Whilst the situation for Japanese forces on mainland New Guinea and its surrounding islands was dire, tens of thousands of troops still presented a significant threat to Australian and American forces. Wakde Island, 140 miles further northwest along the coast from Hollandia, would be MacArthur’s next target and was assaulted by US forces on 17 May 1944. Back on the mainland three Japanese forces, spearheaded by four Battalions from the 223rd and 224th Infantry Regiments with artillery support, were moving to engage the advancing Americans. The intensity of the fighting which ensued in the Wadke–Sarmi area, culminating in the Battle of One Tree Hill from June to September 1944, proved that the Japanese still had plenty of fight left to give – US forces suffered nearly 2,000 casualties.
Landings on Biak Island on 27 May by the US 41st Infantry Division saw fighting against the 11,000 Japanese defenders dragging on until September, with US forces suffering 2,500 combat casualties and 7,500 men treated for malaria. 200 Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner; the remainder were all killed in the fighting. In July 1944, Noemfoor Island would be the next to fall to MacArthur’s advancing forces, followed by the largely unopposed landings of the US 6th Infantry Division at Sansapor on the mainland at the end of the month. In this, the final US assault on mainland New Guinea in World War II, the now-sapped Japanese fighting spirit was demonstrated by the number of soldiers surrendering nearly equalling those actually killed in the fighting. For MacArthur, the attack on Morotai Island in September 1944, to the northwest of New Guinea and on the way to his beloved Philippine Islands, would spell the end of a bitter and bloody campaign which had lasted three years and cost over 40,000 Allied casualties.
TOP SECRET
‘A CLOD OF EARTH IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS’
On 10 September 1945, nearly a month after the Japanese surrender, a small group of Japanese officers with a white flag approached Australian positions at Kiarivu near the north coast of New Guinea, between Wewak and Aitape. They informed their Australian victors that their leader, Lieutenant General Hatozo Adachi, was on his way to formally surrender. The next morning Adachi was marched to the Australians, his chair carried high on poles supported by four of his malnourished soldiers. On 13 September, Adachi signed the surrender of his 12,000 surviving soldiers at Cape Wom near Wewak. Colonel Hennessy of the Cavalry Commandos ordered his men not to stand to attention; the Japanese general’s reception was even more hostile when the 3,200 assembled Australian soldiers booed his arrival.
Adachi was found guilty of war crimes for the conduct of his men during the New Guinea campaign, regarding the treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Adachi’s sentence lasted only two months. On 10 September 1947, Adachi wrote several letters, one of which was addressed to the survivors of the 18th Army. He concluded it with:
‘At that time I made up my mind not to set foot on my country’s soil again but to remain as a clod of earth in the Southern Seas with the 100,000 officers and men [lost under his command].’
Hatozo Adachi ritually committed suicide with a paring knife on 10 September. In 1954 – nine years later – the final four soldiers of his command surrendered in the jungles of New Guinea.
Meanwhile for the Australians, Blamey was disappointed in his units’ role of defending objectives which had been taken by US forces. Elements within the Australian government believed that with MacArthur moving to the Philippines, the defence of Australia itself was secured and any further offensive operations against the starving Japanese defenders isolated in various pockets of New Guinea would be unnecessarily aggressive and cause completely avoidable loss of life. Blamey’s decision to resume the attack at Bougainville clearly showed his personal priorities, and added the final contributions to the Australian death toll of some 7,000 men in the New Guinea campaign – roughly equal to the number of American dead. This offensive spirit was shared by many within the Australian Army; one unit’s historian commented in March 1945 when referring to security operations in the Aitape area as a ‘boring epilogue’ to one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Pacific theatre.
For the Japanese Command isolated at Rabaul, the war came to an end on 4 September when General Imamura and Vice Admiral Kusaka signed the surrender of all Japanese forces in New Britain – nearly 90,000 personnel – on the deck of the British aircraft carrier HMS Glory, which lay at anchor off Rabaul. Following the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945, it was impossible to send news and orders to all of the isolated pockets of Japanese forces spread across the Pacific. Even though every effort was made by Australian forces to inform their opponents that the war was over, many Japanese soldiers took this as a ruse and continued small attacks against Allied positions. The last Australian soldiers who lost their lives on New Guinea were killed in actions on 18 August. By this time, estimates of between 110,000 and 200,000 Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen had lost their lives during the New Guinea campaign.
Aussies and Papuans face a Japanese charge
TOP SECRET
KOKODA BONEMAN
Born in December 1919, Kokichi Nishimura was a factory worker before he was conscripted into the Japanese Army at the age of 21. After completing his basic training, Nishimura was deployed to Guam with his unit, the 5th Company of the 144th Infantry Regiment, part of Major General Horii’s South Seas Detachment. One of the first units to participate in the New Guinea campaign, Nishimura took part in the landings at New Britain, the Kokoda Track campaign and the Battle of Brigade Hill (Isurava).
Promoted to lance corporal in 1942, he was sent to Rabaul to recuperate after months of exhaustion and starvation. He also fought in Burma but was wounded and contracted malaria, for which he was being treated in hospital at the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945. Following the war, Nishimura returned to the machinery industry but was left deeply traumatised by his wartime experiences. Determined to honour his lost comrades and raise awareness in Japan of the New Guinea campaign, Nishimura visited Papua New Guinea in 1979 and then again the following year.
Setting up a base of operations, he then dedicated years of his life searching for the remains of Japanese soldiers so that they could be given a proper burial. However, several hundred of the bodies he recovered were later burned by the Japanese Ministry of Health, with the ashes then laid to rest at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery near Tokyo. This greatly upset Nishimura as his intentions had been to have the bodies DNA tested so that they could be returned to their families.
Suffering from poor health, Nishimura was finally forced to give up his work in 2005. In 2010, he returned once again to Papua New Guinea to attempt to find the body of Australian Captain Sam Templeton, who Nishimura claimed to have personally buried in 1942, following his alleged execution by Lieutenant Colonel Hatsuo Tsukamoto. Sadly, he was unable to find the body. Kokichi Nishimura passed away in October 2015, aged 95. In 2008, author Charles Happell published a book about his life entitled The Bone Man of Kokoda.