Fortress Rabaul (38 page)

Thirty-year-old Cornelius “Con” Page, a planter in the Tabar Islands east of New Ireland, could see for himself that the Japanese were slowly closing in. His home, a plantation called Pigibut, was raided only five days after the fall of Rabaul. Headquarters at Townsville had urged him to bury his radio and move to safety, but Page stubbornly refused to leave. A twentieth-century Robinson Crusoe, he’d “gone native” years earlier, taking an island girl named Ansin Bulu as his common-law wife. Page answered to no authority but his own: he was the lord of his little tropical island.

In March 1942, the navy awarded Page a commission as a sublieutenant in the reserves, the idea being that if he were captured he might be treated as a prisoner of war rather than as a spy. Officials even sent a naval cap and epaulets with the next supply drop, a gesture without precedent in the Royal Australian Navy, but the symbols of rank were both too little and too late to bolster Page’s sagging reputation. Within a few months virtually all of the natives except Ansin Bulu had turned against him. Page finally agreed to be picked up, but the aging American submarine sent to rescue him suffered a breakdown and had to withdraw to Brisbane.

On June 8, troops of the Kure No. 3 Special Naval Landing Force raided Page’s island, Simberi. They hunted him down for three days, even using dogs and armed natives, but Page somehow eluded them all. The sailors did succeed in capturing Ansin Bulu before returning to their base at Kavieng, so Page, realizing the Japanese would return with reinforcements, sent an emergency signal to Townsville on June 12. His one chance of rescue, he advised, would be to have a flying boat pick him up on the west side of the island. A Catalina took off from Cairns on the evening of June 16 and made a careful inspection of the island at very low altitude, but nothing was seen of Page.

In the meantime, John S. Talmage, a veteran of World War I who owned a plantation on a nearby island, had joined Page in the hopes of being rescued. Unfortunately for both men, a platoon of SNLF returned to the Tabar Islands on June 14 aboard the auxiliary minesweeper
Seki Maru No. 3
. The naval infantry chased Page and Talmage from island to island for six days before finally running them to ground on June 20. The sailors seemed impressed with the coastwatchers. One wrote in his diary: “With the use of wireless, they have broadcast the movement of our troops to Port Moresby and Australia. These spies were devastating to us.”

Page and Talmage were taken to the Kavieng jail on June 21, whereupon the SNLF went in search of two other coastwatchers holed up on New Ireland. Alan F. “Bill” Kyle, a veteran of the Great War and a former administrator in the Namatani agricultural district, and Gregory W. Benham, a warrant officer in the district police, had become coastwatchers by default. After the Japanese invasion in January, both men passed up opportunities for evacuation, willfully staying behind in order to coordinate rescues for other parties.

The organizer of the coastwatching organization, Lt. Cmdr. Eric Feldt, particularly hoped to rescue Kyle, his closest friend. An aging S-class sub was sent to pick up Kyle as well as Benham, but although it surfaced off New Ireland for two nights in a row, neither man was found.

Learning that more submarines had arrived in the Southwest Pacific, Feldt traveled to Brisbane for a conference with Rear Adm. Ralph Christie, USN, commander of submarine operations in the theater. Feldt explained the value of the coastwatchers and appealed for one more attempt to save the stranded men, adding that he had an agent available to put ashore. Christie approved the plan, and on July 8 the
S-43
departed Brisbane
carrying Cecil John Trevelyan Mason, a thirty-nine-year-old flight officer in the RAAF.

After making a slow, careful transit of the Coral Sea, the S-boat reached New Ireland on July 18. The next night, Mason paddled ashore in an inflatable boat and questioned a local islander, then noticed that the native wore a Japanese arm band. The man was obviously collaborating with the enemy. His answers were evasive, and he refused to divulge any helpful information about Kyle or Benham. (Both men, it turned out, had been captured less than twenty-four hours before the first sub was to pick them up.)

