Contents

Top of the Ladder:
Marine Operations in the
Northern Solomons

Marines in
World War II
Commemorative Series

By Captain John C. Chapin
U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Ret)

Riflemen clad in camouflage
dungarees await the lowering of
their landing craft from George Clymer
(APA 27) for their dash to the beaches in
their amphibious assault landing on
Bougainville. (National Archives
Photo 80-G-55810)

Raiders, up to their hips in
water, man a machine gun along a jungle
trail. Department of Defense Photo
(USMC) 70764

1

Top of the Ladder:
Marine Operations in the
Northern Solomons

by Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)

Assault landings began
for the men in the
blackness of the early
hours of the morning.
On 1 November 1943,
the troops of the 3d Marine
Division were awakened before
0400, went to General Quarters at
0500, ate a tense breakfast, and
then stood by for the decisive command,
“Land the Landing Force.”
All around them the preinvasion
bombardment thundered, as the
accompanying destroyers poured
their 5-inch shells into the target
areas, and spotters in aircraft
helped to adjust the fire.

As the sun rose on a bright,
clear day, the word came at 0710
for the first LCVPs (Landing
Craft, Vehicle and Personnel) to
pull away from their transport
ships and head for the shore, a
5,000-yard run across Empress
Augusta Bay to the beaches of an
island called Bougainville.

Almost 7,500 Marines were
entering their LCVPs (with Coast
Guard crew and coxswains) for an
assault on 12 color-coded beaches.
Eleven of these extended west
from Cape Torokina for 8,000
yards to the Koromokina Lagoon.
The 12th was on Puruata Island
just offshore from the beaches.
The six beaches on the right were
assigned to Colonel George W.
McHenry’s 3d Marines and
Lieutenant Colonel Alan
Shapley’s 2d Raider Regiment
(less one battalion). The five on
the left and Puruata Island were
the objectives of Colonel Edward
A. Craig’s 9th Marines and
Lieutenant Colonel Fred D. Bean’s
3d Raider Battalion.

As the men headed for shore, 31
Marine torpedo and scout
bombers, covered by fighters,
came screaming in from their base
at Munda, bombing and strafing
to give the beaches a final plastering.
At 0726, the first wave
touched ground, four minutes
ahead of the official H-Hour. As2
the other waves came in, it was
immediately apparent that there
was serious trouble in two ways.
A high surf was tossing the
LCVPs and LCMs (Landing Craft,
Medium) around, and they were
landing on the wrong beaches,
broaching, and smashing into
each other in the big waves. By
the middle of the morning, 64
LCVPs and 22 LCMs were hulks
littering the beaches. Three of the
designated beaches had to be
abandoned as unusable.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 62751

Marine riflemen keep their heads down as they get closer to the assault beach on D-Day.

Major Donald M. Schmuck,
commanding a company in the 3d
Marines, later recalled how, in the
“mad confusion” of the beachhead,
his company was landed in
the midst of heavy gunfire in the
middle of another battalion’s zone
on the beach of Torokina. Running
his company on the double
through the other battalion and
the 2d Raiders’ zone across inlets
and swamp, Major Schmuck got
his men to the right flank of his
own battalion where they were to
have landed originally. His surprised
battalion commander,
Lieutenant Colonel Hector de
Zayas, stared at the bedraggled
new arrivals exclaiming, “Where
have you been?” Major Schmuck
pointed back to Cape Torokina
and replied, “Ask the Navy!”

As seen from a beached landing craft, these Marines are under fire while wading in the
last few yards to the beach.

The other trouble came from
the Japanese defenders. While the
9th Marines on the left landed
unopposed, the 3d Marines on the
right met fierce opposition, a
deadly crossfire of machine gun
and artillery fire. One Japanese
75mm gun, sited on Cape
Torokina, was sending heavy
enfilade fire against the incoming
landing waves. It smashed 14
boats and caused many casualties.
The boat group commander’s
craft took a direct hit, causing the
following boat waves to become
disorganized and confused.
Machine gun and rifle fire, with
90mm mortar bursts added, covered
the shoreline. Companies
landed in the wrong places.
Dense underbrush, coming right
down to the beaches, shrouded
the defenders in their 25 bunkers
and numerous rifle pits. The commanding
officer of the 1st
Battalion, 3d Marines, Major
Leonard M. “Spike” Mason, was
wounded and had to be evacuated,
but not before he shouted to
his men, “Get the hell in there and
fight!” Nearby, the executive officer
of the 2d Raider Regiment,
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph J.
McCaffery, was directing an
assault when he was severely
wounded. He died that night.

3

Department of Defense Photo (USMC)

Sgt Robert A. Owens was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor.

In spite of the chaos, the intensive
training of the Marines took
hold. Individuals and small
groups moved in to assault the
enemy, reducing bunker after
bunker, dropping grenades down
their ventilators. For an hour, the
situation was in doubt.

The fierce combat led to a wry
comment by one captain, Henry
Applington II, comparing “steak
and eggs served on white tablecloths
by stewards … and three
and a half hours and a short boat
ride later … rolling in a ditch trying
to kill another human being
with a knife.”

The devastating fire from the
75mm cannon on Cape Torokina
was finally silenced when
Sergeant Robert A. Owens, crept
up to its bunker, and although
wounded, charged in and killed
the gun crew and the occupants of
the bunker before he himself was
killed. A posthumous Medal of
Honor was awarded to him for
this heroic action which was so
crucial to the landing.

Meanwhile, on Puruata Island,
just offshore of the landing beaches,
the noise was intense; a well-dug-in
contingent of Japanese
offered stiff resistance to a reinforced
company of the 3d
Battalion, 2d Raiders. It was
midafternoon of D plus one before
the defenders in pill boxes, rifle
pits, and trees were subdued, and
then some of them got away to
fight another day. A two-pronged
sweep and mop-up by the raiders
on D plus 2 found 29 enemy dead
of the 70 Japanese estimated to
have been on that little island.
The raiders lost five killed and 32
wounded.

An hour after the landings on
the main beaches a traditional
Marine signal was flashed from
shore to the command and staff
still afloat, “Situation well in
hand.” This achievement of the
riflemen came in spite of the ineffective
prelanding fire of the
destroyers. The men in front-line
combat found that none of the 25
enemy bunkers on the right-hand
beaches had been hit. Some of the
naval bombardment had begun at
a range of over seven miles, and
the official Marine history summarized,
“The gunfire plan …
had accomplished nothing.”

Unloading supplies and getting
them in usable order on the chaotic
beaches was a major problem.
Seabees, sailors, and Marines all4
turned to the task, with 40 percent
of the entire landing force laboring
as the shore party. They sweated
6,500 tons of supplies ashore.

THE LANDING AT CAPE TOROKINA

I MARINE AMPHIBIOUS CORPS
1 NOVEMBER 1943

Yellow beaches for cargo unloading during assault phase

Simultaneously, the batteries of
the 12th Marines were struggling
to get their artillery pieces ashore
and set to fire. One battery, in support
of the 2d Raider Battalion,
waded through a lagoon to find
firing positions. Amtracs (amphibian
tractors), supplemented by
rubber boats, were used to ferry
the men and ammunition to the
beaches. The 90mm antiaircraft
guns of the 3d Defense Battalion
were also brought ashore early to
defend against the anticipated air
attacks.

The Japanese had been quick to
respond to this concentration of
American ships. Before the first
assault boats had hit the beach, a
large flight of enemy carrier
planes was on its way to attack the
Marines and their supporting
ships. New Zealand and Marine
fighters met them in the air and
the covering destroyers put up a
hail of antiaircraft fire, while the
transports and cargo ships took
evasive action. Successive Japanese
flights were beaten off; 26
enemy planes were shot down.

THE SOLOMON ISLANDS

1943

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 61899

LtGen Alexander A. Vandegrift was an
early commander of IMAC.

The men in the rifle battalions
long remembered the sight. On5
one occasion, a Marine Corsair
was about to pull the trigger on an
enemy Zeke (“Zero”) fighter set
up perfectly in the pilot’s sights
when a burst of fire from Marine
.50-caliber machine guns on the
beach, meant for the Zeke, shot
the American down. One of the
riflemen later recalled that the
Marine pilot fell into the ocean
and surfaced with a broken leg.
“We waded out to get him. He
was ticked off—mostly because he
missed the Jap.”

In spite of all these problems, the
assault battalions had, by the end
of D-Day, reached their objectives
on the Initial Beachhead Line, 600–1,000
yards inland. One enormous
unexpected obstacle, however,
had now become painfully
clear. Available maps were nearly
useless, and a large, almost
impenetrable swamp, with water
three to six feet deep, lay right
behind the beaches and made
movement inland and lateral contact
among the Marine units
impossible.

The night of D-Day was typical
for the ground troops. By 1800,
darkness had set in and the men
all knew the iron-clad rule: be in
your foxhole and stay there.
Anyone moving around out there
was a Japanese soldier trying to
infiltrate. John A. Monks, Jr.,
quoted a Marine in his book, A
Ribbon and a Star:

From seven o’clock in the
evening till dawn, with only
centipedes and lizards and
scorpions and mosquitoes
begging to get acquainted—wet,
cold, exhausted, but
unable to sleep—you lay
there and shivered and
thought and hated and
prayed. But you stayed there.
You didn’t cough, you didn’t
snore, you changed your6
position with the least
amount of noise. For it was
still great to be alive.

At sea, the transports and cargo
ships were withdrawn; there was
intelligence that enemy naval
forces were on the move.

[Sidebar (page 5):]

Major General Allen H. Turnage, USMC

Allen Hal Turnage was born in Farmville, North
Carolina, on 3 January 1891. After attending
Horner Military Academy and then the
University of North Carolina, at age 22 he was appointed
a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Sent to
Haiti, he served with the 2d Marine Regiment from
1915 to 1918, becoming a company commander in the
Haitian Gendarmerie.

A captain in 1917, Turnage did get to France where
he commanded the 5th Marine Brigade Machine Gun
Battalion. Home in 1919, he was assigned to the 5th
Marines at Quantico and became regimental adjutant
and an instructor for the first Field Officers School,
1920–22.

A major in 1927, Turnage had three years with the
Pacific fleet, and then he served with the U.S. Electoral
Mission in Nicaragua (1932). He came back to
Washington, made lieutenant colonel in 1934 and full
colonel in 1939. He was director of the Basic School at
the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and, in the spring of 1939,
he was sent to China to head Marine forces in North
China.

