Authors: Bruce Gamble
Initially, the Japanese believed that because of Operation
I-Go
, “enemy transportation and the threat of hostile planes in the Southeast area had been checked temporarily.” But it soon became obvious that Allied air strength and shipping were unaffected. In fact, attacks by V Bomber Command against Rabaul, Lae, Wewak, and other strongholds intensified as the Allies gained supremacy of the skies over New Guinea. Japanese convoys and even single ships were attacked relentlessly. The Imperial Navy would later admit that protecting shipments to New Guinea, particularly Lae, had become “extremely difficult.” They resorted to drastic measures, even making supply runs with submarines, which possessed a fraction of the cargo capacity of surface vessels. These too sometimes failed due to “harassment by enemy planes.”
The Japanese were not weak. Despite the departure of planes loaned for
I-Go
, aerial strength in the region remained potent. In early 1943 several JAAF fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance units arrived, and construction battalions started building two new airdromes at Rabaul. One of the army fields, located near the Keravat experimental farm southwest of Rabaul, was eventually halted because of drainage problems; the other, near Rapopo plantation, overlooked Blanche Bay at Lesson Point, southeast of Rabaul. It served as a regional base for JAAF bombers and as a staging area for units on their way to New Guinea. By late March 1943, more than fifty Type 1 fighters (Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscars”) were operational, along with sixteen Type 99 light bombers (Kawasaki Ki-48 “Lilys”) and seventeen Type 97 heavy bombers (Mitsubishi Ki-21 “Sallys”). Additional army units were poised to arrive at Rabaul by the end of April, including the 68th Flying Regiment, the first to be equipped with the new inline-engine Type 3 fighter (Kawasaki Ki-61 “Tony”).
The arrival of JAAF units was not the only improvement to Rabaul’s air strength. During
I-Go
and throughout April, Vice Admiral Kusaka’s land-based Eleventh Air Fleet relied on two primary components, the 21st and 26th Air Flotillas. Each consisted of a tactical element (the 1st Air Attack Force and the 6th Air Attack Force, respectively), formed around three air groups that specialized in interception, attack, and reconnaissance. At the beginning of May, that overall strength grew by approximately one-third with the return of the 25th Air Flotilla/5th Air Attack Force. Depleted by attrition after months of combat over the Solomons and New Guinea, the flotilla had returned to Japan the previous November. Now, after six months of recuperation and training, the flotilla redeployed to Rabaul.
*
Ground personnel and staff arrived first. On May 10 more than one hundred new aircraft flew in: fifty-nine Type 0 fighters and seven Type 2 reconnaissance planes of Air Group 251, along with forty-seven Type 1 land attack aircraft of Air Group 702.
Vice Admiral Kusaka had a powerful force available, yet his fighters were still unable to stop the American heavy bombers and their harassing night attacks. By this time, the garrison had endured several months of nighttime disruptions, the effects of which were almost as harmful as bombs. Chronic fatigue led to elevated stress and lowered immunity, which caused greater susceptibility to infection and disease. A prime example was the case of Vice Adm. Nishizo Tsukahara, commander of the Eleventh Air Fleet for much of 1942. Physically exhausted by the stress of the campaigns for Guadalcanal and New Guinea, his sleep often disturbed by American bombers, Tsukahara became so ill from dengue fever, malaria, and gastrointestinal ailments that he was sent home to Japan. His replacement, Kusaka, also had to spend many nights in an underground bunker. He typically began his workday at 0500, but on the nights when air raids disturbed his schedule, Kusaka would arise an hour later and perform calisthenics to wake up.
Most of the night attacks were directed against the airdromes, but the main base at Lakunai was close to Rabaul’s eastern neighborhoods. Garrison personnel could hear the disconcerting whistle of falling bombs, and the buildings shook with rolling concussions. Bombs that fell short or long of the target often landed in the eastern neighborhoods. Occasionally the town itself was targeted, particularly the waterfront district with its hundreds of warehouses and supply dumps.
The POWs in the Kempeitai compound, located only a mile from the harbor, were at risk from friendly fire. McMurria would later recall that “many a stray bomb came our way.” Fortunately the B-17s and B-24s made individual runs at night, as opposed to carpet-bombing. This reduced risk to the prisoners, but McMurria nevertheless issued a formal request to Colonel Kikuchi for air raid shelters. He mentioned the Geneva Convention, unaware that the Japanese were not signatories. Kikuchi denied the request, but within a few months he would have a change of heart.
