History of the Second World War (86 page)

CHAPTER 29 - THE JAPANESE EBB IN THE PACIFIC

The first phase of the war in the Pacific had seen Japan’s conquest of the whole western and south-western area of that ocean — all the islands there — and of the adjoining countries in South-east Asia. The second phase had seen Japan’s attempt to extend her control to the American and British bases in the Hawaiian Islands and Australia, and her decisive repulse in the naval-air battle of Midway and at Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, on the approach to Australia.

In the third phase the Japanese were on the defensive — as was emphasised by the orders to their commanders in the South-west Pacific that they were ‘to retain all positions in the Solomons and New Guinea’. Only in Burma did they pursue offensive operations against the Western Allies, and these were defensive in essence — to forestall and frustrate a British counteroffensive from India. The possibility of effectual action by the Japanese had been annulled by their loss of four fleet carriers at Midway, of two battleships and many smaller craft at Guadalcanal, together with their loss of hundreds of aircraft in both these crucial operations. The Western Allies had regained the advantage; the real question now was whether and how they could use it.

The Japanese offensive plan, and action, had profited greatly by the strategic advantage of Japan’s geographical position. They had, and their plan had exploited, this basic advantage both offensively and defensively. For the outcome of their rapid conquests was that they had covered Japan with concentric rings of defence that provided formidable obstacles to any countermove towards Japan that the Western Allies attempted.*

* For maps, see pp. 200-1, 354.

On the map there appeared to be numerous alternatives, but in closer analysis these were few. Examining them from the top of the map downwards, the north Pacific route was ruled out by the lack of adequate bases as well as by the frequency of storms and fogs along that route. A counter-offensive from Soviet Russia’s position in the Far East was annulled by Stalin’s unwillingness to co-operate and engage in a fight against Japan as long as Russia was hard-pressed by the German attack on her western flank. An Allied countermove through China was made impossible by the difficulties of supply, under existing circumstances, as well as by the unreliability of the Chinese. The still more distant route of return through Burma was nullified by the extent to which the British had been driven back — over the Indian frontier — and their all too evident lack of adequate resources for an early comeback.

Thus it soon became clear that any effective counteroffensive must depend on the Americans, and be by a route suitable to them. There were two main alternatives — along a south-western Pacific route from New Guinea to the Philippines, or through the central Pacific. General Douglas MacArthur — as Commander-in-Chief, South-west Pacific — naturally favoured and urged that line of comeback. He argued that it would be the quickest way to deprive Japan of her newly gained southern possessions on which she depended for the raw materials essential to her war effort. In his view, the central Pacific route would be exposed to attack from the cluster of mandated islands that Japan had captured, and in which she had quickly built sea and air bases. Moreover, Australian anxieties would not be allayed by such a remote line of counteroffensive action.

The American Naval chiefs, however, favoured a central Pacific route. They argued that this would enable them to use their large and growing numbers of fast aircraft-carriers more effectively than in the more crowded waters around New Guinea — and would better fulfil their new concept of employing carrier task forces to isolate, and dominate, a group of islands. It would also fit their new idea of a seaborne supply system, instead of having to send their carriers back to port at intervals. They also argued that it would avoid the risk that the southerly route would suffer by being exposed to flank attacks from the Japanese forces lying among the mandated islands, while an advance along the southerly route, being more obvious and predictable, was itself likely to meet tougher and more continuous opposition. A more potent, if more private reason, was that the admirals wanted to keep the bulk of their new carrier strength out of MacArthur’s control — and his monopolising tendencies.

Eventually, it was decided at the ‘Trident Conference’ in Washington in May 1943, to carry out a double-pronged thrust, advancing along both routes, which would keep the Japanese in a state of uncertainty, and keep their forces dispersed, while hindering them from concentrating or switching their reserves from one route to the other. Both routes would eventually converge off the Philippines. That decision fulfilled the aim of threatening alternative objectives, a vital advantage in the strategic concept of indirect approach. But the compound, and compromise, decision did not take sufficient account of the fact, and lesson of history, that such dilemma-producing duality is apt to be more economically attained by taking a single line of advance that threatens alternative objectives — each of which the opponent is anxious to preserve — while itself being a single line of operation.

