Australia's First Spies

Less than a week after Australia declared itself at war, on 8 September 1939 the ex-permanent RAN officer Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt was appointed as Staff Officer (Intelligence) (SO (I)) at Port Moresby. His old classmate at the Naval College, Commander Rupert Long, who was now the DNI, instigated this action. Feldt’s instructions were simple: he was ‘to develop an organisation by which intelligence could be obtained’ in Papua, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides, and their surrounding littoral areas.¹ The resources allocated for Feldt to carry out this task consisted of £200 in travelling expenses.² No staff, no organisation, just travel expenses.

Eric Augustus Feldt was born in 1899 at Ingham, Queensland, into a large Swedish family of cane farmers.³ He attended Brisbane Grammar for one year, 1912, before he was accepted as a cadet midshipman in the class of 1913 at the Royal Australian Naval College. Here he met Rupert Long, the man who, as Australia’s DNI between 1939 and 1945, would be Feldt’s boss throughout the war.

Despite his orthodox career as a RAN officer, life in a rundown navy had no allure for Eric Feldt. In April 1923 he left the permanent RAN and took up a position as a clerk in the administration of the New Guinea Mandate.⁵ From there, he made his way to patrol officer before becoming a district officer. He later held appointments as the Mining Warden, Morobe Goldfields, before rising to the position of Chief Mining Warden, New Guinea.⁶

As far as his naval career was concerned, Feldt, like many ex-regular officers of the time, remained on the RAN Emergency List, being promoted to Lieutenant Commander and granted the war service rank of Commander in 1928.⁷ As war approached, the ACNB, advised by the office of the DNI, looked to revitalise the Admiralty’s Reporting Officer system and coastwatcher organisation. In late 1939, Rupert Long asked Eric Feldt to take on the job of organising the reporting officers in the islands.

Feldt had all of the qualities needed. First, as a classmate of Long’s and an ex-permanent officer of the RAN, he was a known quantity. Secondly, as a long-time resident of New Guinea and a former patrol and district officer, he knew the local populations of New Guinea very well. Thirdly, as the Chief Mining Warden for New Guinea, he was closely networked into all levels of the European community throughout the territory. Fourthly, the fact that he held such a senior position showed that he was no slouch, working hard and effectively. For the ACNB, Eric Feldt was manna from heaven.

With no support staff, Feldt had to rely on the network of honorary (unpaid) civilian reporting officers and, with some qualifications, the assistance of the New Guinea administration and the friendly support of No. 11 Squadron, RAAF, based at Port Moresby.⁸

In the Mandated Territory, the AWA network consisted of the base station at Rabaul working schedules with AWA stations at Salamaua, Madang, Wewak, Lorengau, Kavieng and Kieta. Each of these stations then serviced a local net of tele-radio stations.¹²

In the British Solomon Islands, the British administration controlled a single network with a base station at Tulagi. This station maintained contact with the outside world via Rabaul or Suva in Fiji.¹³

In the New Hebrides, also a British territory, the radio network consisted entirely of tele-radios, with the control station at Port Vila.¹⁴ All of these networks, but particularly the low-powered tele-radio networks, suffered from the atmospherics of the area, and this resulted in them having to communicate at precise times of the day in order to get the right angle of refraction off the ionosphere for their sky wave.¹⁵

From a strategic perspective, the positioning of the individual tele-radios and their control stations would prove both fortuitous and unfortunate. Fortuitous because they were well situated to observe the invading Japanese, if they came; unfortunate because they were in all of the places the Japanese would invade.

Feldt’s initial assessment of the situation showed that large tracts of his area were uncovered, and he moved to begin a program of confirming the willingness and ability of existing coastwatchers to continue their voluntary duties, and to recruit more coastwatchers to cover the gaps.¹⁷

Like all good commanders, Feldt went and looked for himself. He toured the east coast of New Ireland by car, bicycle and foot. He visited Pak Island, Lorengau on Manus Island, Dyaul Island and Sicacui on Latangai Island by schooner. He appointed 26 honorary coastwatchers in these areas. He then proceeded to Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, appointing a further 38 coastwatchers in those territories.¹⁸ He continued on to Salamaua in New Guinea and was flown by flying boat around the coast, appointing even more coastwatchers and providing the pilot of the flying boat with navigational and geographical assistance.¹⁹

This grand tour of the area of operations allowed Feldt to fill the gaps in the existing coastwatcher network and to identify that the strategically important pinch point at Buka Passage and the area between Buka and Latangai islands were unobserved. He also realised that messages from coastwatchers at other important passages through the islands took too long to get to Naval Intelligence.²⁰

From his personal reconnaissance, Feldt was able to put a comprehensive plan to Long for the organisation of the coastwatcher organisation in the islands. This addressed the need for a special frequency, ‘X’, to be made available for all coastwatchers, which required the manufacture and distribution of 33 radio crystals for coastwatcher tele-radios. For coastwatchers in strategically important locations, particularly those overlooking pinch points, the ACNB distributed a further sixteen X frequency tele-radios at their own cost and distributed these to the relevant coastwatchers. In one location, Anir Island, a Chief Yeoman of Signals, S. Lamont, RAN, had to be sent because there was no European to undertake the work.

