[Illustration: _LtCol Victor H. Krulak was commander of the Choiseul
operation._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC)
]
The objectives assigned on Bougainville were to seize a substantial
beachhead and build airstrips. Then American planes could assure final
neutralization of the Japanese airfields at Kahili, Buka, and Bonis
airfields at the north and south ends of Bougainville. (By 31 October,
American planes had initially rendered the Japanese fields inoperable.)
After that would come a massive increase in air operations against
Rabaul.
Facing the invading Marines was a formidable enemy force dispersed
on the island. At Buin, for instance, there were 21,800 Japanese.
Responsible for the defense was an old adversary, Lieutenant General
Haruyoshi Hyakutake, commander of the _Seventeenth Army_, and the man
the Marines had defeated at Guadalcanal. His main force was the _6th
Division_.
Working with the ground U. S. forces were the aviators of Air Solomons:
New Zealand fighters, Army Air Force bombers, and the 1st and 2d Marine
Aircraft Wings. As early as 15 August fighter planes from VMF-214
(the famous Black Sheep squadron) had strafed the Kahili airfield at
the southern end of Bougainville. Now, in October, there were repeated
strikes against the Japanese planes at other Bougainville airfields.
At sea, Halsey had designated Rear Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson as
commander of Task Force 31. Under him were Rear Admiral Frederick C.
Sherman with the carriers (TF 38) and Rear Admiral Aaron S. “Tip”
Merrill with the cruisers and destroyers (TF 39). Their job was to
soften up the defenders before the landing and to safeguard the
Marine-held beachhead.
[Sidebar (page 8):] 3d Marine Division
With Japan’s initial conquests spread over vast reaches of the Pacific,
it quickly became obvious that additional Marine divisions were sorely
needed. Accordingly, a letter from the Commandant on 29 August 1942
authorized the formation of the 3d Marine Division.
There was the 3d Marines, which had been activated first on 20 December
1916 at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Deactivated in August
1922, the regiment was again brought to life on 16 June 1942 at
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and strengthened by boots from Parris
Island. Its commander, Colonel Oscar R. Cauldwell, soon led to it to
Samoa, arriving there in September 1942. Intensive training in jungle
tactics and practice landings took place there. Then, in March 1943,
it received a substantial number of reinforcing units and became a
full-fledged regimental combat team, beefing up its strength to 5,600.
Finally, in May 1943, it sailed for New Zealand, where the 3d Marine
Division would come together.
Also with World War I roots, the 9th Marines was born 20 November 1917
at Quantico, Virginia, and was sent to Cuba. From there it moved to
Texas, before being deactivated at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in April
1919. Reactivated on 12 February 1942 at Camp Elliott, California,
under Colonel Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., it underwent training at the new
Camp Pendleton. Similarly reinforced, by 1 January 1943 it was ready as
a regimental combat team with 5,500 men. Movement overseas brought it
to New Zealand on 5 February 1943.
The third infantry regiment that would make up the division was the
21st Marines. It was formed from a cadre of well-trained men from the
6th Marines, who had just returned from duty in Iceland. Arriving at
Camp Lejeune on 15 July 1942, the cadre was augmented by boots from
Parris Island and officers from Quantico. Colonel Daniel E. Campbell
assumed command and the training began. Moving to join the other
elements, the regiment arrived in New Zealand 11 March 1943.
The reinforcing of the infantry regiments to make them into
self-sustaining regimental combat teams drew heavily on their two
complementary regiments: the 12th Marines and the 19th Marines. The
12th Marines was a salty old unit, led by Brigadier General Smedley D.
Butler in China in the 1920s. It’s antecedent was a small provisional
contingent sent to protect American interests in China and designated
the 12th Regiment (infantry), 4 October 1927. The 12th was reactivated
at Camp Elliott on 1 September 1942 for World War II as an artillery
regiment under command of Colonel John B. Wilson. Concluding its
training, the regiment arrived in New Zealand on 11 March 1943.
