Krulak had already used up all his time and luck. The Japanese were
now on top of him, their commanders particularly chagrined that they
had been fooled, for the big landing had already occurred at Empress
Augusta Bay. Krulak had to get out; Coastwatcher Seton said there was
not much time. On the night of 3 November, three LCIs rendezvoused off
Voza. Krulak gave all his rations to the natives as the Marines boarded
the LCIs. They could hear their mines and booby traps exploding to
delay the Japanese. Within hours after the departure, a strong Japanese
pincer snapped shut around the Voza encampment, but the Marines had
gone, having suffered 9 killed, 15 wounded, and 2 missing, but
leaving at least 143 enemy dead on Choiseul.
[Sidebar (page 9):] The Coastwatchers
It was on Bougainville, as well as on other islands of the Solomons
chain, that the Australian coastwatchers played their most decisive
role in transmitting vital advance warnings to Allied forces in
the lower Solomon Islands. Japanese war planes and ships summoned
in urgency to smash the beachhead at Guadalcanal had to pass over
Bougainville, the big island in the middle of the route from Rabaul.
Paul Mason, short, bespectacled, soft spoken, held an aerie in the
south mountains over Buin, and dark, wiry W. J. “Jack” Read watched
the ship and aircraft movements of the Japanese in and around Buka
in the north. One memorable Mason wireless dispatch: “Twenty-five
torpedo bombers headed yours.” The message cost the Japanese Imperial
Navy every one of those airplanes, save one. Read reported a dozen
or so Japanese transports assembling at Buka before their trip to
Guadalcanal, with enough troops loaded on board to take the island
back. All of the transports were lost or beached under the fierce
attack of U.S. warplanes.
In 1941, as the war with Japan commenced, there were 100 coastwatchers
in the Solomons. There were 10 times that number as the war ended,
later including Americans. Assembled first as a tight group of island
veterans in 1939 (although there had been coastwatchers after World War
I) under Lieutenant Commander A. Eric Feldt, Royal Australian Navy,
their job was to cover about a half million miles of land, sea, and air.
The very first moves of the Japanese on Guadalcanal were observed
by coastwatchers in the surrounding hills. The coastwatchers could
count the Japanese hammer strokes, almost see the nails. When the
Japanese began the airfield (later to be called Henderson Field),
the report of the coastwatchers went all the way up the American
Joint Chiefs of Staff and across the desk of Admiral Ernest J. King,
Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet.
Later, General Alexander A. Vandegrift on Guadalcanal banked heavily on
the intelligence coming in from the radios of the coastwatchers. The
attacks on the Treasuries and Choiseul were based on the information
provided them. On New Georgia, long before Americans decided to take
it, a coastwatcher had set up a haven for downed Allied pilots. And
if the Americans needed a captured Japanese officer or soldier for
interrogation, the local scouts were often able to provide one.
The key to coastwatching was the tele-radio or wireless, good to 600
miles by key, 400 by voice. Cumbersome, heavy, the set took more than
a dozen men to carry it--an indication of how much the Allies depended
upon the local natives.
The risks were great. Death would come after torture. But Mason
recalled the risk was worth it, seeing the sleek, orderly formations
heading for Guadalcanal, then limping back home with gaping holes
in their hulls. Mason and Read were highly decorated by both the
Australians and Americans for their vital services.
_Battle at Sea_
A final part of the planning for the main landing on Bougainville had
envisioned the certainty of a Japanese naval sortie to attack the
invasion transports. It came very early on the morning of D plus 1. On
the enemy side, Japanese destroyer Captain Tameichi Hara, skipper of
the _Shigure_, later recalled it was cold, drizzly, and murky, with
very limited visibility as his destroyer pulled out of Simpson Harbor,
Rabaul. He was a part of the interception force determined to chew
up the U.S. invasion troops that had just landed at Empress Augusta
Bay. The _Shigure_ was one of the six destroyers in the van of the
assigned element of the _Southeast Area Fleet_, which included the
heavy cruisers _Myoko_ and _Haguro_, together with the light cruisers
_Agano_ and _Sendai_. At 0027, 2 November 1943, he would run abreast
of U.S. Task Force 39 under Rear Admiral Merrill, who stood by to bar
the enemy approach with four light cruisers and eight destroyers. Among
his captains was the daring and determined Arleigh Burke on board the
_Charles S. Ausburne_ (DD 570) commanding DesDiv (Destroyer Division)
45.
