A World at Arms (125 page)

Of the over 150,000 Japanese soldiers engaged in the campaign, only a tiny number of sick and exhausted men staggered back to Burma. It had been Japan’s costliest defeat on land in the whole war up to that point, and it did wonders for the morale of the 14th British-Indian Army after its ordeal. By mid-July the Japanese had decided that from here on their only hope in the area was propaganda by Bose, not much of a substitute for their lost 15th Army.
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Even as the Japanese offensive into India was being blunted and then crushed, Stilwell led a combination of American trained and equipped Chinese divisions and a special American force, modelled on the Chindits and called Merrill’s Marauders after their commander, in a series of local attacks which eventuated in the sudden seizure of the key airfield at Myitkyina in mid-May, 1944.
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In spite of the most bitter fighting, neither side could dislodge the other from positions in the Myitkyina area, but two things were obvious: the Americans and Chinese would clear northern Burma and thus make a new road to China possible, whether the British approved or not; and the simultaneous collapse of Chinese Nationalist resistance to the Japanese “Ichigo” offensive meant that the road would lead to a China which could play little part in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

FIGHTING IN THE PACIFIC, 1943 TO JULY 1944

How that ultimate defeat was to be achieved was certainly not yet obvious in 1943. The twin assaults under primary American army and navy control respectively were being pushed with determination, but they were as yet not nourished by the resources available later and had to contend with fierce resistance at the outer reaches of the empire conquered by Japanese forces earlier. The offensives were pushed, nevertheless, not only because the commanders on the spot were insistent on doing so–the point generally stressed in American accounts–or because this was Admiral King’s favorite theater of war–the pet explanation of British authors–but because there were excellent reasons for believing that it
was essential to keep the Japanese on the defensive lest they so fortify the islands and build up the air bases on them as to make a deferred assault horrendously costly or even impossible. It would all prove difficult enough as it was. And if a larger share of the fighting was borne by the Americans than one might have expected in an area on the approaches to Australia and New Zealand, this was due not only to the relative sizes of the resources and armed forces of the Allies but also to MacArthur’s incapacity for Allied command and the deliberate decision to leave in the Mediterranean theater major Australian and New Zealand units instead of recalling all of them to the South Pacific.
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In the Southwest Pacific, there were parallel thrusts in New Guinea and in the Solomons, following up on the earlier victories on both fronts. On New Guinea, American and Australian troops in a series of carefully planned and coordinated moves crushed the main Japanese forces in the Lae and Salamaua area, greatly assisted by a surprise attack of the 5th Air Force which destroyed almost 200 Japanese planes on the ground at Wewak on August 17, 1943, thus both avenging the American losses at Clark Field in December 1941, and depriving the Japanese in central New Guinea of air cover for several weeks in the face of the Allied offensive. A combined U.S.-Australian force, assisted by a parachute assault to capture a nearby area for an airfield, succeeded in taking both Lae and Salamaua in September, 1943, with the surviving Japanese defenders driven into the jungle.

Hardly had the main bases of Japanese power in central New Guinea been taken than the 9th Australian Division landed at Finschhafen at the tip of the Huon peninsula, took the town and harbor after ten days of bitter fighting, and thus anchored an Allied presence on the New Guinea side of the straits separating that great island from New Britain, the long curving island with Rabaul, Japan’s major bastion in the Southwest Pacific, at the other end. A follow–on American landing at Saidor further up the New Guinea coast failed to trap the Japanese forces by–passedin this fashion, but did move the Allies another 150 miles toward their later objectives further west.

