WORLD WAR II

      MacArthur's

       New Guinea

       Campaign

      For many, the Second World War put New Guinea on the map. Though the Japanese at first swept quickly through the Dutch East Indies and on to east New Guinea, their seemingly inexorable advance was finally stopped 50 kilometers from Port Moresby—from which Australia was but a short hop away.

      Vicious jungle fighting by tough Australian troops slowly pushed the Japanese back. As the war progressed and American might came into play, churning out airplanes, ships, weapons and fighting men, the Allies slowly acquired the means to sweep back the Japanese invaders. After the reconquest of east New Guinea, the pace quickened.

      By the spring of 1944, when the Allies were prepared to mount an assault on the area, the northern coast of West Papua was defended by some 55,000 Japanese troops, backed by considerable air power and substantial naval forces based in the secure waters of the Moluccas, to the west. Thanks to intercepted Japanese communications and broken codes, General Douglas MacArthur learned about the defensive weakness of Hollandia (now Jayapura): although 11,000 Japanese troops were stationed there, only about one-fifth were combat soldiers.

      Risking an attack on his exposed flank, MacArthur then bypassed Japanese troop concentrations at Wewak and Hansa Bay and launched a daring assault on Hollandia itself. Control of the skies made a landing possible. The U.S. Air Force, with 1,200 planes, wiped out the Japanese air fleet at Sentani, destroying over 300 craft. Only 25 serviceable planes were left by the American pilots.

      The Hollandia campaign

      For the Hollandia landing, at the time the largest operation in the Pacific, MacArthur employed 217 ships and 80,000 men, led by 50,000 combat troops. The initial objective was to seize a coastal strip some 40 kilometers wide, between the landing points at Hollandia and Tanah Merah Bay. The lack of Japanese resistance was a godsend, as a chaotic debarkation took place amidst heavy rain and over difficult terrain. When the beachheads were secured on April 22, 1944, MacArthur and his staff celebrated by quaffing ice cream sodas.

      The next day, as a landing craft ferried the commander-in-chief to the beach at Tanah Merah, a lone Japanese plane appeared and gave everyone a thorough scare. But the pilot, unaware of the landing craft's passenger, flew on to seek a more sizeable target.

      The Hollandia campaign, considered by war historians as a model strategic maneuver, cost the Allies only 159 lives. More than 4,000 Japanese were killed and 650 prisoners were taken. About 7,000 Japanese tried to escape to Sarmi, a stronghold over 200 kilometers down the coast, but disease, starvation and wounds claimed all but 1,000 men.

      Meanwhile, Allied engineers reinforced and enlarged the roads and airstrips at Sentani, as the Japanese-built runways were neither sturdy nor long enough for the U.S. B-29 Superfortress bombers. A total of 240 kilometers of roads and airstrips were laid. Sides of mountains were carved away, bridges and culverts were built across rivers and creeks, gravel and stone was poured into sago swamps to support highways "as tall as Mississippi levees."

      Building a command post

      Almost overnight, Hollandia mushroomed into a city of 250,000, with 140,000 Australian and American troops and support personnel. The area became one of the war's great military bases, with most of the southwest Pacific command operating from here during the summer of 1944. MacArthur chose the best spot for his sprawling headquarters complex—a 250-meter hill overlooking Lake Sentani. Rugs and furniture from the general's Brisbane office filled prefab army buildings. One of MacArthur's staff described the view:

      "[The] deep green hills of central New Guinea formed a backdrop of peaks, ravines and jungle growth that was almost unreal. Little cone-shaped islands, with native houses on stilts clinging to their shores, dotted the lake."

      War correspondents, not always in awe of the quick-tempered MacArthur, filed a story about the general's million-dollar mansion with lavish furnishings and a custom-built driveway. MacArthur was furious. After the Philippines had been secured, his wife decided to stop at Hollandia on her way to Manila to be reunited with her husband. She wired him, "I want to see that mansion you built—the one where I'm supposed to have been living in luxury!"

      Those present did not dare record even a censored version of MacArthur's reply. Another wartime story, probably apocryphal, recounts that it was while gazing out on island-dotted Lake Sentani that General MacArthur conceived his famous island-hopping strategy.

      The huge airfield complex at Lake Sentani was to eventually house 1,000 planes. An almost equal number of ships ferried in countless tons of supplies and equipment. Humboldt Bay, with hundreds of ships linked by catwalks and lit up at night, was described by war correspondents as "a city at sea."

      The north coast falls

      Because soil conditions at Sentani precluded the speedy completion of a bomber base, the Allies set their sights on the Japanese airfield on Wakde Island. After two days of bitter fighting, with 760 Japanese deaths against 40 on the Allies' side, the strip fell. More tough fighting was needed to secure the shores of Maffin Bay on the mainland near Wakde, essential as a forward staging area. The final toll here was 4,000 Japanese killed and 75 taken prisoner, with 415 U.S. casualties. The Tornado Task Force secured all important positions, but at the end of the war there were still some Japanese soldiers holed up in nearby Sarmi.

      Despite increasing Allied control of the air and sea lanes, the Japanese tried to send 20,000 troops to West Papua from China. The reinforcements never made it. Allied submarines sank four transport ships, drowning 10,000, and the rest of the convoy fled.

      The next Allied objective, Biak Island off the north coast of West Papua, stopped the U.S.-led blitzkrieg cold. The 10,000 Japanese troops on Biak were well-organized and well-prepared. (See "Biak," page 64.)

      The last Allied offensive in West Papua occurred on the northern shore of the Bird's Head. Amphibious landings at Sansapor and Mar here went unopposed. These beachheads were only 150 kilometers west of Manokwari, the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd Army. Quick work by engineers soon yielded operational airfields from which the next objective, Morotai Island off northern Halmahera, could easily be reached.

      In just four short months, from April to July of 1944, the whole north coast of West Papua had fallen to the Allies.