This encounter was crucial to the Bougainville campaign. At Rabaul,
Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin had told his sailors, “Japan will topple if
Bougainville falls.”
At 0250, the American ships were in action. Captain Burke (later to
become Chief of Naval Operations) closed in on the nearest of the
enemy force under Vice Admiral Sentaro Omori. Burke’s destroyers fired
25 torpedoes, and then Merrill maneuvered his cruiser to avoid the
expected “Long Lance” torpedo response of the Japanese and to put his
ships in position to fire with their six-inch guns.
“I shuddered,” Hara wrote later, “at the realization that they must
have already released their torpedoes. The initiative was in the hands
of the enemy. In an instant, I yelled two orders: ‘Launch torpedoes!
Hard right rudder.’” Not a single Japanese or American torpedo found
its mark in the first exchange. Merrill then brought all his guns to
bear. The Japanese answered in kind. The Japanese eight-inch gun salvos
were either short or ahead. The Americans were luckier. One shell of
their first broadside slammed amidships into the cruiser _Sendai_
which carried Admiral Ijuin. There was frantic maneuvering to avoid
shells, with giant warships, yards apart at times, cutting at speeds
of 30 knots. Still _Sendai_ managed to avoid eight American torpedoes,
even with her rudder jammed. Then a Japanese torpedo caught the U.S.
destroyer _Foote_ (DD 511) and blew off her stern, leaving her dead in
the water.
Samuel Eliot Morison in _Breaking the Bismarck Barrier_, tells how
“Merrill maneuvered his cruisers so smartly and kept them at such range
that no enemy torpedoes could hit.” Admiral Omori showed the same skill
and judgement, but he was a blind man. Only the American had radar.
Hara afterwards explained, “Japan did not see the enemy, failed to size
up the enemy and failed to locate it.... The Japanese fleet was a blind
man swinging a stick against a seeing opponent. The Japanese fleet had
no advantage at all....”
What Japan had lacked in electronic sight, however, it partially made
up with its super-brilliant airplane-dropped flares and naval gunfire
star shells. Commander Charles H. Pollow, USN, a former radio officer
on the _Denver_ (CL 58), recalled the “unblinking star shells that
would let you read the fine print in the bible....” The Japanese also
had a range advantage in their eight-inch guns, “Sometimes we couldn’t
touch them....” Three shells hit his _Denver_--not one detonated, but
the ship was damaged. _Columbia_ (CL 56) also took an eight-inch hole
through her armor plate.
Then Merrill confused the enemy ships with smoke so dense that the
Japanese believed the Americans were heading one way when they were
in fact steaming in another direction. But before Admiral Omori could
break away, Burke and his destroyer division of “Little Beavers” was
in among them. First the _Sendai_ was sent to the bottom with 335 men,
then _Hatsukaze_, brushed in an accident with _Myoko_, was finished
off by Burke’s destroyers and sank with all hands on board--240
men. Damaged were the cruisers _Haguro_, _Myoko_, and destroyers
_Shiratsuyu_ and _Samidare_. But, most important, the threat to the
beachhead had been stopped.
The Americans got off with severe damage to the _Foote_ and light
damage to the _Denver_, _Spence_ (DD 512), and _Columbia_. Hara later
wrote, “had they pursued us really hot[ly] ... practically all the
Japanese ships would have perished.” The Americans had left the fight
too soon.
And Admiral Ijuin’s prediction that Japan would topple after the loss
of Bougainville proved to be accurate, but not because of this loss,
particularly. It was just one of the number of defeats which were to
doom Japan.
_Action Ashore: Koromokina_
Back on Bougainville, following the landing, the days D plus 1 to D
plus 5 saw the initiation of Phase II of the operation, involving
shifting of units’ positions, reorganizing the shambles of supplies,
incessant patrols, road building, the beginning of the construction of
a fighter airstrip, and the deepening of the beachhead to 2,000 yards.
[Illustration: JAPANESE COUNTERLANDING