In November 1943, during Operation Galvanic, marines of the 2nd Marine Division captured important documents at Tarawa Atoll (Betio). The attack force comprised 84,000 personnel, including 52,000 combat troops, 23,000 support personnel, and a naval task force of 200 vessels of 7th Fleets Task Force 77 under Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey. 37, No. Aerial resupply brought some relief, and on 30 April a group of 12 LCTs, towed by several LSTs, arrived at Humboldt Bay. The following month at least 20 fighters were lost in combat, while eight were destroyed in July. [43] The facilities in the area were designated Base G. Several higher headquarters were moved to the area, including those of the Sixth Army, Eighth Army, Fifth Air Force, and Seventh Fleet. While MacArthur sought eight days worth of support from the fleet's powerful fleet carriers, Nimitz would only agree to commit this force for two days after the landings. On 24 April, the beach became more congested with the arrival of scheduled reinforcements and further equipment, as well as two transports and seven LSTs carrying troops, including the corps commander and his headquarters, which had been diverted from Tanahmerah Bay. [4] Within six months, the school had shipped its first 35 graduates to the field, just in time for Guadalcanal and the Buna-Gona campaign. The destroyer Yayoi, sent to recover these men, was itself bombed and sunk on 11 September. In addition, about 5,400 survivors of the Japanese defeat at Buna-Gona were moved into the Lae-Salamaua area. Red 1 was found to be better, allowing LVTs and LCMs to come ashore with their infantry charges, but the approaches had to be cleared by engineers to allow the passage of the larger LCMs and even after this had been completed. The Allied reduction of Rabaul was only made possible by relentless air strikes that took place day after day, but Yamamoto thought the damage inflicted by a few attacks of large formations would derail Allied plans long enough for Japan to prepare a defense in depth. [23] The Australian and American anti-aircraft gunners of the Composite Anti-Aircraft Defences played a crucial part. In March 1943, a document was captured showing the submarine schedule between Lae, New Guinea, and New Britain. By the end of the day on 23 April the 186th Infantry were about halfway to Lake Sentani, while those from the 162nd had secured Hollandia and were securing the high ground around their objective, winkling out isolated pockets of resistance with aerial support. The Japanese invaded New Guinea from November 1941 till April 1942 and occupied the Dutch part (except for Merauke) and the northern Australian part (Fakfak fell April 1, Manokwari April 12). ATIS Inventories were also prepared. Translation of the official record by the Japanese Demobilization Bureaux detailing the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's participation in the Southwest Pacific area of the, This page was last edited on 29 January 2023, at 09:02. Interestingly, one of the Japanese operational orders provided the instructions Utmost precautions will be taken to conceal the plan., In mid-March agents of the 40th CIC Detachment captured on Panay Island and Negros Island incriminating documents of Panays puppet governor. When very few documents were captured and relatively little was known about the enemy forces in the SWPA, it was imperative to translate all documents in full. ", John Vader, New Guinea: The Tide Is Stemmed, p. 93, The Australian 7th Division under the command of Major General George Alan Vasey, along with the revitalized US 32nd Division, restarted the Allied offensive. 16 dealt with interrogation of captured American B-24 air crews; No. [18] For more information regarding the Z Plan see my article The Z Plan Story: Japans 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part I and Part II in Prologue, Vol. They were carrying Admiral Mineichi Koga, commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and his staff, including Vice Admiral Shegeru Fukudome, who was carrying the Z plan documents and the associated cipher system. [6] See The Sinking of the Japanese Submarine I-1 off of Guadalcanal and the Recovery of its Secret Documents., [7] See A Letter from Somewhere in Burma, June 1944. They arrived off Hollandia during the night of 21/22 April and about 20 miles (32km) offshore, the convoy split again with the Central Attack Group preceding for Humboldt Bay while the Western Attack Group turned towards Tanahmerah Bay. The landing was supported by carrier-based aircraft of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which had also struck Japanese air installations at Wakde and Sarmi to the northwest. The Japanese entered Lae and Salamaua, two locations on Huon Gulf, on 8 March 1942 unopposed. In January 1943 the Allied and the Japanese forces facing each other on New Guinea were like two battered heavyweights. The U.S. 24th Division's 19th and 21st Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs) were to land at Tanahmerah Bay. Before the end of May 1944 the 41st Infantry Division moved westward from Hollandia and made a landing