Book Reviews

They Watched The Defeat of Japan

Experience of Mission Sisters Who Were Imprisoned By Invasion, 1942-45

FOR four years, after the end of 1941, we knew something of what was happening on our side of the Pacific battle-fronts. We could piece events to gether, connect the story of the American-Australian advance, discern something of the over-all strategy that directed the activities of our fighting ser vices.

But we knew nothing at all of what was happening behind the blank curtain of the battle-fronts. How were the Japs feeling and behaving? Did they, after the tide turned in the Battle of the Coral Sea, discern the shape of things to come —the stalemate forced upon them by our growing air and sea power, the para lysis of their forces by the “leap-frogging” tactics of MacArthur, the bitter taste of utter defeat?

Here, two years after Japan sur rendered. is the answer. It is a new book caled “Red Grew the Harvest,” and it is the collected experiences of the Catholic missionary Sisters of the Order of the Sacred Heart—very cleverly ar ranged and edited, so as to make an al most connected story.

Many of these missionary Sisters were overwhelmed in the rush of the Jap in vaders, and spent years as prisoners.

Their stories are simple and factual; — they describe their daily lives under the heel of the Jap—but they tell us a great deal of what was hidden from us in 1942- 45. They witnessed the deterioration and collapse of the Jap.

The book, apart from its intense human interest, is a valuable contribution to the history of the Pacific War. Every man and woman who was involved in the war will accept it as a revealing story. I, who for nearly four years prepared radio commentaries upon the progress of the Pacific war, have found it a most fas cinating document: it has given me the other side of the pictures which I so often described over BBC and ABC.

HERE, for example, is an intimate, de tailed description of how the great mission station at Vunapope, near Rabaul, was destroyed.

In the beginning the missionaries, from this favourable situation, saw the Jap anese enter Rabaul in January, 1942. and overwhelm its defenders. They watched our fort at Praed Point being blown to pieces. They submitted to a swarm of excited Japanese, who overran the Mis sion and who tried to separate them into Australians and Americans, Germans and French and Dutch. There is a quaint interlude here while Jap scholars wrestle feverishly with the difference between “Dutch” (enemies) and “Deutsch” (allies), and confess their inability to pronounce “Irish.” The Mission was looted, partly handed over to Jap soldiery, and the in mates put under strict discipline.

At the end of April, 1942, following feverish military activity, they counted 45 warships leaving Rabaul, southwards.

“God save Australia!” was their prayer.

A week later they watched again, while battered transports limped back and un loaded the dishevelled and defeated re presentatives of Dai Nippon. The Japs used all their artifice to conceal the re sult of the Battle of the Coral Sea; but even the simple missionaries could read the signs.

The Japs now displayed a very nasty temper. The missionaries were treated with ever-increasing harshness. Eighteen

military and Methodist Mission nurses, who had taken refuge at Vunapope were sent off hurriedly to Japan—they were rescued in Yokohama three years later.

“Round about this time (July. 1942) there was again much military activity.

Officers came to inquire if there were roads over the Owen Stanley Range. We feigned complete ignorance of New Guinea and left them to work out their own plans. They did and the result was a nearly successful effort to take Port Moresby.”

The Japs were very near to taking Port Moresby—but never by using that track across the Owen Stanleys. The danger lay, not in the thrust through Buna, Gona and Kokoda, but in the attack through Milne Bay. If the Milne Bay expedition had succeeded, and the Japs had got around onto the south coast of Papua, with bases in the Milne Bay-Samarai area, it would have been most difficult to hold Port Moresby and the North Queensland ports.

“Once again we saw their forces leave Rabaul . . . Once again only the battered remnants of the force that had set out returned to our shores. The mangled and broken bodies of the survivors of Buna Bay and Kokoda were landed on our beach at Vunapope. If ever a batch of men looked the picture of misery and defeat, they did.”

IN August and September, 1942, the prisoners at Vunapope saw the sea and air forces of the enemy go away again in great strength, this time to the Solomons, and soon they saw the signs of Japan’s third defeat in the South Seas —at Guadalcanal.

Following on that, the Japs took pos session of the big buildings at Vunapope for use as hospitals, while the missionaries were sent into barbed-wire enclosures.

Henceforward, American and Austra lian planes began to attack Rabaul, with increasing frequency and deadly ferocity, and the unhappy missionaries, aided by willing natives, dug a series of deep tunnels into nearby hills. By the end of 1943, they were spending some of their days and' all their nights in those hot and foul holes.

The missionaries watched the Japs use the Vunapope buildings as store-houses for munitions, under the sign of the Red Cross. But the Allies somehow learned of it—and our planes towards the end of 1943 literally wiped out every building.

The terror and horror of those bombard ments are impressively described. Gar dens and farms were gone—the problem of feeding over 300 persons now was seri ous.

Day by day, they watched the oblitera tion of the once pretty little town of Rabaul.

