The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (7 page)

Yours Forever, Sam

Six days later, he wrote again:

Monday 4:30 PM.
June 8, 1942

To My “One and Only”

My first letter from home…to-day. I’ve read it over and over and almost know it by heart. This certainly was quite a letter, honey. And so my Mandy is going to have another little “Warmy”…I sure was thrilled to read about it sweetheart, altho I must honestly say, not surprised. Remember the last time I examined you, I think that was around March 20…I hoped then that you would be pregnant—I didn’t like to say anything about it then because I just had a premonition that after I would leave you there, I wouldn’t be seeing you again for a long time…Well Darling…I’d sure be tickled to have a son…The thing that makes me feel bad is not being home with you to watch them grow up…I’ll bet when I get home he’ll say, “Momma, who’s that man?”

There’s a lot of things I could write about…if I were sure that you were the only one reading them; So many places you’ll have to read between the lines…so much I’d like to tell you…whatever may happen to either one of us, always know this my darling, I’ve always most sincerely and most deeply loved you…I’ll be so anxious to hear from you all the time now, darling—I’ll be praying for you. Give Muriel and Ann a hug and a kiss for me—and Mandy, darling—all your Warmy’s heart’s true love…

Forever yours, Sam

The soldiers that Warmenhoven treated could hardly be blamed for their casual attitude about their training. They were doing what came naturally to young men: They were living day-to-day, making the best of a situation over which they had no control. War might be just around the corner, but they would deal with that when the time came.

Had they been privy to the intelligence that showed that Japan coveted the island of New Guinea, they might have reacted differently. As early as May 19, as the regiments were settling into Camps Sandy Creek and Woodside, ULTRA, the name for the Allied code-breaking system that had cracked Japanese and German wireless codes, revealed that the Japanese army planned to attack Port Moresby via a mountain route from the north coast.

On June 9, when Allied Intelligence again notified MacArthur that the Japanese were contemplating an invasion of New Guinea’s Papuan Peninsula, he alerted General Blamey, his Commander of Allied Land Forces. “There is increasing evidence,” he wrote, “that the Japanese are displaying interest in the development of a route from Buna on the north coast of southern New Guinea through Kokoda to Port Moresby. From studies made in this headquarters it appears that minor forces may attempt to utilize this route…”

Blamey directed MacArthur’s inquiry to Major General Basil Morris, who at the time was commander of New Guinea Force and also head of ANGAU (Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit), the military government that ran New Guinea after Japanese planes bombed Port Moresby. Morris replied that there were ANGAU officers, native constables, two Papuan Infantry Battalions (a unit made up of natives), and a company from the Australian Infantry Battalion patrolling the area around Kokoda.

Blamey followed up with another message instructing Morris “to take all necessary steps to prevent a Japanese surprise landing along the coast, north and south of Buna, to deny the enemy the grasslands in that area for an airdrome, and to assure that we command the pass at Kokoda.”

Morris replied, “Re the Japs, I don’t think you need to worry about them. It is not likely they will want to commit suicide just yet.”

Despite Morris’ assurances, MacArthur was concerned. The Allies had just finalized their own plans for seizing New Guinea. Operation Cartwheel called for a powerful two-pronged attack by MacArthur’s ground forces and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. MacArthur’s troops would sweep through New Guinea by land while the navy moved up through the Solomon Islands by sea. Operation Providence stipulated that Australian troops and American engineers would march over the Kokoda track to Buna and prepare the area for the arrival of a main Allied landing force, which was to make the trip from Port Moresby. That force would travel around the tail of the Papuan Peninsula and then north up the coast in a series of small coastal steamers. The main body was to arrive in mid-August and prepare Buna for antiaircraft defense and begin construction of a large airbase at Dobodura, fifteen miles inland.

The resounding booms to the north on the evening of July 21 puzzled Captain Sam Templeton. A thunderstorm? How could it be? The sky was a cloudless blue.

Templeton had no time to investigate. After receiving a directive from Allied Headquarters in Brisbane, General Morris had ordered him and a company of Australian militiamen to cross the mountains via the Kokoda track and defend the Kokoda airfield from a possible Japanese invasion. On July 21, they picked up twenty tons of supplies at Buna, including machine guns, and with the help of native carriers were transporting those supplies back to Kokoda.

As Templeton and his party made their way toward Kokoda, one of his sergeants was urgently trying to relay a message: “A Japanese warship,” he said, “is shelling Buna…to cover a landing at Gona or Sanananda. Acknowledge, Moresby. Over…”

Despite sending out repeated warnings, the sergeant received no reply. In the meantime, three coastwatchers forty miles northwest of Buna picked up the message and relayed it to Port Moresby.

The following day, Templeton learned what had happened from native constables who had witnessed the shelling and had traveled all night to Awala, where the track begins its climb to Kokoda.

The Japanese landing terrified the natives. Arthur Duna, a Buna villager, described the scene:

As if you had a dreamlike spirit chasing you and you want to run; [but] you cannot run and the spirit catches you. It was just like that. There was a great panic. That afternoon you have to run away from where you were at the time of Japan landing. There was not time to go to your village to gather your family or collect your valuable belongings. Wife ran naked without her husband and children. Husband ran naked without wife and children. A child ran without his parents and even if he was with his small ones, he deserted them. All ran in different directions into the bush. All ran like rats and bandicoots in the kunai grass. The night fell and each individual slept either in the grass or under trees. The soil was your bed and the rotten logs your pillow. You go to sleep wherever you happened to run into.