In summer of 1941, on the eve of the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, he returned to Headquarters in
Washington. In 1942, as a brigadier general, he commanded
the burgeoning Marine Base and Training
Center at New River, North Carolina.

When the 3d Marine Division was formed in
September 1942, he was named assistant division commander.
In the summer of 1943 Turnage was promoted
to major general and selected to head the division. He
then led the division on Bougainville and in the liberation
of Guam, the first American territory to be recaptured
from the enemy.

After the war, he was appointed Assistant
Commandant, followed by promotion to lieutenant
general and command of FMFPac (Fleet Marine Force,
Pacific). He retired 1 January 1948, and died 22 October
1971.

His awards included the Navy Cross, the Navy
Distinguished Service Medal, and the Presidential Unit
Citation (which his men received for both Guam and
Iwo Jima).

Planning the Operation

Photo courtesy of Cyril J. O’Brien

LtGen Haruyoshi Hyakutake, commanded
the Japanese forces on
Bougainville.

This kind of strong enemy reaction,
in the air and at sea, had been
expected by American staff officers
who had put in long weeks
planning the Bougainville operation.
Looking at a map of the
Solomon Islands chain, it was
obvious that this largest island
(130 by 30 miles) on the northwest
end was a prime objective to cap
the long and painful progress
northward from the springboard
of Guadalcanal at the south end.
As Guadalcanal had been the
beginning of the island chain, so
now Bougainville would mark the
top of the ladder in the Northern
Solomons. From Bougainville airfields,
American planes could
neutralize the crucial Japanese
base of Rabaul less than 250 miles
away on New Britain. From
Bougainville, the enemy could
defend his massive air-naval complex
at Rabaul. “Viewed from
either camp, the island was a priority
possession.”

There were the usual sequences
of high level planning conferences,
but, on 1 October 1943,
Admiral William F. Halsey,
Commander, South Pacific Area,
notified General Douglas MacArthur,
Supreme Allied
Commander, Southwest Pacific
Area, that the beaches on Empress
Augusta Bay in the middle of
Bougainville’s west coast would
be the main objective. This location
was selected as the point to
strike because with the main
Japanese forces 25 miles away at
the opposite north and south ends
of the island, it would be the point
of least opposition. In addition, it
provided a natural defensive
region once the Marines had landed
and their airfields had been
gouged out of the swamp and jungle.
Finally, the target area would
provide a site for a long-range
radar installation and an
advanced naval base for PT
(patrol torpedo) boats.

It promised to be a campaign in
a miserable location. And it was.
There were centipedes three fingers
wide, butterflies as big as little
birds, thick and nearly impenetrable
jungles, bottomless mangrove
swamps, crocodile infested
rivers, millions of insects, and
heavy daily torrents of rain with
enervating humidity.

Major General Allen H.
Turnage, the 3d Marine Division
commander, summarized these
horrors. “Never had men in the
Marine Corps had to fight and
maintain themselves over such
difficult terrain as was encountered
on Bougainville.”

To carry out this operation,
Lieutenant General Alexander A.
Vandegrift, Commanding General,
I Marine Amphibious Corps
(IMAC),A had in his command for
the operation:

3d Marine Division

1st Marine Parachute Regiment

2d Marine Raider Regiment

37th Infantry Division, USA (in reserve)

The Marine riflemen in these
units were supplemented by a
wide range of support: 155mm
artillery; motor transport; amphibian
tractor; and signal, medical,
special weapons, Seabee, and tank
battalions. The 3d Division had its
own engineers and pioneers in the
19th Marines and artillery in the
12th Marines.

Immediately following Vandegrift’s
operation order, practice
landing exercises were conducted
in the New Hebrides and on
Guadalcanal and Florida Islands.

TREASURY ISLANDS LANDINGS

I MARINE AMPHIBIOUS CORPS
27 OCTOBER 1943

7

The objectives assigned on
Bougainville were to seize a substantial
beachhead and build
airstrips. Then American planes
could assure final neutralization
of the Japanese airfields at Kahili,
Buka, and Bonis airfields at the
north and south ends of
Bougainville. (By 31 October,
American planes had initially rendered
the Japanese fields inoperable.)
After that would come a massive
increase in air operations
against Rabaul.

Facing the invading Marines
was a formidable enemy force dispersed
on the island. At Buin, for
instance, there were 21,800
Japanese. Responsible for the
defense was an old adversary,
Lieutenant General Haruyoshi
Hyakutake, commander of the
Seventeenth Army, and the man the
Marines had defeated at
Guadalcanal. His main force was
the 6th Division.

Working with the ground U. S.
forces were the aviators of Air
Solomons: New Zealand fighters,
Army Air Force bombers, and the
1st and 2d Marine Aircraft Wings.8
As early as 15 August fighter
planes from VMF-214 (the famous
Black Sheep squadron) had
strafed the Kahili airfield at the
southern end of Bougainville.
Now, in October, there were
repeated strikes against the
Japanese planes at other
Bougainville airfields.

At sea, Halsey had designated
Rear Admiral Theodore S.
Wilkinson as commander of Task
Force 31. Under him were Rear
Admiral Frederick C. Sherman
with the carriers (TF 38) and Rear
Admiral Aaron S. “Tip” Merrill
with the cruisers and destroyers
(TF 39). Their job was to soften up
the defenders before the landing
and to safeguard the Marine-held
beachhead.

Diversionary Landings

There was another key element
in the American plan: diversion.
To mislead the enemy on the real
objective, Bougainville, the IMAC
operations order on 15 October
directed the 8th Brigade Group of
the 3d New Zealand Division to
land on the Treasury Islands, 75
miles southeast of Empress
Augusta Bay. There, on 27 October,
the New Zealanders, under
Brigadier R. A. Row, with 1,900
Marine support troops, went
ashore on two small islands.

One was named Mono and the
other Sterling. Mono is about four
miles wide, north to south, and
seven miles long. It looks like a
pancake. Sterling, shaped like a
hook, is four miles long, narrow in
places to 300 yards, but with plenty
of room on its margins for
airstrips.

In a drizzly overcast, the 29th
NZ Battalion (Lieutenant Colonel
F. L. H. Davis) and the 36th
(Lieutenant Colonel K. B.
McKenzie-Muirson) hit Mono at
Falami Point, and the 34th (under
Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Eyre)
struck the beach of Sterling Island
off Blanche Harbor. There was
light opposition. Help for the
assault troops came from LCI
(landing craft, infantry) gunboats
which knocked out at least one
deadly Japanese 40mm twin-mount
gun and a couple of enemy
bunkers.

9

A simultaneous landing was
then made on the opposite or
north side of Mono Island at
Soanotalu. This was perhaps the
most important landing of all, for
there New Zealand soldiers,
American Seabees, and U.S. radar
specialists would set up a big
long-range radar station.

The Japanese soon reacted to
the Soanotalu landing and hurled
themselves against the perimeter.
On one occasion, 80–90 Japanese
attacked 50 New Zealanders who
waited until they saw “the whites
of their eyes.” They killed 40 of the
Japanese and dispersed the rest.

There was unexpected machine
gunfire at Sterling. One Seabee
bulldozer operator attacked the
machine gun with his big blade.
An Army corporal, a medic, said
he couldn’t believe it, “The
Seabee ran his dozer over and
over the machine gun nest until
everything was quiet…. It all
began to stink after a couple of
days.”

Outmanned, the Japanese drew
back to higher ground, were hunted
down, and killed. Surrender
was still not in their book. On 12
November, the New Zealanders
could call the Treasuries their own
with the radar station in operation.
Japanese dead totaled 205,
and the brigade took only eight
prisoners. The operation had
secured the seaside flank of
Bougainville, and very soon on
Sterling there was an airfield. It
began to operate against enemy
forces on Bougainville on
Christmas Day, 1943.

A second diversion, east of the
Treasury Islands and 45 miles
from Bougainville, took place on
Choiseul Island. Sub-Lieutenant
C. W. Seton, Royal Australian
Navy and coastwatcher on
Choiseul, said the Japanese there
appeared worried. The garrison
troops were shooting at their own
shadows, perhaps because
American and Australian patrols
had been criss-crossing the 80-miles-long
(20-miles-wide) island
since September, scouting out the
Japanese positions. There were
also some 3,500 transient enemy
troops on Choiseul, bivouacked
and waiting to be shipped the 45
miles north to Buin on
Bougainville, where there was
already a major Japanese garrison
force. Uncertainty about the
American threat of invasion
somewhere was enough to make
the Japanese, especially Vice
Admiral Jinichi Kusaka,
Commander, Southeast Area
Fleet, at Rabaul jittery. It was he
who wanted much of the Japanese
Seventeenth Army concentrated at
Buin, for, he thought, the Allies
might strike there.

General Vandegrift wanted to
be sure that the Japanese were
focused on Buin. So, on 20
October, he called in Lieutenant
Colonel Robert H. Williams, commanding
the 1st Parachute
Regiment, and Lieutenant Colonel
Victor H. Krulak, commanding its
2d Battalion. Get ashore on
Choiseul, the general ordered,
and stir up the biggest commotion
possible, “Make sure they think
the invasion has commenced….”

It was a most unusual raid, 656
men, a handful of native guides,
and an Australian coastwatcher
with a road map. The Navy took
Krulak’s reinforced battalion of
parachutists to a beach site near a
hamlet called Voza. That would
be the CP (command post) location
for the duration. The troops
slipped ashore on 28 October at
0021 and soon had all their gear
concealed in the bush.

By daylight, the Marines had
established a base on a high jungle
plateau in the Voza area. The
Japanese soon spotted the intruders,
sent a few fighter planes to
rake the beach, but that did no
harm. They did not see the four
small landing craft which Krulak
had brought along and hidden
among some mangroves with
their Navy crews on call.

10

Krulak then outlined two targets.
Eight miles south from their
CP at Voza there was a large
enemy barge base near the Vagara
River. The Australian said some
150 Japanese were there. The
other objective was an enemy outpost
in the opposite direction, 17
miles north on the Warrior River.
Then Krulak took his operations
officer, Major Tolson A. Smoak, 17
men, and a few natives as scouts,
and headed for the barge basin.
On the way, 10 unlucky Japanese
were encountered unloading a
barge. The Marines opened fire,
killing seven of them and sinking
the barge. After reconnoitering
the main objective, the barge
basin, the patrol returned to Voza.

The following morning, Krulak
sent a patrol near the barge basin
to the Vagara River for security
and then to wave in his small
landing craft bringing up his
troops to attack. But, back at
Voza, along came a flight of
American planes which shot up
the Marines and sank one of their
vital boats. Now Krulak’s attack
would have to walk to the village
of Sangigai by the Japanese barge
basin. To soften up Sangigai,
Krulak called in 26 fighters escorting
12 torpedo bombers. They
dropped two tons of bombs and it
looked for all the world like a real
invasion.

