Invasion Rabaul (19 page)

T
HE
J
APANESE WERE QUICK TO PUBLICIZE THEIR VICTORY, BEGINNING WITH
an official statement from Imperial General Headquarters on the afternoon of January 24:
“The Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy in cooperative fashion eliminated the enemy’s resistance and successfully landed in Rabaul,
New Britain Island, in the east of New Guinea before dawn on 23 January. They are steadily extending their gains.”

Despite the fact that several hundred Australians had escaped into the jungle, General Horii was certain his troops would hunt them down. So far the invasion had been conducted with almost surgical precision, and victory was guaranteed.

To honor their glorious campaign, the men of the South Seas Detachment composed an emotion-filled victory song titled
“Nankai Dayori” (“Tidings from the South Seas”)

First to cross the Equator,

Our unit of vigorous youth from Shikoku.

Far from home, in the South Seas,

The Rising Sun flag fluttering brightly

Over Rabaul, New Britain.

Like a maiden’s breast,

Rising kindly over the gulf,

The fiery volcano beckons.

The pure hearts of young brave men

Think of the smoke in their homeland.

Push on into the jungle,

Bananas, papayas, and coconut milk,

Enjoy the taste of bounteous nature;

Nostalgic we would push on

To our mothers in our villages.

After a passing squall,

A rainbow on Branch Gulf,

When at last all the enemy bombs

Are heard receding in the distant sky,

Beautiful smokescreen blooms with the rainbow.

Just below the Equator

We are under the Southern Cross.

The warrior’s blood runs hot

As the Rising Sun flag advances.

Ahead the enemy pleads for his life under a white flag.

A brisk divine breeze blowing

Towards Australia at the limit of the south.

The ultimate place to reach.

The dawn of a new world,

Not quickly but faintly

*
Webster’s ethnic wisecrack was more accurate than he knew. Japanese soldiers went into battle with “emergency rations” for five days, including 1/2 pound of hard candy, a package of hard tack, and a small sack of polished rice. Additionally, the landing orders of the South Seas Detachment required every soldier to carry a two-day supply of Field Ration B, which included more than a pound of rice.

CHAPTER EIGHT

YOU WILL ONLY DIE

“Each day we felt ourselves growing weaker…”

—Captain David Selby, Antiaircraft Battery

A
fter Colonel Scanlan and his party left Tomavatur, Bill Harry was one of the few men left at the headquarters site. His decision to stay behind proved wise. Captain McLeod and Lieutenant Figgis showed up an hour or so later expecting to find the colonel still in charge; and shortly thereafter Major Mollard and ten more men arrived in an army truck and a civilian taxi. All were curious about Scanlan’s whereabouts. Harry’s answer was simple: The colonel and his staff had walked off, and he didn’t know where they were.

As the senior officer on the scene, Mollard took charge of the group. He decided to conduct a recon to the rim of the caldera, and placed Harry on point as they moved along a narrow track that brought them to Blanche Bay just west of Kokopo. The view of enemy activity was astonishing.
“Great quantities of Japanese shipping were in the harbor and minesweepers were methodically sweeping the area,” remembered Harry. “Large numbers of enemy troops were ashore with trucks and armored fighting vehicles, and consolidation of the area they had so recently gained was well under way.”

The party returned to Tomavatur at dusk. From the hilltop they could see the glare of headlights as Japanese vehicles moved onto Vunakanau airdrome. Obviously, the plateau was in enemy hands. To avoid capture, Mollard and his party would have to find a way off the island.

The most logical escape route from Tomavatur was south toward the coast. A network of roads led as far as the Warangoi River, from which point the Australians would have to walk or take boats to Wide Bay. There, rumor had it, the evaders might be picked up by the RAAF. The total distance to Wide Bay was more than seventy miles, and the Australians would be hunted every step of the way by Japanese planes and roving infantry patrols.

An alternative escape route was southwest to Malabunga Mission. From there, native footpaths led to Lemingi, a Roman Catholic mission high in the Baining Mountains. More trails branched out from Lemingi to Open Bay on New Britain’s north coast or Wide Bay to the south.

Aside from Bill Harry, who had hiked among the mountains with the Reverend John Poole, few people in Lark Force knew enough about the territory to make an informed decision. For John Mollard, however, the choice was obvious: his primary goal was to find Hugh Mackenzie and the precious two-way radio, reported to be somewhere near Malabunga Mission.

Just as darkness began to settle over the hilltop, privates Webster, Kelleher, and Searle stumbled in, exhausted after escaping from the Japanese ambush on the Kokopo Ridge Road. They shared their story, then everyone boarded the two vehicles for the trip to Malabunga Mission. Starting up the Glade Road toward Vunakanau, they moved slowly past the airdrome under the cover of a heavy downpour. They encountered no Japanese patrols on that miserable night, but the road became so slick that the taxi skidded into a ditch just beyond Malabunga Junction. The whole group crowded aboard the truck, and the driver turned on headlights for a wild dash over the last few miles of road.