The scheme was then expanded to include Thursday Island and Torres Strait, North Queensland and the Northern Territory. Six more tele-radios were lent by the ACNB to the New Hebrides administration for use in their area. Feldt then conducted visits along the south coast of Papua, then Tulagi Island, Buka Passage, and the Trobriand and Woodlark islands in January 1940. Finally, in early 1940, two service personnel joined Feldt in the area, Flight Lieutenant Thompson, RAAF, at Tulagi and S. Lamont at Port Moresby. Lamont would later deploy to Anir Island.²³ Feldt was to accompany Lamont to Anir in HMAS Manoora on 10 May 1940, but the cruise was cancelled, so Feldt and Lamont borrowed a launch from the administration to get there and establish the post.²⁴

By January 1940, Feldt’s coastwatchers were providing the DNI with reporting on everything nautical. One report of this period, provided by the local police, two Catholic missionaries and a visiting patrol officer, detailed the arrival of HMAS Kanimbla at Wanimo Harbour on 28 December 1939. Another report, from the Schouten Islands, detailed the arrival of the government vessel Thetis on 3 January 1940 and described another darkened vessel, thought to be Kanimbla, that steamed around the island on 4 January, showing chinks of light through her blackout. There was even a report of an explosion heard over an area of more than 80 kilometres that Feldt put down to a meteorite.²⁵ Although these reports are the minutiae of small isolated locations, they proved the system was working and that information was being forwarded in a timely fashion.

Feldt had done an enormous amount in setting up the coastwatch system by himself. He had established at least 50 stations across the outer arc of the eastern archipelago and another extensive arc of stations on the southern coast of Papua. It was no mean feat. On 3 November 1940, Lieutenant H.A. Mackenzie, RAN, along with an Able Seaman Writer, was posted as the Assistant SO (I) Port Moresby to help Feldt.²⁶

In Melbourne, Commander Long was working hard trying to build up an effective intelligence system, and prevent Military Intelligence from causing mayhem with the one the ACNB had already established. As Long described to Feldt in a letter of 13 January 1940, the declaration of war had caught the army on the hop, and it was now playing catch-up and trying to build its own reporting system in a mad rush.²⁸

The problem for Long was that the army was trying to recruit the navy’s coastwatchers and, when unable to, adding army tasks to the work the coastwatchers were doing for the navy. In New Guinea, this had alienated the Administrator, who felt his patrol and district officers were being distracted from their real jobs.²⁹

In January 1940, the situation threatened to get out of control, as the military bureaucrats of the General Staff in Melbourne issued instructions to the coastwatchers, whom they now regarded as military reporting officers, to use the army’s highly redundant and very ponderous signal procedures, including nil returns every day.³⁰ Effectively, they wanted a daily signal saying ‘nothing to report’.

This instruction was presumptuous, as the coastwatchers concerned were working for the ACNB. Far worse, it was lunacy. Signal procedures in the RAN of 1939 differed from army signalling because the RAN operated in a more sophisticated electronic environment in which radio messages that were too long or too frequent gave away the position and direction of a ship. HFDF could not locate ships that remained radio silent and so the RAN kept messages extremely brief and never sent nil returns. For coastwatchers, the threat posed by enemy warships and raiders, to say nothing of the IJN’s SIGINT capabilities, was very real. The signal sent out by the General Staff shows a marked lack of understanding of the problems involved in clandestine coastwatching.

Long’s approach was to recommend the establishment of a combined operations HQ manned by the three services at Port Moresby. He was using this as the thin edge of a wedge to get such combined organisations established in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, where the RAN, army and RAAF commands were located.³¹

In July 1940, when Lieutenant Colonel Wake began nosing around Feldt’s organisation, he held the concurrent appointments of Head of Military Intelligence in Queensland, State Director of the Security Service in Queensland and, his actual job, Inspector-in-Charge for the CIB in Queensland.³³ In effect, he had centralised all security and intelligence roles in Queensland in his own hands, and no one in the Australian government appears to have seen the dangers in allowing this. It is likely Wake was moving against Feldt’s organisation with the support of Military Intelligence, who wanted it brought under army control.