Krulak then sent a company to
attack the basin from the beach,
and another company with rifles,
machine guns, rockets, and mortars
to get behind the barge center.
It was a pincer and it worked. The
Marines attacked at 1400 on 30
October. What the battle didn’t
destroy, the Marines blew up. The
Japanese lost 72 dead; the
Marines, 4 killed and 12 wounded.

All was not so well in the other
direction. Major Warner T. Bigger,
Krulak’s executive officer, had
been sent north with 87 Marines
toward the big emplacement on
Choiseul Bay near the Warrior
River. His mission was to destroy,
first the emplacement, with
Guppy Island, just off shore and
fat with supplies, as his secondary
target.

Bigger got to the Warrior River,
but his landing craft became stuck
in the shallows, so he brought
them to a nearby cove, hid them in
the jungle, and proceeded on foot
north to Choiseul Bay. Soon his
scouts said that they were lost. It
was late in the day so Bigger
bivouacked for the night. He sent
a patrol back to the Warrior where
it found a Japanese force. Slipping
stealthily by them, the patrol got
back to Voza. This led Krulak to
call for fighter cover and PT boats
to try to get up and withdraw
Bigger.

But Bigger didn’t know he was
in trouble, and he went ahead and
blasted Guppy island with mortars,
because he couldn’t get to the
main enemy emplacement. When
Bigger and his men barely got
back to the Warrior River, there
were no rescue boats, but there
were plenty of Japanese. As the
men waited tensely, the rescue
boats came at the last moment, the
very last. Thankfully, the men
scrambled on board under enemy
fire. Then two PT boats arrived,
gun blazing, and provided cover
so Bigger’s patrol could get back
to Voza. One of the PT boats was
commanded by Lieutenant John F.
Kennedy, USN, later the President
of the United States, who took 55
Marines on board when their
escape boat sank.

CHOISEUL DIVERSION

2d PARACHUTE BATTALION
28 OCTOBER–3 NOVEMBER 1943

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, 1511
wounded, and 2 missing, but leaving
at least 143 enemy dead on
Choiseul.

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 D12
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.

JAPANESE COUNTERLANDING

LARUMA RIVER AREA
7 NOVEMBER 1943

Then, at dawn on the morning
of 7 November (D plus 6), the
Japanese struck. Four of their
destroyers put ashore 475 men
well west of the Marine perimeter,
between the Laruma River and
the Koromokina Lagoon. They
landed in 21 craft: barges, ramped
landing boats, even a motor boat,
but, to their disadvantage, along
too wide a front for coordinating
and organizing a strike in unison
and immediately. A Marine Corps
combat correspondent, Sergeant
Cyril J. O’Brien, saw the skinny
young Japanese who scampered
up the beach with 80-pound packs
two-and-a-half miles from the
Laruma to near the Koromokina,
left flank of the Marines, to join
their comrades.

They were eager enough, even
to die. A little prayer often in the
pockets of the dead voiced the
fatalistic wish that “whether I
float a corpse under the waters, or
sink beneath the grasses of the
mountainside, I willingly die for
the Emperor.”

The first few Japanese ashore
near the Laruma, however, did
not die. An antitank platoon with
the 9th Marines did not fire
because the landing craft in the
mist looked so much like their
own, even to the big white numbers
on the prow. Near
Koromokina, they seemed to be
all over the beach. One outpost
platoon, which included Private
First Class John F. Perella, 19 years
old, was cut off on the beach.
Perella swam through the surf
1,000 yards to Marine lines and
came with a Navy rescue boat and
earned a Silver Star Medal.

Lieutenant Colonel Walter
Asmuth, Jr., commanding officer
of the 3d Battalion, 9th Marines,
ordered a company attack, called
on mortars and the artillery of the
12th Marines. The Japanese were
well equipped with the so-called
knee mortars (actually grenade
launchers) and Nambu machine
guns and fought back fiercely. In
that jungle, you could not see,
hear, or smell a man five feet
away. Private First Class Challis
L. Still found a faint trail and settled
his machine gun beside it. An
ambush was easy. The lead
Japanese were close enough to
touch when Still opened up. He
killed 30 in the column; he was a
recipient of the Silver Star Medal.

Yet, the Japanese didn’t give
way. Ashore only hours, they had
already dug strong defenses.
Even a Marine double envelopment
in water, sometimes up to
the waist, did not work. By 1315,
the weakened 9th Marines company
was relieved by the 1st
Battalion, 3d Marines, coming in
from the beachhead’s right flank.

During darkness on that night
of 7 November, enemy infiltrators
got through to the hospital.
Bullets ripped through tents as
surgeons performed operations.
The doctors of the 3d Medical
Battalion, under Commander
Robert R. Callaway, were protected
by a makeshift line of cooks,
bakers, and stretcher bearers. (As
a memorable statistic, less than
one percent died of wounds on
Bougainville after having arrived
at a field hospital.)

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 12756

PFC Henry Gurke was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor.

14

The 1st Battalion was close to
the enemy, close enough to
exchange shouts. The Japanese
yelled “Moline you die” … and
the Marines made earthy references
to Premier Tojo’s diet.
Marine Captain Gordon Warner
was fluent in Japanese, so he
could quickly reply to the
Japanese, even yell believable
orders for a bayonet charge. He
received the Navy Cross for
destroying machine gun nests
with a helmet full of hand
grenades. He lost a leg in the battle.

Sergeant Herbert J. Thomas
gave his life near the Koromokina.
His platoon was forced prone by
machine gunfire, and Thomas
threw a grenade to silence the
weapon. The grenade rebounded
from jungle vines and the young
West Virginian smothered it with
his body. He posthumously was
awarded the Medal of Honor.

General Turnage saw that reinforcements
were needed. The day
before (6 November) the first echelon
of the 21st Marines had come
ashore. Now the battle command
was transferred to Lieutenant
Colonel Ernest W. Fry, Jr., of the
1st Battalion. With two companies,
he was set for a counterattack,
but not until after two
intense saturations of the Japanese
positions by mortars and five batteries
of artillery. They slammed
into a concentrated area, 300
yards wide and 600 deep, early on
8 November. Light tanks then
moved in to support the attack.

When Colonel Fry’s advancing
companies reached the area where
the Japanese had been, there was
stillness, desolation, ploughed
earth, and uprooted trees.
Combat correspondent Alvin
Josephy wrote of men hanging in
trees, “Some lay crumpled and
twisted beside their shattered
weapons, some covered by
chunks of jagged logs and jungle
earth, [by] a blasted bunker….”
In that no-man’s land, Colonel Fry
and his men walked over and
around the bodies of over 250
enemy soldiers. To complete the
annihilation of the Japanese landing
force, Marine dive bombers
from Munda bombed and strafed
the survivors on 9 November.

By now, the veteran 148th
Infantry, the first unit of the
Army’s 37th Infantry Division,
was coming ashore, seasoned in
the Munda campaign on New
Georgia. Later, to take over the
left flank of the beachhead, would
come its other infantry regiments,
the 129th on 13 November and the
145th on 19 November. The
Army’s 135th, 136th, and 140th
Field Artillery came ashore, too,
and would be invaluable in supporting
later advances on the
right flank. Major General Robert
S. Beightler, USA, was division
commander.

[Sidebar (page 13):]

37th Infantry Division

Major General Robert S. Beightler, USA

Called the “Buckeye” Division, the 37th was
among the very first American troops sent to the
Pacific at the beginning of the war.

The 37th was an outfit with a long history and many
battle streamers, dating from August 1917, when it was
formed at Camp Sheridan, Alabama. It left for overseas
in 1918, and took part in five major operations in France
before returning in 1919, and facing demobilization that
same year.

As an Ohio National Guard unit, the “Buckeye”
Division was inducted into federal service in 1940, and
by June of 1942, it was heading into the Pacific war, sent
to garrison the Fiji Islands. First combat was on New
Georgia, which included taking the critical Munda airfield.
The 37th joined the 3d Marine Division on
Bougainville, and then trained on the island for the
campaign on Luzon Island in the Philippines.

Landing with the Sixth Army at Lingayen Gulf, 9
January 1945, the 37th raced inland to Clark Field and
Fort Stotsenburg. It entered Manila, and its commander,
Major General Robert S. Beightler, accepted the
surrender of General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Next came
the capture of Baguio and liberation there of 1,300
internees at the Bilibid Prison. The division came home
for demobilization in November 1945.

Its commander, Major General Beightler, was born 21
March 1892, and enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private
in 1911. Promoted quickly to corporal, sergeant, and
then first sergeant of his company, he was then commissioned
as a second lieutenant in March 1914. After
service on the Mexican border, he took part in five
major campaigns in World War I with the famous 42d
(Rainbow) Division.

A graduate of Ohio State University, Beightler finished
first in his class in the Reserve Officers’ Course of
the Command and General Staff School, Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1926. After that he served as a
member of the War Plans Division of the War
Department General Staff (1932–36).

After World War II, he assumed command of the
Fifth Service Command at Fort Hayes, Ohio, and then
was assigned (1947) to the Personnel Board of the
Secretary of War. In 1949, he was sent to the Far East
and took over the Marianas-Bonins Command on
Guam. In 1950 he was named Deputy Governor of the
Ryukyus Command on Okinawa.

Major General Beightler received the Distinguished
Service Cross, the nation’s second highest honor, for his
leadership in the Philippine campaign, as well as a
Distinguished Service Medal for the New Georgia operation,
with an Oak Leaf Cluster as a second award for
his outstanding service on Bougainville and then on
Luzon in the Philippine Islands. He also wore the
Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Bronze Star
with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star Medal, and the
Purple Heart.

He died 12 February 1978.

The Battle for Piva Trail

BATTLE FOR PIVA TRAIL

2d RAIDER REGIMENT
8–9 NOVEMBER

Captain Conrad M. Fowler, a
company commander in the 1st
Battalion, 9th Marines, later
recalled how an attack down the
trails was expected: “They had to
come our way to meet us face-to-face.
The trails were the only way
overland through that rainforest.”
His company would be there to
meet them. He was awarded a
Silver Star Medal.

COCONUT GROVE

2d BATTALION, 21st MARINES
13–14 NOVEMBER

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 52622

MajGen Roy S. Geiger assumed command
of IMAC on 9 November 1943.

