dystopias.” During the 1930s, the Japanese Imperial army sent recruits to the rugged island of Formosa. The training there was intense, rigorous, and designed to inure soldiers to suffering. In the process, the Japanese army learned some very basic lessons: Do not overburden soldiers; provide them with light weapons and light loads; give every soldier a headband to absorb sweat that would otherwise pour into his eyes; do not confine troops’ movements to trails; and use the jungle and the element of surprise to outwit and outmaneuver the enemy.

The Imperial army also simulated island landings. Crammed into the holds of ships, soldiers were deprived of water and forced to endure unbearable heat. Then they were dumped onto beaches under combat conditions. Meanwhile, Japanese engineers developed barges with innovative bow ramps that could carry and quickly discharge men and even light tanks. By late in the war, the barges were already obsolete; but early on, the innovation afforded the Japanese forces a technological advantage over the U.S. Army.

The thirty men whom Templeton had sent back to investigate the Japanese landing first sighted Tsukamoto’s scouts a few miles from Awala, well inland from where the Japanese had disembarked—they were clearly moving fast. The bayonet blades of their long-barreled .25 caliber Arisaka rifles and Type 38 bolt-action rifles gleamed brightly in the glare of the tropical sun.

Templeton’s platoon fell back to the village of Wairopi on the Kumusi River. At 9:00 a.m. the following morning, the platoon received a message from Templeton instructing it to retreat to Oivi. Ten of the men remained at Wairopi. They cut the cables of the wire-rope bridge that spanned the river, sending it tumbling into the current. Then they lay in wait for Tsukamoto’s scouts.

The Kumusi roared through a deep gorge en route to the coast, but Tsukamoto’s scouts were superbly conditioned men. Upon encountering the sixty-foot-wide river and the remnants of the bridge, they plunged into the current and fell into the Australian ambush. Templeton’s men killed fifteen Japanese. The scouts kept coming, though, and eventually the small Australian force fled.

Back in Port Moresby, General Morris, despite his earlier insouciance, was scrambling to get enough troops to Kokoda to stop the Japanese short of the village and its airstrip. Four of his companies, however, were still south of the mountains. Even if they had been able to walk round the clock, it would have taken them days to make Kokoda. Aware that he could not get the battalion there in time, Morris chose instead to fly in the battalion’s capable commander, Lieutenant Colonel William T. Owen. Owen assessed the situation and made a rash decision: He would torch Kokoda, leaving little for the Japanese.

The following day, Owen recognized his mistake: He was handing Kokoda and its vital airfield to the Japanese without a fight. Owen returned to Kokoda with a scanty force and waited among the burned remnants of what had once been a flourishing village. Smoke rose from the charred buildings, creating a ghostly impression in the misty morning light.

At 2:00 a.m. on July 29, with wispy clouds veiling a fat moon, four hundred of Tsukamoto’s men plunged into the jungle void. Screaming like wild animals, they scaled a nearly vertical hill and stormed the Australian stronghold.

In the chaos of the battle, Owen was shot. The battalion medical officer and a number of stretcher bearers rushed to his side, but a bullet had lodged in Owen’s head and brain tissue oozed out of the wound. Owen had survived the bloody January 1942 Japanese invasion of the island of Rabaul only to fall dead to a sniper’s bullet in the first large-scale battle on the New Guinea mainland.

When the generals at GHQ in Brisbane learned of the loss of the Kokoda airfield, they insisted that the airstrip be recaptured. On August 8, Australian forces attacked, catching Tsukamoto’s surprised troops off guard. By afternoon, Kokoda was back in Australian hands.

For two and a half days, Tsukamoto’s men threw themselves at the Australians. Second Lieutenant Hirano, a platoon leader in Tsukamoto’s battalion, was unnerved by the fierceness of the Australian defense. “Every day I am losing men,” he lamented. “I could not repress tears of bitterness.”

On the evening of August 10, as a heavy fog fell over the yawning Mambare River, Tsukamoto’s forces sprang out of their trenches and rushed the Australians. “The stirring and dauntless charge,” wrote Hirano in his diary, “is the tradition of our Army and no enemy can withstand such an attack.” He was right: The Japanese soldiers overwhelmed the Australians.

