[4][32] The shortage of shipping meant that each ship had to be loaded as efficiently as possible, using a technique known as combat loading to ensure that the most important stores and equipment could be unloaded quickly. MacArthur, with a firm foothold in New Guinea, was determined to move next to the Philippines, from which he had been driven after Pearl Harbor, and from there launch the final attack on the Japanese home islands. [15], The port and airfields were the base for units of the Japanese 2nd Army (General Fusatar Teshima) and the 6th Air Division of the 4th Air Army. Intelligence gained from breaking the codes protecting Imperial Japanese Army radio messages led the Allies to learn that the Hollandia area was only lightly defended, with Japanese forces being concentrated in the Madang-Wewak region. 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). ", Samuel Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, p. 38. 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). As the body of available material continued to grow, individual studies based on information available to ATIS were produced as Information Bulletins on subjects of general interest. Todays post is by Dr. Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. 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. 72 was published as an accumulation of documentary evidence for the Commission Regarding Breaches of the Rules of Warfare by the Japanese Forces of the Australian Commonwealth. 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. Neither Kitazono nor Endo had been able to prepare a comprehensive defensive plan, and in any event had neither the men nor the resources to carry it out. [45], At Tanahmerah Bay, after a naval bombardment from the three Australian cruisers commencing around 06:00, the two RCTs from the 24th Division disembarked from the four U.S. and Australian transports Henry T. Allen, Carter Hall, Kanimbla and Manoora and moved ashore aboard 16 LCIs. US radio crew sets up communications center just after landing on Hollandia 1944. Report No. Cushing, realizing the possible significance of the documents, notified his superiors who in turn notified the Allied Intelligence Bureau in Brisbane. In late 1943, the Information Section was given the task of writing Briefs consisting of a summary and highlights of Enemy Publications and Current Translations. [7] The volume would have been more but members of the 414th CIC unit learned that Chinese soldiers through ignorance destroyed many documents. [5], According to John Laffin, the campaign "was arguably the most arduous fought by any Allied troops during World War II". This translation aided materially in speeding up the execution of the subsequent attack on Saipan and other Japanese bases in the Pacific, which occurred shortly thereafter. The Japanese defended Biak valiantly, even managing at one point to bring in 1,100 reinforcements, but they were finally overcome in early August. US troops debark from LST-66 at Tanahmerah Bay Hollandia. Incidence of malaria was almost one hundred per cent. Late the next month at Biak, an island in Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, CIC agents seized the records of the finance office, post office, bank, and Japanese headquarters. Subsequently, Supplements No. SEATIC and SINTIC operating in Southeast Asia and China received and translated relatively large quantities of captured documents during the war. 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. Before June, between 20 and 25 P-39s had been lost in air combat, while three more had been destroyed on the ground and eight had been destroyed in landings by accident. It included excerpts from Japanese captured documents on their research and use of bacterial warfare. [36], The Australians decisively turned back the Japanese assault in the ensuing 2931 January 1943 Battle of Wau. When the Allied forces began to advance, more documents were captured and a much higher proportion was official. [11] For the same reasons, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces South West Pacific Area was determined to hold it. 1, List of Japanese Military Conventional Signs and Abbreviations (March 4, 1943); No. [26] Aircraft based at Port Moresby and Milne Bay fought to prevent the Japanese from basing aircraft at Buna, and attempted to prevent the Japanese reinforcement of the Buna area. 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 Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in 1942 represented crucial losses for the Japanese and marked a turning point in the war. Some of the research reports dealt with military and naval matters, such as No. Over 120 of these Research Reports were published. The naval command in the Southwest Pacific remained unchanged. [1][2], Hollandia was situated on the east side of a headland separating Humboldt Bay to the east and Tanahmerah Bay, 25 miles (40km) to the west. [34], Wau is a village in the interior of the Papuan peninsula, approximately 50 kilometres (30mi) southwest of Salamaua. The US Navy had similar language programs. 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. [6] The Joint Chiefs of Staff also directed the United States Pacific Fleet to assign aircraft carriers to provide air support for the landings. The documents were then sent on to ATIS, SWPA, for final examination. This airfield was of great value to the Australians during the fighting for northeast Papua. I and II were published on March 19, 1945 and June 23, 1945, respectively. 