With just such a Japanese attack
anticipated, General Turnage had
dispatched a company of the 2d
Raider Regiment up the Mission
(Piva) trail on D-Day to set up a
road block—just up from the old
Buretoni Catholic Mission (still in
operation today). At first the
raiders had little business, and by
4 November elements of the 9th
Marines had arrived to join them.
The enemy, the 23rd Infantry up
from Buin, struck on 7 November.
Their attack was timed to coincide15
with the Koromokina landings.
The raiders held, but “the woods
were full of Japs, dead…. The
most we had to do was bury
them.”

At this point General Turnage
told Colonel Edward A. Craig,
commanding officer of the 9th
Marines, to clear the way ahead
and advance to the junction of the
Piva and Numa-Numa trails.
That mission Craig gave to the 2d
Raider Regiment under Lieutenant
Colonel Alan B. Shapley. The
actual attack would be led by
Lieutenant Colonel Fred D. Beans,
3d Raider Battalion, just in from
Puruata Island and would include
elements of the 9th Marines and
weapons companies.

The Japanese didn’t wait for a
Marine attack; they came in on 516
November and threatened to
overrun the trailblock. It soon
became a matter of brutal small
encounters, and battles raged for
five days. They were many brave
acts. Privates First Class Henry
Gurke and Donald G. Probst, with
an automatic weapon, were about
to be overwhelmed. A grenade
plopped in the foxhole between
them. To save the critical position
and his companion, Gurke thrust
Probst aside and threw himself on
the grenade and died. He was
awarded the Medal of Honor
posthumously; Probst, the Silver
Star Medal.

Mortars and artillery dueled
from each side. The Japanese
would creep right next to the
Marine positions for safety.
Marines had to call friendly fire
almost into their laps. On the narrow
trail, men often had to expose
themselves. The Japanese got the
worst of it, for suddenly, shortly
after noon on 9 November the
enemy resistance crumbled. By
1500, the junction of the Piva and
Numa-Numa trails was reached
and secured. Some 550 Japanese
died. There were 19 Marines dead
and 32 wounded.

To consolidate the hard-won
position, Marine torpedo bombers
from Munda blasted the surrounding17
area on 10 November.
This allowed two battalions of the
9th Marines to settle into good
defensive positions along the
Numa-Numa Trail with, as usual,
“aggressive” patrols immediately
fanning out. The battle for the
Piva Trail had ended victoriously.

The key logistical element in
this engagement—and nearly all
others on Bougainville—was the
amtrac. There were vast areas
where tanks and half-tracks,
much less trucks, simply could
not negotiate the bottomless
swamps, omnipresent streams,
and viscous mud from the daily
rains. The amtracs proved amazingly
flexible; they moved men,
ammunition, rations, water,
barbed wire, and even radio jeeps
to the front lines where they were
most needed. Heading back, they
evacuated the wounded to reach
the desperately needed medical
centers in the rear.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 65162

A bloody encounter on 14 November at the junction of the Numa-Numa and Piva
Trails: Marine infantrymen had been stopped by well dug-in and camouflaged enemy
troops. Five Marine tanks rushed up and attacked on a 250-yard front through the
jungle.

Other developments came at
this juncture in the campaign. As
noted, the 37th Infantry Division
was fed into the perimeter. At the
top of the command echelon
Major General Roy S. Geiger
relieved Vandegrift as Commanding
General, IMAC, on 9
November and took charge of
Marine and Army units in the
campaign from an advanced command
post on Bougainville.

The Seabees and Marine engineers
were hard at work now.
Operating dangerously 1,500
yards ahead of the front lines,
guarded by a strong combat
patrol, they managed to cut two
5,000-foot survey lanes east to
west across the front of the
perimeter.

[Sidebar (page 16):]

War Dogs

In an interview with Captain Wilcie O’Bannon long
after the war, Captain John Monks, Jr., gained an
insight into one of the least known aspects of Marine
tactics. It was an added asset that the official Marine
history called “invaluable”: war dogs. O’Bannon, the
first patrol leader to have them, related:

One dog was a German Shepherd
female, the other was a Doberman
male, and they had three men with
them. The third man handled the dogs
all the time in the platoon area prior to
our going on patrol—petting the dogs,
talking to them, and being nice to
them. The other two handlers—one
would go to the head of the column
and one would go to the rear with the
female messenger dog…. If the dog in
front received enemy fire and got
away, he could either come back to me
or circle to the back of the column. If I
needed to send a message I would
write it, give it to the handler, and he
would pin it on the dog’s collar. He
would clap his hands and say,
“Report,” and the dog would be off
like a gunshot to go to the third man in
the rear who had handled him before
the patrol.

The war dogs proved very versatile. They ran telephone
wire, detected ambushes, smelled out enemy
patrols, and even a few machine gun nests. The dog got
GI chow, slept on nice mats and straw, and in mud-filled
foxholes. First Lieutenant Clyde Henderson with
one of the dog platoons recalled how the speed and
intelligence of dogs was crucial in light of the abominable
communications in the jungle, where sometimes
communications equipment was not much better than
yelling.

Under such circumstances, a German Shepherd
named “Caesar” made the difference between life and
death for at least one company. With all wires cut and
no communication, Caesar got through repeatedly to
the battalion command post and returned to the lines.
One Japanese rifle wound didn’t stop him, but a second
had Caesar returned to the rear on a stretcher. A memorable
letter from Commandant Thomas B. Holcomb
described how Caesar another time had saved the life
of a Marine when the dog attacked a Japanese about to
throw a hand grenade. The Commandant also cited in
letters four other dogs for their actions on Bougainville.

Sergeant William O. McDaniel, in the 9th Marines,
remembered, “One night, one of the dogs growled and
Slim Livesay, a squad leader from Montana, shot and
hit a Jap right between the eyes. We found the Jap the
next morning, three feet in front of the hole.”

One Marine said that what Marines liked most was
the security dogs gave at night and the rare chance to
sleep in peace. No enemy would slip through the lines
with a dog on guard.

There were 52 men and 36 dogs in the K-9 company
on Bougainville.

The Coconut Grove Battle

On D plus 10, 11 November, a
new operation order was issued.
“Continue the attack with the 3d
Marine Division on the right (east)
and the 37th Infantry Division on
the left (west).” An Army-Marine
artillery group was assembled
under IMAC control to provide
massed fire, and Marine air would
be on call for close support.

The first objective in the
renewed push was to seize control
of the critical junction of the
Numa-Numa Trail and the East-West
trail. On 13 November a
company of the 21st Marines led
off the advance at 0800. At 1100 it
was ambushed by a “sizeable”
enemy force concealed in a
coconut palm grove near the trail
junction. The Japanese had won
the race to the crossroads, and the
situation for the lead Marine company
soon became critical. The 2d
Battalion commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Eustace R. Smoak, sent up
his executive officer, Major Glenn
Fissell, with 12th Marines’
artillery observers. They reported
the situation as all bad. Then
Major Fissell was killed. Disdaining
flank security, Smoak
moved closer to the fight and fed
in reinforcing companies. (By
now a lateral road across the front
of the perimeter had been built.)

The next day tanks were
brought up and artillery registered
around the battalion. Smoak
also called in 18 torpedo bombers.
The reorganized riflemen lunged
forward again in a renewed
attack. The tanks proved an ineffective
disaster, causing chaos at
one point by firing on fellow
Marines on their flank and running
over several of their own
men. Nevertheless, the Japanese
positions were overrun by the end
of the day, with the enemy survivors
driven off into a swamp.
The Marines now commanded the
junction of the two vital trails. As
a result, the entire beachhead was
able to spring forward 1,000 to
1,500 yards, reaching Inland
Defense Line D, 5,000 yards from
the beach.

Photo courtesy of Cyril J. O’Brien.

“Marine Drive” constructed by the 53d Naval Construction Battalion enabled casualties
to be sent to medical facilities in the rear and supplies to be brought forward easily.

One important result of this
advance was that the two main
airstrips could now be built. The
airfields would be the work of the18
Seabees. The 25th, 53d, and 71st
Naval Construction Battalions
(“Seabees”) had landed on D-Day
with the assault waves of the 3d
Marine Division—to get ready at
once to build roads, airfields, and
camp areas. (They had a fighter
strip operating at Torokina by
December). Always close to
Marines, the Seabees earned their
merit in the eyes of the
Leathernecks. Often Marines had
to clear the way with fire so a
Seabee could do his work. Many
would recall the bold Seabee bulldozer
driver covering a sputtering
machine gun nest with his blade.
Marines on the Piva Trail later
saw another determined bulldozer
operator filling in holes in the
tarmac of his burgeoning bomber
strip as fast as Japanese artillery
could tear it up. Any Marine who
returned from the dismal swamps
toward the beach would retain the
wonderment of the “Marine
Drive.” It was a two-lane asphalt
highway, complete with wide
shoulders and drainage ditches. It
lay across jungle so dense that the
tired men had had to hack their
way through it only a week or so
before.

Meanwhile, back on the beach,
the U.S. Navy had been busy
pouring in supplies and men. By
D plus 12 it had landed more than
23,000 cargo tons and nearly
34,000 men. Marine fighters overhead
provided continuous cover
from Japanese air attacks. The
Marine 3d Defense Battalion was
set up with long-range radar and
its antiaircraft guns to give further
protection. (This battalion also
had long-range 155mm guns that
pounded Japanese attacks against
the perimeter.)

20

By now, the 37th Infantry
Division on the left was on firm
ground, facing scattered opposition,
and able to make substantial
advances. It was very different
for the 3d Marine Division on the
right. Lagoons and swamps were
everywhere. The riflemen were in
isolated, individual positions, little
islands of men perched in what
they sarcastically called “dry
swamps,” This meant the water
and/or slimy mud was only shoe-top
deep, rather than up to their
knees or waists, as it was all
around them. This nightmare
kind of terrain, combined with
heavy, daily, drenching rains, precluded
digging foxholes. So their
machine guns had to be lashed to
tree trunks, while the men huddled
miserably in the water and
mud. They carried little in their
packs, except that a variety of pills
was essential to stay in fighting
shape in their oppressive, bug-infested
environment: salt tablets,
sulfa powder, aspirin, iodine, vitamins,
atabrine tablets (for supressing
malaria), and insect repellent.