The following day, what should have been a celebration turned into a dour ritual. Though the Japanese were again in possession of Kokoda, they were forced to gather up their dead. Lieutenant Hirano found time to make an entry in his diary. “The bloody fighting in the rain during the last few days seems like a nightmare,” he wrote. Then regaining his defiance, he added, “I swore to the souls of the warriors who died that I would carry on their aspirations.” The next morning, he wrote in a more sentimental vein, “The day was beautiful, and the birds sang gaily. It was like spring.”

Six days later, on August 18, 1942, with Colonel Tsukamoto in possession of Kokoda, the main body of Japan’s famous Nankai Shitai (South Seas Detachment), including its commander, Major General Tomitaro Horii, landed at Basabua, right under the nose of unsuspecting Allied air units.

Chapter 4

S
ONS OF
H
EAVEN

M
AJOR
G
ENERAL
T
OMITARO
H
ORII
was a tiny, bold man with a flair for the dramatic—he liked to ride into battle on a white steed with a sword hanging from his side. But his instructions in New Guinea were straightforward: to march on Port Moresby as swiftly as possible, employing battle-tested Japanese field tactics of surprise, encirclement, and night attacks. Horii had already proved himself during the invasion of Rabaul, which he had commanded. Though he had misgivings about the mission on New Guinea’s mainland, as a Japanese officer he was prepared to obey his orders absolutely.

Although the Japanese succeeded in landing the main body of the Nankai Shitai, two battalions of the 144th Infantry, two artillery companies, crack naval landing troops, and a huge support force, they were not yet finished sending troops to New Guinea. A day after Horii’s men arrived at Basabua, another regiment left Rabaul bound for the Buna coast. Like the Nankai Shitai, the 15th Independent Engineers and the Tsukamoto Battalion that preceded it, the Yazawa Detachment, under the command of Colonel Kiyomi Yazawa, was a veteran fighting force.

Again, the Japanese navy’s luck held. The convoy that carried the Yazawa Detachment reached Basabua under cloud cover on August 21, bringing Japan’s troop count to a total of eight thousand army troops, three thousand naval construction troops, and 450 troops from the Sasebo 5th Special Naval Landing Force.

These were not the “minor forces” Allied intelligence had predicted. Still, Willoughby persisted in his stubborn appraisal of Japanese plans. When Allied air reconnaissance discovered that the Japanese were lengthening a landing strip at Buna, Willoughby seized on the report as evidence that he had been right all along—the Japanese would penetrate inland only as far as they needed to build airfields.

In dismissing the threat of a land-based assault on Port Moresby, Willoughby, MacArthur and his advisors, and the Australians were forgetting the lesson of Malaya. There, British forces had relied on a vast jungle to the north to defend Singapore from a Japanese incursion. The Japanese overcame that jungle through sheer force of will, once again proving themselves capable of enormous daring, and forced the surrender of eighty thousand British troops.

The “ghost” in the modern Japanese army that allowed military strategists to forgo caution and field officers to push their troops beyond what was considered humanly possible was the samurai spirit. Around the ninth century, as feudalism evolved in Japan, samurai, or “those who serve,” were a small, elite warrior class within the feudal system. The samurai emphasized the twin virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice and evolved an ethic known as
bushido
, the “way of the warrior.” In the first half of the twentieth century, the Japanese military resurrected bushido, and distorted it as a way to transform Japan’s entire male population into willing warriors. In fact, at the time, the whole of Japanese society was being systematically indoctrinated and militarized. Slogans were omnipresent:
“Ichoku isshin”
(One hundred million [people], one mind)
“Hoshigarimasen katsu made wa”
(Abolish desire until victory). Dissent was aggressively suppressed. Unwavering dedication to the emperor, to Japan, to a culture that considered itself morally superior to the degenerate West became the norm. In fact, by World War II, the average Japanese citizen had been instilled with a master race mentality that was every bit as dangerous as the German conception of the Aryan race.

