Kokoda (21 page)

With all the blokes helping, it didn’t take long to get down to the ’drome, grab the guns out of the planes, and set them up. In a jiffy, Smoky’s platoon, which had started with two old Lewis guns from the Great War, now had a
serious
machine gun, .303s and a 50-calibre gun for every man.

No one in authority told them to do it; it just seemed the obvious thing to do when they were copping it from the Japs and nothing was being done to support the boys on the ground. It was up to
them
, so they just got on with it.

In the air, meanwhile, on the bright beautiful morning of 6 May 1942, in his Hudson A16–160 of 32 Squadron, RAAF Pilot Officer Pennycuick was conducting a reconnaissance flight around the eastern tip of New Guinea when his eye was caught by the tiniest speck of something ahead in the vast blue nothingness. Nosing towards the speck, which he estimated to be some ten miles north by northeast, he soon saw another speck beside it, with each one showing wisps of smoke coming from on top and a wake of white water behind. Going only close enough to confirm, he was quickly on the radio to report the sighting.

‘Moresby Control, this is Pilot Officer Peter Pennycuick of 32 Squadron, there is a Japanese convoy heading south by southwest, approximate position ten miles west of Misima. There appears to be at least one aircraft carrier with many more ships around it, do you copy? Over…’

And things moved quickly from there. This, it seemed, was the Japanese invasion force headed for Moresby, just four hundred miles from it, which had been half-expected since the previous month when codebreakers had intercepted a signal indicating that there would be an invasion force launched from Rabaul.

Although Port Moresby was not designated by the Japanese command as the target area, it was the obvious choice, and the sighting of the convoy confirmed it. The codebreakers had given the Allies crucial time to assemble the forces necessary to thwart the Japanese action, and from his Land Force Headquarters in Brisbane, General Blamey signalled Major General Basil Morris: ‘A serious attack against you and the troops under your command will develop in the immediate future. All possible forces are being assembled to deal with the enemy. Do not doubt that you and your command, which includes troops of our great ally, the United States of America, supported by Allied Air Forces, will show the Japanese that Australian territory cannot be invaded without meeting a most determined and successful resistance. Australia looks to you to maintain her outposts, and is confident that the task is in good hands…’
⁸¹

Morris replied: ‘Grateful your inspiring message… We are determined not to let Australia down.’

And now those American forces—including the aircraft carriers USS
Lexington
and USS
Yorktown
—under the command of US Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, were thrown into the fray.

From their positions all around Seven Mile Airfield, the soldiers of the 39th Battalion saw aeroplane activity like never before, as reconnaissance planes and other planes from the respective aircraft carriers engaged in actual battle. The soldiers and citizens of Port Moresby watched the constant landings and launching of aircraft with enormous interest and no little trepidation, even as the soldiers themselves scrambled to defensive positions around the town’s beaches, steeling themselves. For if those Allied planes failed to do their job, then Moresby had perhaps less than twenty-four hours before the Japanese would be storming ashore.

While this ‘Battle of the Coral Sea’, as it became known, continued, the invading Japanese troops of the
Nankai Shitai
(the South Seas Detached Force) heading towards Port Moresby—including the 144th Regiment drawn from Shikoku—sweated impotently in the bellies of their nautical beasts. At any moment they could be torn apart by a bomb or torpedo. There was nothing for them to do but wait it out. As they had already proved across the devastated Pacific, on land they could fight like demons, yet on water they were at the merciless whim of the battle gods.

On the afternoon of 8 May, though, the keenly trained senses of the soldiers picked up a change of rhythm and movement. Their troopships were turning around. The Japanese invasion had been routed.

In the final balance of the Battle of the Coral Sea the Japanese had lost a light carrier, a destroyer and three smaller ships, together with seventy-seven planes shot down and over one thousand men killed or wounded, while the US had lost one aircraft carrier, the
Lexington
, as well as another carrier severely damaged, an oil tanker and destroyer sunk, sixty-six planes shot down and over five hundred men killed.