The 19th Marines was different. It was made up of Seabees, engineers,
bakers, piledrivers, pioneers, paving specialists, and many old timers
from the 25th Naval Construction Battalion at the U.S. Naval Advance
Base, Port Hueneme, California. It, too, was formed at Camp Elliott
and its birthday was 16 September 1942. This was the regiment with
pontoons for bridges, power plants, photographic darkrooms, bulldozers,
excavators, needles, thread, and water purification machinery. No
landing force would dare take an island without them. Colonel Robert M.
Montague took command of the unit in New Zealand on 11 March 1943.
The division’s first commander was Major General Charles D. Barrett,
a veteran of World War I. He assumed command in September 1942, but
left a year later to take charge of IMAC and the planning for the
Bougainville operation.
His assistant division commander had been Brigadier General Allen
H. Turnage, and, upon Barrett’s death, he was promoted to major
general and given command of the division which he would soon lead at
Bougainville.
_Diversionary Landings_
There was another key element in the American plan: diversion. To
mislead the enemy on the real objective, Bougainville, the IMAC
operations order on 15 October directed the 8th Brigade Group of the
3d New Zealand Division to land on the Treasury Islands, 75 miles
southeast of Empress Augusta Bay. There, on 27 October, the New
Zealanders, under Brigadier R. A. Row, with 1,900 Marine support
troops, went ashore on two small islands.
One was named Mono and the other Sterling. Mono is about four miles
wide, north to south, and seven miles long. It looks like a pancake.
Sterling, shaped like a hook, is four miles long, narrow in places to
300 yards, but with plenty of room on its margins for airstrips.
In a drizzly overcast, the 29th NZ Battalion (Lieutenant
Colonel F. L. H. Davis) and the 36th (Lieutenant Colonel K. B.
McKenzie-Muirson) hit Mono at Falami Point, and the 34th (under
Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Eyre) struck the beach of Sterling Island off
Blanche Harbor. There was light opposition. Help for the assault troops
came from LCI (landing craft, infantry) gunboats which knocked out at
least one deadly Japanese 40mm twin-mount gun and a couple of enemy
bunkers.
A simultaneous landing was then made on the opposite or north side of
Mono Island at Soanotalu. This was perhaps the most important landing
of all, for there New Zealand soldiers, American Seabees, and U.S.
radar specialists would set up a big long-range radar station.
The Japanese soon reacted to the Soanotalu landing and hurled
themselves against the perimeter. On one occasion, 80-90 Japanese
attacked 50 New Zealanders who waited until they saw “the whites of
their eyes.” They killed 40 of the Japanese and dispersed the rest.
There was unexpected machine gunfire at Sterling. One Seabee bulldozer
operator attacked the machine gun with his big blade. An Army corporal,
a medic, said he couldn’t believe it, “The Seabee ran his dozer over
and over the machine gun nest until everything was quiet.... It all
began to stink after a couple of days.”
Outmanned, the Japanese drew back to higher ground, were hunted down,
and killed. Surrender was still not in their book. On 12 November,
the New Zealanders could call the Treasuries their own with the radar
station in operation. Japanese dead totaled 205, and the brigade took
only eight prisoners. The operation had secured the seaside flank of
Bougainville, and very soon on Sterling there was an airfield. It began
to operate against enemy forces on Bougainville on Christmas Day, 1943.
A second diversion, east of the Treasury Islands and 45 miles from
Bougainville, took place on Choiseul Island. Sub-Lieutenant C. W.
Seton, Royal Australian Navy and coastwatcher on Choiseul, said the
Japanese there appeared worried. The garrison troops were shooting at
their own shadows, perhaps because American and Australian patrols had
been criss-crossing the 80-miles-long (20-miles-wide) island since
September, scouting out the Japanese positions. There were also some
3,500 transient enemy troops on Choiseul, bivouacked and waiting to
be shipped the 45 miles north to Buin on Bougainville, where there
was already a major Japanese garrison force. Uncertainty about the
American threat of invasion somewhere was enough to make the Japanese,
especially Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, Commander, Southeast Area
Fleet, at Rabaul jittery. It was he who wanted much of the Japanese
_Seventeenth Army_ concentrated at Buin, for, he thought, the Allies
might strike there.