The two-pronged thrust inevitably required much larger, and thus longer, preparation — in terms of forces, shipping, landing craft, naval bases, and airfields. This prolonged preparatory period gave the Japanese more time to develop their own defensive preparations, and make the American task harder, especially in carrying out land, and landing, operations.

During this lengthy lull, the only operation of any importance was the American expedition to regain the Aleutian Islands, in the Northern Pacific. Strategically, this move was so remote as to carry no promise of effect on the course of the war. It was secondary without being supplementary or diversionary. Its only value was psychological, as a reassurance to the American public, which had been alarmed at the apparent threat to the security of Alaska brought by the seizure of Kiska and Attu by a small Japanese landing force the previous June. But the tonic was purchased by a very large and uneconomic use of the still limited American resources.

An early reaction to the seizure of the two islands had been a naval bombardment of Kiska at the beginning of August; then at the end of that month American troops had landed on the island of Adak, some 200 miles east of Kiska, and built an airfield there to assist an attack on that captured island. In January 1943 they had gone on to re-occupy the island of Amchitka, ninety miles east of Kiska, for the same purpose. But then the local American commanders decided to tackle Attu, the farthest west of the Aleutian island chain, as they had discovered that it was more weakly defended than Kiska. An interruption came at the end of March when the naval blockading force encountered a slightly more powerful Japanese force that was escorting three troop-transports. After a three-hour fight at long range, the Japanese withdrew. No ships were sunk on either side, but the reinforcing transports were turned back.

On May 11 the Americans landed a division on Attu, cloaked by a fog and supported by a bombardment from three battleships. With odds of more than 4 to 1 in its favour this division gradually pushed the Japanese garrison (of about 2,500) back into the mountains in a fortnight’s tough fighting, and then the Japanese solved the problem of overcoming them there by launching a suicidal assault on the American positions in which they were wiped out — only twenty-six prisoners being taken. The Americans now concentrated on Kiska. Constant pressure, from air and sea, on this now isolated island led the Japanese to evacuate their garrison (of some 5,000 troops) on the night of July 15, under cover of the frequent fog. The Americans continued to bombard the island for a further two and a half weeks, and landed a large force of some 34,000 troops — who spent five days in searching the island until they were convinced that it was empty.

Thus the Aleutians were cleared, but the Americans had employed 100,000 troops in all, supported by large naval and air forces, in this trivial task — a flagrant example of bad economy of force,
and
a good example of the distraction that can be caused by diversionary initiative with slight expenditure.

The apparent stalemate in the South-west Pacific continued until the summer of 1943.

Fortunately for the Americans, and their allies, forestalling and frustrating action by the enemy was hindered and hampered by the acute differences of view between the Japanese Army and Navy chiefs. While both were intent on maintaining all the Japanese conquests, they were sharply divided as to the best way of doing so. The Army chiefs favoured land operations in New Guinea, an advanced position which they considered necessary for the security of their captured territory in the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. The Navy’s chiefs wanted priority for the Solomon and Bismarck Islands, as strategic cover for the great naval base at Truk, in the Carolines, 1,000 miles to the north. In the strategic decision the Army, as usual, got its way.

The eventually agreed line of defence was from Santa Isabel and New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, westward of Guadalcanal, to Lae in New Guinea — i.e. the area west of the Papuan Peninsula. The Navy was to be in charge of the Solomons sector, and the Army of the New Guinea sector.

Army Command at Rabaul, the headquarters of the whole area, directed the operations of the 17th Army in the Solomons and the 18th Army in New Guinea — the 7th Air Division being attached to the former, and the 6th Air Division to the latter. The naval forces comprised the 8th Fleet and the 11th Air Fleet, both being directed by the naval headquarters at Rabaul. The naval forces were light, consisting of cruisers and destroyers, but could be reinforced by heavier ships from Truk.

