‘I’m not going back, not a step! How can we abandon this position, after all the blood the soldiers have shed and the hardships they have endured? I cannot give such an order’
—Major-General Horii Tomitaro to his staff officer at Ioribaiwa
Horii’s deadline for the invasion of Port Moresby, 20 September, passed without a movement. Torrential afternoon rains drenched the ridge, and the Japanese troops sat and contemplated their position. The scale of the anti-climax engendered a deep depression. Reality came seeping in. ‘Every company is reduced to about half its strength,’ wrote Private Watanabe of the Tsukamoto Battalion. The bodies of the Japanese who’d died storming the ridge remained on the northern slopes; the troops hadn’t the strength to burn or bury them. Lieutenant Hayashi Hiroyuki of Shitai Headquarters couldn’t endure the stench ‘of the tremendous litter of the dead’.
Horii issued a message to the troops that day. It can be read as the last gasp of a proud general indulging in memories of battles of dubious merit, in order to prepare his army for the shock of retreat. He makes no mention of the immense losses, delays, and the pointlessness of the advance despite how much he knew about his supply failure:
It is now over one month since we took over from the Yokoyama Unit…We first reduced the strong position at Isurava, and continued on crushing the enemy’s resistance…at The Gap, Eora, Efogi, etc…We smashed his last resistance in the fierce fighting at Ioribaawa [sic] and today we firmly hold the line on the heights of that area, the most important point for the advance on Port Moresby.
For more than 20 days…every unit forced its way through deep forests and ravines, and climbed over…high peaks in pursuit of the enemy. Traversing mud more than knee-deep, clambering up steep precipices, bearing uncomplainingly the heavy weight of artillery ammunition, our men overcame the shortage of our supplies, and we succeeded in surmounting the Stanley Range. No pen or word can depict adequately the magnitude of the hardships suffered.1
Conceding that the Americans at Guadalcanal and Tulagi had ‘not yet been annihilated’, Horii urged his men to ‘strike a hammer-blow at the enemy stronghold of Moresby…in front of us, the enemy still crawls about…’* (He claimed the Shitai had killed 300 Australians at Isurava and 320 at Brigade Hill; the actual figures were about 250 and 77).
If Horii believed this message, he’d possibly lost his mind—or suffered from Captain Ahab syndrome, with Port Moresby transmogrifying into the white whale. His own officers, notably Tanaka, saw the writing on the wall: the severe setback at Guadalcanal, the diversion of reinforcements to the Solomons and the defeat at Milne Bay meant that the order to withdraw was imminent.
Sunset on 24 September found the Japanese commander sitting ‘solemnly upright on his heels, his face emaciated, his grey hair reflecting the dim light of a candle, that stood on the inner lid of a ration can’.2 The flickering light played on his worn face. Lieutenant-Colonel Tanaka sat opposite him, a rigid silhouette in the orange glow of twilight—‘two lonely shadows’ against the wet canvas.
Up ahead the Japanese forces clung to the summit of Ioribaiwa like a little medieval village isolated by some terrible disease. With weary inevitability the rain came down in heavy, spitting droplets. Torn tents and hastily built lean-tos served as pathetic shelters for this doomed fragment, whose gaunt faces peered out on the steaming jungle, tormented by thoughts of their next meal.
That day a wireless message had arrived from General Imamura Hitoshi, commander of the Southern Army in Rabaul: ‘Stop attacking Port Moresby,’ it said, ‘and wait for further instructions at present position.’
Later a second message came: ‘Withdraw from present position to some point in the Owen Stanley Range which you consider best for strategic purposes.’3
Horii, stubborn to the end, reacted angrily. ‘I’m not going back, not a step!’ he shouted at Tanaka. ‘How can we abandon this position, after all the blood the soldiers have shed and the hardships they have endured? I cannot give such an order.’
There are melodramatic flourishes in Okada’s account of what happened next. Apparently Horii ‘grasped his samurai sword’, drew up within inches of Tanaka, and added in a biting tone: ‘I will not retreat an inch. I’d rather disguise myself as a native of these mountains and stay here!’
Tanaka was silent, ‘watching the burning wick of the candle as though to avoid the commander’s eyes, when a rustling sound was heard in the thicket outside’.4 Then the signal squad commander came in with another wireless message, from the army commander at Rabaul, who instructed the Nankai Shitai ‘to withdraw completely from the Owen Stanleys and concentrate on the coast at Buna’.
