Battle of Rabaul (1942)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Rabaul began before dawn on the 23rd of January, 1942, when a South Seas Force of around 5,000 Japanese troops entered Simpson Harbour and started coming ashore on the island of New Britain. The Australian garrison defending the town numbered roughly 1,400 men. What followed was not a battle in any conventional sense. It was an overwhelming. A small force holding a port that their own commanders had decided could not be reinforced, confronted by one of the largest naval task forces the Pacific had yet seen. How did Rabaul come to matter so much to both sides? Why did the Australians stay when planners had already concluded the position was indefensible? And what happened to the soldiers and civilians who survived the fall of the town? Those questions reach from the jungle interior of New Britain all the way to a tragedy at sea that would become one of the worst losses of Australian life in the entire war.

• 2. A Port Worth Dying For

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  Rabaul sits on the eastern end of New Britain, and in 1942 it served as the capital of the Australian-administered Territory of New Guinea. Australia had held the town since 1914, when it was taken from the Germans. Its value was geographic. The port offered a deep-water harbour and airfields that sat close to the Caroline Islands, home to Truk, the Imperial Japanese Navy's major regional base. For Japan, controlling Rabaul meant protecting Truk and cutting Allied communication lines running between the United States and Australia. For the Australians, holding it even temporarily meant preserving a forward observation post for monitoring Japanese movements across the region.

  In March 1941, with tensions with Japan rising, the Australians sent a small garrison to secure the area. That force was built around Lieutenant Colonel Howard Carr's 2/22nd Battalion, roughly 700 strong, and fell under Lark Force, which eventually reached 1,400 men under Lieutenant Colonel John Scanlan. The garrison included a coastal defence battery, an anti-aircraft battery, an anti-tank battery, a detachment of the 2/10th Field Ambulance, and personnel from the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. One of its more unusual units was the 2/22nd Battalion Band, reportedly the only military band ever recruited entirely from the ranks of the Salvation Army. A separate commando unit, the 130-strong 2/1st Independent Company, was sent to hold the nearby island of New Ireland.

  Plans drawn up throughout 1941 had envisioned Rabaul as a secure fleet anchorage, complete with a radar station and a defensive minefield. Those plans were shelved. Allied commanders concluded they lacked the capacity to expand the garrison and that the naval situation made reinforcement impossible if the post came under attack. Yet the garrison stayed, tasked primarily with protecting the main Royal Australian Air Force airfield at Vunakanau and the flying boat anchorage in Simpson Harbour.

• 3. Thin Air Cover

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  Wing Commander John Lerew commanded the RAAF contingent at Rabaul, and the air assets available to him were meagre. His force consisted of ten CAC Wirraway training aircraft, lightly armed, and four Lockheed Hudson light bombers from No. 24 Squadron. The Wirraways were not fighters in any real operational sense. Pitting them against Japanese carrier aircraft was less a tactical decision than an act of grim necessity.

  Starting on the 4th of January 1942, Rabaul came under attack by large numbers of Japanese carrier-based aircraft. The raids intensified. On the 20th of January, over 100 Japanese aircraft attacked in multiple waves. Eight Wirraways flew to intercept them. Three RAAF planes were shot down, two crash-landed, and another was damaged. Six Australian aircrew were killed and five wounded. One Japanese bomber was brought down by anti-aircraft fire. It was not an exchange that could be sustained.

  After the losses mounted, Lerew sent a signal to RAAF headquarters in Melbourne using the Latin phrase attributed to gladiators preparing to enter the arena: "Nos Morituri Te Salutamus" - "we who are about to die salute you." The message required no translation for those who received it. By the 21st of January, the remaining RAAF elements had been reduced to two Wirraways and one Hudson, which were withdrawn to Lae. A subsequent order from RAAF Townsville command to continue bombing Japanese ships arrived after the squadron no longer had the aircraft to carry it out. The one serviceable Hudson was eventually used to evacuate severely wounded personnel, departing at 0300 hours on the 22nd of January for Port Moresby, against standing orders. After it left, RAAF ground crews demolished Vunakanau's runways and ammunition stores. A rushed attempt to destroy nearly two thousand aerial bombs all at once was described as a botched demolition. The blast leveled buildings within a quarter mile and caused damage at half a mile. Nationals caught in the open were killed.

• 4. The Landing

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  The Japanese naval task force that approached Rabaul comprised four aircraft carriers, including Shokaku and Zuikaku, seven cruisers, 14 destroyers, and numerous smaller vessels and submarines, under the command of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue. It had embarked from Truk on the 14th of January. On the 21st of January, an RAAF Catalina flying boat crew located the invasion fleet off Kavieng and managed to transmit a signal before being shot down.

