Invasion Rabaul (35 page)

Wright ordered the crew to take the sub to periscope depth and set up his first shot in the early hours of June 25. He passed the order to rig for depth charging, and then ordered the outer bow tube doors opened. One remained stuck in the closed position, so he elected to fire a three-torpedo spread at the target, identified from the profile books as the
Toyohasi Maru
“or a very similar type.”

The sky was beginning to lighten when the first torpedo sped from its tube at 0529; the second was launched six seconds later, and the third followed after another eight-second delay. Distance to the target was 3,600 yards, or roughly two miles. Immediately after the third torpedo was fired, one of the Japanese warships hoisted a signal flag, increased speed, and then turned toward the
Sturgeon
. The Japanese had detected the submarine, or more accurately, its periscope.

Wright took the
Sturgeon
deep and altered course. He could no longer observe the course of the torpedoes through the periscope, but several people in the control room had their stopwatches running. The torpedoes, which sped through the water at forty-six knots, would take more than two minutes to cover the calculated distance to the target—a long time for the anxious crew to wait. At two and a half minutes, an explosion was heard, seemingly a confirmed hit. “As these were 700# heads,” Wright noted in the
Sturgeon’s
log, “I feel reasonably sure that the target was sunk.”

Two minutes after the explosion, splashes were heard as depth charges from the warship hit the surface. Now it was the submariners’ turn to sweat. Twenty-one detonations were felt, some of them strong enough to crack the glass in a few gauges, but otherwise the submarine sustained no damage. Sonar operators listened as the two destroyers searched in vain for thirty minutes. One of the warships then departed, evidently to shepherd the convoy, and two hours later the other destroyer gave up the hunt.

Wright kept the boat submerged for the rest of the day, heading westward on the electric motors until after dark. When the sub finally surfaced, the crew opened hatches to allow fresh air into the hull, and they stood down from the attack. The whole evolution—from stalking the convoy and firing the torpedoes to avoiding the angry escorts—had lasted eighteen hours. All in all, it had been a fairly typical day.

Wright decided to hunt next in the waters off the northern tip of Luzon, and patrolled west of Cape Bojeador. An old stone lighthouse, though no longer functional, made an excellent landmark. For several days in a row, the sub dived at dawn and hunted at periscope depth, and then surfaced at dusk to recharge the batteries and patrol throughout the night. The routine of silent hunting became all too familiar to both submarine and crew, who waited impatiently for another target to come along.

A
T
R
ABAUL, THE SIZE AND INTENSITY OF
A
LLIED BOMBING RAIDS HAD BEEN
gradually gaining strength. Several missions specifically targeted the wharves and “military camp,” an indication that the planners were unaware the former home of Lark Force was now a POW stockade. From the air it resembled an active military compound—which of course it had once been. Even when the camp was not identified as a target, it was dangerously close to the wharves and warehouses that were being hit with increasing frequency. By some miracle the bombs did not harm the POWs, but there were several close calls.

One day, as a large group of prisoners worked in a copra shed alongside the Toboi Wharf, an Allied plane roared over at low level and strafed the building. A few men were
“slightly wounded and scorched” by incendiary bullets, but no one was seriously hurt. Stray bullets hit the POW stockade on other occasions, and during one bombing raid several small bombs landed in the compound. The only damage was caused by a piece of shrapnel that pierced the cookhouse roof and knocked the handle off a large stewpot containing the next morning’s rice.

The Japanese were not blind to the hazards faced by the prisoners. Their own personnel also worked in the stockade, and the risk to all hands became greater as more prisoners were brought in. Colin Stirling and his party, having dodged the Japanese for more than four months, were finally captured near Sum Sum plantation on June 2. Their arrival at Rabaul added six more prisoners to an already overcrowded population. In all, some twelve hundred POWs and civilian internees were crammed into one corner of the camp, originally built to accommodate nine hundred men.