By the time Finschhafen was secured on October 2, 1943, the other wing of the “Cartwheel” operation to isolate Rabaul, the offensive in the Solomons, had also made major advances. The next main island north of Guadalcanal is New Georgia, and the Americans were alarmed to learn that the Japanese were constructing a big airfield at Munda, an indication of the kind of problem awaiting the Allies if the Japanese were allowed time to harden the perimeter defense of their newly conquered empire. Having seized the Russell Islands between Guadalcanal and New Georgia in February, the Americans now launched a coordinated
ensive against New Georgia. The island of Rendova just across a narrow strait from Munda was the scene of a landing on June 30, 1943; three days later the Americans landed on New Georgia itself. The Japanese fought a bitter defensive battle on the island and repeatedly tried to run in reinforcements, primarily on light cruisers and destroyers. Fierce air, sea and land battles raged all during July. In the air, the Americans inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese, in part because the new pilots being sent in were simply not up to the standard of those they replaced. As the Japanese naval air force units were run down, the Americans were increasingly more experienced and their replacements better trained.
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At sea, the American and New Zealand warships did much better now than in the fighting off Guadalcanal the preceding year, sinking a series of Japanese destroyers loaded with reinforcements for the loss of one destroyer and a light cruiser.
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The land fighting was longer and more costly than Admiral Halsey had anticipated; but after reinforcements had been sent in and the American division commander replaced, a series of drives brought the Americans first control of the Munda airfield at the beginning of August and then of the rest of New Georgia by the end of the month. Of the 9000 Japanese soldiers, only a few escaped to other islands in the Solomons; and the Munda airfield, quickly expanded by the Seabees, the special engineer construction units, was quickly converted into an important American air base.
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The next island in the Solomons was Kolombangara, even more heavily garrisoned and fortified than New Georgia. Taking a leaf from Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s procedure in the Aleutians, where Kiska had been by–passed for an assault on Attu, Halsey now made an almost unopposed landing on Vella Lavella, the large island on the other side of Kolombangara from New Georgia, on August 15. This jump left the Japanese garrison of 10,000 men to sit on their island while the war passed them by after they had failed to dislodge the American 25th Division from Vella Lavella. The Americans, and the Australian and New Zealand contingents fighting alongside them, could now prepare for the attack on the most important island in the northern Solomons, Bougainville, where they would be on the other side of Rabaul from the Australians and Americans at Finschhafen on New Guinea.

The attack on Bougainville had to be prepared with great care. Here was an objective that was obviously menaced by the Allies, had to be defended by the Japanese if Rabaul was not to be outflanked, and simply could not be by–passed if the Americans were to proceed further. The
Japanese in a series of policy conferences in Tokyo during September agreed on a somewhat modified strategy for the defense of their Pacific empire. They drew a new defensive line–including Bougainville and parts of New Guinea-which they would hold as long as at all possible, with that defense strengthened by extensive reinforcements which were now to be sent to the Southern Pacific. This defensive strategy would be assisted by cooperation with Germany and facilitated by improved relations with the Soviet Union. The time gained by hard defensive fighting was to be used to build more airplanes and ships as well as an inner line of strongpoints for the continuation of the struggle. The following year, 1944, did see Japanese aircraft production reach its World War II peak of 28,180-as well as Germany’s of 39,807-but the United States alone produced 100,752, a figure which even understates the discrepancy because of the high proportion of four–engine bombers included in the American production figure.
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Long before the new Japanese planes entered service, the Americans had broken into the perimeter at several places. Bougainville was the first. While the Japanese were getting ready to reinforce their 35,000 soldiers on the threatened island with additional troops from New Britain and naval air units from the Combined Fleet, the Allies carried out several diversionary operations to mislead the Japanese and throw them off balance. An American marine unit temporarily landed on Choiseul Island, drawing off Japanese reserves, while the 8th New Zealand Brigade Grallp landed on the Treasury Islands to make it possible for the Allies to build an advance airstrip for additional coverage of Bougainville. The main assault went into a lightly defended and unlikely portion of Bougainville, Empress Augusta Bay. Attacks by planes and warships on the Japanese air bases at both ends of the island threw off the defenders, who were totally surprised by the 3rd Marine Division’s November 1, 1943, landing. The Japanese counter–attack mounted by naval forces already on the way from Rabaul was defeated by the smaller but better handled Task Force 39 of Admiral Aaron Stanton Merrill.