Colonel Frazer West, who at
Bougainville commanded a company
in the 9th Marines, was
interviewed by Monks 45 years
later. He still remembered painfully
what constantly living in the
slimy, swamp water did to the
Marines: “With almost no change
of clothing, sand rubbing against
the skin, stifling heat, and constant
immersion in water, jungle
rot was a pervasive problem. Men
got it on their scalps, under their
arms, in their genital areas, just all
over. It was a miserable, affliction,
and in combat there was very little
that could be done to alleviate it.
The only thing you could do was
with the jungle ulcers. I’d get the
corpsman to light a match on a
razor blade, split the ulcer open,
and squeeze sulfanilamide powder
in it. I must have had at one
time 30 jungle ulcers on me. This
was fairly typical.” Corpsmen
painted many Marines with skin
infections with tincture of merthiolate
or a potassium permanganate
solution so that they
looked like the Picts of long ago
who went into battle with their
bodies daubed with blue woad.

The Marines who had survived
the first two weeks of the campaign
were by now battlewise.
They intuitively carried out their
platoon tactics in jungle fighting
whether in offense or defense.
They understood their enemy’s
tactics. And all signs indicated
that they were winning.

[Sidebar (page 18):]

Navajo Code Talkers

Marines who heard the urgent combat messages
said Navajo sounded sometimes like gurgling
water. Whatever the sound, the ancient
tongue of an ancient warrior clan confused the
Japanese. The Navajo codetalkers were busily engaged
on Bougainville, and had already proved their worth
on Guadalcanal. The Japanese could never fathom a
language committed to sounds.

Originally there were many skeptics who disdained
the use of the Navajo language as infeasible. Technical
Sergeant Philip Johnston, who originally recommended
the use of Navajo talkers as a means of safe voice transmissions
in combat, convinced a hardheaded colonel by
a two-minute Navajo dispatch. Encoding and decoding,
the colonel then admitted, would have engaged his
team well over an hour.

When the chips were down, time was short, and the
message was urgent, Navajos saved the day. Only
Indians could talk directly into the radio “mike” without
concern for security. They would read the message
in English, absorb it mentally, then deliver the words in
their native tongue—direct, uncoded, and quickly. You
couldn’t fault the Japanese, even other Navajos who
weren’t codetalkers, couldn’t understand the codetalkers’
transmissions because they were in a code within
the Navajo language.

[Sidebar (page 19):]

‘Corpsman!’

Less than one percent of battle casualties on
Bougainville died of wounds after being brought
to a field hospital, and during 50 operations conducted
as the battle of the Koromokina raged and bullets
whipped through surgeons’ tents, not a patient was
lost.

Painting by Kerr Eby in the Marine Corps Art Collection

Those facts reflect the skill and dedication of the
corpsmen, surgeons, and litter bearers who performed
in an environment of enormous difficultly. Throughout
the fight for the perimeter, the field hospitals were
shelled and shaken by bomb blasts, even while surgical
operations were being conducted.

Every day there was rain and mud and surgeons
practiced their craft with mud to their shoe laces.
Corpsmen were shot as they treated the wounded right
at the battle scene; others were shot as the Japanese
ignored the International Red Cross emblem for ambulances
and aid stations.

Bougainville was the first time in combat for the
corpsmen assigned to the 3d Marine Division. Two surgeons
were with each battalion and, as in all other battles,
a corpsman was with each platoon. Aid stations
were as close as 30–50 yards behind the lines. The men
from the division band were the litter bearers, always
on the biting edge of combat.

Many young Marines were not aware until combat
just how close they would be to these corpsmen who
wore the Marine uniform, and who would undergo
every hardship and trial of the man on the line. The
corpsman’s job required no commands; he was simply
always there to patch up the wounded Marine enough
to have him survive and get to a field hospital.

Naval officers seldom had command over the corpsman.
He was responsible directly to the platoon, company,
and battalion to which he was assigned.

Ashore on D-Day with the invading troops,
Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class Andrew Bernard later
remembered setting up his 3d Marines regimental aid
station, just inland in the muck off the beach beside the
“C” Medical Field Hospital. Later, as action intensified,
Bernard saw 15 to 20 wounded Marines waiting at the
hospital for care, and commented, “this was when I
noticed Dr. Duncan Shepherd…. The flaps of the hospital
tent went open, and there was Dr. Shepherd operating
away, so calm, so brave, so courageous—as
though he was back in the Mayo Clinic, where he had
trained.”

On 7 December, the Japanese attacked around the
Koromokina. The official history of the 3d Marine
Division described the scene:

The division hospital, situated near the
beach, was subjected to daily air raids, and
twice to artillery shelling…. Company E of
the 3d Medical Battalion, which was the division
hospital under Commander R. R.
Callaway, USN, proved that delicate work
could be carried on even in combat. During the
battle the field hospital was attacked, bullets
ripped through the protecting tent, seriously
wounding a pharmacist’s mate.

Painting by Franklin Boggs in Men Without Guns (Philadelphia:/The
Blakiston Company, 1945)

Hellzapoppin Ridge was the most intense and miserable
of the battles for the corpsmen of Bougainville,
according to Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Carroll
Garnett. He and three other corpsmen were assigned to
the forward aid station located at the top of that bloody
ridge. The two battalion surgeons were considered
indispensable and discouraged from taking undue
risks. Regardless, Assistant Battalion Surgeon
Lieutenant Edmond A. Utkewicz, USNR, insisted on
joining the corpsmen at the forward station and
remained there throughout the entire battle. The doctor
and his four assistants were often in the open, exposed
to fire, and showered with the dust thrown up by mortar
explosions.

The corpsmen’s routine was: stop the bleeding,
apply sulfa powder and battle dressing, shoot syrette of
morphine, and administer plasma. The regular aid station
was located at the bottom of the ridge where the
battalion surgeon, Lieutenant Commander Horace L.
Wolf, USNR, checked the wounded again, before sending
them off in an ambulance, if available, to a better
equipped station or a field hospital.

Corpsmen (and Marines) were in deadly peril atop
the ridge. Corpsman John A. Wetteland described volunteers
bringing in a wounded paramarine who was
still breathing when he and the medical team were hit
anew by a shell. One corpsman was killed, another
badly wounded, and Wetteland was badly mauled by
mortar fragments, though he tried, he said, “to bandage
myself.”

Dr. Wolf later painted a grim picture of the taut circumstances
under which the medics worked:

Several of my brave corpsmen were killed in
this action. The regimental band musicians
were the litter bearers. I still remember the terrible
odor of our dead in the tropical heat. The
smell pinched one’s nostrils and clung to clothing….
During combat in the swamps, about
all one could do to try to purify water to drink
was to put two drops of iodine solution in a
canteen. Night was the worst, when we could
not evacuate our sick and wounded. But, if one
could get a ride to the airstrip on the jeep
ambulance to put the sick and wounded on
evacuation planes, one could see a female
(Navy or Army nurses) for the first time in
many months.

Piva Forks Battle

The lull after the Coconut
Grove fight did not last long. On
18 November, the usual flurry of
patrols soon brought back information
that the Japanese had set
up a road block on both the22
Numa-Numa Trail and the East-West
Trail.

National Archives Photo 111–5C-190032

The 155mm guns of the Marine 3d Defense Battalion provided firepower in support of Marine riflemen holding the Torokina
perimeter.

To strike the Numa-Numa position,
the 3d Marines sent in its 3d
Battalion (Lieutenant Colonel
Ralph M. King), to lead the attack.
It hit the Japanese flanks, routed
them, and set up its own road
block on 19 November.

The 2d Battalion of the 3d
Marines immediately went after
the Japanese block on the East-West
Trail between the two forks
of the Piva River. After seizing
that position, the next objective
was a 400-foot ridge that commanded
the whole area—and, in
fact, provided a view all the way
to Empress Augusta Bay. (As the
first high ground the Marines had
found, it would clearly produce a
valuable observation post for
directing the artillery fire of the
12th Marines.)

PIVA ACTION
NOV 1943

Lieutenant Colonel Hector de
Zayas, commanding the battalion,
summoned one of his company
commanders and gave a terse
order, “I want you to take it.”
Thus a patrol under First
Lieutenant Steve J. Cibik was
immediately sent to occupy it.
This began a four-day epic, 20–23
November. The Marines got to
the top, realized the importance of
the vantage point to the Japanese,
dug in defensive positions, and
got ready for the enemy counterattacks
that were sure to come.
And they came, and came, and
came. There were “fanatical
attempts by the Japanese to reoccupy
the position” in the form of
“wild charges that sometimes carried
the Japanese to within a few
feet of their foxholes on the crest
of the ridge.” Cibik called in
Marine artillery bursts within 50
yards of his men. The Marines
held and were finally relieved,
exhausted but proud. Cibik was
awarded a Silver Star Medal, and
the hill was always known thereafter
as “Cibik Ridge.”

While the firestorm roared
where Cibik stood, the 3d Marines
were pursuing its mission of driving
the Japanese from the first
and nearest of Piva’s forks. The
2d Battalion caught up with Cibik,
and Lieutenant Colonel de Zayas
moved it out down the reverse
slope of Cibik Ridge. The
Japanese struck hard on 21
November and de Zayas pulled
back. Then, in true textbook fashion,
the Japanese followed right
behind him. The Marines were
ready, machine guns in place.
One of them killed 74 out of 75 of
the enemy attackers within 20–30
yards of the gun.

The 3d Marines was supported
by the 9th, and 21st Marines, and
the raiders, while the 37th
Infantry Division provided roadblocks,
patrols, and flank security.
Support was also provided by the
Army’s heavy artillery, the 12th
Marines, and the defense battalions.
All the troops were now be
entering a new phase of the campaign,
during which the fight
would be more for the hills than
for the trails.

Reconnaissance patrols provided
a good idea of what was out
there, but they also discovered
that the enemy was not alert as he
could or should be. A Marine rifle
company, for instance, came upon
a clearing where the Japanese
were acting as if no war was on—the
troops were lounging, kibitzing,
drinking beer. The Marine
mortars tore them apart. Another
patrol waited until the occupants
of a bivouac lined up for chow
before cutting them down with23
mortars in a pandemonium of
pots, pans, and tea kettles. (Jungle
combat had taught the Marines
the wisdom of General Turnage’s
order: Marines go nowhere without
a weapon!)

National Archives Photo 127-N-67228B

Marine communicators had the difficult task of stringing wire in dense jungle terrain
while remaining wary of the enemy.

The various, successive objectives
for the Marine and Army
riflemen were codenamed using
the then-current phonetic alphabet:
Dog (reached 15 November),
Easy (reached 20 November,
except for the 9th Marines, slowed
by an impassable swamp), Fox
(finally reached by the Marines on
28 November) and How (part of it
reached by the Army on 23
November since it encountered
“no opposition,” and the remainder
as a goal for the Marines).
Thereafter, the Marines were to
press on to the Item and Jig objectives
“on orders from Corps
Headquarters.”