The work parties assigned to dig
benjo
holes eventually used up every available space, including the parade ground. Heavy rains flooded the shallow latrines, causing the entire camp to become
“foul in the extreme,” and
it wasn’t long before dysentery was added to the list of afflictions bothering the prisoners. “The weakened men were now suffering from recurring gastric malaria,” wrote Hutchinson-Smith, “and tropical ulcers and wet beriberi were becoming common as the Japanese became more vigilant in safeguarding [their] food stocks.” The occurrence of beriberi among the prisoners was of particular concern. It indicated a serious deficiency of thiamine, thanks to the prison diet that consisted almost entirely of rice.

But the prisoners weren’t the only ones suffering a food shortage. As early as May 16, the stockpiles reserved for the Japanese were running low. Army signaler Jiro Takamura observed,
“There is no food left to requisition and there is nothing good to eat nowadays.” His complaint raises a critical question: Why, when Simpson Harbor was crowded with cargo ships, were the Japanese running out of food?

The answer lies in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s planning. With the Southern Offensive well underway, the great majority of merchantmen were dedicated to providing the arsenal necessary to defend the empire’s rapidly expanding territory. Rabaul was a prime example. In the months following the invasion, the Japanese placed nearly one hundred 75mm antiaircraft guns around the caldera, as well as almost two dozen 120mm and 127mm dual-purpose guns. And that was only the heavy stuff. The navy installed about one hundred Type 96 25mm multi-barrel cannons, while the army added another 120 automatic cannons and heavy machine guns. Eventually, the Gazelle Peninsula was covered by almost 370 antiaircraft guns, most of which were arranged in a ring starting at the tip of Crater Peninsula and extending around the caldera all the way to Kokopo.

Even more impressive was the assortment of ground and coastal defenses. The Japanese divided the northern end of New Britain into areas of military responsibility, with the navy controlling the defense of the harbor and township while the army handled the outer regions of the Gazelle Peninsula. The navy alone placed thirty-eight heavy coastal defense rifles around Blanche Bay and the northern coast of Crater Peninsula—all but one with a bore of 120mm or larger—and the emplacements were augmented by at least fifty concrete pillboxes housing large-caliber machine guns. The army added dozens of 150mm howitzers, 75mm infantry guns, mortars, and antitank guns to their area of coastal defense, and also built a system of inland bunkers. The latter were armed with an astounding array
of weapons: almost 240 heavy cannon and howitzers, approximately the same number of antitank guns, twenty-three heavy mortars, and nearly six thousand machine guns and grenade launchers. The defenses required hundreds of shiploads of weapons, spare parts, and ammunition.

In addition to the defensive
weapons and other material being sent to Rabaul, troops were being shipped southward by the tens of thousands. Prior to the commencement of the Southern Offensive, the General Shipping Transport Headquarters had been placed under the control of the Southern Army. It is well worth noting that of the 1.75 million shipping tons allotted to the offensive, 1.45 million tons were designated for troop movement. The balance was set aside
“for the transportation of supplies to rehabilitate the natural resources of the southern area.” Simply put, the Japanese concentrated nearly all their shipping on the transportation of troops and weapons, and failed to provide enough ships to maintain an adequate food supply.

Another factor affecting the availability of food at Rabaul was its distance from Japan. The supply line exceeded three thousand miles, virtually all of it over water. At least eighty merchantmen were sunk fleet-wide during the first six months of the war, including a significant number by American submarines. Some of those losses had a direct impact on the shortages at Rabaul.

To alleviate the food problem, the Japanese decided to relocate the Australian POWs and civilians. Rumors began to circulate that they would be shipped to Japan, but most people discounted the talk as
“so much empty camp chatter.” In the wee hours of June 22, however, the prisoners were surprised by a sudden development.

David Hutchinson-Smith later related the details:

At about 4:30 a.m. we were awakened by unusual activity on the part of the guards. There was shouting and stomping and we could hear the men and civilians moving about and talking. Many of us rose, but when we went to leave the hut we found light machine guns [trained] on the doorway at each end, and the Japanese made it unmistakably clear that we were to remain inside. We could see the men and civilians collecting their miseable
possessions and discussing the movement. Then they were formed into parties of about fifty men, the sick having to be supported or half-carried, and several transported on improvised stretchers or old doors.