The Japanese invasion force made camp east of Basabua at 3:30 a.m. on July 22. By 6:00 a.m. on July 23, the men were moving again, eager to reach what they thought was a road running from Buna to Kokoda. After taking a wrong turn, the force did not arrive at Buna until fifteen hours later.

Led by Colonel Yosuke Yokoyama, the invasion force was made up of elite soldiers who had fought in Shanghai in 1937, Guam in December 1941, and Rabaul in early 1942, and nine hundred men of the Tsukamoto Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hatsuo Tsukamoto, part of the superbly trained 144th Infantry Regiment.

The 144th was assembled in Kochi City, a country town situated in the verdant hills at the mouth of the Niyodo River on the island of Shikoku. Its members were hardened, enthusiastic volunteers, the sons of farmers and tradesmen.

Rounding out the force were soldiers from the 15th Independent Engineers Regiment, who doubled as combat infantry; mountain and antiaircraft artillery units; a force of highly skilled naval shock troops; one hundred Formosan troops, praised for their fearlessness and endurance; fifty-two horses; and twelve hundred native conscripts from Rabaul.

Yokoyama’s orders came directly from Japan’s South Seas headquarters in Rabaul. Initially his mission was to reconnoiter the presumed “road” running from Buna to Kokoda and Kokoda south to Port Moresby, and to put the first portion in a condition to handle vehicles, packhorses, and bicycles. However, by the time he departed Rabaul on July 19, that mission had changed. Yokoyama’s men were now considered an invasion force.

Leading the advance guard of the invasion force was Colonel Tsukamoto, a “thundering old man” with a great affection for sake. On the afternoon of July 24, he was at the head of a long line of men bound for the government station of Kokoda. Kokoda was an outpost with huts, native gardens, a school, and a small hospital, situated on a plateau in the northern foothills of the Owen Stanley Mountains. Kokoda also possessed a strategically important airfield.

Seizo Okada, a war correspondent assigned to the invasion, described the march inland. “The unit continued to walk with single-mindedness…Each man is required to carry provisions for thirteen days in his backpack, comprising 18 litres of rice, a pistol, ammunition, hand grenades, a spoon, first aid kit…”

A patrol of scouts from the Tsukamoto Battalion traveled lightly and even faster than the rest of the battalion. Its objective was “to push on night and day” to Port Moresby.

While the Japanese soldiers marched on Kokoda, engineers remained behind to solidify Japan’s hold on the north coast. They built an airfield and fortified the beachhead with antiaircraft guns and a system of reinforced and interlinked bunkers. Some of the engineers also constructed a palm log road from Buna to the inland village of Soputa; the Japanese plan was to build a vehicle base and radio station there. Clearly, they were still under the illusion that the Kokoda track was navigable.

Yokoyama’s engineers toiled tirelessly in torrential rains. When trucks stalled in channels of thigh-deep mud, soldiers were turned into pack mules. They worked around the clock carrying supplies from the coast. Sleep was a luxury, and when they did rest, they did so in riverbeds, where they risked being swept away during flash floods. “Our duty to reach the front line,” one Japanese engineer wrote, “would not let us rest for one moment.”

They completed the Buna-Soputa passage in just three days. It was an incredible achievement, though it received little recognition. The Japanese soldier was expected to endure misery, fatigue, hunger, and disease.

The Japanese had beaten MacArthur to the punch, but even as they stormed ashore, MacArthur and his advisors dismissed the invasion as a minor threat. Brigadier General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s head of intelligence, clung to the notion that the Japanese would penetrate inland only as far as they needed to build airfields. The airfields, Willoughby argued, would allow Japanese pilots to attack Port Moresby and the Cape York Peninsula of Australia, and could support a possible seaborne invasion of Port Moresby and Milne Bay. But a major land assault on Port Moresby was inconceivable.

Ten days after Yokoyama landed at Basabua, General Marshall contacted MacArthur. Keeping Port Moresby in Allied hands and reestablishing Allied control over Papua’s north coast, he insisted, was of paramount importance. MacArthur reassured Marshall that he was doing everything in his power to secure New Guinea.

MacArthur had just ordered two Australian Infantry Division (AIF) brigades to Port Moresby. Comprised of seasoned soldiers, the brigades had returned from the Middle East in late March 1942. Upon arriving in Australia, however, most of the soldiers were sent to Queensland to perform menial labor, finishing airfields and fortifying the coastline, thus forfeiting valuable training time, so when they arrived in Port Moresby in mid-August, they lacked the skills for jungle fighting. They had the wrong equipment, too. For example, instead of jungle green, they wore bright khaki-colored battle gear; instead of pants to keep away the mosquitoes, leeches, and chiggers, they had knee-length shorts similar to the ones they wore in the deserts of North Africa. And in a land where every additional pound was a burden, they carried too much weight in their fieldpacks.