One account makes clear the
overwhelming difficulties facing
the Marine battalions: “water
slimy and often waist deep, sometimes
to the arm pits … tangles of
thorny vines that inflicted painful
wounds … men slept setting up in
the water … sultry heat and stinking
muck.”

In spite of this, elaborate plans
were made to continue the attack
from west to east. The “strongly
entrenched” Japanese defenses,
with 1,200–1,500 men, were oriented
to repel an assault from the
south. Accordingly, the artillery
observers on Cibik Ridge registered
their fire on 23 November, in
preparation for a thrust by two
battalions of the 3d Marines to try
to advance 800 yards beyond the
east fork of the Piva River. All
available tanks and supporting
weapons were moved forward.
Marine engineers from the 19th
Marines joined Seabees under
enemy fire in throwing bridges
across the Piva River.

On 23 November, as the night
fell like a heavy curtain, seven
battalions of artillery lined up,
some almost hub-to-hub. There
were the Army’s 155s, 105s, mortars,
90mm AA; and the same
array of the 12th Marines’ cannons,
plus 44 machine guns and
even a few Hotchkiss pieces taken
from the enemy.

The attack in the morning
began with the barrage at 0835, 24
November, Thanksgiving Day; a
shuddering burst of flame and
thunder, possibly the heaviest
such barrage a Marine operation
had ever before placed on a target.
The shells, 5,600 rounds of them,
descended on a narrow 800-foot
square box of rain forest, only 100
yards from the Marines, so close
that shell splinters and concussion
snapped twigs off bushes around
them.

BATTLE OF PIVA FORKS

FIRST PHASE
19–20 NOVEMBER

Yet, as the two assault battalions
moved out, the redoubtable
Japanese 23d Infantry crashed in
with their own heavy barrage.
Their shells left Marines dead,
bleeding, and some drowned in
the murky Piva River, “the heaviest
casualties of the campaign.24
Twice the enemy fire walked up
and down the attacking Marines
with great accuracy.” But the 3d
Marines came on with a juggernaut
of tanks, flame throwers, and
machine gun, mortar, and rifle
fire.

BATTLE OF PIVA FORKS

FINAL PHASE
21–25 NOVEMBER

Where the Army-Marine
artillery barrages fell, however,
there was desolation. Major
Schmuck, a company commander
in one of the assault battalions,
later remembered:

For 500 yards, the Marines
moved in a macabre world of
splintered trees and burned-out
brush. The very earth
was a churned mass of mud
and human bodies. The
filthy, stinking streams were
cesspools of blasted corpses.
Over all hung the stench of
decaying flesh and powder
and smoke which revolted
[even] the toughest. The first
line of strong points with
their grisly occupants was
overrun and the 500-yard
phase line was reached.

The Japanese were not
through. As the Marines
moved forward a Nambu
machine gun stuttered and
the enemy artillery roared,
raking the Marine line. A
Japanese counterattack hit
the Marines’ left flank. It
was hand-to-hand and tree-to-tree.
One company alone
suffered 50 casualties,
including all its officers. Still
the Marines drove forward,
finally halting 1,150 yards
from their jump-off point,
where resistance suddenly
ended. The Japanese 23d
Infantry had been totally
destroyed, with 1,107 men
dead on the field. The
Marines had incurred 115
dead and wounded. The battle
for Piva Forks had ended
with a dramatic, hard fought
victory which had “broken
the back of organized enemy
resistance.”

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 78796

To enable a forward observer to adjust
artillery fire, these 3d Defense Battalion
Marines used a jury-rigged hoist to lift
him to the top of a banyan tree.

There was one final flourish. It
had been, after all, Thanksgiving
Day, and a tradition had to be
observed. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt had decreed that all servicemen
should get turkey—one
way or another. Out there on the
line the men got it by “the other.”
Yet, few Marines of that era would
give the Old Corps bad marks for
hot chow. If they could get it to
the frontline troops, they would.
A Marine recalled, “The carrying
parties did get the turkey to them.
Nature won, though, the turkey
had spoiled.” Another man was
watching the big birds imbedded25
in rice in five gallon containers,
“much like home except for baseball
and apple pie.” For some,
however, just before the turkey
was served, the word came down,
“Prepare to move out!” Those
men got their turkey and ate it on
the trail … on the way to a new
engagement, Hand Grenade Hill.

National Archives Photo 127-N-69394

Concealed in the heavy jungle growth, these men of Company E, 2d Battalion, 21st
Marines, guard a Numa-Numa Trail position in the swamp below Grenade Hill.

Before that could be assaulted,
there was a reorganization on D
plus 24. The beat-up 3d Marines
was beefed up by the 9th Marines
and the 2d Raiders. Since D-Day a
total of 2,014 Japanese dead had
been counted, but “total enemy
casualties must have been at least
three times that figure.” And as a
portent for the future use of
Bougainville as a base for massive
air strikes against the Japanese,
U.S. planes were now able to use
the airstrip right by the Torokina
beachhead. With the enemy at
last driven east of the Torokina
River, Marines now occupied the
high ground which controlled the
site of the forthcoming Piva
bomber airstrip.

Hand Grenade Hill

The lead for the next assault on
25 November was given to the
fresh troops of Lieutenant Colonel
Carey A. Randall, who had just
taken over the 1st Battalion, 9th
Marines. They were joined by the
2d Raider Battalion under Major
Richard T. Washburn. Randall
could almost see his next objective
from the prime high ground of
Cibik Ridge. Just ahead rose
another knoll, like the ridge it
would be the devil to take, for the
Japanese would hold it like a
fortress. It would soon be called
“Hand Grenade Hill” for good
reason. Two of Randall’s companies
went at it with Washburn’s
raiders. But the Japanese gave a
good account of themselves.
Some 70 of them slowed the
Marine attack, but one company
got close to the top. The Marines
were from five to 50 yards away
from the Japanese, battling with
small arms, automatic weapons,
and hand grenades. The enemy
resisted fiercely, and the Marines
were thrown back by a shower of
hand grenades. One Marine
observed that the hill must been
the grenade storehouse for the
entire Solomon Islands.

It was on Hand Grenade Hill
that Lieutenant Howell T. Heflin,
big, memorable, one of Alabama’s
favorites, son of a Methodist minister,
snatched up a BAR
(Browning Automatic Rifle) and
sprayed the Japanese positions.
He pried open a way for his platoon
almost to the hilltop, but
could not hold there. He was
awarded the Silver Star Medal,
and later he went on to become
Chief Justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court and then the
senior U.S. Senator from Alabama.

National Archives Photo 127-N-71380

Evacuation of the wounded was always difficult. These men are carrying out a casualty
from the fighting on Hill 1000.

At the end of the action-filled
day, the Marines were stalled. In
the morning of 26 November surprised
scouts found that the
Japanese had pulled out in the
darkness. Now all of the wet,
smelly, churned-up terrain around
the Piva Forks, including the26
strategic ridgeline blocking the
East-West Trail, was in Marine
hands.

There now occurred a shuffling
of units which resulted in the following
line-up: 148th and 129th
Infantry Regiments on line in the
37th Division sector on the left of
the perimeter. 9th Marines, 21st
Marines, and 3d Marines, running
from left to right, in the Marine
sector.

The Koiari Raid

As a kind of final security measure,
IMAC was concerned about
a last ridge of hills, some 2,000
yards to the front, and really still
dominating too much of the
perimeter. Accordingly, on 28
November, General Geiger
ordered an advance to reach
Inland Defense Line Fox. As a preliminary,
to protect this general
advance from a surprise Japanese
attack on the far right flank, a raid
was planned to detect any enemy
troop movements, destroy their
supplies, and disrupt their communications
at a place called
Koiari, 10 miles down the coast
from Cape Torokina. The 1st
Parachute Battalion, just in from
Vella Levella under Major Richard
Fagan, drew the assignment, with
a company of the 3d Raider
Battalion attached. While it had
never made a jump in combat, the
parachute battalion had been seasoned
in the Guadalcanal campaign.

Carried by a U.S. Navy landing
craft, the men in the raid were put
ashore at 0400, 29 November,
almost in the middle of a Japanese
supply dump. Total surprise all
around! The Marines hastily dug
in, while the enemy responded
quickly with a “furious hail” of
mortar fire, meanwhile lashing
the beachhead with machine gun
and rifle fire. Then came the
Japanese attacks, and Marine
casualties mounted “alarmingly.”
They would have been worse
except for a protective curtain of
fire from the 155mm guns of the
3d Defense Battalion back at Cape
Torokina. With an estimated 1,200
enemy pressing in on the Marines,
it was painfully clear that the raiding
group faced disaster. Two
attempts to extricate them by their
landing craft were halted by
heavy Japanese artillery fire.
Now the Marines had their backs
to the sea and were almost out of
ammunition. Then, about 1800,
three U.S. destroyers raced in
close to the beach, firing all guns.
They had come in response to a
frantic radio signal from IMAC,
where the group’s perilous situation
was well understood. Now a
wall of shell fire from the destroyers
and the 155s allowed two rescue
craft to dash for the beach and
lift off the raiding group safely.
With none of the original objectives
achieved, the raid had been a
costly failure, even though it had
left at least 145 Japanese dead.

Hellzapoppin Ridge

Now the action shifted to the
final targets of the 3d Marine
Division: that mass of hills 2,000
yards away. Once captured, they
would block the East-West Trail
where it crossed the Torokina
River, and they would greatly
strengthen the Final Inland
Defense Line that was the
Marines’ ultimate objective. A
supply base, called Evansville,
was built up for the attack in the
rear of Hill 600 for the forthcoming
attacks.

The 1st Marine Parachute
Regiment, under Lieutenant
Colonel Robert H. Williams, was
informed, two days after its
arrival on Bougainville, that
General Turnage had assigned it
to occupy those hills which IMAC
felt still dominated much of the
Marine ground. That ridgeline
included Hill 1000 with its spur
soon to be called Hellzapoppin
Ridge (named after “Hellzapoppin,”
a long-running Broadway
show), Hill 600, and Hill 600A. To27
take the terrain Williams got the
support of elements of the 3d, 9th,
and 21st Marines (which had
established on 27 November its
own independent outpost on Hill
600). By 5 December, the 1st
Parachute Regiment had won a
general outpost line that stretched
from Hill 1000 to the junction of
the East-West Trail and the
Torokina River.

