Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun (51 page)

So the
Amagiri
cut the
PT-109
in two. Two crewmen perished. Thus began a weeklong ordeal for Jack Kennedy and his eleven survivors. At great personal risk Kennedy rallied his sailors, saved several from the flaming wreck, and shepherded the disoriented men toward an island, swimming with one of them himself. After days of exposure Kennedy helped move them to another islet. He looked for ways to contact Allied commanders. A portion of the PT boat’s wreck was found afloat in daylight, and in due course Station KEN, the Guadalcanal coastwatcher network control, circulated a notice to look out for American survivors. Reginald Evans, the Australian coastwatcher on Kolombangara, got the message. He confirmed the nature of the observed wreckage. Two of his native scouts, Eroni and Biuku, eventually encountered a pair of the
PT-109
crewmen, and Jack Kennedy was
able to get a note to Evans and then meet him. Natives took the news to a U.S. outpost. Kennedy and his crew were picked up by
PT-157
on August 8. While that day marked the end of an ordeal for Jack Kennedy and his men, it also framed the moment Japan tumbled over the edge into an abyss.

TOWARD THE EVENT HORIZON

New Georgia continued to beg for help. Admiral Kusaka had to respond. On August 4 he ordered another Express. In Tokyo the next day General Sugiyama informed the emperor that Allied moves threatened every post in the Outer South Seas. Sugiyama had to endure a very unusual imperial outburst. “Isn’t there someplace where we can strike the United States?” Hirohito demanded. “When and where on earth are you ever going to put up a good fight? And when are you going to fight a decisive battle?” The next engagement would confirm all the emperor’s worst fears.

At Rabaul naval officers gathered under an awning on the destroyer
Hagikaze
for a briefing on their operation. Captain Sugiura Kaju, who had led the previous Tokyo Express successfully, commanded this mission and went over the plans. A torpedo expert, Sugiura had already been a senior destroyer leader before the war, and he had a sterling reputation. But he intended to replicate the approach of the previous sortie, so, even to an old friend, Hara Tameichi objected. Sugiura countered that the details of the Express had already been settled with Kusaka’s headquarters and with the Army. It was too late. Captain Hara sailed in the
Shigure
, last in Sugiura’s four-ship column.

Hara’s misgivings were well-founded. While it is perfectly true that, with the New Georgia campaign in full swing and the Japanese operational tempo well understood, SOPAC could expect a Tokyo Express, Halsey’s preparations were based on Ultra intercept of an Eighth Fleet dispatch, enabling him to set the ambush. As on the night of the
PT-109
incident, when SOPAC had put cruisers off Vella Gulf (on the other side of Kolombangara from previous Express missions), with PTs down near Blackett Strait, this time Halsey posted PT boats in the same place, with destroyers right inside the gulf. He instructed Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson, his operational leader, to put the forces in motion. The preparatory order went to Captain Frederick Moosbrugger the preceding day. The Japanese destroyers,
still at Rabaul, left at 5:00 a.m. on August 6. Moosbrugger had had nearly a day’s notice. In any case, the American captain raised steam by noon and led a half dozen destroyers from the anchorage. They were in position by 10:00 p.m. Moosbrugger delivered on his instructions.

The standard practice with Ultra was to post an air scout in the vicinity of a predicted surface naval movement. While an air spotter tipped the enemy that the Allies were aware of their presence, more important was that it gave the Japanese an explanation other than codebreaking for why their actions were anticipated. Sure enough, as Sugiura’s destroyers passed Buka Island at 6:30 p.m., they saw a snooper and then overheard its contact report. Sugiura pressed on without altering course or speed. By 9:00 p.m. the Express neared its goal. Captain Sugiura arrived in Vella Gulf at his appointed hour.

Moosbrugger had put his ships close off the Kolombangara shore, difficult to see against the dense jungle foliage. The last-quarter moon, obscured by clouds, was due to set near 10:30. The Southern Cross constellation was already dropping beneath the horizon. There were occasional squalls. This darkness completed the frustration of Japanese lookouts. At 11:18 destroyer
Dunlap
made radar contact. Captain Moosbrugger decided it was a ghost signal, but fifteen minutes later the same ship acquired a real contact, almost due north, twelve miles distant.
Craven
this time confirmed the contact. Moosbrugger immediately ordered his ships to set for torpedo attack. By 11:37 the tin cans knew there were four Imperial Navy warships. The launch took place at 11:43, with the Japanese at 6,500 yards, before a single gun had spoken. Commander Gelzer L. Sims of the
Maury
sent her fish against Sugiura’s
Hagikaze.
These were classic night-destroyer tactics, the kind the Japanese had so often employed against American flotillas whose own tin cans were usually restricted by conforming to a battle line of heavy ships.