on the little island of Biak. [30], The D'Entrecasteaux Islands lie directly off the northeast coast of the lower portion of the Papuan peninsula. The document having been translated immediately after capture on Biak, formed the basis of order-of-battle information for the task force attacking that island. The defeat of the Japanese invasion of Milne Bay by 5 September 1942 was the first Allied land victory over the Japanese. [17] It proved difficult to accurately estimate the size and composition of the Japanese defenses, as attempts to infiltrate reconnaissance parties in the area failed. January 23, 1942 - August 1945. author Paul Bocu, 2019. None of the senior officers present had been in post more than a few weeks and the senior air officer had been relieved following the destruction of his air forces at the beginning of April. . 11, Factors in Japanese Military Psychology was ever completed, although the material intended for this publication could have been used instead for Research Report No. per cubic foot, this works out to 1,350 cubic feet of records. Opposition on the ground at Hollandia was negligible and within four days the two divisions had secured inland Japanese airfields. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for My dad's whole collection of old stamps UNTEA Dutch Nw Guinea [ay08] at the best online prices at eBay! Primary Image: The US pursued a two-pronged offensive across the central and southwest Pacific to . Over 170 were published, including many extracts from diaries and notebooks. [8], The Japanese high command intended to hold Hollandia. [9] Few combat units were stationed at Hollandia in early 1944. [10] After the chief of staff of the Second Area Army travelled to Wewak to deliver Adachi orders in person, he directed that the 66th Infantry Regiment begin moving from Wewak to Hollandia on 18 April; it was expected that this unit would arrive there in mid-June. The story of the capture and return of the Z documents is detailed in Appendix II. Later, the procedure was altered again to cope with the tons of documents captured at main Japanese bases. Late in the summer, Lieut. Rabaul became the forward base for the Japanese campaigns in mainland New Guinea, including the pivotal Kokoda Track campaign of July 1942 - January 1943, and the Battle of Buna-Gona. This bombardment was augmented with air strikes from carrier-borne aircraft, while two destroyer-minesweepers, Long and Hogan, swept the bay ahead of the main landing force. Tweet. This document provided a complete list of approximately 40,000 Japanese Army officers together with their assignments. This plan was eventually reversed in favor of a counterattack on U.S. forces around Aitape. 9, Japanese-English Medical Dictionary; No. [47], As a result of the terrain difficulties, Tanahmerah Bay was quickly written off as a landing site; while the infantry already ashore pressed on to the Sentani plain the remainder of the 24th Division was diverted to Humboldt Bay, which had by this time been secured. When Japanese Americans on the West Coast were moved into internment camps in the late spring of 1942, the school moved to temporary quarters at Camp Savage, Minnesota. Among this cache were code books and a list of Japanese and German agents in the United States. Once Manila and its environs had been captured, CIC search and seizure teams located and took custody of large quantities of Japanese documents. [29] The Japanese arrived and the 25 August 7 September Battle of Milne Bay was underway. The US Navy had similar language programs. The most important find was a set of plans and specifications for some of the defenses encountered on the island. Base ATIS was closed at Brisbane on June 4, 1945, and established several weeks later in Manila. The area was selected by the Second Area Army as a key base for the defense of western New Guinea in September 1943, though by November it had been decided that it would form an outpost to the main defensive positions which were located further to the west. His contemplated offensive against Wau died a-borning. On March 1, 1944, soldiers found on the body of the commander of Baba Battalion a copy of a field order issued by him in which he ordered an attack on American positions for that same afternoon. In September 1945 they seized in Singapore important documentary evidence of war crimes, including photographs showing captured Indian soldiers being executed for refusing to join with Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army. The Battle of Hollandia (code-named Operation Reckless) was an engagement between Allies of World War II and Japanese forces during World War II. The plan called for the establishment of a two-battalion front, with troops landed in seven waves at two beaches: Red 1 around the Depapre Inlet and Red 2 on the eastern side of the bay. In the second half of 1943 the main Allied concern in the south Pacific was the major Japanese base at . West Papua: Forgotten War, Unwanted People. The campaign resulted in a crushing defeat and heavy losses for the Empire of Japan. region: "", The PTs turned their guns on, and hurled depth charges at the three boats which, with over a hundred men on board, sank. Possibly the most important translations published by the 6th Army ATIS Advanced Echelon in February 1945, were files of orders of the Japanese 58th Independent Mixed Brigade. This document was immediately translated and subsequently provided new bombing targets for the B-29s over Japan and during the early occupation provided a means of quickly locating and seizing armaments. 