In case any doubt remained, another wire immediately followed, reported Okada. It carried the imprimatur of the divine—sent directly from Imperial HQ in Tokyo: ‘It was now beyond doubt that the order…had been authorised by the Emperor himself,’ the journalist claimed. It seems incredible that Hirohito should have taken a direct interest in the welfare of this tiny, hungry cog in the vast Japanese military machine. Perhaps the news that his South Seas Detachment had almost reached Port Moresby impressed him. Whatever the reason, His Majesty must be obeyed.
‘A terrible grief cut deep into our hearts,’ remembers Takita Kenji. ‘This must be what is meant by “namida o nomu” that is, to drink or swallow one’s tears.’5
For the Imperial Army, it was a new experience. The Nankai Shitai had never retreated from a battleground. ‘No one knew what was going to happen—they didn’t know how to retreat,’ said Imanishi.6
At 9.00 a.m. the next morning Horii ordered his officers to withdraw. They responded with great bitterness. Hungry men within sight of the sea could not fathom the decision. ‘Hot blooded battalion commanders advocated a desperate single-handed thrust into Port Moresby,’ reported Okada.7
‘The order came like a bolt from the blue,’ said Captain Nakahashi, ‘causing an overflowing…of emotion, which could not be suppressed; it was compounded by feelings of anger, sorrow and frustration. The purpose, the dreams and the desires of the officers and soldiers of the South Seas Force had vanished in an instant.’8
Horii’s staff officer Tanaka—apparently a man of inexhaustible patience—tried to reason with senior ranks angry at being told to abandon their heavy guns: ‘I know how you feel,’ Tanaka said gently, ‘but it can’t be helped. Guns are valuable but soldiers are more valuable. Leave your guns and ammunition and all that. We must take every living soldier with us—every living soldier, sick or wounded.’9
The Japanese top brass passed the order down the ranks. Many of the ordinary troops were motionless with shock—‘stupefied among the rocks’ in Okada’s vivid phrase. Sakomoto noted briefly: ‘Received orders to withdraw to Isurava. Regretted leaving an area captured with brave warriors’ blood.’10
A few available native carriers were press-ganged into lines, supplies that could not be carried were destroyed, and the battalions formed up.
On 25 September, at precisely 11.00 a.m., an Australian heavy artillery cannon fired its first shells towards the Japanese positions. The troops lining Imita Ridge cheered on every blast. Even Albert Moore of the Salvation Army delighted a little guiltily in the arrival of the first artillery piece.
It had taken seven days and 50 Australian sappers using a powerful pulley system to winch the gun up the Golden Stairs—an amazing engineering feat.11 Though the shells fell short of the Japanese across the valley, the sound of their crumping explosions on the southern approaches to Ioribaiwa sent a clear message to the enemy: heavy cannon had arrived for the first time in the campaign. If Horii had any remaining plans to disguise himself as a native and stay, they were swiftly expunged.
Sakomoto rose early on the 26th to prepare for the day’s departure. The sick and wounded were assembled at 8.30 a.m.; the dead were buried. ‘It is truly regrettable,’ he wrote, ‘having to leave…the bodies of our comrades and the ground that we won so dearly. Sleep peacefully my friends. Farewell. We shall meet again in Heaven.’12
The Japanese prayed to their Shinto gods under a fresh deluge that drenched the heights from which they watched the gathering Australian forces across the valley. As a last gesture of defiance they fired a few rounds of their little wheeled mountain gun—dwarfed by the Australians’ 25-pounder—‘thereby uplifting our downcast spirits and those of our dead comrades’ and formed up. A few, too weak to stand, stayed on Ioribaiwa and died there.
The retreat began at 5.00 p.m. that afternoon, and continued ‘all night through the woods under the moonlight’ to avoid air attack.13
An odd thing happened as the Japanese moved out. Their bitterness gave way to feelings of relief. The fitter troops were suddenly animated by the will to live. The general oppressiveness seemed to evaporate. They were on a northern route for the first time in the war. They no longer faced the Allied guns. They were heading, geographically at least, home. To men inured to the harshest military tradition, the idea of actually surviving the war perilously entered their minds. Had the will to live survived the cult of death? Okada witnessed the moment:
…once in retreat they fled for dear life. None of them had ever thought that a Japanese soldier would turn his back on the enemy. But they were actually beating a retreat! There was no denying that. As soon as they realised the truth, they were seized with an instinctive desire to live. Neither history nor education had any meaning for them now. Discipline was completely forgotten. Each tried for his life to flee faster than his comrades.14
The Horie and Kuwada battalions pushed north under a clear night. Some of those too sick or hungry to keep up were left by the track: twelve men too weak to continue remained at Nauro, and soon died of starvation or sickness. Dozens more suffered a similar fate a little further up the track.