Captain Sugiura saw everything as nominal. His Tokyo Express had settled on a southeast course at thirty knots. At 11:30 p.m. he altered to south-southeast. On the
Kawakaze
, the second ship, Petty Officer Tokugawa Yoshio, an ammunition hoist operator, was grabbing some shut-eye, in common with his comrades. Aboard the other vessels only Hara Tameichi had any inkling of danger. His
Shigure
, an older tin can in need of a refit, had lagged behind. Seeing nothing but forbidding darkness, rather
than speeding up Hara ordered the
Shigure
to battle stations and doubled his lookouts. At 11:42 a spotter on the
Hagikaze
reported dark shapes along the Kolombangara coast. American torpedoes were already in the water.

After that, bedlam. A
Shigure
lookout saw torpedo wakes. Captain Hara had hardly gone on the long-wave radio to warn of torpedoes when lookouts on
Arashi
and
Kawakaze
reported enemy ships.
Hagikaze
and
Arashi
heeled to port and
Kawakaze
to starboard, but none could avoid the deadly tin fish. The first two were hit amidships. On the
Kawakaze
the crew barely made it to battle stations before torpedoes struck. Petty Officer Tokugawa believed the first one hit the bow. Sailors claimed a PT boat had delivered it. She quickly began sinking. The Japanese later established that seven torpedoes struck home, including one no one noticed, right through
Shigure
’s rudder, apparently so encrusted with barnacles that the holed rudder was only slightly less efficient at turning the ship. It was Hara who put up the fight for the Japanese, and
Shigure
survived because she had lagged behind. Had she matched the speed of Sugiura’s other ships, the
Shigure
would have been in the torpedo water. Hara turned away under a cloud of smoke and made for Rabaul, joining cruiser
Sendai
, returning from a supply run to Buin.

A number of Japanese survived tribulations as great as those of Jack Kennedy. Chief Petty Officer Kawabata Shigeo of
Kawakaze
swam fifteen hours before reaching land. Friendly natives gave him coconuts and young shoots to eat. Petty Officer Tokugawa drifted two days until the current took him to Vella Lavella, where he found more than two hundred survivors of the other ships. Seaman Kawahara Jihei drifted about twenty hours and cut himself badly on coral as he beached at Vella Lavella. The U.S. patrol that captured him was guided by a Melanesian tribesman.

The Battle of Vella Gulf, as this action is known, marked the onset of Japan’s dark period. Suddenly a draw seemed the best that Japanese forces could accomplish. Amid the succession of inconclusive actions and actual defeats, Kusaka’s position collapsed. Come to witness that sorry end would be Baron Tomioka Sadatoshi, the erstwhile NGS planner. After a time commissioning a new cruiser for the Imperial Navy, Tomioka arrived in Rabaul as a staff aide to Admiral Kusaka. Only a year earlier Tomioka had been debating the merits of South Pacific offensives versus an invasion of Australia. Now he
had to assist his admiral in the desperate defense of a Japanese bastion, its power ebbing.

This transformation boggles the mind. Until very recently Halsey’s SOPAC forces had not exceeded the Japanese. Indeed, for roughly the first half of Tomioka’s year it was Japan that had been superior. Intelligence made the difference. Not that Japan lacked for resources in this field. The Japanese had aerial reconnaissance; they set up their own network of coastwatchers; the radio traffic analysts of the Owada Group and the communications units—like the 1st and 8th at Rabaul—were very good. But there were marked differences in the two sides’ capabilities. The Japanese simply never devoted the weight of effort to intelligence that the Allies—the United States, Great Britain, Australia—all did. There were many thousands of officers and men involved with Allied activities. On the Japanese side the number was a fraction of that. While hard data are lacking, a reasonable estimate would put their personnel at a tenth to a quarter the size of the Allied intelligence force.

