japanese invasion of dutch new guinea
Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, previously commander of the U.S. The Japanese invaded New Guinea from November 1941 till April 1942 and occupied the Dutch part (except for Merauke) and the northern Australian part (Fakfak fell April 1, Manokwari April 12). Exact tracings and translations were supplied to XXIV Corps prior to attack on these positions. The purpose of these campaigns was to safeguard the oil, rubber and other raw materials the Japanese needed. The battle of Hollandia (22-27 April 1944) was part of Operation Reckless and saw the Americans leapfrog past a series of Japanese bases to capture a key position on the northern coast of New Guinea, catching the Japanese almost entirely by surprise and winning an unexpectedly easy victory.. [58], Japanese casualties amounted to 3,300 killed and 600 wounded in combat;[59] a further 1,146 were killed or died in the area up to 27 September 1944. The fires around White 1 continued until 27 April when the engineers were released to return to the beach. [10], The colonial capital of Port Moresby on the south coast of Papua was the strategic key for the Japanese in this area of operations. Often, they consisted of combined translations of several documents relating to the same subject, such as (No. The U.S. built Naval Base Morotai, . [4][23], The main landings at Hollandia would be made at two locations. (1944), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Guinea_campaign&oldid=1136220909, 44,000 on Bougainville (politically a part of New Guinea), 30,500 on New Britain, New Ireland, and the Admiralty Islands. The plane in which Koga was flying crashed at sea, with no survivors. 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. Copies of these ATIS publications can be found at the National Archives at College Park, the Australian National Archives, as well as other archival repositories. The Aussies were fighting mad, for they had found some of their captured fellows tied to trees and bayoneted to death, surmounted by the placard, 'It took them a long time to die'. 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 a result of immediate translation of the map, the 5th Air Force was informed and proceeded to destroy practically all of the barges. 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. Backed by a swamp just 30 yards from the shoreline, and with just one exit trail unsuitable for vehicles, it quickly became congested. In March General Hatazo Adachi, the commander of the Japanese 18th Army, was ordered by the Second Area Army to withdraw his forces west from the Madang-Hansa Bay area to Hollandia, with one division to be dispatched there immediately. [34][35] During the same period, American air and naval forces sank many of the Japanese ships which were attempting to transport reinforcements to the Hollandia and Wewak areas; these attacks were guided by intelligence gained from breaking the Japanese codes. Also that summer, the 441st CIC unit established a clinical laboratory, which, among other things, restored charred documents. [29] The Japanese arrived and the 25 August 7 September Battle of Milne Bay was underway. Even before the war ended, ATIS was exploiting captured records for war crimes purposes. [30][31] The decision to undertake these operations simultaneously stretched Allied shipping and logistics resources, and necessitated reallocating resources from other theaters and roles. After the Japanese invasion of New Guinea the Americans, aided by Australian troops, organized a series of landings and other offensive actions against the Japanese in New Guinea. [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. In response, on 8 March General Douglas MacArthur sought approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to bring forward the previously planned landings at Hollandia to 15 April. The situation was not fully resolved until 3 May when transport aircraft began landing on an airstrip that was hastily built by an engineer aviation battalion at Tami. 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. 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. In New Guinea, U.S. and Australian infantry were moving along the northern coast, pushing the Japanese before them. The forces of the Southwest Pacific Area were ready to move on to the Philippines. . The battle took place between 22 April and 6 June 1944 and formed part of the New Guinea campaign. Once the war ended, Southeast Asia Command Field Security Sections were assigned to seize records that, among other things, could be used for the prosecution of war criminals. [57] Stephen R. Taaffe reached a similar conclusion. 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. Adachi ignored this order, and instead decided to concentrate his troops at Hansa Bay and Wewak. The Z Plan [issued as Admiral Kogas Combined Fleet Secret Operations Order No. Report No. Joseph J. Rochefort (of the Battle of Midway code-breaking fame). Lieut. The following month at least 20 fighters were lost in combat, while eight were destroyed in July. 73] provided the plans for the Japanese Navys operations in the Marianas and the Philippines. CIC personnel were constantly engaged in providing lectures to soldiers about the importance of captured Japanese documents. In December 1943, an operational order indicating the times and dates at which Japanese submarine were scheduled to appear in designated spots in the Arawe area, New Britain, was translated by ATIS and immediately forwarded to Naval Intelligence where prompt action was taken. By the end of the day on 23 April the 186th Infantry were about halfway to Lake Sentani, while those from the 162nd had secured Hollandia and were securing the high ground around their objective, winkling out isolated pockets of resistance with aerial support. [25] But fighters did provide cover for the transports, and for bombers when their targets were within range. The landing was supported by carrier-based aircraft of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which had also struck Japanese air installations at Wakde and Sarmi to the northwest. Reports were issued when sufficient information on any subject had been