The Army forces in the theatre were of larger scale — three divisions of the 18th Army in New Guinea, totalling 55,000 troops, and two divisions plus a brigade and other troops of the 17th Army in the Solomons and Bismarcks. Although Japanese air strength had been heavily depleted in the struggle for Guadalcanal, the Army had 170 aircraft and the Navy 240 available. Within six months, it was reckoned, the theatre could be reinforced by from ten to fifteen divisions and upward of 850 aircraft. So there was reason to feel that a holding, or ‘containing’, strategy was quite possible.

American planning was complicated by the earlier decision to divide this theatre between a Pacific Ocean area and a South-west Pacific area, with the Solomon Islands in the line of division. In the effort to make this more workable the Joint Chiefs of Staff decreed that MacArthur would have strategic command of the whole New Guinea-Solomons part of the theatre, but that Admiral Halsey, C.-in-C. South Pacific, would have tactical control, while naval forces from Pearl Harbor operating in that area would remain under Admiral Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean command.

The American strategic aim was to break down the barrier formed by the Bismarck Archipelago, and capture the main Japanese base at Rabaul. This was to be achieved by alternating strokes on both approach routes — to keep the Japanese ‘on the hop’. First, Halsey’s forces were to occupy the Russell Islands, just west of Guadalcanal, as an air and naval base. Then two islands in the Trobriand group east of New Guinea would be seized to provide air bases for the Rabaul attack — and intermediate staging-points for switching air forces from one line to the other. In the second phase, Halsey would advance to New Georgia (in the Solomons west of Guadalcanal) and capture the key airfield of Munda, while MacArthur was to capture the Japanese footholds around Lae on the north coast of New Guinea. By then, it was hoped, Halsey would have secured the island of Bougainville, at the west end of the Solomons. In the third phase, MacArthur’s forces, turning northward, were to cross the sea-gap to New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago, the great island where Rabaul was situated, at the northern end. Then, in the fourth phase, the Allied attack on Rabaul itself was to be launched. It was a very gradual process, even as planned — the calculation being that the attack on Rabaul would be launched within eight months of the opening moves in the campaign.

MacArthur had seven divisions (three of them Australian) in his South-west Pacific area, and about 1,000 aircraft (a quarter of these Australian) — with two more American divisions to come as well as eight Australian divisions in training. Halsey had seven divisions (two being Marine divisions and one New Zealand), and 1,800 aircraft (of which 700 were U.S. Army planes). The naval strength varied, for while an amphibious force was being built up for each prong of attack, a large number of the warships were on short loan from Nimitz’s vast force at Pearl Harbor; at the outset Halsey had six battleships and two carriers as well as many smaller ships. In all, there was now ample strength for success, even though it was not so much as MacArthur wished — he had asked for some twenty-two divisions and forty-five air groups.

During the preliminary or ‘stalemate’ period, Halsey landed a force on the Russell Islands on February 21, but found no trace of the Japanese garrison that was believed to be there. Moreover, his naval forces put a stop to the Japanese practice of raiding runs down ‘the Slot’. In New Guinea, a Japanese attempt to capture the airfield at Wau, near the Huon Gulf, was foiled by the Australians, who air-lifted a brigade there; and when the Japanese despatched the bulk of a division thither as reinforcement, the convoy — of eight transports escorted by eight destroyers — was promptly spotted and caught by the Allied air force in New Guinea — losing all its transports and half its destroyers, along with over 3,600 troops (half the total). After this disastrous ‘Battle of the Bismarck Sea’, the Japanese only ventured to send supplies to their troops in New Guinea by submarines or in barges.

Admiral Yamamoto then sought to retrieve the adverse Japanese situation in the air by sending the carrier aircraft of the 3rd Fleet from Truk to Rabaul in the hope of wearing down the Allies’ air strength by constant raids on their bases. But this harassing operation (which began, ominously, on April 1) actually cost the Japanese almost twice as many planes as the defenders in a fortnight — contrary to the optimistic reports of the attacking pilots. And then Yamamoto himself was ambushed and shot down on a flying visit to Bougainville — of which the U.S. Intelligence had gained advance news. His successor as C.-in-C. of the Japanese Combined Fleet was Admiral Koga, but he did not prove as formidable as Yamamoto.