The professional spook in the Imperial Navy lacked standing. So did the Allied pros, but on their side wartime events, starting with Midway, ended any confusion over the value of their work. During Tomioka’s year, intelligence proved so central to enabling meager Allied forces to trump the enemy that by mid-1943 it had become integral to the entire enterprise. The Japanese tolerated intelligence but regarded the product more as demonstrating the dimension of obstacles a commander must overcome to achieve victory. At root this was different from the Allied concept, in which intel identified targets; then operating forces blasted them.

Japanese intelligence nevertheless employed identical principles. Documents captured in the South Pacific show that the Japanese graded information for accuracy (“undoubtedly reliable,” “probably reliable,” “authenticity is undetermined”), collected topographical and other information from natives and friendly residents, had an actual propaganda strategy, exploited captured documents, recognized the value of prisoners as information sources, closely followed Allied radio news broadcasts, and, of course, valued radio intelligence and aerial reconnaissance. Japanese instructions placed special emphasis on this data: shifts in strength and movements of adversary air units, status and equipment of airfields, movements and status of warships and supply forces, the state of signaling and broadcasting,
and adversary unit identifications. Japanese Army documents also emphasized data on enemy airborne raiding forces (MacArthur would conduct a parachute assault against Nadzab in New Guinea). Any Allied intelligence officer would recognize these collection targets immediately.

Much as IGHQ reached “central agreements” on operations, and local commanders negotiated parallel arrangements for their regions, the Imperial Navy and Army made formal agreements that assigned primary collection responsibility in given sectors to one service or the other. In the Solomons the Navy took the lead on intelligence.

The Japanese were careful statisticians. Captured documents showed they closely tracked attacks on their air bases in an effort to divine overall patterns. Ground observers recorded the numbers and types of aircraft in an attack or over an area, as well as the hour, altitude, and general technique of attacks. Halsey was thus gaming the Japanese system when he flung a 150-plane attack at Kolombangara but made his next amphibious landing on Vella Lavella. Kusaka expected SOPAC to invade the former.

Given the intelligence juggernaut that fueled Allied success, it is perplexing that their system fell short when it came to Japanese pullbacks. The Guadalcanal evacuation owed much to Allied tardiness in divining the enemy’s true intentions. This happened again in the summer of 1943. The view from Rabaul was that supplying such exposed outposts as Munda and Vila had become too costly. Admiral Kusaka had also begun to suspect that Halsey would invade Bougainville—hence the sudden effort to build up Buin and surrounding bases, including Shortland, which Southeast Area Fleet believed a specific SOPAC target. Kusaka determined to regroup his garrisons, relinquishing Munda, which the Americans captured on August 4. He also ordered that troop movements be made primarily by barge.

What began as tactical maneuver soon became strategic necessity. Tokyo viewed the Solomons with increasingly jaundiced eyes. The Americans had just ejected Japan from the Aleutians—in the end without any intervention by Koga’s Combined Fleet. In various encounters during early August the emperor raked both Army and Navy chiefs over the coals, and complained to Prime Minister Tojo as well. The Allies had to be stopped somewhere. Imperial Headquarters initiated yet another strategic review. Planners decided that positions throughout the Pacific needed strengthening and the Solomons were draining capabilities. As an interim measure
while Army-Navy discussions progressed, on August 13, Admiral Nagano issued NGS Directive No. 267, providing that the Solomons battle be waged by forces in place, which should withdraw to rear positions from late September. Meanwhile at the front, the tenor of operations quickly changed. Naval officers at Rabaul found themselves dispatched to convoy barges or to distract SOPAC while barges sneaked past the the Allies. General Sasaki and Admiral Ota made it to Kolombangara with many of their troops. The Americans reckoned they had eliminated about 2,400 Japanese in the seven-week Munda campaign. That represented a fraction of the Japanese force. It soon became clear that the Allies were not going to assault Kolombangara. On August 15 Halsey’s forces landed on Vella Lavella instead. The Japanese Army rejected any counterlanding. The Americans invaded more points on the island. Kusaka responded with air strikes. A transport was sunk off Guadalcanal and an LST at Vella Lavella, while a few other ships were damaged, but there was no halting SOPAC, which funneled 6,300 troops into Vella Lavella. Allied participation in combat reached a new level when New Zealand troops engaged there. The Japanese barges worked overtime to shuttle men to posts the Allies had yet to reach.