  Before dawn on the 23rd of January, Japanese forces entered Simpson Harbour. The landing force of around 5,000 troops came primarily from the 144th Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Masao Kusunose. The regiment's 3rd Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Kuwada Ishiro, was held up at Vulcan Beach by a mixed company from the 2/22nd and the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. The other two battalions landed at unguarded positions and moved inland. Within hours, Lakunai airfield had fallen.

  Facing the collapse of his perimeter, Scanlan ordered every man for himself. Australian soldiers and civilians broke into small groups and retreated through the jungle along both coasts of New Britain. During the fighting on the 23rd of January, the Australians lost two officers and 26 other ranks killed in action. Only the RAAF had made evacuation plans. Lerew refused an order to convert his ground staff into infantrymen for a last stand. He insisted they be flown out and organised their evacuation by flying boat and his remaining Hudson. To the north, the Japanese had simultaneously landed a force of between 3,000 and 4,000 troops at three locations on New Ireland, wading ashore through deep water and dangerous mud pools. The town of Kavieng fell without opposition. The 2/1st Independent Company fell back toward the Sook River after fighting near the airfield.

• 5. Massacre and Loss at Sea

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  Of the over 1,000 Australian soldiers captured in the weeks after the fall of Rabaul, around 160 were massacred on or about the 4th of February in four separate incidents near Tol and Waitavalo plantations. Six men survived and later testified before a Court of Inquiry. The Australian government concluded that prisoners were marched into the jungle in small groups and then shot and bayoneted by Japanese soldiers. A separate group was shot at the nearby Waitavalo Plantation.

  Allied authorities later placed responsibility on Colonel Masao Kusunose, the commanding officer of the 144th Infantry Regiment. He did not stand trial. In late 1946, Kusunose starved himself to death before proceedings could begin.

  A larger disaster followed on the 1st of July, 1942. A ship transporting at least 800 soldiers and 200 civilian prisoners of war from Rabaul to Japan, the Montevideo Maru, was sunk off the north coast of Luzon by a U.S. submarine. Most of those aboard were Australian. The sinking of the Montevideo Maru became one of the greatest single losses of Australian life in the war. The overall casualty figures from the battle itself remained stark: the Allies lost six aircrew killed and five wounded, along with 28 soldiers killed in action and over 1,000 captured. Against those numbers, the Japanese lost 16 killed and 49 wounded.

• 6. Rabaul as Japanese Stronghold

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  Japanese author Kengoro Tanaka later described the capture of Rabaul as the only fully successful operation of the entire New Guinea campaign for Japan. Once the port was secured, Japanese engineers quickly repaired the damaged airfield. Rabaul became the largest Japanese base in New Guinea and the anchor of their regional defences.

  From Rabaul, Japanese forces advanced onto mainland New Guinea and began operations to capture the Salamaua-Lae region beginning in March 1942. The fighting that followed stretched along the Kokoda Track, at Milne Bay, and around Buna-Gona as Japan pushed toward Port Moresby. The Australians attempted a bombing counter-attack on Rabaul as early as March 1942 to slow the base's development, but Japanese control over the island extended steadily. Airfields were established at Cape Gloucester on the island's western tip, and small outposts were placed along the coast to support boat traffic between Rabaul and New Guinea.

  A handful of Lark Force survivors remained at large on both New Britain and New Ireland throughout this period. Working alongside local islanders, they operated as coastwatchers, passing information about Japanese shipping to Allied intelligence. Between March and May 1942, unofficial rescue missions organised by Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit officers evacuated approximately 450 troops and civilians from New Britain by sea.

• 7. Isolation and Surrender

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  By mid-1943, the tide in the Pacific had shifted. Allied forces launched an offensive aimed at advancing north through New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Rather than attempting to retake Rabaul by direct assault, Allied planners chose to isolate it. Operation Cartwheel, pursued throughout 1943-1945, relied primarily on airpower to contain the garrison.

  By late November 1943, large carrier-based raids had reduced Japanese naval strength at the port significantly. According to author Eric Larrabee, after a major strike mounted from aircraft carriers on the 5th of November, no Japanese heavy ships ever came to Rabaul again. In December 1943, U.S. Marines and Army soldiers landed in western New Britain at Arawe and Cape Gloucester. In November 1944, the Australians returned to New Britain when advanced elements of the 5th Division landed at Jacquinot Bay on the south coast, relieving the U.S. 40th Infantry Division. Australian forces then conducted a limited advance north, securing a line across the base of the Gazelle Peninsula between Wide Bay and Open Bay, containing the main Japanese concentration around Rabaul rather than attacking it directly.

  When Japan surrendered in August 1945, approximately 69,000 Japanese troops remained in Rabaul. It took the Allies more than two years to repatriate them. Japanese salvage companies began work on the wrecks around Rabaul in the late 1950s. Ships, aircraft, weapons, abandoned positions, and tunnels built during the occupation still remain in the area today, tangible remnants of the garrison that held the largest Japanese base in New Guinea until the final day of the war.