Thwarted on New Ireland, Mason rendezvoused with the
S-43
, which then moved seventy miles east to Anir Island. There, Mason hoped to contact yet another coastwatcher, leading telegraphist Roy Woodroffe, RAN. Mason went ashore on the night of July 21 but was subsequently captured along with Woodroffe. Unaware of this, the sub’s crew elected to remain offshore for several consecutive nights while attempting to contact Mason. After ninety-six frustrating hours, the
S-43
departed for Brisbane.

The string of bad luck on New Ireland and nearby islands was one of the darkest hours for Feldt’s coastwatching program. Not only were all of the early volunteers swept up by the Japanese occupation, the agent sent to rescue them was also captured. The Japanese extracted all the information they could get from Benham, Kyle, Page, and Talmage, then took them to Nago Island in Kavieng Harbor for execution. Page and Talmage were killed on or about July 21, followed by Kyle and Benham on September 1.

For unknown reasons, Mason and Woodroffe, along with two natives who had been captured with them, were transported to Rabaul. They were already in the POW compound, therefore, when Pease and Czechowski arrived during the second week of August. Approximately a month later the prisoners were joined by Father George W. Lepping, a newly captured Roman Catholic priest, who noted a disparity in the treatment of POWs and internees. Years later he wrote: “
The military prisoners were held in much tighter security than the missionaries and other civilians, being handcuffed and roped to their beds at night
.”

During daylight hours the prisoners were allowed to mingle. Although talking was supposedly forbidden, Lepping and the others “found ways around that.” Harl Pease entertained them with stories of the 19th Bomb
Group’s adventures in the Philippines and Java. He explained how the B-17s flew at night using celestial navigation, and he invented humorous nicknames for the guards based on their physical traits and personalities. Self-assured, a natural leader, Pease earned the admiration of his fellow prisoners. The guards also liked him, according to Father Lepping. “The Japanese looked up to Pease because they were in awe of the B-17. The Fortresses were semi-gods to them, and to have a Captain of a ‘Boeing,’ as they called them, was something to be remembered.”

THE CAMP GUARDS may have admired Pease but they had no control over his fate. In late August, the 81st Naval Garrison Unit began to periodically eliminate small groups of prisoners and civilian internees. The first such event occurred on August 29, when six Australian civilians captured the previous month near Kokopo were led away under the guise of a work party. Two German priests saw the men taken from the camp. Later that day the prisoners’ possessions were brought back and buried, but the six Australians were never seen again.

At approximately this same time, a Chinese civilian named Timothy Mak, a former clerk at the Burns, Philp & Company store in Rabaul, observed a truck carrying eleven or twelve captured officers heading toward Lakunai airdrome. Mak wasn’t able to identify the prisoners, nor did he witness what happened to them, but he was later informed that they had been executed. He “seemed sure” that some of the prisoners were American airmen and believed they were killed in retaliation for a bombing raid on Rabaul.

The latter detail adds credibility to his statement. Shortly after 1000 hours on August 29, eight Flying Fortresses struck the dispersal area at Vunakanau airdrome. Little is known about the damages caused by the raid, but the Japanese were troubled, especially because of the heavy losses they had endured at Guadalcanal during the past few weeks. Mak’s observation adds to the likelihood that the Allied prisoners he saw on August 29 were executed as a reprisal. Two of the aviators may have been the remaining members of Keel’s crew, Sergeant Marsh and Lieutenant Reed, but their bodies were never recovered.

ANOTHER GROUP of prisoners was led away from the compound on the morning of October 8. Father Lepping watched as guards of the 81st
Naval Garrison Unit handed out picks and shovels to Pease, Czechowski, Massey, and King, as well as to the two Australian coastwatchers, Mason and Woodroffe. Captain Mizusaki, the English-speaking commandant, told the POWs that they were going to work on a new airdrome near Kokopo. He then pointed at Lepping and said, “
You go tomorrow
.” Before Pease and the rest of the work party left the camp, the other prisoners took up a collection and provided them with spare articles of clothing. But that afternoon, recalled Lepping, the tools and extra clothing were returned. “We never saw the six men again,” he wrote.

