Fortress Rabaul (9 page)

Despite the death of Hiraishi, the air attacks proved effective at breaking down the Australians’ flimsy communications system. Within hours Colonel Scanlan lost control over his scattered rifle companies, which began to fall back in disarray.

SEVERAL WEEKS PRIOR to the invasion, Scanlan had chastened subordinates for suggesting that food and supplies should be cached in the jungle, berating their attitude as “defeatist.” He reinforced his point on New Year’s Day with two unyielding proclamations, distributed to all hands: “EVERY MAN WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST,” and “THERE SHALL BE NO WITHDRAWAL.”

But on January 23, as his defenses fell apart around him, Scanlan reversed his position. During his last radio contact with Lt. Col. Howard H. Carr, commanding officer of the 2/22nd Battalion, Scanlan stated that the situation appeared hopeless. It had become, he said, a matter of “every man for himself.” The unimaginative Carr, interpreting Scanlan’s words as a directive, ordered the phrase transmitted to the scattered companies. He even sent out runners to make certain the message was delivered.

Scanlan then did the unthinkable. Accompanied by several members of his staff and a native houseboy, he walked off the battlefield while the fighting was still in progress. A short while later, all resistance by Lark
Force collapsed. What had begun as an organized withdrawal degenerated into a pell-mell dash for the sanctuary of the jungle.

Among the hundreds of Australians who “went bush,” almost none were prepared for long-term survival in the wilds of New Britain. Much of the blame lies with Scanlan’s bizarre decision to deliberately mislead his men into believing they were deploying on an exercise of two or three days’ duration. His earlier refusal to allow caches of food to be hidden in the jungle also came back to haunt him, because there were several trailheads and other strategic locations where supply dumps might have been placed. A veteran of trench warfare, Scanlan had no background in jungle fighting. As a direct result of his intractability, hundreds of men entered the jungle with little more than the lightweight khaki uniforms they wore.

A FEW OF THE firefights, though brief, had been intense. At various sites, mostly on the plateau south of the caldera, fifty-seven Australians lay dead, and dozens more were wounded. The Japanese captured most of those who could still walk, but men immobilized by their wounds were generally finished off.

At least five Lark Force officers were murdered by General Horii’s soldiers. On January 26, Lt. Lennox D. Henry, an infantry officer, and Capt. Herbert N. Silverman, a medical officer with the Royal Australian Artillery, were captured with a small party of evaders following a skirmish northwest of Rabaul. The Japanese beheaded Henry on the spot and took Silverman to Rabaul, only to execute him four days later after refusing to recognize his status as a doctor. Captain Richard E. Travers, who led a rifle company in the 2/22nd Battalion, voluntarily surrendered with approximately one hundred of his men on January 27 and was immediately murdered. His death was apparently intended as a warning to other Australians contemplating evasion.

In the minds of the Japanese, the killings were justified. On the day of the invasion, thousands of leaflets had been air-dropped to the Australians hiding in the jungle, warning them in no uncertain terms that their situation was hopeless:

To the Officers and Soldiers of this Island!
SURRENDER AT ONCE!

And we will guarantee your life, treating you as war prisoners. Those who RESIST US WILL BE KILLED ONE AND ALL. Consider seriously, you can find neither food nor way of escape in this island and you will only die of hunger unless you surrender.

January 23rd, 1942

Japanese Commander in Chief

Horii must have anticipated quick compliance, for that was how the system worked in the Imperial Army. His decree was more than a warning: it was a direct order. But the Australians had no intention of complying. As the days passed, only a few surrendered, mainly because no one in Lark Force took the threats seriously. Their defiance proved to be a huge mistake. Horii was undoubtedly offended when Scanlan and hundreds of Aussies, including all of the senior officers, disregarded his decree.

