[51] Eight waves landed at White 1 after two LCIs fired rockets at the high ground overlooking the beach where several Japanese antiaircraft guns were located. On 24 April, the beach became more congested with the arrival of scheduled reinforcements and further equipment, as well as two transports and seven LSTs carrying troops, including the corps commander and his headquarters, which had been diverted from Tanahmerah Bay. 4, to acquire Japanese records, staged a contest, making awards to Burmese or Chinese turning in the most documents. 16 dealt with interrogation of captured American B-24 air crews; No. In the early months of 1944, both at Bougainville and at Rabaul, large numbers of Japanese troops were effectively put out of action without being confronted in bloody combat. From there the documents were immediately sent to Brisbane for translation by ATIS personnel. [34][35] During the same period, American air and naval forces sank many of the Japanese ships which were attempting to transport reinforcements to the Hollandia and Wewak areas; these attacks were guided by intelligence gained from breaking the Japanese codes. [4][23], The main landings at Hollandia would be made at two locations. Combined Fleet, Third Fleet and Southeast Area Commanders. [5], According to John Laffin, the campaign "was arguably the most arduous fought by any Allied troops during World War II". The whole northern coast of the island was now in Allied hands and airfields from which bombers could strike the southern Philippines were soon in operation. [20], I Corps under Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger provided most of the ground forces for the combined Operations Reckless and Persecution. [citation needed], Three factors conspired to create disaster for the Japanese. This was usually done in the form of listings (usually termed bulletins) that provided a brief description of the records and various types of publications containing full or partial translations of specific documents and publications containing full or partial translations of documents relating to a general or specific topic. Excerpts from the citation indicate that he, with great risk to his life made reconnaissance in a number of caves which had been occupied by Japanese, approaching dangerously close to enemy fire and recovered more than 11 cases of enemy documents vitally needed for the successful conclusion of the operation.. His contemplated offensive against Wau died a-borning. These totaled 11,000 men under the command of General Masazumi Inada, Major General Toyozo Kitazono and Rear Admiral Yoshikazu Endo (Ninth Fleet). 17 with Allied and Japanese Operations Among Natives of Dutch New Guinea; No. The experience of the green US 32nd Infantry Division, just out of training camp and utterly unschooled in jungle warfare, was nearly disastrous. The plane in which Fukudome was flying also crashed into the sea, near the island of Cebu. In early April 1943, a Japanese map was captured showing hidden positions of 87 barges at Labu, New Guinea. The gunners got a lot of practice; Port Moresby suffered its 78th raid on 17 August 1942. [14] Some sources indicate the figure was 50 tons. [18]. 76) and Japanese efforts to fight Plague and Cholera (No. [38], General Imamura and his naval counterpart at Rabaul, Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, commander Southeast Area Fleet, resolved to reinforce their ground forces at Lae for one final all-out attempt against Wau. 25 with Anti-Japanese activities in Java; and No. During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded the Australian-administered Mandated Territory of New Guinea (23 January) and the Australian Territory of Papua (21 July) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the Netherlands East Indies. German New Guinea Stamps, Dutch Dutch & Colonies Cover Stamps, Dutch Stamps, [54] There was little resistance initially, but further inland there was some opposition as elements of the 186th Infantry reached the lake by 24 April. This plan was eventually reversed in favor of a counterattack on U.S. forces around Aitape. I Corps, became commander of the newly formed U.S. 8th Army. They were carrying Admiral Mineichi Koga, commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and his staff, including Vice Admiral Shegeru Fukudome, who was carrying the Z plan documents and the associated cipher system. In December 1943, an operational order indicating the times and dates at which Japanese submarine were scheduled to appear in designated spots in the Arawe area, New Britain, was translated by ATIS and immediately forwarded to Naval Intelligence where prompt action was taken. The air defences consisted of P-39 and P-40 fighters. [8] ICPOAs first officer in charge was Cmdr. In July 1944, incidental to the disclosure in ATIS documents and interrogations that a number of war crimes had been committed against Allied prisoners and non-combatants in the SWPA, the War Crimes Investigation Board was established under the Commanding General, US Army