Many Japanese soldiers who came ashore at Basabua in July and August carried with them a copy of the famous Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors. The Imperial Rescript, which was promulgated by Emperor Meiji in 1882, articulated a series of virtues similar to the traditional samurai code of bushido. Bravery and loyalty were seen as the ultimate manifestations of a soldier’s commitment. He was encouraged to relinquish all personal initiative. Consequently, Japanese soldiers carried out orders unquestioningly. To become an officer, a cadet had to pass through the military academy at Ichigaya, where absolute obedience was inculcated during every waking hour, originality and individuality were stifled, and death was glorified as a transcendent act that brought honor to oneself and one’s family. A good soldier was said to die with the “Emperor’s name on [his] lips.” And death, even a grisly one, was preferable to surrender. Surrender was the consummate disgrace, a humiliation that would forever haunt not only the soldier, but the soldier’s family, too. Mothers, bidding farewell to their sons, were said to encourage them to commit suicide instead of being taken prisoner.

On August 19, as the morning burned into midday and the tropical sun bore down on them, General Horii and his men marched with all the confidence of invaders certain of victory. Soldiers led the way. Then came more troops lugging mortars, machine guns, and field pieces, followed by Rabaul natives carrying ammunition.

Horii believed that his campaign was a sacred one: “To extend the light of the Imperial power” over the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” and to eliminate the “White Race from Asia.” A popular regimental song reflected similar sentiments: “Of Heavenly Japan / The Emperor’s power is clear / We must build a new World Order…/ While we have this weighty Mission / Even if in the waters, grass-grown corpses soak / Let us go, Comrades, with hearts united.”

By the time Horii, whom a lieutenant described as an “unsympathetic man,” reached the village of Soputa ten miles inland and set up camp in a coffee plantation, he was already frustrated with his troops’ progress. He feared a protracted struggle and worried over the reliability of his supply line, which extended by ship from Rabaul to Buna and, eventually, as he advanced, by carrier into the mountains. He had hoped that they might be able to navigate the trail on horseback, but by the time he got to Soputa, he realized that the terrain was far too rugged for horses, and that he had seriously underestimated the difficulty of the advance.

As little as Allied Headquarters in Brisbane knew about New Guinea, the Japanese may have known even less. Yokoyama and Horii had no maps or geographic surveys and no conception of the topographical hurdles and medical problems their troops would encounter. Horii’s faith in the inevitability of Japanese victory was illustrative of a broader Japanese conceit—“victory disease.” Encouraged by Japan’s stunning successes in Southeast Asia, “victory disease” caused its military leaders to ignore warning signs.

The impetuousness of the Japanese plan was in keeping with the Japanese Imperial army’s modus operandi. “Fighting spirit” was valued at the expense of strategy and planning. Patience and prudence were antithetical to the most revered of all of Japan’s martial virtues: action. Supply considerations were given little attention; troops were forced to make do with inferior weapons. In many cases, infantrymen carried a Type 38 bolt-action rifle that shot only five rounds. Grenades were left over from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and were highly unreliable. The Japanese did have two exceptional weapons, a wheel-mounted artillery gun (carried in pieces), and the Juki heavy machine gun. For the most part, though, the Imperial army relied on speed, surprise, and courage. Never concerned with heavy casualty rates, the Japanese regularly employed suicide squads and night attacks to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies.

On August 26, as the first rays of dawn cut through the enveloping night fog, General Horii began his advance from Kokoda down the track. His orders to his enthusiastic troops reiterated basic Japanese battlefield tactics. “Lay in wait,” Horii advised them, “and then go around the flank…Harass them and exhaust them by ceaseless activity. Finally, when they are completely exhausted, open the offensive…The enemy must never be allowed to escape.”

Lieutenant Hirano’s company commander had issued his enigmatic message days before. “In death there is life,” he said. “In life, there is no life.” Hirano, however, required no encouragement. “I will die at the foot of the Emperor,” he wrote in his diary. “I will not fear death! Long live the Emperor! Advance with this burning feeling and even the demons will flee!”

Before Horii could march on Port Moresby, however, his Nankai Shitai would need to conquer a whole succession of villages, beginning with Isurava, roughly six miles south of Kokoda. Anticipating only feeble resistance from the Australian 39th Battalion, and certain of his troops’ superior skills, Horii held Yazawa Force in reserve at Kokoda and dedicated only three of his battalions to the attack.

