Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [180]
For General Douglas MacArthur, in spite of the brilliance of the campaign he waged in New Guinea and the East Indies, late 1943 and much of 1944 was a period of frustration. His ideas on the retaking of the western Pacific had been rejected by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and subsequently by the Allied Combined Chiefs. MacArthur wanted to utilize land-based air power and leap-frog along the coast of New Guinea, through the Philippines, to the China coast, where a lodgment could be secured as a base for air attack and eventual invasion of the Japanese home islands. The China coast was accepted as the penultimate objective, but the Joint Chiefs also accepted the navy’s contention that it was cheaper, and a better return for resources, to go straight west through the islands to the Philippines. The prospect that someone else might fulfill his pledge, “I shall return,” was anathema to MacArthur, and so, through 1944, there was a race for the Philippines.
In that race were two major hurdles. The great port of Rabaul at the eastern tip of New Britain Island blocked MacArthur’s advance; the huge naval base in Truk Lagoon, in the eastern Carolines, blocked Nimitz’. Both of these sites were major bastions of the Japanese defense perimeter, and no one, especially after the experience of prying Japanese troops out of prepared positions on Tarawa, looked forward to taking them. But as the year turned, and as the Americans slowly began to attain command of the sea and the air, they decided not to do so. The great bases could be isolated by air strikes, submarines could deny them the supplies needed for viability, and they could be bypassed. Lesser islands all around and beyond them could be taken, and as the tide of war rolled westward, both Truk and Rabaul were left withering in isolation.
The Japanese too had revised their plans and estimates. Hurt by their losses, recognizing their inability to recoup as rapidly as the enemy, they decided on a contraction of their defense lines. They had to hold on to the Indies, the major point of the whole exercise, but they could pull back in the central Pacific. The new line ran Kuriles-Bonins-Marianas-Carolines—western New Guinea. Troops still to the east of that were left to trade their lives for time while the new defenses were prepared. The Japanese told themselves that eventually the Americans would overreach themselves; with their charts and dividers and parallel rulers they plotted courses and distances. They were going to fight Tsushima all over again; they were going to trap and destroy the United States fleet.
MacArthur and Admiral Halsey, commanding the naval forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, spent the first third of 1944 isolating Rabaul. After very hard fighting around Madang and Saidor, the Americans and Australians pushed up along the coast of New Guinea. In April they leaped beyond their land-based air cover and landed major forces at Hollandia, cutting off the Japanese 18th Army. Meanwhile, attacks on New Britain, the upper Solomons, and another long jump to the Admiralty Islands completed Rabaul’s encirclement. The whole campaign was a masterful illustration of the possibilities of combined operations, with naval, air, and ground forces successfully and amicably cooperating and supporting each other. The Hollandia operation especially achieved that unusual but most desirable of military aims, the destruction of a major enemy force with relatively little fighting.
The American forces swept on to the westward, leaving the rear areas to be mopped up by Australian ground forces, which had some heavy fighting for the rest of the year before the Japanese ultimately disintegrated. In May, MacArthur’s troops landed in western—Netherlands—New Guinea.