The danger posed to the landing by the dispatch of large Japanese naval reinforcements was averted by Halsey’s risking his carriers
Saratoga
and
Princeton
to attack Rabaul. In conjuction with the land-based planes sent by General Kenney from New Guinea, these air attacks destroyed most of the carrier planes the Combined Fleet had sent to Rabaul and damaged six cruisers in the harbor. Perhaps even more important, the raid had the effect of bluffing the Japanese navy out of use of Rabaul because Admiral Koga was simply unwilling to believe that Halsey would have sent in his carriers without massive escorting warships.

These naval air successes left the fighting to the units on Bougainville itself where the 37th Infantry Division quickly joined the 3rd Marines. By the time the Japanese on the island realized that there were going to be no further landings, the Americans had upset all their calculations by building an airfield in the swamps within their Empress Augusta Bay perimeter. The Japanese attack on that perimeter in late November failed, and another attempt by the Japanese navy to bring in reinforcements–the last in the Solomons as it turned out–was beaten off by the United States navy. The fighting on Bougainville continued for months; but without substantial air support and with no prospect of reinforcement, the Japanese soldiers who survived the hard battle on the island became involuntary bystanders in the war.
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Rabaul had been isolated and largely neutralized. This was what the Quadrant Conference of August 1943 in Quebec had called for instead of the direct assault MacArthur had insistently urged. By the end of 1943, MacArthur came to embrace a policy of by–passing strong Japanese garrisons, a policy of which he became the loudest advocate and most successful practitioner (and which he later claimed to have invented).
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A final operation in the process as regards Rabaul was the landing of the 1st Marine Division and army units at Cape Gloucester near the western end of New Britain in late December 1943. Though carefully and effectively carried out, this operation was later considered unnecessary by some.
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Necessary or not, it helped contain the Japanese forces of over 100,000 men who remained on both New Britain and the nearby island of New Ireland until 1945.
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“Cartwheel,” the operation designed to convert the Japanese base at Rabaul from an effective bastion in defense and a potential basis for new offensives into a wasting liability had been completed.

The extremely large garrisons isolated at Rabaul and elsewhere, furthermore, showed the reverse side of the Japanese strategy of fighting hard to defend the outer perimeter of their empire. Once the perimeter had been pierced, there were after Guadalcanal no large-scale evacuations of the experienced garrisons left behind by Allied thrusts. The Japanese procedure of making the crust hard to crack was costly for them and not merely for the Allies.

One of the major reasons that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had decided against allocating to the Southwest Pacific the resources needed for any direct attack on Rabaul had been their agreement in the summer of 1943, formally settled with the British at the Quadrant Conference, for a push in the Central Pacific. This axis of advance pointed through the Marshall Islands to the Marianas. With forces still limited, the first step to the Marshalls would be into the Gilberts; this operation would provide
the experience as well as an important base for the subsequent advance.
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Unlike the operations in the Southwest Pacific to date, which involved primarily unopposed landings on large islands followed in most cases by bitter fighting in deep jungles for weeks and even months, the whole framework of Central Pacific operations was necessarily different. The islands to be assaulted were in most cases minute or at least very small; because of the enormous distances involved, air cover had to be provided by carriers, not by the nearest land bases; the whole operation would be dependent on a floating supply base, not a land base; the initial landings were generally likely to be extremely difficult in the face of entrenched Japanese resistance; and the fighting that was expected to follow would necessarily be bloody and brief. There was nowhere for the defenders to retreat to: there was no prospect of evacuation, and they could be expected to fight to the end to sell their lives dearly.
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The Central Pacific thrust would, however, benefit from the simultaneous operations in the Southwest Pacific, which immobilized the Japanese fleet at Truk during the most critical period of the Gilberts operation.
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