The nighttime bombing raids also had a detrimental effect on Rabaul’s brothels. Soon after the Japanese captured the stronghold, the military had established officially sanctioned “special purpose houses” for authorized personnel and civilians. There were at least seven brothels in Rabaul—three for the navy and four for the army—staffed with conscripted prostitutes known as “comfort women.” Sent to Rabaul by the shipload, they were usually Koreans or Formosans hired under false pretenses. One brothel, named the East Magnificent Love Line, was located on Casuarina Avenue directly across from the Kempeitai compound. It served naval officers and senior administration officials, who paid two and a half yen for admission. Noncoms visited the West Magnificent Love Line and paid two yen.
Warrant Officer Kazuo Tsunoda, a veteran fighter pilot in Air Group 582, often spent nights with an impressionable young conscript. His memoir provides insights about their liaisons, particularly her wartime attitudes. During a night of bombing, they found their dissimilar lives hanging together in an unexpected balance:
Soon after we met, we received a B-24 raid in the middle of the night. Their purpose was more to disturb our sleep than to bombard us, using small-size bombs in waves. Deprived of sleep, our air defense unit was engaged in anti-air combat all night.
I suggested to Wakamaru that we go to the shelter at the comfort house, but she said, “I am not going. You go, please.”
I said, “What’s the matter with you? It’s dangerous.”
Then she said, “If I go into the shelter, I can’t be killed.”
I wondered why, and asked many things about her. She told me that most of the comfort women who were stationed in Rabaul at that time … were from the northern part of Korea, around the Ganzan area. They were collected as female labor corps volunteers at first. When they arrived at Yokohama, they were asked their preference: to work for munitions factories in Japan, or for the “comfort corps” at the front. Some stouthearted girls, not knowing what the actual work was, but assuming it would be cooking or laundry or doing other odd jobs, chose to go to the front.
On the ship heading for Truk, the girls were told what their job would be. They were astonished, but it was too late. In the ship, they were educated every day that their duty was also for the sake of the Emperor. When they arrived at Rabaul via Truk, most of them gave in. Only four or five girls refused to obey for a while. But now there was only one who was still adamant and refused to give in, saying that her fiancé was waiting for her in her hometown. She was doing laundry and cooking for the other girls.
“I decided to be a substitute wife for soldiers for the sake of the Emperor,” said Wakamaru. “Some of my peers cannot speak Japanese well,
but I graduated from a girl’s high school in Keijyo, and know mostly about life in Japan. So, I try to be like a wife in Japan.”
Then she continued that she did not want to inform her family. She sent them brief postcards saying that she was fine, working in a factory, but because of military secrets she could not write any more details. She addressed these cards in care of the Yokohama Post Office. She was paid a lot, but there was no way to spend the money. It was not good to send more than 10 yen to her family, either. Normally girls could not possibly earn more than that. Their supervisor suggested that girls save their money and open a restaurant or such in the Yokohama area in the future. Most of the girls were convinced and decided not to return to their hometown. Wakamaru said, “According to our supervisor, should we die in action here, our rank will advance to the next level, and we will be publicly announced as special nurses and enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine.
*
Rather than having a store, I would rather be enshrined at Yasukuni and have the public announcement sent honorably to my parents. In the shelter, I can’t die in action.”
Even though I faced death day after day in air battles, I had not thought of death of my own accord. I fought for my country with my all might, but I also fought because I did not want to shut down and die.
I believed this girl, who had made up her mind to die. After listening to her, I could not run away by myself. The face of my wife appeared in the back of my mind for a moment, but I decided to die with Wakamaru if the worst should happen, as a testimony of apology on behalf of the Emperor, as this girl had accepted her life for the sake of the Emperor.
Wakamaru was so delighted, I thought she would jump for joy.
“Really, are you staying with me? I heard that if a couple was bombarded and died together, the Navy will recognize them as married, even for sleeping together only for one night. The Navy would give us a naval funeral. I might be enshrined as a wife of an air officer at the Yasukuni shrine,” she said.