Arriving at
Malabunga Mission, Mollard’s party found the compound deserted except for two men holed up in an abandoned native hospital. Tom Connop, one of the oldest privates in the 2/22nd, had suffered a badly broken leg earlier in the day. One of Major Palmer’s field ambulances had picked him up, but the bumpy ride had been excruciating. When the “meat wagon” reached the mission hospital, Connop was offloaded and doped with morphine to make him as comfortable as possible. There was no hope of moving him through the jungle, so Private Albert “Pop” Thomas, a London-born dental assistant, volunteered to remain at his side.

Mollard’s party drove on for another mile and spent the night in a leaky native hut, then rose at dawn and continued on their journey. Soon the truck came to a fork in the road. To the right, a rough track led uphill to Kalas, the Methodist mission run by Reverend Poole. The main road, such as it was, continued a short distance to its terminus at the village of Rabata, situated on the upper reaches of the Warangoi River.

Getting down from the truck, “Tusker” McLeod, Peter Figgis, and Bill Harry hiked uphill toward Kalas to see if any friendly troops had gone in that direction. Soon they found an abandoned staff car, identified as Lieutenant Colonel Carr’s, an encouraging sign that Mackenzie and the all-important radio were up ahead. But only a few paces up the trail they found the radio itself—smashed to pieces.

Disheartened, the three men continued to Kalas. At the large, well-maintained compound, they were met by what Harry described as
“a concerned group of missionaries, all neatly attired in white and awaiting the arrival of the Japanese.” John Poole and two other Methodist ministers, along with two businessmen from Rabaul, had decided to give themselves up. They shared a cup of tea with the soldiers, then explained what had recently happened. Mackenzie and Carr had indeed passed through Kalas, where they tried to hire native porters to help carry the radio. But none could be found, as most of the Tolai had disappeared into the jungle when the invasion started. With great reluctance, Mackenzie had destroyed the radio rather than let it fall into enemy hands.

The missionaries, afraid to be caught harboring Australian soldiers, were anxious to see the three men off. Bill Harry urged John Poole to join them, but the other two ministers interjected. The reverends Laurie McArthur, head of the Methodist missions on New Britain, and Laurie Linggood, who ran another mission station on the coast, explained why they were surrendering: four Australian women from the ministry had gone to Vunapope with the hospital staff two days earlier, and they were now prisoners. The pastors were determined to accept the same fate.

McLeod, Figgis, and Harry bid them all good luck and walked southward. The next day they caught up with Carr and Mackenzie in the village of Riat, swelling the total group to twenty-one individuals. In addition to Mackenzie and his naval signalers, the party included William B. “Bruce” Ball, the commissioner of police on New Britain, and two riflemen from the NGVR.

Mollard’s group had not yet reached the village, which was fortunate. The men gathered at Riat had already run out of army rations and were subsisting on whatever they could barter from local villagers. Within two days of the invasion, the specter of starvation was already looming large.

Many soldiers were surprised to discover that the jungle, for all its lush vegetation, would not feed them. It was actually “a desert” in the words of Lieutenant Commander Feldt, who had spent twenty years among the islands.
“At its best,” he wrote, “the food the jungle can supply is only enough to sustain life, and under a prolonged diet of jungle food, mental and physical vigor decline until there is no ability left to do more than barely support life itself.”

When their provisions ran low, evading soldiers turned to native-grown vegetables such as
kau-kau
, a close relative of the sweet potato, and taro, a broadleaf plant resembling a lily. The tubers were loaded with starch but lacked calories, and taro had to be cooked to a sticky paste in order to eliminate poisonous calcium oxalate. Other commonly grown foods included coconuts, papaya, sugar cane, and cassava roots, which yielded tapioca. There was very little meat available on the island, and although some villagers had pigs and fowl, they were not considered a regular part of the native diet.

McLeod, Figgis, and Harry could see that Carr and the others at Riat were in no hurry to move on. The general state of lethargy was made worse by heavy rains which had fallen for several days, and the combination of sodden conditions and lack of food was brutal on morale. Deciding to move on, the three newcomers hiked to Rabata on January 27 to look for John Mollard. The village was empty, but Mollard’s vehicle was parked among a jumble of abandoned trucks, some of which still held plenty of canned rations. McLeod returned to Riat and obtained some help to transfer the food back to Carr and his dispirited group.

Figgis and Harry remained near the Warangoi River for a few days before returning to Riat on the 29th. However, despite the additional rations, there had been no improvement in morale among Carr’s party.
“The only plan,” noted Harry, “was to eventually trek across the Baining Mountains to the south coast.” No one had a timetable, and some of the men believed there was nothing to gain even if they crossed the rugged mountains. In their dejected condition, they believed it was better to
simply wait for the Japanese to come. A few actually talked of returning to Rabaul under a white flag.

This was exactly what Major General Horii wanted. On the afternoon of the invasion, he had taken pains to dictate a warning to the retreating Australians. Printed on
leaflets, the persuasive message was airdropped with remarkable efficiency and reached hundreds of Australians. Few, however, took the warning seriously:

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.