117, Infringement of the Laws of War and Ethics by the Japanese Medical Corps, contains information on violations of the Geneva Convention on the rules of warfare and points out how, time and again, medical personnel put to death their own patients. From there the documents were immediately sent to Brisbane for translation by ATIS personnel. When Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, was captured in late April one of the first places CIC agents seized was the post office. [46], On landing, the U.S. troops came under sporadic small arms and machine gun fire, but this was quickly suppressed. U.S. Military forces began capturing records almost as soon as the war began and started exploiting them immediately. [12] General Headquarters South West Pacific Area Operational Instruction No.7 of 25 May 1942, issued by Commander-Allied-Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, placed all Australian and US Army, Air Force and Navy Forces in the Port Moresby Area under the control of New Guinea Force. Twelve of these were scheduled to be produced, beginning in March 1943. This involved air attacks and naval bombardments on the Wewak area, and faked landings of reconnaissance patrols. In March General Hatazo Adachi, the commander of the Japanese 18th Army, was ordered by the Second Area Army to withdraw his forces west from the Madang-Hansa Bay area to Hollandia, with one division to be dispatched there immediately. 2, Alphabetical List of 40,000 Japanese Army Officer (May 1943); No. It would commit all the remaining Japanese naval power to one last major battle with the Allies. Fortunately, one American officer wrote in 1944, the enemy as a nation is addicted to keeping diaries, and converting everything into writing.. Between November 1943 and March 1944 18 Squadron was ordered to prevent Japanese reinforcements reaching the north-east part of Papua and New Guinea. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. Nimitz offered to assign eight small escort carriers to support the landing at Aitape, with these vessels then proceeding to support operations at Hollandia until 11 May. By the time the Allied bombers and PT boats finished their work on 3 March, Kimura had lost all eight transports and four of his eight destroyers. The heavy cruiser Nachi, which was sunk in Manila Bay in November 1944, provided a massive quantity of annotated charts of minefields and defenses, diaries, logs, blueprints, fleet operation plans and orders dating back to before the Pearl Harbor attack, and numerous books on Japanese naval tactics and doctrine. In early January 1943, Japanese documents taken from the body of a sniper killed near Soputa, New Guinea, revealed the entire standing operating procedure of the Japanese in that area. CIC personnel were constantly engaged in providing lectures to soldiers about the importance of captured Japanese documents. Miscellaneous identifications taken from documents captured in early November in the Pinamopoan Area, Leyte, gave the first indication of the Japanese 1st Divisions presence in this area. The translation of documents captured in the Southwest Pacific Area began with those taken in the Milne Bay operation in August 1942. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days later, America found itself in a global war. Hollandia was a port on the north coast of New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies, and was the only anchorage between Wewak to the east, and Geelvink Bay to the west. formId: "13b57390-1d3c-43b8-b8c2-4570bb51abe4", 5 captured many military documents. }); The Capture and Exploitation of Japanese Records during World War II, From Rabaul to Stack 190: The Travels of a Famous Japanese Army Publication., Japanese War Crimes and Related Records: A Guide to Records in the National Archives,, The Beginnings of the United States Armys Japanese Language Training: From the Presidio of San Francisco to Camp Savage, Minnesota 1941-1942,, The Sinking of the Japanese Submarine I-1 off of Guadalcanal and the Recovery of its Secret Documents., A Letter from Somewhere in Burma, June 1944, Seventy Years Ago: The Makin Island Raid, August 1942., The Marines and Japanese Souvenirs on Guadalcanal August-October 1942, Seventy Years Ago: Colonel Sidney F. Mashbir and the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), September-October 1942., The National Archives Arthur Evarts Kimberly and the Allied Translator and Interpreter Sections Document Restoration Sub-Section, 1944-1945., The Z Plan Story: Japans 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part I, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. I am estimating that a cubic foot of records is 2,500 pages. More than 6,000 