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. Wrecked Japanese planes litter Hollandia field, largely the victims of USAAF attacks earlier in the month (80-G-325109). The first major collection of captured Japanese documents in the Pacific Theater was made in August 1942 when the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, under Col. Evans Carlson and Lt. Col. James Roosevelt, made a harassing raid on Makin Island in the Gilberts. [36] The air and naval attacks succeeded in isolating the remaining Japanese forces in New Guinea. [13], Due north of Port Moresby, on the northeast coast of Papua, are the Huon Gulf and the Huon Peninsula. [30], The D'Entrecasteaux Islands lie directly off the northeast coast of the lower portion of the Papuan peninsula. portalId: 20973928, They subsequently neutralized the Japanese positions, as well as interdicted a portion of the Japanese movements, and anticipated Japanese defensive position and strengths. Documents captured during the Philippine operations also proved useful. All agreed, of course, that the naval forces that had met with such success in the Gilbert Islands should push toward the Marianas, from which the heavy B-29 bombers of the Army Air Forces could strike at Japan. For his action during the Biak operation, Jack Y. Cannon, the commanding officer of the 41st CIC Detachment received the Silver Star. During the period of October 1942-July 1943, the work of indexing, abstracting and collating information from captured documents and prisoners of war, answering internal queries, and providing information to assist translators and examiners, was carried on by a staff consisting of six officers and ten enlisted personnel. [46] Yamamoto then turned his attention to New Guinea: 94 planes struck Oro Bay on 11 April; 174 planes hit Port Moresby on 12 April; and in the largest raid of all, 188 aircraft struck Milne Bay on 14 April. The plan called for the establishment of a two-battalion front, with troops landed in seven waves at two beaches: Red 1 around the Depapre Inlet and Red 2 on the eastern side of the bay. The sinking of over 25,000 tones of Japanese ships earned the unit the nickname . Landings were made at two points in the Hollandia area on April 22, 1944, with the U.S. 24th Infantry Division moving ashore at Tanahmerah Bay and the 41st Infantry Division pushing inland at Humboldt Bay, 25 miles (40 km) to the east. None of the senior officers present had been in post more than a few weeks and the senior air officer had been relieved following the destruction of his air forces at the beginning of April. Over the course of an hour, this feature, dubbed Pancake Hill, was captured with only minimal opposition. [6] See The Sinking of the Japanese Submarine I-1 off of Guadalcanal and the Recovery of its Secret Documents., [7] See A Letter from Somewhere in Burma, June 1944. 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. Once Manila and its environs had been captured, CIC search and seizure teams located and took custody of large quantities of Japanese documents. 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. On March 1, 1944, soldiers found on the body of the commander of Baba Battalion a copy of a field order issued by him in which he ordered an attack on American positions for that same afternoon. [63][64], Meanwhile, the Allies quickly made the Sentani airfields operational and were able to mount bombing raids on Japanese positions as far west as Biak, making them useless for air operations. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, previously commander of the U.S. At wars end it moved to Tokyo. This was the so-called Z Operation document which gave the Japanese air and naval plan of defense against Allied attacks on their South Pacific possessions, giving their solutions for the defense against Allied attacks in three sectors of the South Pacific. Over 170 were published, including many extracts from diaries and notebooks. [5] The first Nisei linguists were tested when the Marines invaded Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 and flew prisoners of war and captured Japanese documents were sent a short distance away to New Caledonia for processing by the Nisei language team attached to Task Force 6814. 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. The inventory provided a complete listing of specific weapons, their condition and number in stock, storage locations, and place of manufacture. Forward positions would first be established at Milne Bay, located in the forked eastern end of the Papuan peninsula, and at Buna, a village on the northeast coast of Papua about halfway between Huon Gulf and Milne Bay. Horikoshi, upon arrival at ATIS, at first denied all knowledge of any atrocities but on being confronted with his diary, admitted that such things had occurred. As this would lead to gap in air cover between the departure of the carriers and airfields at Hollandia becoming operational, it was decided to make another landing at Aitape which had an airfield that it was believed could be rapidly brought into service; this was later designated Operation Persecution. [35], Once the Japanese had decided to give up on Guadalcanal, the capture of Port Moresby loomed even larger in their strategic thinking. Opposing these forces were the Australian 2/5th, 2/6th and 2/7th Battalions along with Lieutenant Colonel Norman Fleay's Kanga Force. This material was translated by ATIS in May 1945 and provided Allied naval commanders with immediate intelligence regarding a variety of topics. 8, Kanji Abbreviations, Variants, and Equivalents; No. Due to USAAF doctrine and a lack of long-range escorts, long-range bomber raids on targets like Rabaul went in unescorted and suffered heavy losses, prompting severe criticism of Lieutenant General George Brett by war correspondents for misusing his forces. By 22 August, about 8,500 Australians and 1,300 Americans were on site. [15] The only Allied response was a bombing raid of Lae and Salamaua by aircraft flying over the Owen Stanley Range from the carriers USSLexington and USSYorktown, leading the Japanese to reinforce these sites. [47], I-Go demonstrated that the Japanese command was not learning the lessons of air power that the Allies were. Nimitz offered to assign eight small escort carriers to support the landing at Aitape, with these vessels then proceeding to support operations at Hollandia until 11 May. It was occupied by the Japanese during their invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, who planned to use it as a base for their expansion towards the Australian mandated territories of Papua and New Guinea. Only 30 percent of the captured documents needed no treatment; the rest needed cleaning, drying, and/or other conservation treatment. ATIS received and translated in April 1944 the diary of prisoner of war Hiroshi Horikoshi, a civilian employee (interpreter) with the Japanese 14th Army, who was captured at the same time. American military leaders knew that while the number of prisoners (and thus information) taken in the Pacific would be relatively small, compared to the war in Europe, Japanese records would become all that more important as an intelligence source. 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