The missionaries, in June, 1944, were transferred to the deep, wet. gloomy Ramale Valley, several miles inland from Vunapope. Here, they were fairly free from bombs, but until they got their gardens going, they lived under conditions of great misery, often approaching star vation. Later, they had native foods, coconuts, beans and bananas. But the lack of meat was felt severely—some of them ate the flesh of cats, dogs and snakes. They were in desperate need of clothes. The death-rate was heavy.

Early in September, 1945, there were loud “coo-ee’s” from the top of Ramale Valley. Australian troops had come at

last to lead them to safety and comfort, and end nearly four years of horror.

PAPUA escaped actual invasion. We learn, however, how Japanese bom bers forced the evacuation of the great mission station at Yule Island early in 1942—the missionaries were taken across to the mainland, and up a creek to an inland station.

The buildings on Yule thereafter be came the headquarters of an American Air Force Radar Unit. Aerodromes were built there.

Terapo, 120 miles west of Port Moresby, became a busy military centre—the un loading depot for the heavy equipment for the building of the Bulldog-Wau road. This road was to be used to attack the Japs in New Guinea from Wau—but the success of the coastal campaign, in Northeastern Panua, caused the abandon ment of that plan.

THERE is an interesting account of events on Nauru—from the disas trous sinking of the five ships around the phosphate island by German raiders at the end of 1940, right up to the evacuation of the Europeans and Chinese by the Fighting French destroyer “Triomphant” in late February, 1942.

Here is the story of how 400 Chinese and many Europeans were packed onto the destroyer, and their great sufferings in the tropic heat as the little ship raced down to Port Sandwich, in the New Hebrides, and unloaded her complement onto the waiting “Trienza,” one of the phosphate ships which survived the Nauru raid. The Nauru contingent were then left in comparative coolness to recover from their ordeal in Port Sandwich while the Frenchmen dashed away north again, to rescue a small party of Europeans and 200 Chinese from Ocean Island. These also were put aboard the “Trienza,” and all of them were taken direct to Brisbane Tribute fittingly is naid to the men who voluntarily stayed behind to help th,s natives, and all of whom with one ex ception were murdered bv the Japs—let their names never be forgotten ON NAURU—Lieut-Colonel F. R. Chal mers, administrator: Dr. B. H. Quin.

Government Medical Officer: Mr. W. H.

Shugg, Medical assistant: Mr. F. Harmer, engineer and Mr. W. H. Doyle, overseer.

(Continued on page 61)

of British Phosphate Commission’s staff; Father Kayser and Father Clivaz, of the MSC Mission.

On Ocean Island—Mr. C. Cart

wright, Government Secretary; Mr. Third, radio operator; Mr. Lindsay Cole and Mr. Arthur Mercer, of the British Phos phate Commission staff, Father Pujebet and Brother Brummel, of the MSC mis sion.

The only one who escaped was Father Clivaz. Both fathers were sent from Nauru to hard labour in the Carolines, and Father Kayser succumbed. Some how, Father Clivaz, very weak, got away to another island, where there were Spanish Jesuit missionaries, with whom he could converse only in Latin.

They saved his life.

The Japs retained on Ocean Island only about 150 native and Chinese men, whom they used as labourers. They had killed the Europeans—Father Pujebet was murdered in the hospital, where the Japs experimented on him with deadly injec tions; Brother Brummel was similarly used as a human guinea-pig, but he es caped from hospital. Thereafter, he dis appeared entirely. On August 9. 1945, the Japs massacred all those natives? and Chinese, except one Gilbertese lad, who feigned death, hid in a hole in the rocks, and escaped—to tell the frightful story.

FINALLY, there is the story of what happened in the Gilbert Islands (especially Tarawa, Abaiang and Abemama) after the Europeans left and the Japs came in, trapping a large num ber of the missionaries. It follows the same pattern—little monkey-men danc.ng around with bayonets, hoisting their flags, pushing helpless women around and making obseisance to strange gods; and

then, when they found themselves menaced by the growing strength of America, and bombs showered upon them from the air, they turned around and savagely murdered their 22 helpless prisoners 17 New Zealand soldiers, and five old European residents of the Gilberts one of the Pacific war’s most horrible crimes.

The mission sisters from Tarawa took refuge on Abaiang, and returned to Tarawa only when they were on the point of being murdered by their Jap guards, and obliged to flee across the open sea.

The first voice they heard when they got into Tarawa lagoon was that of a British officer warning them of danger and, soon after, they were succoured by a gallant company of United States Marines. They had arrived, by chance, immediately after the Americans had won the terrible Battle of Tarawa.

The Mission Sisters on Abemama were similarly rescued by United States Marines. The Marines pressed the Jap defenders of Abemama hard; and the latter, deeming their situation hopeless, committed mass suicide.

Again and again, in this book, the Mission Sisters praise the unvarying courtesy and kindliness of the soldiers, sailors and airmen of the United States and Australia.

The book is published, at 15/-, by Pel legrini and Co., of Sydney.

R. W. Robson.

Nauru’s Food For Britain Fund has now in hand £367. Of this sum £lBB was raised at a Gala Carnival Night which was held recently.