Initially, Feldt got along quite well with Robert Wake, but this changed when Long alerted Feldt to Wake’s active criticism of the coastwatcher organisation at meetings in Melbourne.³⁴ Wake had alleged that Feldt had not recruited enough people and that the duties of those he had recruited were so limited that they were unable to meet the army’s needs.³⁵ It was typical Military Intelligence, and it was typical Robert Wake. By October 1940, Eric Feldt’s view of Wake had hardened, and he wrote to Long that ‘Hereward the Wake…is the worst double-crossing bastard I have ever had dealings with.’³⁶

The year 1940 brought another difficulty over which no one had any control: the price of copra fell drastically, and coastwatchers were either losing their jobs or watching their incomes fall substantially. The result was that the men Feldt had recruited were leaving the islands or couldn’t pay AWA the rental for their tele-radios. The ACNB raised the issue with the Commonwealth-controlled AWA, and it was agreed that the rental payments would be suspended as long as the tele-radios were used only for coastwatch traffic.³⁷

Originally, the concept of operations for the coastwatch system was that all reports would be sent directly to Melbourne. With the advent of Long’s Area Combined Headquarters (ACHQ), however, it was decided that reports should go to the local ACHQ, which in this case was Port Moresby.38 Further changes occurred as Australian defensive preparations, such as the RAAF aerodromes at Rabaul, Gavutu and Vila, were put in place. To enable the aircraft based at these locations to respond quickly to coastwatcher reports, naval liaison officers were posted to the airfields.³⁹ A naval liaison officer was also placed at Tulagi, and Lieutenant Mackenzie was sent as the Naval Intelligence Officer (NIO) to Rabaul. Each liaison officer had an assistant and a small group of signallers and coders to assist them. In addition, the RAAF staff at these airfields kept a listening watch on X frequency at all times, and duplicated the warnings being sent to the forward commands.⁴⁰

It was at this juncture, May 1941, that the ACHQ was relocated to Townsville, and so Feldt and his small party moved to the new location, leaving an NIO at Port Moresby. In Townsville, Feldt’s title was changed to Supervising Officer (Intelligence) (SO (I)), and his staff was increased by the appointment of K.L. Murray as his civil assistant.⁴¹ It was also at this time that Long’s idea of the Combined Operations and Intelligence Centre (COIC) was adopted, and COICs were established at Townsville, Port Moresby and Rabaul, among other locations.

New coastwatcher posts were also created, one at Toma, in the hinterland of Rabaul, and one in the mountains of Guadalcanal. The general idea was that, following invasion, the civilian coastwatchers would cease operations due to the risk of being shot as spies. It was intended, however, that military coastwatchers would continue reporting from behind enemy lines using these inland posts.⁴² This plan for continued military coastwatching suffered from a significant flaw, in that there was no system in place to support them, and no equipment, supply caches or any of the other essentials necessary to enable them to carry out their duties.⁴³

Thus, as war with Japan came closer, Feldt had an operational HQ at Townsville, and local NIOs at Thursday Island, Port Moresby, Rabaul, Tulagi and Vila, each controlling their local coastwatcher networks. The radio reporting system had a dedicated, constantly monitored frequency, X, and its own code, PLAYFAIR, and each NIO could communicate reports directly to Melbourne for the ACNB, the chiefs of staff and the COIC now established at Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road, Melbourne.⁴⁴

The next brush with the war was more immediate. On 24 December 1940, the coastwatch station at Kavieng on New Ireland reported that German commerce raiders had landed survivors of merchant ships on Emirau Island. Lieutenant Mackenzie travelled from Rabaul to Emirau and interviewed the survivors, sending selected ships’ officers to Port Moresby for interrogation. From the information gleaned, a comprehensive picture of the voyages, activities and capabilities of the raiders in question was compiled. Other than this, the main business was handling the many odd and false reports, and the occasional valid one.⁴⁶

The system Feldt put in place was intelligence at its best. It produced a lot of material through which intelligence officers sifted, looking for the occasional speck of gold. In the period before the Japanese entered the war, Australia’s intelligence system did find some specks, including the area of operations of the Takaichiho Maru, a suspected spy ship. Other specks were Japanese flights over Kavieng, the Admiralty Islands and the Solomons. The lack of a proper system for evaluating and assessing intelligence into a broad picture meant, however, that not much use was made of any of these reports.⁴⁷

As tension in Asia continued to grow, the ACNB also authorised the reorganisation of the coastwatcher organisation, with the creation of an additional layer of control and coordination. Until June 1941, the supervision of coastwatch personnel had been left to the local civilian administration on the spot. By mid-1941, however, the DNI moved to appoint dedicated RAN intelligence officers to key points.⁴⁸ Lieutenant H.A. Mackenzie, RAN, was appointed as the NIO at Rabaul; Sub-Lieutenant J.C.H. Gill, RANVR, at Port Moresby; Lieutenant Commander H.A.G. Crawford, RANVR, at Thursday Island; Sub-Lieutenant D.S. Macfarlane, RANVR, at Tulagi; and Lieutenant H.W. Bullock, RANVR, at Vila.⁴⁹