Forces Far East (USAFFE). After the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, in March 1943, an abandoned lifeboat at Goodenough Island (northeast of New Guinea) from the Teiyo Maru was recovered and found in it was The Japanese Army List, dated October 15, 1942. MacArthur was now determined to liberate the island as a stepping-stone to the reconquest of the Philippines. I Corps Commanding General was informed in detail of a major enemy operation involving several divisions and embracing the entire Corps front from Rosario to Puncan. [43], The remaining destroyers with about 2,700 surviving troops limped back to Rabaul. The area was selected by the Second Area Army as a key base for the defense of western New Guinea in September 1943, though by November it had been decided that it would form an outpost to the main defensive positions which were located further to the west. They subsequently neutralized the Japanese positions, as well as interdicted a portion of the Japanese movements, and anticipated Japanese defensive position and strengths. MacArthur's rollback began with the 16 November 1942 22 January 1943 Battle of Buna-Gona. Adachi's decision may have been motivated by a belief that Hansa Bay would be the target of the next Allied amphibious landing and that he could reinforce Hollandia at a later date. Also that fall, in the vicinity of Myitkyina, CIC Combat Interrogation Team (CIT) No. This information was put to immediate tactical use and resulted in the capture of the position by the US 7th Cavalry Squadron. [16] See The National Archives Arthur Evarts Kimberly and the Allied Translator and Interpreter Sections Document Restoration Sub-Section, 1944-1945.. Gen. Millard F. Harmon, who was also subordinate to Nimitz. On November 4th, a Japanese 16th Division Operations Order, dated October 31st, was captured. MacArthur, the supreme commander in the area, also commanded all U.S. Army troops in the Southwest Pacific in his capacity as commanding general, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. portalId: 20973928, Hollandia was a port on the north coast of New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies, and was the only anchorage between Wewak to the east, and Geelvink Bay to the west. The quantity and type of documents captured from the Japanese varied widely. In the early months of 1944, both at Bougainville and at Rabaul, large numbers of Japanese troops were effectively put out of action without being confronted in bloody combat. The Kokoda Trail [was] suitable for splay-toed Papuan aborigines but a torture to modern soldiers carrying heavy equipment", Samuel Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, p. 34, Buna was easily taken as the Allies had no military presence there (MacArthur wisely chose not to attempt an occupation by paratroopers since any such force would have been easily wiped out by the Japanese). At the Kempei Tai (Japanese Military Police) headquarters they found numerous lists of names and evidence of collaboration and disloyalty to the Philippines and the United States. [18] For more information regarding the Z Plan see my article The Z Plan Story: Japans 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part I and Part II in Prologue, Vol. The westernmost island of this group, Goodenough, had been occupied in August 1942 by 353 stranded troops from bombed Japanese landing craft. ATIS was established on September 19, 1942, and was headquartered in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Seven LSTs were also assigned. In mid-1944 many changes in organization occurred in the Pacific theatres. The Japanese had already captured Rabaul, the capital of the Australian-controlled territory of New Guinea, on 23 January 1942, and early in February Australian and Dutch forces surrendered the island of Ambon in the Netherlands East Indies (modern Indonesia). [16] Only about 500 of the 11,000 personnel were ground combat troops, being drawn from several antiaircraft batteries. Reports were issued when sufficient information on any subject had been collated to warrant publication. 67 (Japanese Warships and Merchant Vessels Sunk, Damaged or not Previously Listed); No. The Dutch East Indies fell into Japan's sphere. [48] These meager results were not commensurate with either the resources expended or the expectations that had been promoted. Late in the summer, Lieut. Translation of the official record by the Japanese Demobilization Bureaux detailing the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's participation in the Southwest Pacific area of the, This page was last edited on 29 January 2023, at 09:02. Document numbers and a brief description including authority, title, date, area of reference and similar essential data were set forth under seventeen headings, such as 1) Diaries, Field; 5) Letters, Postcards; and 16) Technical Documents. Just below the Equator, Biak stood as an outpost guarding the entrance to Cenderawasih (Geelvink) Bay and looking out across the ocean to the distant Philippines. Many of the captured documents provided significant intelligence to General Douglas MacArthurs forces in the SWPA. At Kokoda [between Port Moresby and Buna] 268 documents were captured, at Buna 1,349, at Lae [eastern New Guinea] 1,562, while at Saipan in July 1944 the figure reached at least 27 tons.