‘Not a single grain of rice left. Taroes sufficient for only another day. From tomorrow we will have to chew grass or bark’
—Lieutenant Sakomoto, at Ioribaiwa
The war correspondent Okada Seizo stood on Ioribaiwa Ridge in mid-September and witnessed the Japanese troops pouring onto the summit, ‘wild with joy’ and ‘stained all over with mud and blood’. They embraced and wept.
As the invader’s triumphant glow faded, their predicament began to dawn on Horii’s officers. The silent pacifist within Okada found a voice: ‘They knew nothing,’ he later wrote. They knew nothing of the bigger picture: the diversion of resources to Guadalcanal, the destruction of transport ships from Rabaul, the sudden need for reinforcements at Buna. ‘They had simply done the best they had been taught to do, and reached the top of Ioribaiwa,’ he wrote.1
Horii knew what was happening. Perched on the dripping summit, the Japanese commander realised the advance on Moresby was doomed. He had overshot the southern-most point of his advance, as defined by Rabaul HQ on 28 August. His supply lines were dangerously over-extended.2 Ahead, 20,000 Allied combat and support troops were assembling; behind, his line of battered carriers—Formosans and Koreans, as well as Rabaul natives—stumbled up the track, harassed daily by Allied aircraft. And ominous news was coming in about the situation at Guadalcanal.
Horii allowed his men to labour under the delusion a little longer.
The Japanese troops had been promised an extra rice ration when they took Ioribaiwa. Most were disappointed. The machine-gunner Lieutenant Sakomoto did manage to reward some of his men with saturated Australian rations. But for most, there was nothing. ‘Not a grain of rice left,’ he wrote on 17 September.3
The Australians had left a little ammunition and signal gear, as well as about a thousand spoiled rations consisting of punctured tins and scattered food, the rotting detritus of spent ration packs.4 Australia’s 25th Brigade had burnt clothes and blankets, bayoneted cans of bully beef and strewn biscuits and rice through the bush. Booby traps—grenades poised to explode—were placed in piles of rubbish, in old boots and the cold ashes of extinguished fires.
With rising anxiety the Japanese scratched about the Australian dugouts for a morsel, wary of spoiled food after their terrific bout of food poisoning at Myola. ‘We were indeed in a hopeless position. The only thing that kept up the morale was the thought of Port Moresby,’ wrote Okada.5
As the first flush of victory dissipated, the men began to comprehend their peculiarly hellish circumstances. Some soldiers grew disorderly and angry. Military discipline lapsed and a mob mentality spread. The hungriest tore at tree roots and gnawed on native taro plants and sugar cane sticks. They were caught in a closing vice.
Even so, it was an exaggeration to suggest, at this point, that ‘In the scramble [for food]…the warrior spirit evaporated.’6 Most of the troops remained stoic in the face of extreme adversity. Mutiny and desertion were unthinkable, as remote from their minds as questioning the divine will of the Emperor.
To calm the troops, Major-General Horii appealed to their martial pride. Were they not the legendary South Seas Detachment, the Nankai Shitai, conquerors of Rabaul and the Owen Stanleys? Had they not driven the Australians back to Port Moresby? After all this, must they capitulate to the mere demands of their stomachs?