On 8 December 1941, the whole coastwatch system was alerted that war was imminent, and the stations on Anir, Rooke (Umboi), Duke of York, Nissau (Nissan) islands and at Toimonapu Bay on Bougainville Island were placed on 24-hour operations.50 At Rabaul, the Assistant SO (I) had become unwell, and Sub-Lieutenant Gill was sent to relieve him. Gill was sent because it was expected that the Japanese would attack Rabaul, and that the NIO there, Lieutenant Mackenzie, would need the help.⁵¹ Pay Lieutenant J.H. Paterson, RANVR, was appointed NIO at Port Moresby, while pay lieutenants Macfarlane, RANVR, and Bullock, RANVR, remained at Tulagi and Port Vila respectively.⁵²

The success of Feldt’s work in preparing the coastwatchers for the coming Japanese war was clearly demonstrated when only one coastwatcher left his station at the outbreak of war.⁵³

The first sign that the Japanese were on the way was an aerial reconnaissance of Nauru on 8 December, followed by aerial reconnaissance of Rabaul and Tabar Island on 9 December. These were the first sightings of the Japanese made by Con L. Page (later Sub-Lieutenant, RANVR), a planter on Tabar Island, which sat on the most direct air route from the Japanese airbase on Truk to Rabaul.⁵⁴ Page’s warnings arrived at Rabaul 40 minutes before the Japanese aircraft. The first Japanese attack, the bombing of Nauru just outside Feldt’s area of operations, took place on 9 December. After this, nothing happened until the Japanese undertook aerial reconnaissance missions over Salamaua, Lae and Madang on 28 December. Coastwatchers reported all of this activity, except that at Nauru.⁵⁵

On 4 January, the war heated up, with two Japanese bombing attacks on Rabaul for which Page again provided 40 minutes’ warning. This was enough time for the RAAF to get its outmatched Wirraway fighters airborne so the Japanese could shoot them down rather than destroy them on the ground.

On the same day, the coastwatchers at Tulagi, Tabar and Kieta reported Japanese aircraft. On 10 December, Percy Good at Kissa reported six aircraft flying south. On 11, 12 and 13 December, Page on Tabar reported aircraft. On 12 December, the Rev. A.P.H. Freund on Rooke Island also reported aircraft, as did A.F. Kyle at Namatanai. On 13 and 14 December, J.K. McCarthy entered the war by reporting aircraft at Talasea.⁵⁶

The Japanese attack, when it came, was quick and efficient, with the garrison’s defence turning into a shambles, of which the defining moment was the premature demolition of the RAAF bomb dump. The resulting shock-wave destroyed every radio valve in Rabaul, cutting it off from the outside world. The only working tele-radio left was with the coastwatchers at Toma, 6 kilometres south-east of Vunakanau Airfield, where the entire garrison now retreated. To the outside world, the only indication that Rabaul and Kavieng had fallen was the sudden loss of all communications. Eric Feldt was very unimpressed, and he made this clear when he wrote to Long on 31 March:

The whole Rabaul business smells badly and I hope there will be a thorough check up on the stories told…Having seen the result of indiscipline in the AIF I told all the Subs and under here that in future everything will be done Whale Island style.⁵⁸

A cascade of retreating troops and vehicles tumbled down to Toma, and this attracted the Japanese. Mackenzie decided to destroy the tele-radio and lead his nine men out of New Britain by walking down the coast and picking up a boat. As they were preparing for the trek they were joined by Lieutenant Colonel H.H. Carr, the Commanding Officer of 2/22nd Battalion; Lieutenant Figgis, the Intelligence Officer; and Superintendent W.B. Ball of the Rabaul Police.⁵⁹ This extended party then took to the jungle.⁶⁰

At Kavieng on New Ireland, the Japanese had an anticlimactic experience, with Major J. Edmunds-Wilson’s 1st Independent Rifle Company choosing discretion and departing, apparently in accordance with their orders. If Edmunds-Wilson was trying to save the lives of his men, it was in vain. The Japanese captured the bulk of the company and most of them were killed when the ship taking them to Hainan Island, off the coast of China, the Montevideo Maru, was torpedoed by the US submarine Sturgeon in the South China Sea.

