Liquidating the Solomons Japs: Bitter
Affrays of 1942-43
By Harold Cooper
mHE best account I have yet heard of J. the tactics used by the Solomon Island scouts who played so impor tant a part in the American liberation of Guadalcanal and New Georgia was given by Sergeant Kerry Gasimata, now serving on MV “Myrtle,” recently built in New Zealand to the order of the Protectorate Government.
Kerry was at Munda when the Japanese landed there in 1942 and, like all other natives in the vicinity, he with drew deep into the bush to avoid con tact with the enemy. In less than a week he had joined up with a scouting force led by Sergeant Willie Paia and Lieut.
Harry Wickham, which was operating under remote control from Sege, Major Kennedy’s secret headquarters.
Kennedy believed in training his scouts well, for he knew that if any one of them, by a false move, betrayed to the Japanese the existence of his widely ramifying “underground” movement, an organisation upon which the Americans depended for the y supply of vital in formation would be in danger of complete disruption. So if you were to be one of Kennedy’s “boys,” you had first to satisfy his recruiting agents that you were intelligent, self-possessed, patient and, above all, a good actor; for a scout’s life was one continuous pretence Kerry told me how well Willie Paia s men did their pretending in northern New Georgia. They wore no clothes, except for a modest girdle of dried banana leaves. They let their hair grow long and went unshaven. They carried no tinned food on their patrols, but lived on an unvaried diet of coconut flesh. In short, they played the part of primitive jungle people,” knowing little, and caring less, about the ways of their former European masters; and if ever they were unlucky enough to come face to face with a Japanese patrol (for the enemy was per sistent in his search for any stray white men who might still be on the island) they put on so convincing a display or childish fear and rank stupidity that any attempt to interrogate them was invari ably given up in despair.
KERRY began his career as a scout with an interesting and responsible assignment. With a few coin panions, he paid regular visits to a small island just off Munda point and carefully observed and recorded everything that happened on the Japanese airstrip. The journeys to and from the island were made by canoe under cover of darkness, and the reports prepared by Kerry were translated into English by Willie Paia, and sent down to Kennedy at Sege.
One of the most useful features of these reports was the accuracy with which they indicated the position of Jap anti-aircraft batteries. The Commander of the garrison at Munda must have been astonished at the inadequacy ;of his camouflage and the ease with which American dive-bombers singled out his guns for destruction almost as soon as they were mounted. His astonishment would have turned to rage had he known that the innocent little island just off the point, which his men often used as a base for fishing expeditions, and which they declared to be quite uninhabited, was actually an important Allied ob servation post.
The crushing defeat the Japanese sut fered in the Solomons campaign is no mystery to Kerry. He spoke with scorn of the poor quality and desperately small quantity of the Jap equipment.
It had taken them s’i months, he said, to build the airstrip at Munda —and he made it clear that every Solomon Islander who had seen the Americans at work knew that you should only need a fortnight, at the outside, for a chore of that kind.
The greatest number of planes the Japs ever mustered at Munda was 43 — 32 Zeros and eleven two-engined bombers. All the transport the Japs had was eight trucks and six barges. Their supplies at one stage ran so low that they were reduced to eating raw corn and un ripe bananas. The sickness rate was high, and there were numerous casualties caused by American bombing.
MOST of us remember that Admiral Halsey’s communiques were crammed with what seemed at first almost fantastic estimates of enemy planes destroyed or damaged over the Solomons.
Kerry assured me that the truth was even more fantastic. On one day he saw 160 Jap aircraft fly south over New Georgia towards Guadalcanal. Only 32 returned. By contrast, during half a year of American air activity in the skies above Munda, he saw only two attack ing planes brought down. One was a dive-bomber and the other a Mitchell.
After the Americans had landed on New Georgia, Kerry and his friends were issued with rifles and given the job of guiding the Yank infantry through the jungle towards Munda. It was dan gerous work, but Kerry enjoyed every minute of it. Life on the MV ‘TVEyrtle is going to seem very dull by comparison.
KERRY’S shipmates on the “Myrtle” include several other Islanders who saw service with the Protectorate Defence Force during the campaign that began in early 1942, and has just ended with the surrender of the Jap remnants on Choiseul and Shortland.