While the losses of the two sides were roughly comparable, there was no doubt that it was an American victory, given that the industrial resources of the United States were so much greater than Japan’s and the only way Japan could win the war was to have a series of rapid and overwhelming victories. More important still, perhaps, for American and Australian morale was the fact that the Japanese invasion force had been obliged to turn around and this marked the first time that the relentless Japanese expansion in the Pacific had been checked. The result of the Battle of the Coral Sea was that Japan had lost the capacity to launch a seaborne invasion of Moresby.

Still, luckily for Japan, their troopships, carrying thousands of crack soldiers, had emerged from the battle unscathed, and they would just have to find another way to get them there.

Perhaps they could do once again what they had recently done so successfully in Singapore, which was to attack overland from a direction that the defenders were not prepared for. As the Japanese military leadership saw it, it might be possible to land on the north coast of the island, around Buna and Gona, and then march across a track which went all the way through to the central government station situated at Kokoda, on the northern foothills of the Owen Stanleys, and proceed from there to Port Moresby. Of this track, the Japanese knew little, other than that it was clearly marked on the map as the sole thoroughfare between the north and south coasts of the eastern end of the island; but it stood to reason that being in constant use it would have to be in fairly good condition…

In the meantime, the narrow escape from the Japanese seaborne invasion galvanised the ‘Mice of Moresby’. During the days when the battle hung in the balance, and it really seemed as if the Japs would soon be arriving, the garrison had put its grand defensive plan into operation, with massive movements of men and munitions heading off on their pre-ordained routes. The result, with traffic jams, mayhem, lost platoons and bungled communications, made a dropped bowl of spaghetti look organised, and it was clear that if the Japs really did come then the Australians were a long way from battle ready. But the ‘dry-run’ had helped to highlight the weaknesses, and afforded the Diggers opportunities to correct them.

In Australia proper, the news of the victory in the Coral Sea also had a bracing effect. At the height of the battle John Curtin made a speech broadcast nationwide in which he said: ‘A battle of crucial importance to the whole conduct of the war in this theatre is going on,’ and the people awaited the outcome impatiently.

While good news would come, any thought that the Japanese danger had receded was countered just a short time later when, on the night of 31 May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines—launched from a pod of mother submarines just off the coast—made their way into Sydney Harbour. Fire torpedo one sent the HMAS
Kuttabul
, an RAN barracks ship, to the bottom, killing nineteen sailors. Fire torpedo two and three: missed. By this time the alarm was raised and two of the submarines, trapped by special submarine nets, were destroyed by depth charges, but one escaped.

And this was just the beginning. Over ensuing weeks, Japanese submarines sank Australian ships up and down the east coast of Australia, while shells were also lobbed into Sydney and Newcastle— ensuring as a side effect that the price of harbourside homes plummeted. You practically couldn’t
give
them away.

While the physical damage to Sydney was not great, the effect on Australian morale was enormous. An American official in Australia at the time wrote a report for Washington and noted: ‘There is a fatalistic depression that is almost solid, and if the Japs landed tomorrow, the great majority of Australians would just turn over and play dead.’
⁸²
It was precisely this kind of fatalistic attitude that John Curtin had to expend much of his energy fighting, something that drained him dry.

And certainly, the Japanese tried to capitalise on this low morale— sometimes at the expense of the truth—even with the Australians who were already under lock and key. Up at the infamous Changi prison camp in Singapore, for example, thousands of Australian soldiers were told to form up as the Japanese Commanding Officer would be making a very important announcement.

Standing on a rough platform above them, the officer shouted the news of the bombings on the Australian mainland, relishing the impact it would surely have upon these roughshod enemy prisoners.

‘Sydney. One thousand bombers. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—all gone.’

Sure enough, there was consternation in the ranks and a whispering wail of despair among the Australians, even as the Japanese officer followed up.

‘Melbourne. One thousand bombers. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM— all gone.’

Same result, and the officer drove it home one last time.