collated to warrant publication. Japanese forces to the west were reconfigured to form a defense line through Biak and Manokwari,[62] while the Japanese 18th Army, still in defensive positions around Wewak, to the east, were faced with a long retreat west through the jungle having been ordered to bypass Hollandia and Aitape and reinforce the 2nd Army in western New Guinea. During the war, the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS), as it came to be called, grew dramatically. They arrived off Hollandia during the night of 21/22 April and about 20 miles (32km) offshore, the convoy split again with the Central Attack Group preceding for Humboldt Bay while the Western Attack Group turned towards Tanahmerah Bay. [13], Due north of Port Moresby, on the northeast coast of Papua, are the Huon Gulf and the Huon Peninsula. When the Allied forces began to advance, more documents were captured and a much higher proportion was official. They totaled 104 in number. 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. Only 30 percent of the captured documents needed no treatment; the rest needed cleaning, drying, and/or other conservation treatment. This material was translated by ATIS in May 1945 and provided Allied naval commanders with immediate intelligence regarding a variety of topics. RAAF radar could not provide sufficient warning of Japanese attacks, so reliance was placed on coastwatchers and spotters in the hills until an American radar unit arrived in September with better equipment. The report contained 28 pages of translations, each translation accompanied by a photostatic copy of the original document and authenticated under oath by the translation. [8] ICPOAs first officer in charge was Cmdr. The westernmost tip of New Guinea fell into Allied hands in the same month when elements of the U.S. 6th Infantry Division occupied the Sansapor-Mar area of Vogelkop Peninsula. Urgent information was extracted before rushing the documents on to the Advanced Echelon where they were sorted, stamped, examined, and translated as necessary. 119 deals with the Japanese Military Police Service and Report No. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. To assist researchers interested in World War II-era research regarding the Pacific and Far East, I prepared a 1,700-page finding aid entitled Japanese War Crimes and Related Records: A Guide to Records in the National Archives,which is searchable and available online. Interestingly enough, among these records was a complete listing of the Japanese Imperial Army Ordnance Inventory. Their scheme of conquest envisaged control of the Aleutians, Midway, Fiji and Samoa, New Britain, eastern New Guinea, points in the [2] 11, Factors in Japanese Military Psychology was ever completed, although the material intended for this publication could have been used instead for Research Report No. [18]. In the first months of 1942, the Japanese launched further attacks against British Burma, Australian-administered New Guinea and Papua, and the islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). By the end of the war, ATIS had processed over 350,000 documents (or 1,680 cubic feet of records).[17]. [34], Wau is a village in the interior of the Papuan peninsula, approximately 50 kilometres (30mi) southwest of Salamaua. At 177 planes, this was the largest Japanese air attack since Pearl Harbor. The Dutch surrendered on 8 March. He told soldiers that ATIS personnel had told him that they had seen Japanese . [20], I Corps under Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger provided most of the ground forces for the combined Operations Reckless and Persecution. In the Southwest Pacific Area, aside from the creation of the Far Eastern Air Force, there were few changes. In addition, about 5,400 survivors of the Japanese defeat at Buna-Gona were moved into the Lae-Salamaua area. [4] See The Beginnings of the United States Armys Japanese Language Training: From the Presidio of San Francisco to Camp Savage, Minnesota 1941-1942,. I Corps Commanding General was informed in detail of a major enemy operation involving several divisions and embracing the entire Corps front from Rosario to Puncan. [7][8] Over the next year, the Japanese built up the area into a major air and naval base. During mid-May American forces intercepted a Japanese landing craft near Arare that carried material for reinforcing the Japanese-held islands offshore of New Guinea that were to be attacked as part of the Wakde-Sarmi Bay Operation. US troops debark from LST-66 at Tanahmerah Bay Hollandia. Most Japanese troops never even came into contact with Allied forces, and were instead simply cut off and subjected to an effective blockade by Allied naval forces. 3, Glossary of military terms encountered in Japanese documents; No. ATIS Inventories were also prepared. [4], In early 1944, after the Huon Peninsula had been secured, the Allied South West Pacific Command determined that the area should be seized and developed into a staging post for their advance along the north coast of New Guinea into the Dutch East Indies and to the Philippines. As their number grew, and the volume of available intelligence increased, such a procedure became unnecessary, and also impossible due to the limited number of linguists available. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. 1944 battle between American and Japanese forces during World War II, "Securing New Guinea: The U.S. Navy in Operations Reckless and Persecution: 2122 April 1944", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Hollandia&oldid=1132691020, South West Pacific theatre of World War II, Battles and operations of World War II involving Australia, Battles and operations of World War II involving Japan, Battles and operations of World War II involving the United States, Amphibious operations involving the United States, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 January 2023, at 02:36. 2, Alphabetical List of 40,000 Japanese Army Officer (May 1943); No. The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison summed up the results this way: the enemy had shot his bolt; he never showed up again in these waters. 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