General Vandegrift wanted to be sure that the Japanese were focused
on Buin. So, on 20 October, he called in Lieutenant Colonel Robert H.
Williams, commanding the 1st Parachute Regiment, and Lieutenant Colonel
Victor H. Krulak, commanding its 2d Battalion. Get ashore on Choiseul,
the general ordered, and stir up the biggest commotion possible, “Make
sure they think the invasion has commenced....”
It was a most unusual raid, 656 men, a handful of native guides, and
an Australian coastwatcher with a road map. The Navy took Krulak’s
reinforced battalion of parachutists to a beach site near a hamlet
called Voza. That would be the CP (command post) location for the
duration. The troops slipped ashore on 28 October at 0021 and soon had
all their gear concealed in the bush.
By daylight, the Marines had established a base on a high jungle
plateau in the Voza area. The Japanese soon spotted the intruders, sent
a few fighter planes to rake the beach, but that did no harm. They did
not see the four small landing craft which Krulak had brought along and
hidden among some mangroves with their Navy crews on call.
Krulak then outlined two targets. Eight miles south from their CP at
Voza there was a large enemy barge base near the Vagara River. The
Australian said some 150 Japanese were there. The other objective was
an enemy outpost in the opposite direction, 17 miles north on the
Warrior River. Then Krulak took his operations officer, Major Tolson A.
Smoak, 17 men, and a few natives as scouts, and headed for the barge
basin. On the way, 10 unlucky Japanese were encountered unloading a
barge. The Marines opened fire, killing seven of them and sinking the
barge. After reconnoitering the main objective, the barge basin, the
patrol returned to Voza.
The following morning, Krulak sent a patrol near the barge basin to
the Vagara River for security and then to wave in his small landing
craft bringing up his troops to attack. But, back at Voza, along came
a flight of American planes which shot up the Marines and sank one
of their vital boats. Now Krulak’s attack would have to walk to the
village of Sangigai by the Japanese barge basin. To soften up Sangigai,
Krulak called in 26 fighters escorting 12 torpedo bombers. They dropped
two tons of bombs and it looked for all the world like a real invasion.
Krulak then sent a company to attack the basin from the beach, and
another company with rifles, machine guns, rockets, and mortars to get
behind the barge center. It was a pincer and it worked. The Marines
attacked at 1400 on 30 October. What the battle didn’t destroy, the
Marines blew up. The Japanese lost 72 dead; the Marines, 4 killed and
12 wounded.
All was not so well in the other direction. Major Warner T. Bigger,
Krulak’s executive officer, had been sent north with 87 Marines toward
the big emplacement on Choiseul Bay near the Warrior River. His mission
was to destroy, first the emplacement, with Guppy Island, just off
shore and fat with supplies, as his secondary target.
Bigger got to the Warrior River, but his landing craft became stuck
in the shallows, so he brought them to a nearby cove, hid them in the
jungle, and proceeded on foot north to Choiseul Bay. Soon his scouts
said that they were lost. It was late in the day so Bigger bivouacked
for the night. He sent a patrol back to the Warrior where it found a
Japanese force. Slipping stealthily by them, the patrol got back to
Voza. This led Krulak to call for fighter cover and PT boats to try to
get up and withdraw Bigger.
But Bigger didn’t know he was in trouble, and he went ahead and blasted
Guppy island with mortars, because he couldn’t get to the main enemy
emplacement. When Bigger and his men barely got back to the Warrior
River, there were no rescue boats, but there were plenty of Japanese.
As the men waited tensely, the rescue boats came at the last moment,
the very last. Thankfully, the men scrambled on board under enemy fire.
Then two PT boats arrived, gun blazing, and provided cover so Bigger’s
patrol could get back to Voza. One of the PT boats was commanded by
Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, USN, later the President of the United
States, who took 55 Marines on board when their escape boat sank.
[Illustration: CHOISEUL DIVERSION