The submarine picked up the documents on May 11th and sailed to Darwin. This bombing operation was also the moment in the New Guinea campaign when Japanese air power no longer threatened the Allies. [11] For the same reasons, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces South West Pacific Area was determined to hold it. [38], General Imamura and his naval counterpart at Rabaul, Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, commander Southeast Area Fleet, resolved to reinforce their ground forces at Lae for one final all-out attempt against Wau. While it was beyond MacArthur's capabilities to deny Buna to the Japanese, the same could not be said of Milne Bay, which was easily accessible by Allied naval forces. By December 27, 1942, 1,100 Japanese documents had been received at the Advanced Land Headquarters, Brisbane, from the New Guinea area. Statistical and Accounting Branch Office of the Adjutant General 1953, p. 94, Craven & Cate 1948, p. 477 & 723 (note 15), Office of the Combined Chiefs of Staff 1943, p. 67, New Guinea: The US Army Campaigns of World War II, "Biography of Lieutenant-General Heisuke Abe () ( ) (18861943), Japan", United States Army Center of Military History, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 19421944, "Report on Historical Sources on Australia and Japan at war in Papua and New Guinea, 194245", "The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Volume I", "Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, Volume II Part I", National Archive Video of Hollandia Bay, New Guinea Invasion, Allies Study Post-War Security etc. Before the end of May 1944 the 41st Infantry Division moved westward from Hollandia and made a landing on the little island of Biak. At wars end it moved to Tokyo. However, this is contradictory to the total number of Japanese combat deaths calculated across most individual battles in the campaign. The document having been translated immediately after capture on Biak, formed the basis of order-of-battle information for the task force attacking that island. Army units in the South Pacific were transferred to MacArthurs direct control in June, and the U.S. 13th Air Force was moved to the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) to form, with the U.S. 5th Air Force, the new Far Eastern Air Force, which was commanded by Gen. George C. Kenney in addition to his position as commander of Allied Air Forces SWPA. Japanese makeshift bridges were attacked by P-40s with 500lb (230kg) bombs. In the final days of March, the Fast Carrier Force (Task Force 58) attacked Japanese airbases on Palau and islands in the Carolines. These totaled 11,000 men under the command of General Masazumi Inada, Major General Toyozo Kitazono and Rear Admiral Yoshikazu Endo (Ninth Fleet). [33], Initial operations commenced in the second week of March 1944 with air raids by aircraft of the U.S. 5th Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force attacked Japanese airfields along the New Guinea coast from Wewak to the Vogelkop and on Biak Island. Japan's threatened military encroachment closer to Australia hinted at some type of potential invasion of the northernmost frontiers. To alleviate this difficulty, in July 1944, an officer was assigned for duty with ATIS for the purpose of organizing a sub-section to clean and restore documents making them more readily legible. ", Samuel Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, p. 38. The campaign was long and arduous, but by the end of 1944 the Japanese threat was contained in New Guinea. [36] The air and naval attacks succeeded in isolating the remaining Japanese forces in New Guinea. Incidence of malaria was almost one hundred per cent. [1] All of the various organizations widely disseminated the information contained in the captured records. I want you to take Buna, or not come back alive. The Admiralty Islands having been seized a month ahead of schedule, MacArthur accelerated his advance. They were prepared and distributed as a result of a specific need, and represented a form of publication for matters outside the usual range of translations and reports. The Z Plan would fall into the hands of the Allies and be translated by ATIS during the early summer of 1944 and immediately be returned to the Japanese. It was not just on the islands that important information was captured. The attack failed, and the Japanese were driven back toward Wewak. Today known as Jayapura, in 1941 Hollandia (140.707E 2.543S) was the largest settlement in the Dutch half of New Guinea.It was located on the only really first-class natural harbor on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea, Humboldt Bay, though it had only primitive port facilities. The plane in which Koga was flying crashed at sea, with no survivors. This diary along with other documents relating to atrocities was used in the trials of Japanese war criminals. [7] The volume would have been more but members of the 414th CIC unit learned that Chinese soldiers through ignorance destroyed many documents. US troops man Anti Aircraft MG in New Guinea 1942. When Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, was captured in late April one of the first places CIC agents seized was the post office. The terrain, however, proved more problematic. Report No. [27], The ground forces would be supported by two naval bombardment forces. Limited