Then on 7 December, Major
Robert T. Vance on Hill 1000 with
his 3d Parachute Battalion walked
the ridge spine to locate enemy
positions on the adjacent spur that
had been abandoned. The spur
was fortified by nature: matted
jungle for concealment, gullies to
impair passage, steep slopes to
discourage everything. That particular
hump, which would get
the apt name of Hellzapoppin
Ridge, was some 280 feet high, 40
feet across at the top, and 650 feet
long, an ideal position for overall
defense.

Jumping off from Hill 1000 on
the morning of 9 December to
occupy the spur, Vance’s men
were hit by a fusillade of fire. The
Japanese had come back, 235 of
them of the 23d Infantry. The parachutists
attacked again and again,
without success. Artillery fire was
called in, but the Japanese found
protective concealment on the
reverse slopes. Marine shells burst
high in the banyan trees, up and
away from the dug-in enemy. As a
result, the parachutists were hit
hard. “Ill-equipped and under-strength,”
they were pulled back
on 10 December to Hill 1000. Two
battalions of the 21st Marines,
with a battalion of the 9th Marines
guarding their left flank, continued
the attack. It would go on for
six gruelling days.

Scrambling up the slopes, the
new attacking Marines would
pass the bodies of the parachutists.
John W. Yager, a first lieutenant
in the 21st recalled, “The
para-Marines made the first contact
and had left their dead there.
After a few days, they had become
very unpleasant reminders of
what faced us as we crawled forward,
in many instances right
next to them.”

Sergeant John F. Pelletier, also
in the 21st, was a lead scout.
Trying to cross the ridge spine
over to the Hellzapoppin spur, he
found dead paratroopers all over
the hill. There were dead Japanese
soldiers still hanging from trees,
and it seemed to him that no
Marine had been able to cross to
the crest and live to tell about it.

HELLZAPOPPIN RIDGE

NEARING THE END
6–18 DECEMBER

Pelletier described what happened
next:

The next morning Sergeant
Oliver [my squad leader]
told me to advance down the
ridge as we were going to
secure the point. That point
was to become our most costly
battle. We moved down
the center until we were
within 20 feet of the point.
The Japs hit us with machine
gun, rifle, and mortar fire.
They popped out of spider
holes. We were in a horseshoe-shaped
ambush. We
were firing as fast as we
could when Sergeant Oliver
pulled me back. He gave me
the order to pull back up the
ridge. He didn’t make it.

When artillery fire proved ineffective
in battering the Japanese
so deeply dug in on Hellzapoppin
Ridge, Geiger called on 13
December for air attacks. Six
Marine planes had just landed at
the newly completed Torokina
airstrip. They came in with 100-pound
bombs, guided to their targets
by smoke shells beyond the
Marine lines. But the Japanese
were close, very close. Dozens of
the bombs were dropped 75 yards
from the Marines. With additional
planes, there were four bombing
and strafing strikes over several
days. A Marine on the ground
never forgot the bombers roaring
in right over the brush, the ridge,
and the heads of the Marines to
drop their load, “It seemed right
on top of us.” (This delivery technique
was necessary to put the
bombs on the reverse slope
among the Japanese.)

EXPANSION OF THE BEACHHEAD

I MARINE AMPHIBIOUS CORPS
1 NOVEMBER–15 DECEMBER 1943

Helping to control these early
strikes and achieve pinpoint accuracy
was Lieutenant Colonel
William K. Pottinger, G-3
(Operations Officer) of the
Forward Echelon, 1st Marine
Aircraft Wing. He had taken a
radio out of a grounded plane,
moved to the frontlines, and
helped control the attacking
Marine planes on the spot. (This28
technique was an improvised
forerunner of the finely tuned procedures
that Marine dive bombers
would use later to achieve
remarkable results in close air
support of ground troops.)

The 3d Marine Division’s history
was pithy in its evaluation, “It
was the air attacks which proved
to be the most effective factor in
the taking of the ridge … the most
successful examples of close air
support thus far in the Pacific
War.”

Geiger wasn’t through. He had
a battery of the Army’s 155mm
howitzers moved by landing craft
to new firing positions near the
mouth of the Torokina River. Now
the artillery could pour it on the
enemy positions on the reverse
slopes.

In one of the daily Marine
assaults, one company went up
the ridge for two attacks against
Japanese who would jump into
holes they had dug on the reverse
slope to escape bombardment.
The Japanese finally were tricked
when another company, relieving
the first one, jumped into the
enemy foxholes before their rightful
owners. It cost the Japanese
heavily to try to return.

In a final assault on 18
December, the two battalions of
the 21st moved from Hill 1000 to
the spur in a pincer and double
envelopment. But the artillery and
bombs had done their work. The
Japanese and their fortress were
shattered. Stunned defenders
were easily eliminated.

Patrick O’Sheel, a Marine combat
correspondent, summed up
the bitter battle, “No one knows
how many Japs were killed. Some
30 bodies were found. Another
dozen might have been put
together from arms, legs, and torsos.”
The 21st suffered 12 killed
and 23 wounded.

With Hellzapoppin finally
behind them, Marines could count
what blessings they could find
and recount how rotten their holidays
were. There had been a
Thanksgiving Day spent on the
trail while gnawing a drumstick
on the way to another engagement
at Piva Forks. And now, on
21 December, four days until
Christmas, and the troops still had
Hill 600A to “square away.”

ATTACK ON HILL 600A
22–23 DEC 1943

ADVANCE TO THE EAST
NOV-DEC 1943

Reconnaissance found 14–18
Japanese on that hill, down by the
Torokina River. A combat patrol
from the 21st Marines moved to
drive the Japanese off the knob. It
wasn’t hard, but it cost the life of
one Marine and one was wounded.
But IMAC wanted a permanent
outpost on the hill, and the
3d Battalion, 21st, drew the
assignment. It began with one
rifle platoon and a platoon of
heavy machine guns on 22
December. Hill 600A was a repeat
of past enemy tactics. The
Japanese had come back to occupy
it. They held against all efforts,
even against a two-pronged
attack. A full company came up
and made three assaults. That didn’t30
help either. Late on the 23d,
the Marines held for the night,
preparing to mount another
attack in the morning. That morning
was Christmas Eve, 1943.
Scouts went up to look. The
Japanese had gone. Christmas
wasn’t merry, but it was better.
For the 3d Marine Division, the
war was over on Bougainville.

National Archives Photo 80-G-250368

The Piva airfields (shown here in February 1944 photograph) became key bomber and
fighter strips in the aerial offensive against Rabaul.

The landing force had seized
the beachhead, destroyed or overcome
the enemy, and won the
ground for the vital airfields. Now
they prepared to leave, as the airfields
were being readied to
reduce Rabaul and its environs.

Since 10 December, F4U Vought
Corsairs of Marine Fighting
Squadron (VMF) 216 (1st Marine
Aircraft Wing) had settled on the
new strip on Torokina, almost
washed by the sea. The fighter
planes would be the key to the
successful prosecution of the
AirSols (Air Solomons) offensive
against Rabaul, for, as escorts,
they made large-scale bombing
raids feasible. Major General
Ralph J. Mitchell, USMC, had
become head of AirSols on 20
November 1943. By 9 January
1944, both the fighter and bomber
aircraft were operating from the
Piva strips. Following Bougainville,
Mitchell would have twice
the airpower and facilities that the
Japanese had in all of the
Southwest Pacific area.

The campaign had cost the
Marines 423 killed and 1,418
wounded. Enemy dead were estimated
at 2,458, with only 23 prisoners
captured.

It was now time for the 3d
Marine Division to go home to
Guadalcanal, with a “well done”
from Halsey. (In the Admiral’s colorful
language, a message to
Geiger said, “You have literally
succeeded in setting up and opening
for business a shop in the Japs’
front yard.”) Now there would be
plenty of papayas and Lister bags,
as well as a PX, a post office, and
some sports and movies. General
Turnage was relieved on 28
December by Major General John
R. Hodge of the Americal
Division, which took over the
eastern sector. The 37th Infantry
Division kept its responsibility for
the western section of the
Bougainville perimeter. Admiral
Halsey directed the Commanding
General, XIV Corps, Major
General Oscar W. Griswold, to
relieve General Geiger, Commanding
General, IMAC. The
Army assumed control of the
beachhead as of 15 December. The
3d Marines left Bougainville on
Christmas Day. The 9th left on 28
December, and had a party with
two cans of beer per man. The
21st, last to arrive on the island,
was the division’s last rifle regiment
to leave, on 9 January 1944.

Every man in those regiments
knew full well the crucial role that
the supporting battalions had
played. The 19th Marines’ pioneers
and engineers had labored
ceaselessly to build the bridges
and trails that brought the vital
water, food, and ammunition to
the front lines through seemingly
impassable swamps, jungle, and
water, water everywhere.

And the amtracs of the 3d
Amphibian Tractor Battalion had
proven essential in getting 22,92231
tons of those supplies to the riflemen.
They were “the most important
link in the all-important supply
chain.”

Working behind the amtracs
were the unsung men of the 3d
Service Battalion who, under the
division quartermaster, Colonel
William C. Hall, brought order
and efficiency from the original,
chaotic pile-up of supplies on the
beach. As roads were slowly built,
the 6×6 trucks of the 3d Motor
Transport Battalion moved the
supplies to advance dumps for
the amtracs to pick up.

The 12th Marines and Army
artillery had given barrage after
barrage of preparatory fire—72,643
rounds in all.

The invaluable role of Marine
aviation, as previously mentioned,
was symbolized by
General Turnage’s repeated
requests for close air support, 10
strikes in all.

The Seabees, working at a
“feverish rate,” had miraculously
carved three airfields out of the
unbelievable morass that characterized
the area. And it was from
those bases that the long-range,
strategic effects of Bougainville
would be felt by the enemy.

The 3d Medical Battalion had
taken care of the wounded. With
omnipresent corpsmen on the
front lines in every battle and aid
stations and field hospitals right
behind, the riflemen knew they
had been well tended.

General Turnage summarized
the campaign well, “Seldom have
troops experienced a more difficult
combination of combat, supply,
and evacuation. From its very
inception, it was a bold and hazardous
operation. Its success was
due to the planning of all echelons
and the indomitable will, courage,
and devotion to duty of all members
of all organizations participating.”

Thus it was that the capture of
Bougainville marked the top of
the ladder, after the long climb up
the chain of the Solomon Islands.