‘Brisbane. One thousand bombers. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM— all gone.’
⁸³

A momentary stunned silence fell upon the Australians as they contemplated the horror of what had just been announced and the officer stood there preening. The silence was only broken when one Digger by the name of Kelly Davidson drawled an enquiry about his own tiny town, situated just north of Glen Innes in the New South Wales hinterland.

‘What about Llangothlin… ?’

The officer drew himself up and one more time shouted the grim tidings: ‘Rrrangothrin. One thousand bombers. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—all gone.’

This time there was a different quality to the momentary stunned silence that followed the pronouncement as the tide suddenly turned from rising gloom to runaway merriment.

‘Bullshit!’ Kelly Davidson called out. ‘Bullshit your one thousand bombers!’

The cry was taken up among the ranks—‘Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!’—as the Australians fell about laughing and the Japanese officer perhaps realised his mistake. Kelly was severely flogged for his trouble, but for the rest of his days he’d maintain it had been worth it.

MacArthur had had enough. Certainly enough of Australian newspapers printing what was going on in his domain—he was definitely not happy about it. He wanted total control of the flow of information emanating from his area, and censorship of anything that didn’t meet with his approval. As he explained to Australia’s Advisory War Council—defined by Curtin as a body ‘representative of all parties and empowered to investigate, advise and assist the government in all its war efforts’—it was the only way to ensure proper security over all sensitive military matters. It was a measure of MacArthur’s dominance that the Advisory War Council promptly acceded to his request.

From the middle of May 1942, MacArthur was the
sole
source of information about MacArthur, MacArthur’s operations, and anything with which MacArthur was remotely associated. For a man who had once made his way in the Public Relations Division of the US Army, this was manna from heaven; he could construct any image of himself and his operations that he damn well pleased and choke off any information that he didn’t like. He did not miss either opportunity. For the journalists in the field who were ill-disposed to form part of the MacArthur machine, it became virtually impossible to do their jobs properly, which was to report and comment without fear or favour.

As an infuriated Osmar White would write of how these edicts affected his own work reporting from New Guinea: ‘Once news sources are officially controlled by censorships, no individual writer can deflect by as much as a hair’s breadth the impact upon the public mind of the tale wartime leadership wants to tell. But history may judge the relationship of dead facts… ’
⁸⁴

Up in Japan, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo had introduced similar restrictions through the Ministry of Home Affairs. Not only was he upset about newspapers printing stories which contained what he considered sensitive military information, but he had also become concerned about the effect on the Japanese public of hearing stories of Japanese soldiers being killed. He wanted it stopped, and it was.

Too early to be sure. Way too early. But on 18 May the Allied codebreakers were all but positive that one of the intercepted Japanese messages mentioned a land route leading from the north coast of New Guinea across the Owen Stanley Range into Port Moresby— a plan known as Operation MO. What made the codebreakers and their superiors so unsure was that it seemed so unlikely. Yes, nominally, there was some kind of track there, but very little was known about it, and what little knowledge there was indicated that it would be impassable for an invading army. Still, the information was passed on and it was reviewed by both MacArthur and the Bataan Gang, and General Blamey with his senior staff. On balance the combined Allied military leadership decided to ignore it. Many years later, one of the codebreakers concerned related how, after they had passed on their tip to the nation’s highest military leaders, ‘They said: “Nobody in their right senses would land there!” We told them this was going to happen. Blamey couldn’t have cared less.’
⁸⁵

It was simply inconceivable that the Japanese would try to invade Port Moresby overland through New Guinea’s dark heart. Or was it? As the Japanese continued to make their own provisional plans, they decided that they would take hundreds of bicycles stored in the holds of their invading ships to better facilitate troop movement. And if they went ahead with it, those bicycles would be as much mechanical force as the troops had. The Japanese might not have known much about New Guinea—few from the outside world did— but they at least knew that it was a conquest which would be won or lost on manpower alone, and not mechanised power as it had been in the theatres of Europe and the Middle East.