A string of morale-boosting declarations were distributed to platoon commanders. Horii had announced on 11 September, just before the charge on Ioribaiwa: ‘The Shitai has completed the pursuit of the enemy…these troops are in a state of utter confusion, and to a great degree have lost their will to fight…’7
Three days later, from his tent on the heights west of Wamai, Horii issued an order of brazen mendacity—a plan for the capture of Port Moresby: ‘…you will kindly take note of the following,’ he told his officers, ‘…First the South aerodrome [Kila Kila airport] is to be captured…Next our main force will capture Moresby peninsula and the town of Moresby. Only one battalion will then be assigned for guarding this area and mopping up…’8
The Japanese commander was either pre-emptively defying orders he knew were imminent, or wilfully deceiving his men to sustain morale. He knew the advance was impossible. Yet, junior officers effusively relayed his instructions. First Lieutenant Akiyama told his unit that the enemy ‘have only been putting up resistance on a small scale during their retreat…They are thought to have abandoned their last key position…in order to defend Moresby.’*
By mid-September, news of the landing of US marines at Guadalcanal came from behind, ‘as if borne by the wind’. While the troops thought little of this—preoccupied as they were with the advance on Port Moresby—many officers realised the dire consequences: ‘So that was why no Japanese planes nor supplies came to New Guinea!’ wrote Okada, with devastating simplicity.9 ‘An atmosphere of uneasiness stole over their positions on the mountain like the fog that gathered noiselessly every morning.’10
Horii could not face defeat. He’d driven his men into the heart of darkness; many had survived. The idea of abandoning Port Moresby, for which thousands had been killed or wounded, was intolerable. For Horii, the deeds of the dead were more important than the lives of the living.*
In many ways, Horii had only himself to blame for the supply failure. One POW, Lieutenant Inagaki Riichi, said that Horii had always expected his troops to eat off the land. Another fatal error was his decision to commandeer the powerful Formosans (known as the Takasago**) for mountain use, when they were supposed to be delivering supplies from the Buna beachhead to Kokoda. So the crucial section over the Kumusi River was left to weaker carriers.
Horii stubbornly clung to the advance. He sent Japanese patrols to reconnoitre enemy positions, with a view to launching an attack on Port Moresby on ‘about the 20th September’.11 The Kusunose Butai—whose leader arrived on a stretcher—would form the front line, with support from the apparently inexhaustible Yokoyama Independent Engineer regiment.
In readiness, the officers tried to fortify their depleted ranks. Orders flew down the lines for the immediate requisitioning of native food. All captured arms and supplies were to be instantly reported. A strict rationing regime controlled the consumption of salvaged Australian and native food. Resource Collecting Tai were dispatched to gather taro, yams, sugar cane, pumpkins and green vegetables. The daily rice quota was cut to under a pint on 11 September, and two days later, ‘men involved in great physical exertion’ were to get two thirds of a pint, and the rest, even less.12
The Tomita Battalion’s discovery of an abundance of sugar cane, taro, yams, pumpkins, melons and vegetables relieved this crippling regime, to some extent (it didn’t help the Rabaul carriers, who received a mere one-third of a pint of rice a day—barely enough for an inactive man to survive on).
‘The fullest use must be made of taro, wheat and other local produce and captured food in order to maintain fighting strength,’ one captain told his unit in a hastily scrawled note.13 He sternly added: ‘The eating of captured food between meals is forbidden.’ Nor were the men allowed to prepare their ‘rice substitutes’ in their tents, as they pleased. Officers had been ordered to report in writing whether they believed their food would last until 23 September.
In mid-September a few fitter Japanese troops attempted to pursue the Australians into the valley between Ioribaiwa and Imita Ridge. It was here that the Australian 2/33rd Battalion mounted the most lethal Allied ambush of the campaign. They lay in wait in the tall grasslands. At 6.45 a.m. on the 15th some 50 to 70 Japanese troops led by a sword-bearing officer marched into the area ‘carrying tins of Aussie food’.14 Bunched together in two files, none seemed on their guard. They marched along ‘chattering and laughing’ in a ‘wanton suicidal move’.15
Captain Larry Miller shot the swordsman, and 80 Australian rifles, Tommy guns and mortars opened up in a barrage of fire. For two minutes, 3000 rounds were shot into ‘this screaming, writhing heap of humanity’.16 The Australians withdrew, planting booby traps along the track and observation posts in the treetops.
After the ambush, the Japanese sent no more troops forward. They were, literally, at the end of the line—and daily showed signs of physical and mental collapse.
