Preface

Public awareness of our military history contains some interesting gaps, and understanding of many issues often lags still further behind. Thus popular attention to the Great War focusses on Gallipoli but downplays the Western Front, and mostly ignores the campaigns in the Middle East. In the Second World War, most Australians are aware of the fighting on the Kokoda Track in 1942 but know nothing of the subsequent fighting in New Guinea in 1943-1944, or of how the one relates to the other or how both fit into the wider Allied war against Japan.

The Australian victory in Papua and the frustration of the Japanese advance on Port Moresby was a necessary condition for the campaigns that would follow, but by itself the Kokoda campaign could not ensure the defeat of Japanese aggression and ambitions in that part of the world. The fighting in Papua in 1942 was gruelling and difficult, with the climate and terrain posing problems as great as the Japanese, but the complexity of the operations that followed was an even greater order of magnitude. Although the United States had entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and although US forces built up slowly in the Southwest Pacific Area in the course of 1942-1943, significant US ground forces did not take the field until the fighting for Gona-Buna-Sanananda in early 1943 and the majority of ground forces in New Guinea remained Australian until well into that year. Even when American preponderance of force in the theatre became obvious in 1944, the Australian Army still had to find many of the solutions to the difficulties it faced from within its own resources. There is much about the Army's performance in the war against Japan that possesses an epic quality, and the campaign in New Guinea in 1943-1944 is an essential part of that story.

The essays in this volume were originally presented as papers to the Chief of Army's annual military history conference in 2003. The theme reflected a feeling that the New Guinea campaign has been unjustly overlooked, both within the Army and more widely. A tough campaign against a skilled and tenacious enemy in a difficult environment within our own region resonates strongly in the present as we continue to face numerous challenges in an unstable international and regional order, a judgment perhaps confirmed since by its selection as a principal case study for those senior officers attending the Higher Command and Staff Studies course at the College of Defence and Strategic Studies at Weston, ACT.

In the opening essay, Joan Beaumont addresses the issue of the marginalisation of the New Guinea campaign in collective memory and its invisibility in our national memorialising. Successful campaigns, she suggests, command less attention because they appear to throw up fewer challenges. The later stages of the war are perhaps also more closely associated with those who were victims of the Japanese—especially prisoners of war—than with those who triumphed over them. That victory was by no means a given, as Edward J Drea demonstrates in his chapter on the intense preparations that preceded the campaign. Both sides responded to the outcome in Papua by reinforcing, re-equipping and training fresh forces for the next stage of the struggle, and Drea depicts this as 'a time of equilibrium' in which the result could potentially have gone either way as Australians, Americans and Japanese sought to negate the advantages enjoyed by the other.

This was an important period for the subsequent strategic direction of the war against Japan, as David Horner argues: the first nine months of 1943, he concludes, saw 'the intermeshing of Australia's national policies, Allied grand strategy, theatre military strategy, operational concepts and operational planning' In many ways, this laid the basis for the conduct of Australia's war through to final victory in 1945. John Coates analyses the outcome of that complex process on the ground in New Guinea itself and argues, contrary to some Australian popular perceptions, that MacArthur handled the conduct of the campaign well. Three elements essential to that success are discussed in the succeeding chapters by John Moremon, Albert Palazzo and Ross Mallett: doctrine and training, which drew on the lessons of the Papuan campaign the year before; force structure and organisation, designed to ameliorate the tensions over manpower facing the government through the creation of the jungle division in 1943, which increased tactical flexibility and eased the problem of resupply; and logistics, in which the Army made enormous advances in the course of 1943.

MacArthur declared that victory in New Guinea was dependent on resolving the 'logistic problem'; in short, the Australians and Americans got it right while their Japanese foes were increasingly at its mercy. In an important chapter drawing on Japanese records, Kazumi Kuzuhara demonstrates the appalling difficulties faced by Japanese forces in New Guinea, battling geography, an increasingly dominant enemy, and the shortcomings of their own systems. For them the campaign would exceed 'what could be expected of any human being', in the words of the commander of the Japanese 18th Army, Lieutnant-General Adachi.

Four factors, amongst others, helped to explain the demoralisation of the Japanese and the increasing desperation of their material circumstances. Sebastian Ritchie reminds us of the pivotal role of airpower in support of the ground forces, not only in New Guinea but everywhere in the Asia-Pacfic region, as the strength of Allied air forces increased while that of the Japanese withered. Despite the difficulties it faced, allied intelligence greatly outstripped the capabilities of the Japanese in 'knowing the enemy', as Alison B Gilmore shows in her study of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS), a joint and combined Australian-American unit that successfully reflected the truly allied nature of the anti-Japanese struggle. Tropical disease, like the jungle that seemingly nurtured it, was neutral, striking each side equally, but the Allied medical service were better prepared to meet the challenge intellectually and technically, even if such advantages were insufficient to overcome complacency over such issues in some of the senior ranks. John Pearns' chapter is thus a cautionary tale. By the latter part of the New Guinea campaign, the Australian soldier had well and truly taken the measure of his Japanese opponent, and while this was tinged with a certain racism consistent with the times it had moved on from the notion, common in the early part of the Pacific War, of the Japanese 'superman'. This newfound estimation might range from according the enemy respect as a 'good soldier' to dismissing him as a 'fanatic', but in general Australians knew that they would have the better of their enemy, even if they did not always relate this to the material preponderance they enjoyed over the Japanese forces.

This volume provides a snapshot of the state of current knowledge about the war in New Guinea, and suggests at the same time the many areas that await further research and publication. It draws attention to the difficulties faced by the Australian Army and Australian soldiers in the most trying of circumstances; to the achievements that flowed from their courage, ingenuity and adaptability, and the resource and technical advantages they came to enjoy; and to the hopeless courage of their Japanese enemy.

As always, we are indebted to Roger Lee and his staff at the Army History Unit for their sterling efforts in organising the conference. We thank the speakers for their participation and for their patience in answering queries in the course of revising their papers for publication, and we acknowledge with gratitude the efforts of Margaret McNally and Jeff Doyle in their respective contributions.

Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey

Contents

Contributors: Contributors

Introduction
Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy: Leahy

The Pacific War, 1943, and the Australian National Memory
Joan Beaumont Beaumont

Before Finschhafen: Preparing, Training and Equipping the Forces
Edward J Drea Drea

Strategy and Generalship: Strategic and Operational Planning for the 1943 Offensives
David Horner Horner

The War in New Guinea 1943-44: Operations and Tactics
John Coates Coates

No 'Black Magic': Doctrine and Training for Jungle Warfare
John Moremon Moremon

Organising for Jungle Warfare
Albert Palazzo Palazzo

Logistics in the South-West Pacific 1943-1944
Ross Mallett Mallett

The Nakai Contingency Unit and the Battles on Kankirei Range
Kazumi Kuzuhara Kuzuhara

Rising from the Ashes: Allied Air Power and Air Support for 14th Army in Burma 1943-1945
Sebastian Ritchie Ritchie

The Allied Translator and Interpreter Section:
The Critical Role of Allied Linguists in the Process of Propaganda Creation, 1943-1944
Allison B Gilmore Gilmore

'A Fatalistic Bloke': Australian Attitudes Towards the Japanese in New Guinea, 1943-1944
Mark Johnston Johnston

Medicine at War: The 'Pivotal Years' of 1943 and 1944 in the New Guinea Campaign
John Pearn Pearn

The Green Hole Reconsidered
Peter Stanley Stanley