The withdrawal of Australian defenders from Rabaul and Kavieng was complemented by a significant loss of coastwatchers. The coastwatchers at Kavieng on New Ireland and Waterfall Bay on New Britain were evacuated, and those on the islands of Nissan, Anir, Duke of York, Dyaul and Pak disappeared. Only the stations at Lorengau and Namatanai remained.⁶¹

The coastwatchers on the ground now had to deal with the threat posed by bad security back in Australia. This was in fact so bad that at the end of January the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) aired in its news that Port Moresby was receiving advanced warning of Japanese air raids from a radio station at Gasmata.⁶⁴ Someone in the Australian government seems to have thought that broadcasting this to the people of Australia would help raise morale.⁶⁵ It is not known if the Australian public derived any benefit, but we know the Japanese did. On 8 February they landed a party of troops and captured the coastwatchers, Assistant District Officer J.E. Daymond, R.T. Squires and Sub-Lieutenant E.H.F. Mitchell, RANVR. Surprisingly, Daymond and Squires were taken into custody and not killed out of hand.⁶⁶ Mitchell, who had hidden in the jungle, reported the capture of his colleagues and tried to cross New Britain from south to north. He was also captured. All three men subsequently died on the Montevideo Maru.⁶⁷

The loss of the Gasmata station caused problems for Feldt in Townsville.⁶⁸ He already knew that the explosion in Rabaul had destroyed the radios there, but he couldn’t account for why Mackenzie’s radio, 16 kilometres away in Toma, was not operating.⁶⁹ It was decided that someone had to go and find out what had happened. That someone was a civilian, J.K. McCarthy.⁷⁰

McCarthy, who was at the western end of New Britain, now had to cross the whole island from west to east. This was a 520-kilometre trek through jungle and enemy-occupied territory around Toma. The trip was expected to take at least ten days and more likely two weeks.⁷¹

The incident at Gasmata had also caused Feldt to become more insistent with Long that his coastwatchers needed to be looked after more effectively. If McCarthy, a civilian official, were to be captured on his reconnaissance mission, it would make him a spy liable to be executed and, worse, his family would have no right to death benefits. While Feldt raised these issues with Long, McCarthy was back in his district at the town of Talasea preparing for the expedition.72 As Feldt told Long on 4 February:

I do not want to see them [McCarthy’s party] picked up by sending information now which will only be used for a Minister to make a statement, for a headline in a newspaper or a sentence in a B.B.C. announcement. So…look to you not to give the word ‘GO’ until the news will be of real use. We will only get one chance—a bloke will last about a week to a fortnight if they [the Japanese] start after him.⁷³

McCarthy got together a team of three coastwatchers, himself and two local planters, Flight Lieutenant G.H.R. Marsland, RAAF, and Lieutenant K.C. Douglas, RANVR.⁷⁴ The Toma party consisted of McCarthy, Marsland, local radio operator Nelson Tokidoro, and a small number of local police.⁷⁵ Douglas and a larger party of local police remained and manned the station at Talasea, keeping an eye on the local villages in case Japanese patrols entered the area.

McCarthy’s party travelled along the coast by launch, travelling at night and hiding up under the jungle canopy by day. They also maintained radio silence for two weeks to avoid the possibility of detection by Japanese HFDF stations and shipboard teams.⁷⁶ As the party moved towards Toma and Rabaul, Major G.W.L. Townsend of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU)⁷⁷ began collecting small motor launches that could undertake the evacuation of survivors from New Britain to New Guinea.⁷⁸ At Finschhafen in New Guinea, the coastwatch organisation was growing under its newly appointed commander, Captain G.C. Harris, ANGAU. This group now included W.A. Money, a planter, and the three lay missionaries, A.P.H. Freund, A. Obst and V. Neumann, who had taken up the sword against the Japanese.⁷⁹

At Madang in New Guinea, another coastwatch group was formed consisting of A. Kirkwall-Smith, planters B.G. Hall and R. Emery, and medical practitioner Dr R.A. Chugg. All were appointed to ANGAU then moved to Rooke Island, where they joined up with the Finschhafen group and began the process of planning the evacuation of survivors from Rabaul and New Britain to Port Moresby.⁸⁰

By this time, McCarthy’s party had reached Pondo Plantation, around 80 kilometres south-west of Rabaul. At Pondo, three local men, R. Olander, L. Bell and F. Holland, joined McCarthy’s group.81 The group avoided detection by patrolling Japanese destroyers, and made contact with Captain A.G. Cameron and a small party of eleven soldiers who had managed to keep together as a functioning subunit. On 14 February, McCarthy signalled Townsville to have the groups evacuated.