[14]. Also, Yamamoto accepted at face value his fliers' over-optimistic reports of damage: they reported a score of one cruiser, two destroyers and 25 transports, as well as 175 Allied planes, a figure that should certainly have aroused some skepticism. The Japanese 18th Army (equivalent to an Anglo-American corps), under Lieutenant General Hataz Adachi, was responsible for Japanese operations on mainland New Guinea. The US Navy had similar language programs. Others included information about the Psychology in the Japanese Armed Forces (No. While captured records were quickly evaluated in the field, almost all were eventually sent back to Hawaii, and some of those on to the Washington Document Center in Washington, D.C.[12] Although JICPOA was a major player in the captured documents intelligence business, it was ATIS, however, during the war years that handled the most documents. The Japanese invaded New Guinea from November 1941 till April 1942 and occupied the Dutch part (except for Merauke) and the northern Australian part (Fakfak fell April 1, Manokwari April 12). CIC personnel were constantly engaged in providing lectures to soldiers about the importance of captured Japanese documents. [9] Few combat units were stationed at Hollandia in early 1944. Taking the airfield at Wau was a crucial step in this process, and to this end, the 51st Division was transferred from Indochina and placed under General Hitoshi Imamura's Eighth Area Army at Rabaul; one regiment arrived at Lae in early January 1943. He told soldiers that ATIS personnel had told him that they had seen Japanese . Red 1 was found to be better, allowing LVTs and LCMs to come ashore with their infantry charges, but the approaches had to be cleared by engineers to allow the passage of the larger LCMs and even after this had been completed. Miscellaneous identifications taken from documents captured in early November in the Pinamopoan Area, Leyte, gave the first indication of the Japanese 1st Divisions presence in this area. "Within a few days, the enemy was retreating from the Wau Valley, where he had suffered a serious defeat, harassed all the way back to Mubo"[37] About one week later, the Japanese completed their evacuation of Guadalcanal. Pre-War New Guinea The Japanese Invasion The Turning Point The Long Allied Advance 1943 1944 The New Guinea campaign (January 1942-September 1945) was one of the longest campaigns of the Second World War. The Allied reduction of Rabaul was only made possible by relentless air strikes that took place day after day, but Yamamoto thought the damage inflicted by a few attacks of large formations would derail Allied plans long enough for Japan to prepare a defense in depth. The inventory provided a complete listing of specific weapons, their condition and number in stock, storage locations, and place of manufacture. Rabaul overlooks Simpson Harbor, a considerable natural anchorage, and was ideal for the construction of airfields. [7] The attack was designated Operation Reckless in recognition of the risks involved in carrying it out. [64][66] Both Humboldt and Tanahmerah were developed with naval base, ammunition, repair and fuel facilities. As a result, code breaking was the main source of intelligence. [17], After this failure, the Japanese decided on a longer term, two-pronged assault for their next attempt on Port Moresby. Bypassing the Japanese base at Halmahera, south of Morotai, the XI Corps quickly established a defensive perimeter behind which airfields were constructed to provide air support for further advances. The Pacific Strategy, 1941-1944. [18], "[T]he Owen Stanley Range is a jagged, precipitous obstacle covered with tropical rainforest up to the pass at 6500-foot elevation, and with moss like a thick wet sponge up to the highest peaks, 13,000 feet above the sea. The Japanese at Rabaul and other bases on New Britain would have easily overwhelmed any such effort (by mid-September, MacArthur's entire naval force under Vice Admiral Arthur S. Carpender consisted of 5 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 20 submarines, and 7 small craft). region: "", The National Archives at College Park as well as other United States and foreign archival institutions hold copies of these publications. In May 1945 ADVATIS followed the advance of General Headquarters into Manila. Classes began November 1, 1941, with four instructors and 60 students in an abandoned airplane hangar at Crissy Field. Current Translations were publications containing complete translations of documents classified A, B, C, or D in ATIS Bulletins. Japanese forces began to land on the island of Luzon in the Philippines on December 10. . In the spring of 1944, ATIS received a document which, after being translated, proved to be