Epilogue

There were, however, two
minor land operations to complete
the isolation of Rabaul. The first
was at Green Island, just 37 miles
north of Bougainville. It was a
crusty, eight-mile-long (four-mile-wide)
oval ring, three islands of
sand and coral around a sleepy
lagoon, and only 117 miles from
Rabaul. To General Douglas
MacArthur, it was the last step of
the Solomon Islands campaign.

The task of taking the island fell
to the 5,800 men of the 3d New
Zealand Division under Major
General H. E. Barrowclough, less
the 8th Brigade which had been
used in the Treasuries operation.
There was also a contingent of
American soldiers, Seabees, and
engineers, and cover from AirSol
Marine planes under Brigadier
General Field Harris. Rear
Admiral Wilkinson had Task
Force 31, whose warships would
wait for targets (although Green
Island would get no preinvasion
bombardment). The atoll ring was
too narrow and bombardment
would pose a danger to island
inhabitants.

Late in January 1944, 300 men
of the 30th New Zealand Battalion
and Seabees and engineer specialists
went ashore, measured and
sized up the island’s potential,
found spots for an airfield,
checked lagoon depths, and
sought accommodations for a
boat basin.

All of this warned the Japanese,
but it was too late for them to do
anything. Then, on 14 February,
Japanese scout planes warned the
102 defenders on Green Island
that a large Allied convoy was on
the way, shepherded by destroyers
and cruisers. Japanese aircraft
from Rabaul and Kavieng
attacked the convoy by moonlight,
but at 0641, the landing craft
had crossed the line of departure
unscathed and were almost to the
beach. Within two hours, all were
ashore, unopposed. Then Japanese
dive bombers came roaring
in, but the Allied antiaircraft fire
and Marine fighter planes (VMF-212)
were enough to prevent hits
on the transports or beach supplies.
New Zealand patrols got
only slight resistance, a few brief
firefights. By 19 February, the 33d,
37th, and 93d Seabees were laying
an airfield on the island.

By 4 March, a heavy B-24
bomber was able to make an
emergency landing on the Green
Island strip. Three days later,
AirSols planes were staging there
giving the strip the name
“Green.” Soon B-24s were there to
strike the vast Japanese base at
Truk.

The second operation saw the32
seizure of Emirau Island. It was
well north of Green Island, 75
miles northwest of the New
Ireland enemy fortress of
Kavieng. Actually, Kavieng had
been considered as a target to be
invaded by the 3d Marine
Division, but higher authorities
decided the cost would be too
high. Better to let Kavieng die on
the vine. Taking Emirau and setting
up air and naval bases there
would effectively cut off the
Solomon Islands and the
Bismarck Archipelago from the
Japanese. It would be a small
investment with big results.

Emirau is an irregularly shaped
island in the St. Matthias Group,
eight miles long, four miles wide,
with much jungle and many hills,
but with room for boat basins and
airstrips. The natives said there
had been no Japanese there since
January, and air reconnaissance
could find none.

The unit selected for the landing
bore a famous name in the lore
of the Corps: the 4th Marines. The
original regiment had been the
storied “China Marines,” and had
then been part of the desperate
defense of Bataan and the subsequent
surrender at Corregidor in
the Philippines. Now it had been
reborn as a new, independent regiment,
composed of the tough and
battle-hardened veterans of the
raider battalions.

The 4th Marines arrived at
Emirau shortly after 0600 on 20
March 1944. The Marines and
sailors fired a few shots at nothing;
then the amphibian tractors
opened up, wounding one of the
Marines. The Seabees got right to
work on the airfields, even before
the island was secured. In no time
they laid out a 7,000-foot bomber
strip and a 5,000-foot stretch for
fighters.

All was secured until attention
fell on a little neighboring island
with a Japanese fuel and ration
dump. Destroyers blew it all to
debris … then spied at sea a large
canoe escaping with some of the
enemy. Hardly bloodthirsty after
this placid operation, the destroyer
casually pulled in close. The
Japanese chose to fire a machine
gun. It was folly. The destroyer
was forced to respond. The canoe
didn’t sink and was brought
alongside with the body of a
Japanese officer and 26 living
enlisted men—who may have privately
questioned their officer’s
judgement.

Bougainville Finale

These were small affairs compared
to the finale on Bougainville.
With the withdrawal of the
3d Marine Division at the end of
1943, after it had successfully
fought its way to the final defensive
line, the two Army divisions,
the 37th Infantry and the
Americal, took over and extended
the perimeter with only sporadic
brushes with the Japanese.

Then, in late February and early
March 1944, patrols began making
“almost continuous” contact with
the enemy. It appeared that the
Japanese were concentrating for a
serious counterattack. On 8
March, the 145th Infantry (of the
37th) was hit by artillery fire. Then
the 6th Division, parent of the old
enemy, the 23d Infantry, attacked
hard. It took five days of “very
severe” fighting, with support
from a battalion of the 148th
Infantry, combined with heavy
artillery fire and air strikes, to
drive the determined Japanese
back. Meanwhile, the 129th
Infantry had also been “heavily
attacked.” The enemy kept coming
and coming, and it was a full
nine days before there was a lull
on 17 March.

On 24 March the Japanese, after
reorganizing, launched another
series of assaults “with even
greater pressure.” This time they
also threw in three regiments of
their 17th Division. The artillery of
both American divisions, guided
by Cub spotter planes, fired “the
heaviest support mission ever to
be put down in the South Pacific
Area.” That broke the back of the
enemy attackers, and the battle
finally was over on 25 March.

Major General Griswold, the
corps commander, after eight
major enemy attacks, wrote in a
letter four days later:

I am absolutely convinced
that nowhere on earth does
there exist a more determined
will and offensive
spirit in the attack than that
the Japs exhibited here. They
come in hard, walking on
their own dead, usually on a
front not to exceed 100 yards.
They try to effect a breakthrough
which they exploit
like water running from a
hose. When stopped, they
dig in like termites and fight
to the death. They crawl up
even the most insignificant
fold in the ground like ants.
And they use all their
weapons with spirit and
boldness…. Difficult terrain
or physical difficulties have
no meaning for them.

The Americal Division had
advanced along with the 37th in
the March-April period with its
last action 13–14 April. This ended
the serious offensive action for the
two Army divisions; the enemy
had been driven well out of
artillery range of the airstrips,
12,000 yards away.

For Americans this marked the
end of the Bougainville saga: a tale
of well-trained units, filled with,
determined, skillful men, who
fought their way to a resounding
victory. The 3d Marine Division
had led the way in securing a vital
island base with the crucial isolation
of Rabaul thus ensured.

Sources

The author owes a substantial debt to Cyril
J. O’Brien who was a Marine Combat
Correspondent on Bougainville. A draft he prepared
describing this operation used U.S.
Army, Coast Guard, and New Zealand as well
as Marine Corps sources, and contained a variety
of colorful vignettes and personal interviews,
with some photographs not in official
USMC files, all gratefully acknowledged.

As always, the basic official Marine history
of the Pacific campaigns covers Bougainville
and the auxiliary landings in massive detail:
Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Maj Douglas T. Kane,
USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, vol. 2, History of U.S.
Marine Corps Operations in World War II
(Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division,
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1963).

An earlier, more condensed official history
is Maj John N. Rentz, USMCR, Bougainville and
the Northern Solomons (Washington: Historical
Section, Division of Public Information,
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1948).

The earliest, most modest official account is
a mimeographed summary, characterized as a
“first attempt”: U.S. Marine Corps,
Headquarters, Historical Division. Unpublished
monograph: “The Bougainville
Operation, First Marine Amphibious Corps, 1
November–28 December 1943,” dtd Feb45.
VE603 1st.A2, Library, Marine Corps Historical
Center, Washington, D.C.

A quasi-official history of the 3d Marine
Division was “made possible by the
Commandant, who authorized the expenditure
of the division’s unused Post Exchange funds.

The final draft was approved by a group of
3d Division officers….” The book is: 1stLt
Robert A. Aurthur, USMCR, and 1stLt Kenneth
Cohlmia, USMCR, edited by LtCol Robert T.
Vance, USMC, The Third Marine Division
(Washington: Infantry Journal Press. 1948).

An account representing direct personal
participation in the campaign, supplemented
by later interviews, is: Capt John A. Monks, Jr.,
A Ribbon and a Star: The Third Marines at
Bougainville (New York: Holt and Co., 1945).

Another history traces the campaign on the
island past the Marine operation to the subsequent
U.S. Army battles, and concludes with
the Australians as the final troops leading to the
overall Japanese surrender in 1945: Harry A.
Gailey, Bougainville 1943–1945—The Forgotten
Campaign (Lexington, Ky: University Press of
Kentucky, 1991).

The full story of the crucial naval battle as
the Marines landed is in RAdm Samuel Eliot
Morison, Breaking the Bismarck Barrier, 22 July
1942–1 May 1944, vol. 6, History of United States
Naval Operations in World War II (Boston: Little
Brown and Co., 1950).

A detailed account of the death of Adm
Yamamoto is in R. Cargil Hall, ed., Lightning
Over Bougainville (Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991).

Personal Papers and Oral Histories files at
the Marine Corps Historical Center were
unproductive, but the biographical and photographic
files were most helpful. The staff of the
Marine Corps Historical Center was always
cooperative, in particular Catherine Kerns, who
prepared my manuscript copy.

About the Author

Captain John C. Chapin earned a bachelor
of arts degree with honors in history from
Yale University in 1942 and was commissioned
later that year. He served as a rifle platoon
leader in the 24th Marines, 4th Marine
Division, and was wounded in action during
assault landings on Roi-Namur and Saipan.

Transferred to duty at the Historical
Division, Headquarters Marine Corps, he
wrote the first official histories of the 4th and
5th Marine Divisions. Moving to Reserve status at the end of World War II, he
earned a master’s degree in history at George Washington University with a
thesis on “The Marine Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1922.”

Now a captain in retired status, he has been a volunteer at the Marine Corps
Historical Center for 12 years. During that time he wrote History of Marine
Fighter-Attack (VMFA) Squadron 115. With support from the Historical Center
and the Marine Corps Historical Foundation, he then spent some years
researching and interviewing for the writing of a new book, Uncommon Men:
The Sergeants Major of the Marine Corps, published in 1992 by the White Mane
Publishing Company.

Subsequently, he wrote four monographs for this series of historical pamphlets,
commemorating the campaigns for the Marshalls, Saipan, Bougainville,
and Marine Aviation in the Philippines operations.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in
the World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines
by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps,
Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of
the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.

Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by
a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in the memory of her late husband,
Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of
a Purple Heart.

WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR EMERITUS OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)

GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank

CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Strudet, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist;
Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician.

Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374–5040

1997

PCN 19000314100