The actual movement out of the compound did not commence until about 9 a.m. and it was in the interim that Stewart Nottage asked that [the officers] be permitted to go with the men, or that, if we had to stay, the men be allowed to remain with us. This request the authorities refused.

John May led prayers through the open side of our hut and read the Psalm for the day, which was singularly appropriate, and Vic Turner spoke encouragingly to the members of his flock. We shook hands with the men and a large number of acquaintances, and learned from them in whispers that they expected to go to Hainan.

The Bible passage read by John May from the officers’ hut that morning was Psalm 107. Whether or not he followed a standard lectionary, the selection was not only fitting but an uncanny precursor of events to come. Verses 23 and 24 were the clinchers: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”

While the commissioned officers remained inside their barrack, Warrant Officer McClellan got the prisoners into formation on the parade ground. The guards attempted a roll call and had the usual difficult time getting a valid count. The accuracy of their last nominal roll is somewhat questionable, but it is widely accepted that between 1,053 and 1,057 individuals stood in ranks on the dusty parade ground. Eight hundred and fifty were soldiers, all between the rank of warrant officer and private. Included were 706 members of Lark Force and 133 commandos from the 1st Independent Company, the remainder consisting of men from the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. About 90 percent of the total number hailed from Victoria, with more than four hundred from the 2/22nd Battalion alone.

Among them, none enjoyed closer bonds than Arthur Gullidge, Bert Morgan, Jim Thurst, and the other surviving musicians. Sans instruments,
they were bound in friendship by their passion for music and their faith. On a broader scale, the soldiers of the 2/22nd Battalion had been together for two years. There were at least twelve sets of brothers or cousins in the unit, but even beyond brotherhood, the Victorians were uncommonly close. Their commitment was absolute.

Two hundred-odd civilians were also gathered on the parade ground. A significant number were senior government representatives, including Harold Page, Harry Townsend, and “Nobby” Clark. One of the younger officials was Noel Mulvey, a surveyor with the public works department. He and Alice Bowman had decided to become engaged on the morning of January 4, just as the first wave of Japanese bombers approached Rabaul. The largest percentage of civilians consisted of local businessmen, some of whom had dedicated their livelihood to developing Rabaul. There were also sixteen missionaries in the crowd, most of them Methodists (including Laurie Linggood, Laurie McArthur, and John Poole), and thirty-one Norwegian sailors from the freighter
Herstein
.

Standing in the morning sun, the soldiers and civilians showed obvious signs of their unhealthy imprisonment. For at least three months, longer for some, they had grown weak from malnourishment while enduring unsanitary conditions—yet they still performed hours of manual labor each day. Their clothing hung in tatters from their skinny frames. Paradoxically, some men had swollen limbs because of beriberi, which caused painful edema.

At 0900, calling cheery farewells to the officers who had been ordered to stay indoors, the ragged-looking prisoners began to shuffle toward the gate. The long file headed slowly down Malaguna Road toward the waterfront, covered on both sides of the road by teams of machine gunners—an unnecessary precaution. Crowds of Asians, natives, and foreign laborers also gathered along the road, drawn by the spectacle of the white men carrying their own belongings.

T
IED TO ONE OF THE WHARVES ALONG THE WATERFRONT WAS A LARGE SHIP
with a rakish prow and clipper-shaped stern. Completed in 1926 for service between Japan and South America, the
Montevideo Maru
had the classic profile of a prewar transoceanic cargo liner. With a slender black hull almost 450 feet long and a large white superstructure
amidships, it appeared to be a 10,000-tonner, though it actually displaced just 7,266 tons.

In its heyday with the Osaka Shosen Kaisha line, the
Montevideo Maru
could accommodate thirty-eight passengers in first class, more than six hundred in second class, and ninety-four in third or “special class,” the domain of immigrants. But those days were long gone. In 1941 the Imperial Navy requisitioned the ship and assigned it to the Kure Naval District. After participating in the landings at Makassar during the Indonesian campaign in February 1942, it returned to Japan in early March and worked between the cities of Yokosuka, Kure, and Sasebo for two months. Leaving again for the Southwest Pacific, the
Montevideo Maru
stopped briefly at Java, and then sailed for Rabaul in early June with a load of troops and war material.