of exceptional value and probably considerably shortened the war. The battle of Hollandia (22-27 April 1944) was part of Operation Reckless and saw the Americans leapfrog past a series of Japanese bases to capture a key position on the northern coast of New Guinea, catching the Japanese almost entirely by surprise and winning an unexpectedly easy victory.. Written orders including route, objective of raid, and extent to which enemy intended to rely on these new tactics were also included. When the Allied forces began to advance, more documents were captured and a much higher proportion was official. [17] These troops were positioned along the Depapre Lake Sentani trail. During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded the Australian -administered Mandated Territory of New Guinea (23 January) and the Australian Territory of Papua (21 July) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the Netherlands East Indies. [36], The Australians decisively turned back the Japanese assault in the ensuing 2931 January 1943 Battle of Wau. The headland was formed by the Cyclops Mountains, a mountain ridge rising steeply to 7,000 feet (2,100m) and was backed by Lake Sentani, extending 15 miles (24km) east to west. This information was immediately translated, relayed to naval and air units, and, coordinated with the translation of a captured map showing enemy positions, resulted in the repulse of the enemy attack by naval and aerial bombardment. The terrain, however, proved more problematic. Gen. Robert C. Richardson became commanding general of U.S. Army Forces, Pacific Ocean Area, in which capacity he remained subordinate to Nimitzs operational control. [39] This operation had no effect on the Japanese, as the air units were being held in reserve for a planned major attack on American naval forces in the Central Pacific. Achieving complete surprise, they were able to destroy 340 aircraft on the ground and 60 more aircraft in the air, leaving the 6th Air Division unable to resist the planned invasion. It was captured and was found to be carrying a Japanese message. [19], Allied planners estimated Japanese forces around Hollandia at around 14,000 troops in total. In the meantime another landing was made at Aitape in Australian New Guinea, about 125 miles (roughly 200 km) southeast of Hollandia, where Australian engineers soon completed an airstrip. The B-29s in the Pacific, forming a part of the U.S. 20th Air Force, were controlled by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting through Gen. Henry (Hap) Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces. [8] At the start of 1943, ICPOA was basically dealing with intercepted messages because not that many prisoners of war or documents had been captured. The three supporting U.S. cruisers and destroyers began their bombardment around 06:00, concentrating on targets around the entrance to Jautefa Bay and Hollandia. He told soldiers that ATIS personnel had told him that they had seen Japanese documents held as souvenirs of earlier battles in New Guinea, which contained information of tactical value which if had been turned in at the time, would have saved lives and shortened battles. Captured and sunken Japanese ships and boats also provided large quantities of documents, many of immediate value. Instructions were issued to the assaulting forces personnel not to pocket captured documents as souvenirs but to turn them over to JICPOA personnel.[10]. In January 1943 the Allied and the Japanese forces facing each other on New Guinea were like two battered heavyweights. The Japanese entered Lae and Salamaua, two locations on Huon Gulf, on 8 March 1942 unopposed. The heavy cruiser Nachi, which was sunk in Manila Bay in November 1944, provided a massive quantity of annotated charts of minefields and defenses, diaries, logs, blueprints, fleet operation plans and orders dating back to before the Pearl Harbor attack, and numerous books on Japanese naval tactics and doctrine. With the occupation of Morotai, the long drive up the New Guinea coast was strategically completed. Tweet. per cubic foot, this works out to 1,350 cubic feet of records. [9] See Seventy Years Ago: The Makin Island Raid, August 1942., [10] The Armys Counter Intelligence Corps faced similar problems with souvenir hunters. [27], The ground forces would be supported by two naval bombardment forces. The large majority of the defending Japanese troops there had uncharacteristically abandoned their positions and fled inland. [48][49], Meanwhile, at Humboldt Bay Rear Admiral William M. Fechteler's Central Attack Group carrying the U.S. 41st Division also achieved complete surprise, coming ashore at two beaches: White 1, about 2.5 miles (4.0km) south of Hollandia, and White 2 on a narrow sandspit near Cape Tjeweri at the entrance to Jautefa Bay, and about 4 miles (6.4km) from Lake Sentani. Japan's threatened military encroachment closer to Australia hinted at some type of potential invasion of the northernmost frontiers.

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