Target: Rabaul (65 page)

The Japanese military police realized that they would never undergo torture or face coercion of any sort, and therefore maintained their story that a random bomb had killed the prisoners. As long as they stuck to the basics, they could conceal the truth and frustrate their interrogators. To a great extent that proved to be true, but in one of the most compelling turns of the investigation, a Nisei who had served in the 6th Field Kempeitai agreed to submit to a “polygraph detection of deception technique.”

American-born Shinichi Kawamoto, who joined the Kempeitai headquarters in early 1944 as an interpreter, willingly agreed to undergo the Keeler-type polygraph test. After a baseline was established, Kawamoto answered multiple questions about his possible direct involvement in the disappearance of the prisoners. The line of questioning showed that the Allies strongly suspected a mass execution, and throughout the test, Kawamoto reacted with deception to many of the questions. The team administering the polygraph stated in their final report that he “definitely lied.”

Despite evidence indicating that the POWs were executed rather than killed by a bomb on March 5, Kawamoto denied direct knowledge or involvement in the incident. He did budge, albeit slightly, during a separate interrogation
after
the polygraph test. Upon learning what the Allies thought of his veracity based on the polygraph, and after hearing the details of affidavits submitted by Allied prisoners, Kawamoto was asked if he still believed the original Japanese version of the story. “I cannot believe it now,” he admitted.

Unfortunately, the primary Japanese suspects did not undergo similar deception tests. The polygraphs probably would not have worked anyway, as the use of an interpreter would have influenced their measurable reactions. Thus, while the outcome of Kawamoto’s polygraph was intriguing, the test did not reveal the smoking gun that interrogators had hoped for.

To this day, no definitive evidence has been uncovered to settle the controversy. The Allied investigators never believed the version of events as told by the Japanese, but neither could they disprove the obviously fabricated story.

AT RABAUL, IN the aftermath of what was almost certainly a mass execution of more than thirty POWs, the Allied attacks continued. “The bombings are as
intense as ever,” Maj. Gen. Kimihira wrote in his personal diary on March 6. “More than half the city has been reduced to ashes.”

Mitchell’s strategic planners would have agreed. All of Rabaul’s boundaries were determined by the shoreline of Simpson Harbor and the rim of the caldera. Using aerial photographs, the planners at Strike Command and Bombing Command counted approximately 1,400 structures of all types in Rabaul at the beginning of the campaign. By March 10, about 60 percent of the buildings had been destroyed. The progress of the campaign, combined with the rapid construction of a fighter strip in the newly acquired Green Islands, provided Mitchell and his staff with new options.

Two naval construction battalions completed a five-thousand-foot runway on Nissan Island just three weeks after it was invaded. The first fighter units soon commenced operations, initially using the new strip for staging, but as soon as billeting and support facilities were prepared, squadrons moved in to stay. Shifting their emphasis to the dive-bombing role, the fighters took over the task of “cleaning out the fringes” of Rabaul.

With much of the town in ruins, Mitchell shifted his focus to the next phase of the Rabaul campaign, the destruction of the enemy’s supply depots. Outside Rabaul’s busy waterfront, the biggest supply center on New Britain occupied the area between Kokopo and Vunapope. The Japanese had commandeered almost every building inside the mission, except a few dormitories where approximately 350 Catholic missionaries, staff, and family members were imprisoned. The rest of the campus was occupied by a Japanese infantry battalion. Mitchell’s staff estimated that the mission held nine hundred buildings, including tents, most of which contained stockpiles of food, ammunition, and other supplies.

For months, Bishop Scharmach and his staff had told themselves that Vunapope, with its beautiful cathedral and hundreds of civilians, would not be deliberately attacked. But there had been enough random incidents—some strafing runs, a few off-target bombs from time to time—that Scharmach decided to construct a pair of substantial air raid shelters.

As a young man, Scharmach had served the Kaiser in the Great War. A veteran of Verdun, the Somme, and several other campaigns, he knew the value of deep, well-engineered bunkers. At Vunapope, he oversaw the construction of two large underground shelters, each essentially a hillside tunnel with multiple entrances, electric lights, and benches along the side walls. Designed to shelter as many as two hundred people each, they were dug into hillsides away from buildings, based on Scharmach’s well-founded theory that a lot of bombs missed their intended targets.

The bishop reserved comment when the Japanese constructed shallow shelters near each commandeered house, roofing them with coconut logs and perhaps three feet of dirt. The Japanese smugly advised Scharmach to do the same, bragging that they could reach their shelters quickly. But the raid of March 10 proved them wrong.

The approach of Allied planes that morning sent most of the civilians into their two tunnels. The tireless bishop remained outside, seeing to details that required his attention as head of the largest mission in the South Pacific. He watched the Allied formation as it flew over Saint George’s Channel past his vantage point, heading toward Rabaul—but suddenly the bombers changed course and came straight at Vunapope.

Caught in the open, Scharmach ran to the nearest tunnel entrance and made his way to the center, where the sisters were huddled. “By the time I reached them, hell had broken loose over Vunapope,” he later wrote. “The ominous sound of diving planes, the scream of the falling bombs and their ear-splitting detonations, the rattle and whistle of machineguns and their bullets, all combined in terrific pandemonium. In the tunnel all this noise was somewhat muffled, but the exploding bombs made the shaft shake in the same manner as we experienced during an earthquake.”