There is Lance Corporal Tarevo, who was at the Gold Ridge coast-watch station with Lieut. MacFarlane, RANR. while the Japanese were in undisputed occupation of Guadalcanal, and who afterwards took part in some minor but well managed mopping-up operations as a member of a tiny force of four men, commanded by Sergeant Daniel Pule.
Tarevo describes how Pule s intrepid party, combing the bush for survivors of the crushing defeats the Japanese had suffered at Lunga and Cape Esperance, came upon six Japs who were living in a hut in an abandoned native village. Pule waited until the six fugitives were all inside the hut together (it was a rea sonable guess that they were either sleep ing or sitting down to a meal) and then sent Tarevo and Lance Corporal Kinbo in to make their acquaintance, while he and Sergeant Buqa covered the door way with their rifles. tarevo and Kinbo, it should be ex plained, were wearing the Solomon Islands version of “plain clothes.” They intro duced themselves to the Japanese as former inhabitants of the village, who had come back to make sure that their unexpected guests were comfortable The Japs had only three rifles between them and these, after some conversa tion with Tarevo and Kinbo, were foolish enough to lay aside. The details of the ensuing scuffle are obscure, but it ended with Tarevo bolting out of the hut with two of the rifles clasped to his bosom while Kinbo. wrestled with a Japanese for possession of the third Following a natural impulse, four of the
Jap party rushed out of the hut in pur suit of Tarevo and were methodically picked off by Pule and Buqa. It was then a simple business to finish the separate engagement which Kinbo was gallantly conducting inside the hut. rOM another' village came word- that nine Japanese were in residence there. Pule and his band hastened to the rescue. Again, they used canny tactics, relying on the element of sur prise to offset their inferiority in num bers. This time there was no indoor fighting to do, a circumstance for which Tarevo and Kinbo were doubtless grate ful.
After the four Islanders had kept their victims under observation for some time, seven of the Japs obligingly went to sleep under a tree, leaving their two companions to act as sentries. Four wide-awake men, decided Pule, could easily handle odds of this drowsy variety and he gave the order to attack. The two sentries took to their heels and were shot down as they ran for .the shelter of the jungle. Most of the seven sleepers woke up, if at all, in. another world.
PRIVATE Bariri, another of Kerry’s comrades on the “Myrtle,” thinks of himself as a “Combined Opera tions” man. He was engineer on the schooner “Nanui” during the period when her chief task was to carry sup plies to Allied outposts in the Solomons.
He gave me a racy account of the “liberation” of the one tiny corner of Malaita that the Japs ventured to occupy —a cape at the northern end of the island where they set up an observation post manned by 24 officers and ratings of the Imperial Navy. The local Chief had kept District Officer Bill Bengough, at Auki, informed of the arrival and activi ties of the Japanese; and Bengough had flashed the news across to General Van dergrift’s headquarters on Guadalcanal.
Plans were made for the liquidation of the Japanese. The first stage of the plan was entrusted to the capable hands of the Chief, who busied himself with the cutting of paths which led through the bush up to the rear of the enemy camp. When the paths were ready, an expeditionary force of 50 American Marines, carried in the “Nanui” and another ten-tonner, the “Rob Roy,” set out for Malaita. , , , , The troops landed in a secluded bay just after nightfall and, by marching through the night, reached the Japanese perimeter at dawn the next morning.
Only one of the 24 occupants of the camp was awake, and he was washing face in a bowl of water. He caught sight of the Marines in the bush and made for a nearby machine-gun, but was shot in the leg before he could reach it and promptly threw up his hands in surrender The other Japs, startled out of their sleep, groped wildly for their weapons, but hand grenades and automatic fire made quick work of them. One of them splashed off into the sea.with the appa rent intention of swimming all the way to Ysabel, but a Marine rifleman needed only one cartridge to frustrate this d T fewhoirs'later the “Nanui” and the “Rob Roy” were on their way back to Guadalcanal, with one extra passenger— the wounded face-washing Jap and much useful booty in the form of radio equipment and Japanese naval charts. rnHE two youngest hands on the “Myrtle” .had less thrilling stories to tell, although they, too could claim to have made their modest con tribution to the remarkably solid sum total of the Solomon Island war effort.
The “Myrtle”! is no Queen Mary . but even bv Cunard standards I think it can be said that she has a versatile and resourceful crew.