After the war, WO Minoru Yoshimura, a platoon leader in the 81st Naval Garrison Unit, provided detailed testimony about the executions of Pease and the other POWs. The six men of the so-called “work party,” along with the two native islanders who had been captured in July with Mason and Woodroffe, were transported to the crematorium near Tavurvur crater. Several officers were already in attendance, including Mizusaki and his adjutant, Lt. Shiro Nakayama. Yoshimura was also somewhat surprised to see a young army doctor arrive aboard a motorcycle with a sidecar attached.

The prisoners, wearing blindfolds and with their hands tied behind their backs, were lined up at the edge of a large hole that had been dug beforehand by native laborers. Yoshimura issued commands to several recruits to bayonet the eight prisoners, but several of the sailors were timid or hesitant with their thrusts. Only one of the POWs and the two natives fell into the hole; the other five captives lay on the ground, writhing in agony.

At this, the medical officer moved forward, saying something to Yoshimura about singling out the healthiest survivors. Yoshimura later stated:

I asked him what he was going to do. He did not reply, but laughed and produced some medical instruments. I then realized he was going to carry out a dissection and had possibly obtained permission from Lieutenant Nakayama or 8 Naval Base Force, so I ordered the sightseers who had crowded around to disperse and those who had work to do to go back to their unit. This doctor then cut the jugular vein of the suffering prisoner of war before opening his abdomen. He then took some dark-looking object out, which … he handed to the NCO. He then quickly stepped over to the next prisoner of war who was still alive and writhing on the ground, so the doctor cut his jugular vein, opened him up and took a dark-looking object out. This whole process took about 5 or 6 minutes. The doctor was wearing surgical gloves. I saw the doctor, NCO and driver get on their autobike afterward; the NCO was carrying a shallow white tray containing whatever objects they had removed from the two prisoners of war.

As soon as all the prisoners of war were placed in the hole I gave the coup de grace by stabbing each one in the throat.

For all its gruesomeness, the testimony given by Yoshimura was fairly objective, making his description of the doctor’s demeanor all the more chilling. Possibly this was Chikumi, the same medical officer who had dissected Capt. John Gray in February. If so, the doctor may well have been a psychopath.

The Japanese military in World War II had a reverence for cold steel. On the island of New Britain alone, literally hundreds of Allied prisoners were murdered with bayonets or katana swords. And the systematic killings continued. On November 4, 1942, exactly six months after their capture in the Coral Sea, Allan Norman and the other members of his crew were taken to the usual place near Tavurvur crater. Two other Australians—one unidentified, the other probably Sergeant Brown of 75 Squadron—accompanied the Catalina crewmen. The Japanese blindfolded them, bound each man’s arms and legs with wire, and then forced them to kneel at the edge of a common grave. All eleven men were decapitated by members of the 81st Naval Garrison Unit.

OF ALL THE Allied aviators and coastwatchers known to have been captured in the Southwest Pacific in 1942, only those who were transported to Japan for further interrogation, namely Sergeant Lutz and Corporal Reed, survived. Likewise, Bob Thompson and four other crewmen of his downed Catalina were fortunate that an Imperial Navy cruiser plucked them from the sea and took them straight to Japan.

Otherwise, none of the military prisoners held by the 81st Naval Garrison Unit at Rabaul were allowed to live. By the end of the year, the soft volcanic soil near Tavurvur held dozens of corpses in common graves.

And in the years to come, many more would be added.

CHAPTER 21

A Shift in Momentum

G
EORGE KENNEY HAD BEEN
a busy general for the past few months. On August 7, the day of the big raid on Rabaul, he sent a message to Washington requesting authorization to form a numbered air force—an all-American one at that. General Marshall had already shared with Kenney that “he didn’t think much of mixing nationalities in the same organization,” and Kenney agreed. After barely a week in Australia, he had already made up his mind that the multinational directorate system established by his predecessor, General Brett, was ineffective. His request for a new organization was approved by Marshall on August 9, and the Fifth Air Force was officially activated at Brisbane on September 3.