Distribution Reports were special reports, highly classified, consisting of translations of documents possessing information of the highest intelligence value or of immediate importance, issued from time to time as directed. }); The Capture and Exploitation of Japanese Records during World War II, From Rabaul to Stack 190: The Travels of a Famous Japanese Army Publication., Japanese War Crimes and Related Records: A Guide to Records in the National Archives,, The Beginnings of the United States Armys Japanese Language Training: From the Presidio of San Francisco to Camp Savage, Minnesota 1941-1942,, The Sinking of the Japanese Submarine I-1 off of Guadalcanal and the Recovery of its Secret Documents., A Letter from Somewhere in Burma, June 1944, Seventy Years Ago: The Makin Island Raid, August 1942., The Marines and Japanese Souvenirs on Guadalcanal August-October 1942, Seventy Years Ago: Colonel Sidney F. Mashbir and the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), September-October 1942., The National Archives Arthur Evarts Kimberly and the Allied Translator and Interpreter Sections Document Restoration Sub-Section, 1944-1945., The Z Plan Story: Japans 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part I, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. Primary Image: The US pursued a two-pronged offensive across the central and southwest Pacific to . Base G played an important role as a staging area for subsequent operations in New Guinea and the Philippines. [43] The facilities in the area were designated Base G. Several higher headquarters were moved to the area, including those of the Sixth Army, Eighth Army, Fifth Air Force, and Seventh Fleet. [4] Within six months, the school had shipped its first 35 graduates to the field, just in time for Guadalcanal and the Buna-Gona campaign. For his action during the Biak operation, Jack Y. Cannon, the commanding officer of the 41st CIC Detachment received the Silver Star. This procedure called for all documents to be briefly examined, and those of operational value segregated from those having probable or general value and those having no apparent military value, and provisions were made for the translation on a priority bases of those sections of documents containing information of operational value. By 26 April, U.S. troops secured the two eastern airfields, and later that day linked up with forces advancing from the 24th Division advancing from Tanahmerah Bay. CIC personnel were constantly engaged in providing lectures to soldiers about the importance of captured Japanese documents. If the transports succeeded in staying behind a weather front and were protected the whole way by fighters from the various airfields surrounding the Bismarck Sea, they might make it to Lae with an acceptable level of loss, i.e., at worst half the task force would be sunk en route. It contained details of the proposed landing of Tama Group (full strength of one division) at Ormoc, Leyte, on November 1st. Translation of the official record by the Japanese Demobilization Bureaux detailing the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's participation in the Southwest Pacific area of the, This page was last edited on 29 January 2023, at 09:02. Thousands perished from starvation and disease; the commanding general, Horii, was drowned. The stores situation in the forward area grew more urgent as the supply line up the single road broke down. The unit was in effect a miniature ATIS, with various sections, coordinating the production of translation and interrogation reports of immediate operation value. [36], The Australians decisively turned back the Japanese assault in the ensuing 2931 January 1943 Battle of Wau. It was a new kind of combined operations warfare in which the Allies consistently outclassed their Japanese opponents. Allied casualties amounted to 157 killed and 1,057 wounded. Achieving complete surprise, they were able to destroy 340 aircraft on the ground and 60 more aircraft in the air, leaving the 6th Air Division unable to resist the planned invasion. They included: No. The headland was formed by the Cyclops Mountains, a mountain ridge rising steeply to 7,000 feet (2,100m) and was backed by Lake Sentani, extending 15 miles (24km) east to west. The following month at least 20 fighters were lost in combat, while eight were destroyed in July. After the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, in March 1943, an abandoned lifeboat at Goodenough Island (northeast of New Guinea) from the Teiyo Maru was recovered and found in it was The Japanese Army List, dated October 15, 1942. As a result, code breaking was the main source of intelligence. Pre-landing reconnaissance efforts were hampered by the destruction of the Australian scouting party that was landed in the area by submarine in late March, and the reality of the terrain was only discovered through aerial intelligence that arrived too late. This airfield was of great value to the Australians during the fighting for northeast Papua. In February 1944, marines and soldiers from the 27th Infantry Division captured important documents at Engebi Island. [54] There was little resistance initially, but further inland there was some opposition as elements of the 186th Infantry reached the lake by 24 April. A unified American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, ABDACOM, under Wavell, responsible for holding Malaya, Sumatra, Java, . The Netherlands, Britain and the United States tried to defend the colony from the Japanese forces as they moved south in late 1941 in search of Dutch oil. ATIS was established on September 19, 1942, and was headquartered in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies began on 10 January 1942, and the Imperial Japanese Army overran the entire colony in less than three months. 