Feldt immediately spoke to Major General B.M. Morris, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Port Moresby, and it was agreed that Cameron would use McCarthy’s launch to take his men to Talasea for evacuation.⁸² Cameron took the launch but sailed to Salamaua and led his men to Port Moresby from there, leaving McCarthy’s party stranded in enemy territory. It was an enormously selfish action that led to all military personnel on New Britain being put under McCarthy’s command by an undoubtedly horrified and embarrassed GOC.⁸³

McCarthy had successfully completed his intelligence mission. He had obtained the entire story of Rabaul from Cameron and the other survivors which he then sent back to Port Moresby and Townsville on 14 February.⁸⁴ On 18 February, Major General Morris gave the civilian McCarthy authority over all Australian military officers on New Britain irrespective of rank when he approved McCarthy’s plans to rescue stragglers.⁸⁵

At Pondo, McCarthy’s party collected information from the local population using their local police personnel and it soon became clear that numerous small parties of Australian soldiers, possibly totalling around 600, were spread all over the area.⁸⁶ In order to cover the ground, the party split into two search groups, one led by Holland and the other by McCarthy. A third group under Marsland and Bell remained at Pondo to repair a damaged launch they had found on a plantation.⁸⁷

Holland’s group made its way westward along the southern coast of New Britain, looking to pick up groups of AIF stragglers following the coast. McCarthy’s party searched local plantations to find soldiers who may have remained there. This activity was now becoming urgent because the Japanese were losing patience with Australian stragglers who ignored advice to surrender.

Within a few weeks, McCarthy’s party had located and concentrated 200 survivors of Rabaul at Pondo. Among these were the Commanding Officer of the 2/22nd Battalion, Lieutenant Mackenzie, Sub-Lieutenant Gill and Chief Yeoman Lamont, Signalman C.C. Francis, Yeoman J.T. Knight and Writer T.J. Douglas.⁸⁹ This was not the end of their travails. Francis died on the track at Ril plantation on 24 February, and Knight and Douglas had to be left at a mission station at Wide Bay with Lamont, who stayed to nurse them.⁹⁰ All three were never seen again. These four deaths were among the first suffered by the coastwatch organisation.

McCarthy’s plan was to load the sick and wounded on the Aussi and the Malahuka and have Holland take them back by sea. McCarthy would lead the rest of the party on the 320-kilometre trek westward to the coast of New Britain nearest to New Guinea.⁹¹ As Holland approached Talasea on 14 March, he forwarded a signal from Mackenzie giving the location of more survivors at Waterfall Bay, 160 kilometres east north-east of Gasmata. Because of this, the coastwatchers on Rooke Island moved forward in the four launches Gnair, Bavaria, Unboi and Totol to pick up and ferry the survivors across to Witu Island. At Witu, the survivors were placed on board the motor schooner Lakatoi and evacuated.⁹²

In all, McCarthy and his helpers rescued 397 survivors and crossed hundreds of kilometres of jungle and enemy territory. They had searched for and found isolated groups of survivors in the jungles, villages and plantations of New Britain, brought them all to assembly areas and then arranged their safe evacuation. It was a remarkable set of achievements.

While coastwatchers on New Britain were rescuing survivors from Rabaul, the action moved eastwards towards New Ireland, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands as the Japanese secured the approaches to Rabaul and Truk. On 30 March, IJN vessels arrived off Buin and Buka, and occupied Buka and the Shortland Islands.⁹³ The Japanese were seizing ground to build a line of airfields from which aircraft could provide air cover to naval forces operating southwards from Rabaul. This had made both Rabaul and Kavieng objectives, and now Bougainville and the Solomons as well. A little later, they would make an attempt on Milne Bay for the same reason, and begin work on what would become Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. If these airfields were built, they would close off the whole of the Solomon Sea and northern Coral Sea to Allied naval forces.

The only Allied personnel at any of these places were small detachments of coastwatchers and members of ANGAU. At Buka, the planter Percy Good had remained behind. Good had been an AWA radio operator before becoming a planter and coastwatcher. At the outbreak of the Japanese war, he was 50 years old and somewhat infirm, which prevented him from taking to the jungle, so he passed his tele-radio to four soldiers, privates J.H. Wigley, E.D. Otton, W.A. Ross and B. Swanson, who had been part of the 1st Independent Company at Kieta.⁹⁵ It turned out to be a waste of time because they did not know how to operate a tele-radio.⁹⁶

When the Japanese arrived at Buka, they reconnoitred the island, took soundings of Queen Carola Harbour and placed buoys. They also interviewed the locals, including Percy Good. The Japanese placed Good on parole and he quite rightly did not report the arrival of the Japanese vessels. F.P. Archer on Yame Island had, however, sighted the Japanese, and he sent a note by local runner to W.J. Read at Aravia on northern Bougainville.⁹⁷ Read promptly informed Port Moresby and Townsville, and from there it was passed to the Australian government, then the ABC and its avid listeners, the Japanese.⁹⁸

Armed with the ABC’s information, the Japanese immediately returned to Queen Carol Harbour and brutally killed Percy Good.⁹⁹ They also arrested Father James Hennessy, who survived to die aboard the Montevideo Maru.¹⁰⁰ By June 1942, the ABC had contributed to the capture and eventual death in custody of three coastwatchers and one Catholic priest, as well as the torture and execution of Percy Good.¹⁰¹