To make matters worse, while the Japanese chased the Australians through the jungle, a sudden outbreak of malaria caused numerous deaths among Horii’s men and incapacitated hundreds of others. Almost the entire 1st Battalion and a significant percentage of the 3rd Battalion fell ill, creating a near catastrophe for the medical staff of the South Seas Force. The doctors failed to diagnose the disease for days after the outbreak began, which resulted in far more casualties from malaria than from Australian bullets.

Pulling his troops back from the jungle, Horii decided to monitor the evaders rather than pursue them. Imperial Navy ships patrolled the coastal areas, reconnaissance aircraft watched the jungle trails from above, and villagers were bribed or forced to reveal the whereabouts of Aussie soldiers. By the beginning of February, Horii was satisfied that two large groups of Australians were encamped at plantations on the south coast. He was correct. Due to the rumors that had spread after the successful airlift of 24 Squadron, dozens of Aussies had headed for Wide Bay. Ultimately some two hundred men gathered near Tol plantation, most having arrived by way of the precipitous Baining Mountains.

For almost every individual, the trek to Wide Bay had been a nightmare. Hungry and dejected, they had climbed countless ridges, forded raging rivers, and pushed through suffocating jungle, only to wait in vain once they reached Tol plantation. Soon malaria set in, and by the time the men realized that the flying boats weren’t coming back, many lost the will to
continue evading the Japanese. The notion of surrender no longer seemed so terrible. Depressed and lethargic, the Australians were content to pass the days sleeping or scrounging for food.

The other large group of evaders had gathered at Adler Bay within an abandoned plantation. Although they were significantly better off in terms of food, with ample livestock and rice, they were advised by a medical officer to surrender. It was probably Captain Robertson who bluntly explained that to continue evading would result in “almost certain death from starvation or malaria.” He subsequently moved south to Tol plantation, and the men at Adler Bay placed a white flag at the water’s edge where it could be seen from the sea.

Angry and frustrated with the Australians, General Horii was more than ready to take both groups prisoner. On February 2 he ordered Lt. Col. Masao Kuwada, commander of the 3rd Battalion at Kokopo, to organize a “pursuit by boats” to Wide Bay. The task was delegated to Lt. Tadaichi
Noda, who selected approximately 150 soldiers from the 8th Infantry Company for the operation. He also brought an interpreter assigned to the
Kempeitai
, the military police and counterespionage branch of the Imperial Army.

Noda and his men boarded five Daihatsu landing craft, which were towed by a coast-wise vessel to Wide Bay. Arriving just after dawn on February 3, the landing craft dropped their tow lines and approached the plantation under their own power. As they neared the beach, the Japanese opened fire with light machine guns and even a small howitzer, mostly shooting into the palm trees. Jolted awake by the sudden attack, the Aussies had virtually no time to run. Most were too tired to care, and only a handful escaped from the large plantation.

As soon as the firing stopped, Captain Robertson stepped forward with twenty-one men under a white flag. Within a few hours the Japanese rounded up all the rest—more than 180 men in all—and fed them a hot meal, the first decent food they’d had in days. Afterward, the prisoners lounged quietly under guard. Their initial treatment seemed to reinforce the idea that they were going to be better off in Japanese hands.

But the next morning, Lieutenant Noda was agitated. Only three commissioned officers had been identified among the captives, the most senior being Robertson. The others were Capt. John R. Gray, Royal Australian Engineers, and Lt. Hatsell G. Garrard, a young infantry officer. Colonel Scanlan and the senior officers of Lark Force were still at large.

Increasingly belligerent, Noda ordered the prisoners out of the building and lined them up. Garrard was singled out and led to the Tol plantation house, where Noda, assisted by the
Kempeitai
interpreter, began a brutal interrogation. There is no doubt that Noda demanded to know Scanlan’s whereabouts, but if Garrard knew, he thwarted every question. Furious, Noda beat him on the head and body with a stout piece of wood. Garrard was periodically revived with water, but the punishment continued until he collapsed. The Japanese then tied him to a tree and left him to bake in the scorching sun.