4, to acquire Japanese records, staged a contest, making awards to Burmese or Chinese turning in the most documents. On September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, thus entering the military alliance known as the "Axis."Seeking to curb Japanese aggression and force a withdrawal of Japanese forces from Manchuria and China, the United States . Report No. Adachi ignored this order, and instead decided to concentrate his troops at Hansa Bay and Wewak. [34], Wau is a village in the interior of the Papuan peninsula, approximately 50 kilometres (30mi) southwest of Salamaua. [21] Japanese bombers were often escorted by fighters which came in at 30,000ft (9,100m)too high to be intercepted by the P-39s and P-40sgiving the Japanese an altitude advantage in air combat. 2, Alphabetical List of 40,000 Japanese Army Officer (May 1943); No. In February 1944, the Japanese devised a plan known as Z Plan to counter the American naval offensive and destroy the U.S. Pacific fleet. [5] During the Guadalcanal campaign a large quantity of documents were captured, including ones retrieved from the Japanese submarine I-1, just offshore.[6]. In May 1945 ADVATIS followed the advance of General Headquarters into Manila. The weather changed direction and Kimura's slow-moving task force was spotted by an Allied scout plane. [11] Adachi continued to plan to make a last stand at Hollandia if he was defeated at Hansa Bay. Gen. Robert C. Richardson became commanding general of U.S. Army Forces, Pacific Ocean Area, in which capacity he remained subordinate to Nimitzs operational control. [17], After this failure, the Japanese decided on a longer term, two-pronged assault for their next attempt on Port Moresby. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. Current Translations were publications containing complete translations of documents classified A, B, C, or D in ATIS Bulletins. [45], "At 1400 the Russell Island radar screen became milky with traces of bogeys and Guadalcanal broadcast "Condition Red," followed shortly by an unprecedented "Condition Very Red. When very few documents were captured and relatively little was known about the enemy forces in the SWPA, it was imperative to translate all documents in full. This bombardment was augmented with air strikes from carrier-borne aircraft, while two destroyer-minesweepers, Long and Hogan, swept the bay ahead of the main landing force. January 23, 1942 - August 1945. author Paul Bocu, 2019. Before the operation against the Japanese at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, 41 st CIC Detachment Special Agent in Charge Duval Edwards at Finschhaven during March and April 1944 gave many lectures on the great importance of soldiers turning in any captured documents. The Americans landed at Hollandia and Aitape simultaneously on 22 April with the aim of bypassing the Japanese stronghold at Wewak and thus leaving the Japanese 18th Army isolated and cut off there. The Japanese defended Biak valiantly, even managing at one point to bring in 1,100 reinforcements, but they were finally overcome in early August. Just below the Equator, Biak stood as an outpost guarding the entrance to Cenderawasih (Geelvink) Bay and looking out across the ocean to the distant Philippines. Most regrettable!!' 126 is Hoko: The Spy-Hostage System of Group Control-The Clue to Japanese Psychology. On April 29, 1944, Research Report No. White 1 would be the main landing, as it provided the only spot where the larger LSTs could land, while White 2 would be secured with smaller LVTs and DUKWs, which would be used to cross the shallow entrance to Jautefa Bay. 37, No. 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. Their operation plan decreed a five-pronged attack: one task force to establish a seaplane base at Tulagi in the lower Solomons, one to establish a seaplane base in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of New Guinea, one of transports to land troops near Port Moresby, one with a light carrier to cover the landing, and one with two fleet carriers to sink the Allied forces sent in response. The Allied Air Forces acted promptly on this information and sank both Japanese submarines and supply barges. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison summed up the results this way: the enemy had shot his bolt; he never showed up again in these waters. [11] This document was quickly translated and published as ATIS Publication No. [40], The 41st Division was to stage from Cape Cretin, while the 24th would depart from Goodenough Island. This discovery resulted in a hurried revision of the assault plans regarding these islands. 67 (Japanese Warships and Merchant Vessels Sunk, Damaged or not Previously Listed); No. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the leaders of the Allied nations agreed to this change in strategy focusing on neutralizing Rabaul rather than capturing it.[50]. 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