I straightened my clothes and lay down quietly. Random bombing continued intermittently all night. A bomb, about 30 kilograms, fell near the comfort house. The loud noise of splinters falling on the roof and the voices of people on the second floor were heard. There must be somebody else in the house, too.
Wakamaru sprang up and went out to see them. After a while she came back with cheerful eyes and said, “About seven girls did not go to the shelter tonight. But they are all sleeping alone. The girl right above us had a splinter in her leg, and has just been taken to the hospital. Poor girl.” Yet Wakamaru looked happy. “I’ll be bombarded, bombarded tonight,” she said, as if she
was humming. She lay beside me, buried her face in my chest and seriously prayed in a whisper, “Please, god, hit me tonight.” She was really a sweet girl.
Thinking how her fate could change for the better, I was also praying, but guiltily at heart: “If a bomb hits me, I cannot help it. But hopefully it will miss me.”
Formerly a member of the 2nd Air Group, Tsunoda survived ten months of combat in the South Pacific and was sent home in early June, 1943. A few weeks before he left, he saw the 25th Air Flotilla return to Rabaul after its six-month hiatus in Japan.
Especially noteworthy was the return of the flotilla’s famed fighter unit, Air Group 251. Of the seventy-three pilots in the group, only ten had seen prior combat. Survivors of combat tours over Guadalcanal and New Guinea, they formed a small nucleus to rebuild the unit. Their strength lay in the unit’s lineage, traced back to the glory days of the Southern Offensive. Formed in late 1941 at Tainan, on the southern coast of Formosa (Taiwan), the Tainan Air Group had participated in the opening attacks on American bases in the Philippines. Later integrated into the 25th Air Flotilla, the group proceeded to Rabaul in April 1942 and distinguished itself by sprouting several of Japan’s top aces: Saburo Sakai, Toshio Ota, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, and many others had flown in the Tainan Air Group. But within seven months, most of the originals were either dead or wounded. On November 1, 1942, just days before the survivors returned to Japan, the group lost its name due to a navy-wide restructuring and became simply another numbered unit: Air Group 251.
Since its formation, the unit had maintained several aircraft for general reconnoitering and pathfinding on long overwater flights. The original planes were replaced in early 1942 with Type 2 reconnaissance aircraft, an innovative twin-engine plane. Sleek, large, and relatively fast, the three-seater planes were designed as “strategic fighters” to escort the navy’s land-based bombers. The initial production models were heavily armed, with fixed automatic weapons in the nose and two remote-controlled dorsal turrets with twin machine guns, but unforeseen design and performance issues prevented the aircraft from being accepted as a fighter. Instead it was adopted in spring 1942 as the Type 2 land-based reconnaissance aircraft (Nakajima J1N1), assigned the recognition name “Irving.” Allotted to the Tainan Air Group for combat evaluation, three of these aircraft saw limited action over the Solomons and New Guinea, but only one remained serviceable when the group withdrew to Japan.
DURING AIR GROUP 251’s six-month reorganization, the former executive officer, Cmdr. Yasuna Kozono, recommended a new method to combat the enemy’s night bombing raids. Kozono was an early proponent of the Type 3 aerial burst bomb, which he believed (erroneously) worked with spectacular success. Kozono reasoned that an interceptor fitted with downward-angled automatic cannons,
attacking from above and slightly behind a bomber, would be even more effective. Similarly, a fighter positioned below and slightly behind an enemy bomber could achieve a high rate of hits with
upward
-angled cannons. His proposal, aired during a strategy meeting at naval headquarters in Yokosuka, was received with scorn from the senior officers present.
Confident and hot-tempered, Kozono relentlessly insisted on testing the concept—and his idea ultimately won approval. Three J1N1s were modified by removing the guns from the nose along with the radio equipment and operator position from the fuselage behind the cockpit. In place of the latter, four Type 99 20mm automatic cannons were mounted in fixed positions: two angled downward at thirty degrees (relative to the plane’s flight path), and two angled upward through the fuselage at thirty degrees. Clear panels installed in the lower fuselage enabled the pilot to visually line up on an enemy bomber below. Separate gun sights were fitted to the instrument panel, letting the pilot select between the upper and lower pairs of guns.