At Isurava, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner and his men were under orders to “stand and fight.” If any man could hold, it was Honner. He was widely regarded as the best company commander in the Australian army and his unit, the 39th, was the top unit in the Australian militia.

Honner’s men watched the approach of Horii’s troops. Adorned with leaves and branches they marched “as purposefully as soldier ants.” As the Japanese neared Isurava, they divided: One group scrambled up Naro Ridge, which overlooked Isurava; another moved to the east in the vicinity of the Abuari waterfall; the third, advancing from Deniki, stuck to the track.

At 7:00 a.m. on August 26, the battle for Isurava commenced with the crack of rifles, the insistent pounding of Juki heavy machine guns, and mortar and mountain-gun fire.

Despite the dramatic beginning to the battle, General Horii was actually biding his time, waiting for nightfall. Twelve hours later, when darkness descended over the mountains, Horii’s troops began to move out. Once in position, they began to rhythmically chant, beginning in the rear and rising to the front lines like a crashing wave. Then, the cries of the Nankai Shitai soldiers tore through the jungle: “Banzai! Long live the Emperor!” Suddenly “all hell broke loose,” wrote Honner. Horii’s troops were “shooting, stabbing, hacking, in a…surge of blind and blazing fury.”

It was a suicidal assault, and the ensuing battle was a blur. Men screamed, bayonets flashed, bullets ripped through flesh. Separated by only a few yards of jungle, they lunged for each other’s vital areas like wide-mouthed animals. Honner’s men had never encountered such rage. They fired haphazardly into the tangle of onrushing soldiers. Japanese fell by the dozens, but still they came.

If not for the timely arrival of elite AIF soldiers, Isurava might have fallen that evening. But together Honner’s men and the fresh AIF forces beat back the Japanese. According to Honner, the reinforcements were a “providential blessing.” Honner’s men were “gaunt spectres with gaping boots and rotting tatters of uniform hanging around them like scarecrows…. Their faces had no expression, their eyes sunk back into their sockets. They were drained by [disease], but they were still in the firing line…” One AIF soldier wrote that he “could have cried when [he] saw them.”

The morning of August 27 dawned quietly, and the Australians began to search the jungle for what Honner grimly called the “jetsam of death.” Lacking litters, medics draped bloodstained men over their shoulders and floundered back to camp.

On the Australians’ eastern flank, the scene was just as grim. Unable to stop the oncoming Japanese, Australian soldiers lunged into the overgrown jungle, leaving behind ammunition, food, clothing, and weapons. Soon, according to Honner, “Mortar bombs and mountain gun shells burst among the tree tops or slashed through to the quaking earth…. Heavy machine guns…chopped through the trees, cleaving their own lanes of fire to tear at the defences…bombs and bullets crashed and rattled in unceasing clamour.”

Day and night the Japanese kept up the bombardment, while patrols tested the Australian perimeters, sneaking in to bayonet soldiers distracted by the mortars. At the Naro Ridge Front, Horii’s troops dispensed with stealth. Honner wrote: “Through the widening breach poured another flood of attackers…met with Bren gun and tommy gun, with bayonet and grenade; but still they came, to close with the buffet of fist and boot and rifle-butt, the steel of crashing helmets and of straining, strangling fingers.” Corpses, according to Honner, “soon cluttered that stretch of open ground.”

August 28 came and went, but on the evening of August 29, Horii assembled his troops for what he hoped would be the coup de grâce, an attack so ferocious it would “shatter the Australian resistance beyond hope of recovery.”

That night, after again being beaten back by the Australians, Lieutenant Hirano wrote that one of the company commanders, a friend of his, had been killed. “Only this morning,” wrote Hirano, “he and I…were gaily conversing over a cup of ‘sake’ from his canteen. Now it is only a memory. How cruel and miserable this life is!” Despite their personal sadnesses, the Japanese army did not relent. Facing a torrent of fire from the Australian Bren and tommy guns, Horii’s troops kept coming, preferring death to the dishonor of staying back.

At noon, the Japanese threw caution to the wind. Scaling a steep hill, they ascended straight into the throat of the Australian defense, breaking through. The Australian troops withdrew down the track. Isurava was now General Horii’s.