CHAPTER 2

Appraisal

EPILOGUE 1

Until the Japanese Emperor issued his rescript directing his forces to lay down their arms, troops of the Eighth Area Army and Southeast Area Fleet were still full of fight.   On Bougainville, they were locked in desperate struggle with units of the Australian II Corps; on New Britain and New Ireland they were ready for battle but frustrated by lack of an opponent.   Had the Allied seizure of Rabaul been necessary, the operation certainly would have been a bloody one.

Despite the steady pounding that Allied aircraft gave the enemy base—20,967 tons of bombs dropped in 29,354 sorties (over half of them flown by Marine planes)—the Japanese had plenty of guns left with which to fight.   According to postwar interrogations of officers of the garrison, only 93 out of a total of 367 antiaircraft guns were destroyed, 1 of 43 coast defense guns, and none of the thousands of infantry supporting weapons, ranging in size from light machine guns to 150mm howitzers.   Since ground and beach defenses were seldom subjected to air attack, the high survival rate of the guns is not unusual.   Even if they had been primary targets, however, many would have escaped destruction in the jungle or the caves where they were hidden.

By the war’s end, the Japanese had built or improved more than 350 miles of tunnels and caves, where they had stored all their essential supplies and equipment.   These stocks were sufficient to support the garrison well beyond the time when it surrendered.   Ironically, it was the efficiency of the Allied Naval and Air blockade that was responsible for the favorable enemy logistic situation.   In large part, Rabaul’s troops subsisted on rations, dressed in uniforms, and used equipment that had been intended for garrisons cut off in the northern Solomons and eastern New Guinea.

Wherever supplies were short, the Japanese improvised.   Issue rations were supplemented by extensive gardens, devoted primarily to cassava and sweet potato plants.   Factories were set up which turned out black powder and sulfuric acid for explosives, manufactured flame throwers and mortars, and fabricated enough antitank mines to arm each man with one.   Over 30,000 bombs were fused and planted as antipersonnel mines.   The Japanese at Rabaul were prepared to do battle, and many of them, after 18 months of constant aerial attacks, were even anxious to meet an opponent that they could come to grips with.

Fortunately, the encounter never took place.   The Allied casualty list of an Amphibious Assault at Rabaul would have been as lengthy and grim as any of the Pacific War.   When the order came for the Japanese to cease fighting, Eighth Area Army had about 57,000 men and Southeast Area Fleet about 34,000 on Gazelle Peninsula, with an additional 7,700 Army and 5,000 Navy troops a night’s barge trip away on New Ireland.   These men, as part of the amazing display of national discipline evident throughout, the Pacific, accepted the Emperor’s surrender order without incident.

On 6 September 1945, General Imamura and Admiral Kusaka boarded HMS Glory, standing off Rabaul, and surrendered the forces of the Eighth Area Army and the Southeast Area Fleet to General Vernon A. H. Sturdee, Commanding the Australian First Army.   Two days later, at Torokina, the Japanese who had fought so tenaciously on Bougainville formally capitulated to the Australian II Corps’ Commander, Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Savige.   At each ceremony, Air Commodore Roberts, RNZAF, was present as New Zealand’s senior representative.   In a larger sense, he represented also his predecessors, ComAirNorSols and ComAirSols, and the thousands of Allied flyers who had a part in neutralizing Rabaul’s offensive power.

SUMMARY

At times in the first eight months of the War, it appeared that the tidal wave of Japanese expansion would never ebb.   Yet, like its natural counterpart, the enemy wave washed to a halt, and then receded.   Guadalcanal and Papua were the Japanese high water marks in the southern Pacific.

The Naval battles off Guadalcanal, virtually a standoff is far as ships’ losses were concerned, hurt the Japanese far more than the Allies.   Confronted by ample evidence of America’s superior productive capacity, the enemy could ill afford to trade ship for ship.   Once the Cactus Air Force won control of the skies of the southern Solomons from the Zekes, the Japanese realized they faced unacceptable shipping losses if they continued the fight for Guadalcanal.   The resulting evacuation of enemy troops from the key Island foreshadowed other retreats and defeats certain to come.

Less than a month after the threat posed by the planes at Henderson Field forced the Japanese to pull out of Guadalcanal, a smashing victory won by land-based Allied aircraft crippled enemy efforts to hold positions on the opposite flank of the Solomon Sea.   The heavy transport losses in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea ended large-scale reinforcement of the Eighteenth Army fighting in northeast New Guinea.   Although the Japanese fought just as hard as before to hold what they had, they fought with fewer men, fewer weapons, and less food and supplies.

When the successful capture and defense of Guadalcanal and the simultaneous seizure of the Buna-Gona area of New Guinea wrote “finish” to the Japanese advance, the stage was set for a coordinated Allied offensive aimed at the enemy strategic citadel, Rabaul.   General MacArthur’s ELKTON plans, as revised in Washington in the light of forces available to the South and Southwest Pacific, formed the basis for the JCS CARTWHEEL directive of 28 March 1943.   Under its provisions, a series of intermediate objectives were to be taken before the culminating assault on Rabaul.   The common determinant for the selection of these objectives was their utility as air bases.

The seizure of the Russell Islands by Admiral Halsey’s forces on 21 February, though not a part of the ELKTON concept, was in spirit at least, the opening move of the drive on Rabaul.   The airdrome that was constructed on Banika housed fighters and medium bombers which supported CARTWHEEL operations in the central and northern Solomons.   The advance to the boundary of the South Pacific Area was characteristic of Admiral Halsey’s infectious determination to maintain the initiative over the Japanese.   He was equally anxious to get on with his first operation under CARTWHEEL, the seizure of New Georgia, but had to agree to several delays of D-Day in order to coordinate his attacks with those of Southwest Pacific forces.   The joint landing date finally agreed upon was 30 June; the simultaneous targets were the Trobriands, New Georgia, and Nassau Bay near Salamaua on New Guinea.

VOLUME III, PART I, Launching the Central Pacific Offensive:    Early Plans for a War with Japan