The Japanese soldiers did not openly complain. It was deemed unworthy of the Imperial Army to whinge about hunger and sickness. This severe, if medically disastrous, tradition permeated the armed forces. Troops were not to lose their martial spirit merely because they were hungry.17 To fall ill was seen as disloyal. Japanese soldiers were imbued with the idea that succumbing to sickness and hunger was a disgrace and ‘a dereliction of duty to the Emperor’.18
A soldier did not simply get sick, he ‘allowed himself to become sick’ through ‘negligence of the body’.19 Those guilty of deliberately neglecting their health faced imprisonment, according to the official Extracts from Court Martials and Punishments. Mindful of the shame of illness, many soldiers tried to suppress the signs until it was too late; then they simply collapsed. Casualties multiplied. Some commanders saw this, and tried to encourage the men to report symptoms early.
It was an extraordinary paradox that, while Japanese medical science at home was highly advanced, the quality of medical care at the front reverted to the Dark Ages. Doctors doubled as combatants, carried weapons, and were obliged to prod and harry the sick and wounded back to the front lines as quickly as possible. Medical orderlies did not wear the Red Cross insignia (it was merely displayed on their satchels).20
The wounded were operated on without anaesthetic or painkillers—‘as a soldier he should be able to endure pain unflinchingly’.21 The most hopeless stretcher cases were left to die, ordered to commit suicide or shot.* Such was the fate of the seriously wounded in the last battles of Ioribaiwa.
Some Japanese doctors were ashamed of this affront to their duty of care, and disturbed by the woeful quality of army medicine. Of course, this didn’t help the victims, or arrest the decline. Doctors were powerless: ‘The medical personnel, unable to appease the hunger of the wounded lying in agony at the front line, feel deeply their responsibility as hospital officials,’ said army medical officer First Lieutenant Okubo Fukunobo.22
Captured diaries and documents dated towards the end of September portray an army slowly starving to death: ‘We gave some dry bread to the Engineer Tai at the foot of the hill. They had not eaten anything for two days, and said it was delicious,’ one entry records.
Within a few days Sakomoto fully comprehended the fate of his men: ‘How will we live in our present position without food?’ he wrote on the 18th. ‘Inspected tents and noticed scarcity of food. Entire company turned out to find food.’ That day he went to his HQ to report the food crisis and to order supplies: ‘Returned empty handed,’ he noted.
He dared to suggest High Command were responsible: ‘Wonder what General HQ are doing? Patients will die and we will soon starve. How can we fight against this?’23
Again, on the 20th, the machine-gunner articulated the despair of the whole force: ‘Never till now, did I realise the true meaning of the saying “A full belly counsels well”. Not a single grain of rice left. Taroes sufficient for only another day. From tomorrow we will have to chew grass or bark.’*
Sakomoto wrote this on the day Horii had earlier fixed for the supposed invasion of Port Moresby.**
Towards the end of September, the human chain that stretched over the mountains to Kokoda and the coast, where boats fed it from Rabaul, was in chaos. The sentient Japanese soldier knew it was near collapse: he had only to view the pitiful result at his end.
Allied air attacks were getting more accurate, and persistent. The American General George Kenney, Allied air commander since 3 September, boasted that his massive air bombardment had halted the Japanese advance. This was not true. More often than not, his pilots missed. The jungle canopy obscured the targets, and the topography made low-level missions perilous. Often they strafed the Australian ground troops. Even visible targets eluded them. When Australian troops requested the bombing and strafing of Ioribaiwa, a ‘village…easily found from the air’, the pilots failed to find the ridge.24
It was not for want of trying—and many sorties bombed open targets on the beaches. Throughout September and October ‘Ken’s Men’ (the 43rd Bombardment Group of the Fifth American Air Force, apparently named after Kenney himself) attacked the Japanese lines over the Owen Stanleys and the boats arriving at Buna. Australian pilots from the 75 and 76 squadrons, vital to the defeat of the Japanese at Milne Bay, were equally active.