graduates served throughout the Pacific Theater during the war and the subsequent occupation of Japan. The report contained 28 pages of translations, each translation accompanied by a photostatic copy of the original document and authenticated under oath by the translation. They subsequently neutralized the Japanese positions, as well as interdicted a portion of the Japanese movements, and anticipated Japanese defensive position and strengths. In the early months of 1944, both at Bougainville and at Rabaul, large numbers of Japanese troops were effectively put out of action without being confronted in bloody combat. As a result, code breaking was the main source of intelligence. While it was beyond MacArthur's capabilities to deny Buna to the Japanese, the same could not be said of Milne Bay, which was easily accessible by Allied naval forces. The town itself was on the shore of Humboldt Bay, with a first-class anchorage. [11] For the same reasons, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces South West Pacific Area was determined to hold it. The large majority of the defending Japanese troops there had uncharacteristically abandoned their positions and fled inland. [30][31] The decision to undertake these operations simultaneously stretched Allied shipping and logistics resources, and necessitated reallocating resources from other theaters and roles. The plane in which Fukudome was flying also crashed into the sea, near the island of Cebu. Many of the captured documents provided significant intelligence to General Douglas MacArthurs forces in the SWPA. For this, he ordered the air arm of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's Third Fleet carriers to reinforce the Eleventh Air Fleet at Rabaul. Report No. The Australians held firm and began their counterdrive on 26 September. [4] See The Beginnings of the United States Armys Japanese Language Training: From the Presidio of San Francisco to Camp Savage, Minnesota 1941-1942,. Second, the Allies had become convinced that the Japanese were preparing a major seaborne reinforcement and so had stepped up their air searches. A unified American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, ABDACOM, under Wavell, responsible for holding Malaya, Sumatra, Java, . This airfield was of great value to the Australians during the fighting for northeast Papua. Operation Reckless, the invasion of Hollandia and Aitape of 22-27 April 1944, was one of the most dramatic leapfrogging operations during the New Guinea campaign, and saw American forces bypass the strong Japanese bases at Wewak and Hansa Bay and capture key bases for MacArthur's planned return to the Philippines. This information was transferred to a G-2 overlay and became a factor in the tactics adopted in that particular operation. Japanese forces to the west were reconfigured to form a defense line through Biak and Manokwari,[62] while the Japanese 18th Army, still in defensive positions around Wewak, to the east, were faced with a long retreat west through the jungle having been ordered to bypass Hollandia and Aitape and reinforce the 2nd Army in western New Guinea. Interrogation of a prisoner confirmed the fact that supplies were being unloaded at Lae from enemy submarines. Seven LSTs were also assigned. Pre-War New Guinea The Japanese Invasion The Turning Point The Long Allied Advance 1943 1944 The New Guinea campaign (January 1942-September 1945) was one of the longest campaigns of the Second World War. The air defences consisted of P-39 and P-40 fighters. The three supporting U.S. cruisers and destroyers began their bombardment around 06:00, concentrating on targets around the entrance to Jautefa Bay and Hollandia. Earlier, during the Leyte campaign, important documents and diaries were captured by CIC detachments indicating the collaboration of a prominent police officer. [28], "Thenceforth, the Battle of Milne Bay became an infantry struggle in the sopping jungle carried on mostly at night under pouring rain. Backed by a swamp just 30 yards from the shoreline, and with just one exit trail unsuitable for vehicles, it quickly became congested. US troops and vehicles along the invasion beach at Korako. In New Guinea, U.S. and Australian infantry were moving along the northern coast, pushing the Japanese before them. Although the quantity of documents captured in South East Asia and China were not as voluminous as those found elsewhere, nevertheless there were major collections captured. This attack also destroyed 60 percent of all rations and ammunition that had been landed, and resulted in shortages amongst the infantry advancing towards the airfields. It was occupied by the Japanese during their invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, who planned to use it as a base for their expansion towards the Australian mandated territories of Papua and New Guinea. The timing of the landings at Hollandia were moved back to 22 April at around this time due to logistical problems and the Pacific Fleet's other commitments, and it was decided to conduct the landing at Aitape simultaneously with the main assault. 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