Scharmach’s recollection was consistent with the profile of the first big attack, conducted by twenty-four RNZAF Kittyhawks, each carrying a five-hundred-pound general purpose bomb. Casualties among the civilians were remarkably light. One member of the brotherhood, recovering from illness, had been inside a small hospital that received a direct hit. Killed instantly, he was buried in a dresser drawer, which proved adequate to hold what little remained of him. Elsewhere around the campus, a cleric, four brothers, and two sisters had been seriously wounded. The men succumbed “after a few days of miserable existence during the following air raids,” wrote Scharmach, but the women gradually recovered.

The casualties among the Japanese had been far greater. According to the bishop’s estimate, hundreds of Japanese had been killed. As evidence, Scharmach wrote a graphic account of what the missionaries found after the raid:

In the morning after that first raid, when the Sisters returned to their little convent … they came upon a ghastly sight. Pieces of human bodies were everywhere. Nearly 300 Japanese had fallen victim to bombs or bullets in the area. One of their air raid shelters, only a few yards away, received a direct hit and its 90 occupants were partly buried, partly blown all over the convent. Another house, where sick soldiers were sheltering, had likewise been struck by one of the big bombs, and the remains of its inmates were scattered all over the countryside.

The more heroic amongst the sisters gave themselves to the horrible task of gathering up the mangled remains of the Japanese soldiers. Bucket after bucket was filled up and handed over to the guards.

Scharmach claimed that two hundred Japanese airmen were inside the former indigent sisters’ convent when it was struck by an “aerial torpedo” that wiped them out. Whether or not the death toll that day was inflated, General Imamura later
admitted that approximately 1,500 Japanese were killed in bombing attacks during the collective raids on Rabaul, with approximately the same number wounded.

Less important than the total casualties was the fact that scores of Japanese were apparently killed by a direct hit on a bomb shelter—an ironic disaster that came just days after the Kempeitai claimed that thirty-plus Allied POWs were killed in the same manner. The difference was that some two dozen bombs were dropped on Vunapope on March 10, whereas none are thought to have fallen anywhere near Talili Bay on March 5.

The Fates, it seemed, had a sense of poetic justice.

*
Accounts differ regarding the number of POWs separated. Holguin’s unpublished memoir states that about 31 men were removed. John Murphy’s sworn affidavit claimed a total of 40. McMurria stated firmly that 21 were removed, but was evidently referring only to American POWs.

CHAPTER 22

Island of Despair

I
N A HERCULEAN
but ultimately futile effort, a cadre of mechanics and leftover pilots from Air Group 253 resurrected several badly damaged Zeros. Despite the daily pounding by Allied bombers, the Japanese maintained their morale with the project, even building a complete underground machine shop to manufacture parts that were otherwise unavailable. Topside, working under the cover of coconut palms near the main airdromes, the mechanics pieced together seven fighters. They were airborne over Tobera on the afternoon of March 3 when Maj. Robert P. Keller, who had taken over VMF-223 from Marion Carl the previous month, arrived with a reconnaissance sweep of Corsairs and Hellcats. Keller was credited with downing one, though Air Group 253 recorded no apparent losses. Over the next few weeks more Zeros were lost, but Vice Admiral Kusaka was firmly behind the effort, and the repairs continued. Two Zeros were even modified by removing unnecessary equipment behind the pilot’s seat to enable the installation of a second seat. They became, in essence, fast reconnaissance planes, at least one of which remained in use a year later.

For all the heroic defiance of the effort, the handful of refurbished Zeros had no effect on the Allied campaign. The defeat of Kusaka’s air forces was so complete that Allied medium and heavy bombers began flying unescorted missions on March 9.

With interception no longer a threat, Major General Mitchell’s ever-increasing aerial forces intensified their campaign. Aside from the temporary diversion to wipe out the town and supply areas, the primary goal remained the airdromes. Mitchell pledged to “bomb the fields and keep on bombing them day after day” to prevent the Japanese from ever bringing planes back down from Truk. Because of that policy, more than half the bombs dropped during the SOPAC campaign were aimed at the airdromes. Eventually, however, the effort settled into a stalemate. The runways would be pockmarked with craters at the end of the day, but at night the Japanese labor gangs filled in the holes. Although only a handful of Zeros were in serviceable condition by the end of March, all three navy airdromes underwent repairs after every strike.

Rabaul itself continued to be targeted daily until April 20, when the town was declared 90 percent destroyed. Of the 1,400 buildings originally counted within town limits, only 122 relics remained, their locations “so scattered that it was no longer a paying proposition to try to make it a 100 percent job.”

Similarly, the strikes on Vunapope and the surrounding supply areas were called off after April 6, by which time the structures and storage areas were considered 85 percent destroyed. Scharmach and his people weathered the month-long storm of steel and fire in their two underground bunkers, losing several elderly missionaries who weakened and died from the strain. (The missionaries would have been aghast to learn that SOPAC had actually used Vunapope for an ordnance experiment. During the first ten attacks, when the target offered the highest concentration of buildings, slightly more than one hundred tons of high-explosive bombs were dropped. The result, based on aerial photographs, was the destruction of about 12 percent of the structures. During the next nine raids, the attackers dropped 182 tons of incendiary bombs, which destroyed an estimated 73 percent of the buildings.)

When the missionaries emerged for good from their bunkers, the Japanese battalion had abandoned Vunapope. The 6th Field Kempeitai had officially assumed responsibility for the administration of the internees at the beginning of April, by which time the campus was no longer habitable. For another two months, Scharmach and the missionaries lived in the two tunnels, subsisting on food scrounged from the ruins. In early June, the Japanese decided to move the entire group, now numbering approximately three hundred, into a well-protected ravine in the Ramale Valley, eight miles south of Kokopo. New caves were excavated, a rushing stream provided fresh water, and there was even room to grow gardens. It was all the missionaries needed—along with their faith—to endure the final fifteen months of the war.