Percy Good’s death finally brought the status of the civilian coastwatchers into ‘sharp focus’ in Melbourne.¹⁰² It was used by Feldt to force the ACNB to remove the petty bureaucratic blocks to the appointment of civilian coastwatchers to military ranks in the RANVR.¹⁰³ Eric Feldt played hard when he signalled:

As Good Was Coastwatcher Performing His Duty What Is Position Of Mrs Good And Others Regarding Pension Rights. Is Any Progress Being Made To Appoint Read Mason And Page To Naval Forces Or Are They Expected To Give Their Lives As Good Has Done Without Recompense Or Protection.104

By 2 May 1942, Read was appointed a Lieutenant, Page and Mitchell Sub-Lieutenants, and Mason a Petty Officer in the RANVR.¹⁰⁵ All of the other civilian coastwatchers were given similar appointments.¹⁰⁶

At this time Eric Feldt was controlling Lieutenant J.H. Mackie’s unit, his detachment of four soldiers at Kieta, Assistant District Officer W.J. (Jack) Read, Department of Agriculture field officer Eric Guthrie, and government field officer and medical assistant Frank Green at Aravia. He was also controlling A. Drummond Thompson and another four soldiers at Numa Numa, Sergeant Yauwika and Corporal Sali of the local police at Kieta, and now Paul Edward Mason at Inus on Bougainville Island.¹⁰⁷

The Japanese were now becoming more aggressive and more accurate, which suggests they were employing HFDF to geolocate the position of coastwatcher tele-radios. On 30 March 1942, Feldt signalled all coastwatchers warning them to prepare for more Japanese activity.¹⁰⁸ A decision was made to withdraw the remaining civilians, leaving Read at Aravia, Mason at a point on a ridge above Kieta and the four soldiers, Wigley, Otton, Ross and Swanson, in the town of Kieta.¹⁰⁹ Lieutenant Mackie and his remaining men were to conduct patrols across the island, collecting information.

On Bougainville, coastwatch operations benefited from the fact the Japanese largely ignored the island and the population remained largely neutral if restless. This restlessness showed itself at Kieta, where, with the departure of the Europeans, the local population rioted and looted until order was restored by Brother Henry, a New Zealand missionary, and Dr Kröning, a planter who had previously been the senior German official at Kieta.¹¹⁰ It also should be said that many locals were scared by Percy Good’s execution.¹¹¹ Any residual doubts the locals had about the Japanese were soon removed when they cut the throat of the Chief of Lemankoa at Kieta in front of a crowd because he had refused to come down to receive his Japanese armband. Every local now knew the new ‘big men’ were very dangerous.¹¹²

The local population formed the gravest threat to the safety of the coastwatchers because they had the bushcraft to track them. Only other locals could avoid detection by their countrymen.

The early experience on Bougainville demonstrated the two cardinal requirements for successful coastwatcher activity. First, a supportive or at least neutral local population willing to provide manpower, local knowledge and early warning of an enemy approach; and secondly, and almost as importantly, a quiescent enemy. In the early part of the campaign on Bougainville these conditions allowed Read, Mason, Mackie and the others in the coastwatching organisation to maintain themselves for eighteen months after the arrival of the Japanese. As Japanese interest in Bougainville intensified, however, this would change.

On Tabar Island, Con Page, the first coastwatcher to report Japanese aircraft flying towards Rabaul, stayed at his post. His continued activity drew the attention of the Japanese, who began aggressively searching for him. Despite the danger, and despite numerous instructions from Feldt in Townsville to stop sending messages, Page continued.¹¹⁴ The circumstances under which Page was operating were difficult. In March, atmospheric conditions made communicating with him almost impossible. He was lucky that his signal bounced into Rockhampton and was picked up there. This signal reported that Page was having trouble with a German and that he was thinking of ‘packing up and heading for the nearest port’.¹¹⁵ Page left it too late and was captured on 16 June 1942.

The Japanese troops who had hunted Page had apparently been reinforced by professionals, probably Kempeitai or Tokkeitai (IJN secret police). Evidence of this is shown by the way they conscripted locals to lead their patrols, and their use of tracker dogs on the island. On 13 June, remarkably and foolhardily, Page had signalled Feldt about the chase and that the Japanese were re-embarking onto a ship. Feldt requested the RAAF to attack this vessel.116 At the same time, Feldt was organising for a US submarine to pick up Page on the night of 17–18 June, which was the earliest this could be done. It was too late for Page.