Those with foot rot, fever, or malaria moved a few inches at a time, shaking violently and leaning with both hands on long wooden sticks. Few survived. ‘Here and there along the path soldiers were seen lying motionless, unable to walk any longer,’ reported Okada.15
The Japanese, however, did try to carry out the remaining stretcher cases. Since native stretcher-bearers were scarce, the troops attempted to shoulder their own wounded, an impossible task for a malnourished army: ‘The wounded not only had to bear their wounds,’ witnessed Captain Nakashima in early October, ‘they were under a great mutual strain caused by the unremitting toil of their comrades…the stretcher cases overcome with emotion would cry out, “Please leave us here”, “Let us die”. The stretcher-bearers kept their emotions under control and in an effort to encourage the sick and wounded, spoke harshly to them…If the situation remained unchanged both patients and stretcher-bearers would die together.’16
It was decided to save the lives of the bearers by putting the hopelessly wounded out of their misery. They were shot in the stretchers. ‘The matter was settled and before long rifle shots reverberated throughout the jungle.’17
Up ahead, Okada and a fellow journalist called Sato walked day and night—‘on walking depended our lives’—under threat of daily air attack. They scrounged for food in market gardens, and found not a single potato. Small plantations had been stripped, and the stems of papayas had been ‘rooted out and bitten to the pith’.
Aggressive Australian patrols had been probing the enemy at Ioribaiwa for several days; one, led by Sergeant Bede Tongs of the 3rd Battalion, had slashed the Japanese communication line and killed several enemy troops. The absence of a strong response emboldened the Australians, and the entire 25th Brigade was ordered to attack Ioribaiwa at dawn on the 28th.
The three Australian battalions moved off on the 26th, the day officially marked as the start of the counteroffensive. They dropped to the valley floor, crossed the Goldie River, and pushed up the Ioribaiwa razorback towards the Japanese camp. On the night of the 27th ‘our…guns harassed the whole ridge and at dawn…swept it from the right to the left’.18
‘H hour’ for the attack was 9.00 o’clock the next morning. Two Australian companies, about two hundred men, walked onto the ridge unopposed, and radioed their HQ, ‘not a Jap…sighted’.19 At first, Brigade HQ didn’t believe this: perhaps the troops were in the wrong place, they thought.
A battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Buttrose, hurried forward: sure enough, the enemy had gone. Much abandoned equipment lay scattered about. The Australians especially admired the enemy’s giant tripod-mounted observation binoculars, with which they clearly viewed their own positions, back across the valley.
Sakomoto, the machine-gunner who led the attack on Brigade Hill, chronicled the Japanese retreat in his diary. It is a unique portrayal of the Imperial Army in decline:
September 27, 1942: Men are searching in the moonlight for food. Sickness increased.
October 1: Rations reduced again due to bombing of…supplies.
October 3: Dried wild berry grass to smoke as cigarettes…Men under rank of NCO…are getting disrespectful.
October 4: Woke up and made a fire, but not one man got up to assist me, everyone is so egotistical. It is damp and dark here. We have no more than a handful of rice left. If we remain until the end we will all die…What is the army doing?
0500: Twenty men left for Isurava to dig for potatoes.
October 7: 0700…Did not feel well. Diagnosed by a doctor as beri-beri.
1800. Our company commander was sent back with a large supply of rations. He seems unconcerned whether we starve or not. Takes his exercise by riding a horse, and yet he could not come to the front! Kokoda has been bombed daily.
October 8: Spent all day gathering Australian rice. I was amazed at the various ways one is able to prepare tainted rice…Two thirds of the men are suffering from beri-beri. Their visual powers and physical strength are weakened…Our life here is worse than a beggar’s. Wish the people back home could see our condition.
October 10: Arose and spent few moments meditating. Cruel nature, God take us to paradise. Each day, we are nearing our death…We seem to have been left behind, no order has come out yet…
October 11:…A man consciously shows his true character when faced by hunger and hardship; he becomes rowdy and rude.
As the condition of his men worsened, Sakomoto’s thoughts darkened. He shed his usual deference to High Command, and seemed even to lose faith in the Code of the Warrior:
October 13: Had only a sip of rice gruel for breakfast and half a package of dried bread for lunch. What will we eat for supper? Complaints of discontented soldiers were heard continuously, the effect of inefficient administration and management by the Butai at the rear…
October 17: Attitude of 2nd Lieutenant Nagano is disgusting…His only concern is his own safety…Enemy active again. According to reports from our scouts, enemy troops were groggy, possibly from lack of food. Better men than we are.20
*Another translator rendered this last phrase, ‘the enemy is still squirming forward’.