Consider a few days in the life of Ken’s Men during September. On the 3rd, they bombed and strafed Kokoda airfield, Alola, Isurava and Missima. On the 5th, P-40s machine-gunned Kokoda, Kaile, Isurava, Alola, Buna, Sanananda, and the Buna–Kokoda trail. On the 7th, A-20s and P-40s attacked Japanese positions at Myola and Efogi. On the 11th, A-20s and B-26s again struck Efogi and Menari. The next day, a huge squadron of P-40s, B-26s, A-20s, and B-17s bombed the airfield and strafed supply barges at Buna; further barges were destroyed at Sanananda on the 16th.25
October was a virtual turkey shoot. Enemy camps, huts, barges, ships and troop formations were targeted. How many were actually hit is unclear. The bridge over the Kumusi at Wairopi—vital for getting Horii’s supplies in—was bombed as frequently as it was patched up, and destroyed altogether on 2 October, thereby denying Horii an escape route across the river.26
On the ground there was mayhem. Native carriers deserted in terror, taking whatever food they could; the wounded scrambled into holes under the jungle canopy; soldiers’ attempts to direct anti-aircraft fire were useless. Koreans and Formosans—and Japanese transport troops—were left to man the supply line when the natives deserted.
If the food survived Allied air raids, it did not escape theft and sabotage. The Rabaul carriers and Korean labourers who bore most of the loads stole a huge quantity. They knifed open bags of rice, bored holes into bread packages, and pocketed tins of beef. Much of what reached the hungry troops at the front was half-eaten, or spoiled. The Korean carriers, whom the Japanese tended to view as ‘a lazy, shiftless and thieving lot’, were generally blamed and severely punished if caught.27
In one case, ‘only 5 tins of beef remained out of 33’.28 Bread parcels were bayoneted, rice pilfered. Half-cooked rice was found strewn along the track. Native carriers were also blamed for any theft and punished, even though evidence suggested Japanese troops were the more likely culprits. The carriers were given a third of a pint of rice daily, half that of other transport personnel. Stragglers, Horii noted with disgust, had ‘thrown away ammunition…used cleaned rice in excess of their ration, and consumed biscuits etc’.
Much rice got wet and putrefied. To combat this Horii issued a long list of cooking instructions. Wet rice must be separated from dry rice, wrapped in special containers, laid out to dry whenever the unit halted, and consumed first; or roasted and turned into hard-dried hoshii.
Rations were slashed. Combat troops received one mess tin of rice per day, and were told to complement their diet with taro and other native vegetables. The natives got a third of this, if they were lucky.
The native carriers collapsed or deserted under this regime, and the Nankai Transport Corps were forced to double their efforts to get the rice over the mountains. But they, too, yielded to temptation. ‘We worked desperately to get it to the front line,’ said one transport officer.29 An eighteen-litre bag of rice had typically lost as much as four or five litres to pilfering and wastage by the time it reached Efogi; it was virtually empty by Ioribaiwa. The Transport Corps were ordered to salvage the losses, and adopted the motto, ‘Even if it’s just one grain of rice, let’s get it to the front!’
But they were ravenous—their two cups of rice a day was not enough to sustain them—and they couldn’t help nibbling on their loads. When bags split, ‘these fallen grains were a source of uncontrollable temptation’, said the transport officer. ‘Though we focused on the fact that we must not let the front line starve, in our hearts, we couldn’t but be aware that we ourselves would die [on two cups of rice per day].’
‘Our commander repeatedly issued the order that fallen rice be collected and sent to the front, but the increasingly starving rear-guard corps felt that this was virtually impossible…By the time we arrived at the front, much of the rice had seemingly evaporated into thin air.’30
By late September no supplies were getting through to Ioribaiwa. Horii ordered that every man must try to capture enemy provisions and ‘make the fullest use of taro and the like’.
His army had received just two airdrops—on 23 and 29 September—at Kokoda.31 Allied planes were close to cutting off all seaward landing at Buna and Gona. Nor could he communicate adequately with Kokoda to fix the supply lines. There was a tendency, he stressed, for troops to slash ‘our own, yellow wiring’, mistaking it for Australian communication lines.32
By the last week of September some 1500 to 2000 survivors of the Nankai Shitai were cut off—by air, sea and cable—in the mountains.