On the day Page was captured Feldt was informed that Commander Task Force (COMTASKFOR) could not supply the submarine and so he organised an RAAF Catalina to attempt a dusk pick-up. On 17 June, FERDINAND, the covername now being used by Feldt’s coastwatchers,¹¹⁷ listed Con Page as a casualty. He had not been heard on air since 13 June.¹¹⁸ Around this time, Con Page and John Talmage, who had been captured on Tatau Island, were taken to Nago Island off Kavieng and beheaded.¹¹⁹

New Ireland was another place where coastwatchers paid a heavy price. At Namatanai, the coastwatchers were the assistant district officers Alan (Bill) Kyle and Gregory Benham. They had stayed on to oversee the administration of the district, and to secure the safety and loyalty of the local population. With the capture of Rabaul, both men decided to withdraw down the eastern coast of New Ireland, picking up European stragglers for evacuation to Port Moresby. By early February, they made Metlik. There, Kyle signalled Townsville and Port Moresby that he had a boat and ten evacuees and needed further instructions as to what he should do. Port Moresby ordered Kyle to remain on New Ireland without talking to Feldt in Townsville.

In his later book, Eric Feldt thought this decision was wrong, and he believed that Kyle only obeyed because he thought the order had come from Feldt himself. Kyle and Benham remained on New Ireland and withdrew into the high country leaving Rayman, their assistant, to take the evacuees to Tulagi for evacuation. The issue for Kyle’s party was that there were still a large number of refugees on the island, and the local inhabitants put them in touch with Kyle. Within a short period, the party had picked up ten new military refugees escaping from Rabaul. They did not have the food or other supplies for these numbers, and so Kyle signalled for a supply drop, a new receiver and other equipment. On 28 May, Kyle sent another signal requesting urgent assistance.

Six weeks later, Kyle’s party was at Muliama, where it had joined up with district officer Major J.H. McDonald’s party of civilians from Kavieng. They reported that they had retrieved some dropped supplies, but the Japanese were now driving them hard using the services of locals. Feldt ordered Kyle and his party to withdraw into the mountains, carrying as much as possible, and to avoid all contact with anyone, including escaping Australian soldiers.120 The problem for the coastwatchers was that their rescue role was overwhelming their intelligence role, and Kyle’s party was a good example. They had already got one group off to Tulagi for evacuation, and now they had accumulated 21 refugees, all of whom were later successfully evacuated.

This activity, while humane, was not intelligence collection, and that was the core responsibility of the coastwatchers. Once free of their refugees, Kyle and Benham returned to their intelligence-collection role and prepared posts from which they could obtain intelligence in the lead-up to what would become the Battle of the Coral Sea. Their reports added to the intelligence picture that enabled Admiral Chester Nimitz’s task force to engage and drive off the IJN attack force heading for Port Moresby in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Their activity did not escape detection. The IJN was well aware that these parties were supplying Allied commands with substantial intelligence ranging from weather reports to sightings of IJN ships, aircraft and ground forces. There can be little doubt that the IJN was also using SIGINT and DF against these parties, and that the low-grade cipher, PLAYFAIR, was compromised. There is also no doubt that either Kempeitai or Tokkeitai personnel were involved, as by 28 May 1942 Kyle’s party was being aggressively chased by Japanese patrols using local police personnel as trackers. These moved quickly down to Matakan and Matankuk, and down both coasts to encircle Kyle and Benham’s party, whose difficulties were multiplied by the growing neutrality of the now terrified locals, caught between the coastwatchers and the increasingly brutal Japanese. Kyle and Benham had little choice but to radio for extraction. There was no way they could survive without assistance from the locals and they could not avoid their own police trackers now working for the Japanese.¹²¹ Feldt organised a submarine to pick up the two men on 30 May but this was unsuccessful.

A further attempt was then arranged using a local planter, now Pilot Officer Cecil Mason, RAAF, who was to land from a US submarine, S38, to help extract Kyle, Benham and their party. Mason went ashore at Cape Sena near Muliama on New Ireland on 19 July, and made contact with three locals. While he waited for them to get the village bossman, Mason noted that some of the locals were wearing Rising Sun armbands, and when the bossman arrived, he was not friendly. This unsettled Mason and he returned to the S38 on 20 July.

While they waited for Mason’s return, the S38 crew observed an IJN patrol boat making 10 knots on a south-easterly course to the general area where Mason had been landed, and this craft lingered in the area for four days before departing.¹²³ There could be no doubt they had been compromised and Mason lured ashore, most likely by the Kempeitai. Cecil Mason was never seen again.

The casualties did not stop there. After sending a signal on 30 May, Kyle and Benham went silent.¹²⁴ Feldt had now lost four more coastwatchers—Bill Kyle, Gregory Benham, Roy Woodroffe and Cecil Mason—the last trying to rescue the first three. The fate of Kyle and Benham now fitted the more brutal pattern of Japanese behaviour. They were interrogated, most likely by the Kempeitai, and then beheaded at Nago Island on 1 September 1942.¹²⁵ The price paid by the local population was even higher, and many lost their lives or were raped, brutalised and robbed by the Japanese and their collaborators. It would get worse.