The remaining prisoners were also marched to the plantation house, whereupon Noda attempted to identify the men who had surrendered on the beach the previous morning. At first, about forty claimed to have been part of the group. This caused some confusion among the Japanese, but eventually twenty men, Robertson and Gray among them,
were separated from the main group of prisoners. Approximately 160 captives remained in the yard outside the plantation house. The Japanese confiscated all personal items, including identity disks, and then tied the captives’ hands behind their backs, binding their thumbs tightly with twine or wire.

Setting up a two-way radio, Noda contacted battalion headquarters for further instructions. An exchange of messages ensued, ending with authorization—either from Colonel Kuwada or Horii himself—to proceed with the next step.

The prisoners were separated into groups of about twelve and roped together in single file. All of the groups, each escorted by an officer or noncom and several soldiers, were then marched away from the main house in different directions, taking roads and footpaths that led into the sprawling coconut groves. As they walked through sun-drenched rows of palm trees, the captives realized that they were going to be killed. Helpless to prevent it, the Aussies relied on the one trait that bound them together like no other army in the world: their
mateship
. Although fear and anguish tore at them, they refused to allow their emotions to show. Some, true to their heritage, even managed a quip or two. Each man tried to accept his fate with aplomb, if only to help steady the man next to him.

The Japanese were the cowards. Across the vast plantation, groups of roped-together prisoners were ordered to sit. A man was then pulled from each of the lines and led into a nearby thicket, where soldiers stabbed him in the back with their fifteen-inch-long bayonets. Taking their time, the executioners walked back to the waiting groups of prisoners, making a show of wiping the blood from their bayonets before summoning the next man in line.

The killing went slowly. For the captives at the end of each line, the dread of those prolonged minutes must have been intolerable.

After a while the Japanese grew impatient and began killing prisoners in twos and threes. Some were shot. At nearby Waitavalo plantation, one group of eleven men was gunned down in a single volley. Whether by bullet or bayonet, the Australians were murdered from behind.

But the killers proved to be as careless as they were craven. When Noda and his soldiers departed, they left at least nine Aussies alive among the piles of bodies. Several managed to stumble away, and one survivor helped two severely wounded men into the shelter of a utility shed. He then went
to find help, but before he could return, a Japanese naval landing party found the two victims and torched the shed with them inside it.

Incredibly, six victims of the massacre recovered, including a medical orderly who was stabbed eleven times. Their survival guaranteed that the horrible atrocities at Tol would be exposed in full.

The Japanese had made no attempt to bury the 150 or so corpses scattered throughout the coconut groves. The only exception was Lieutenant Garrard, who was forced to dig his own grave. Soldiers bludgeoned and then bayoneted him before shoving his body in the shallow hole, leaving it only partially covered with dirt.

Sanctioned by Colonel Kuwada, tacitly if not verbally authorized by General Horii, the murders at Tol conveyed an unforgettable message. To emphasize the point, the Japanese left a personal note for Colonel Scanlan on the door of a plantation house stating that he was responsible for what had happened.

Scanlan himself had narrowly avoided being captured at Tol. When the message and the shocking truth of the massacre were revealed to him, he could stomach no more attempts at evasion. At a Roman Catholic mission a few miles beyond Wide Bay, he made up his mind to surrender. On February 10, accompanied by his batman, two other soldiers, and a major from the 2/22nd Battalion, he began the long walk back to Rabaul.

LIEUTENANT NODA and his men returned to Kokopo with Robertson, Gray, and the small party that had initially surrendered at Tol. Along the way, the Japanese also picked up the dozens of Australians waiting at Adler Bay. Most of the prisoners were delivered to a stockade at their own former army post on Malaguna Road, but Robertson and Gray were held at Kokopo. Robertson returned to the native hospital, where the nurses, upset over being abandoned on the eve of the invasion, gave him a cold reception.