The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [140]
Some historians believe that MacArthur learned a number of other lessons at Buna, responding to its savagery by developing his policy of “bypassing” or “leapfrogging,” a “hit ’em where they ain’t” strategy that relied on the efficacy of air power and amphibious operations. After Buna, MacArthur avoided enemy strongholds. Rushing the construction of airstrips, he pounded the Japanese supply line, leaving bases to “wither on the vine.” This strategy, MacArthur admitted, was “as old as warfare itself.” Admiral Nimitz had already used it to great effect in the central Solomons and would again later in the central Pacific when he jumped from the Gilbert Islands to the Marshalls and then to the Marianas. MacArthur, though, got credit for it.
For the natives of New Guinea, who according to General Blamey could not be given “too much praise,” nothing would ever be the same. Yet, as the war moved up the coast of New Guinea, the natives, and especially the carriers, were forgotten. According to a former ANGAU administrator, “Carriers and conscripted village men never received their just rewards.” Author Alan Powell writes that this remains “a lasting stain on Australia’s war record.”
What’s more, civilized warfare had clearly wrought greater destruction than centuries of tribal battles. An estimated fifteen thousand New Guineans died as a direct result of the war and tens of thousands more died of disease and starvation.
According to John Waiko, a native New Guinean, who was born a year after the campaign ended, war had a profound effect on people: “The villages suffered severely, without men to clear gardens, hunt, maintain houses and canoes, etc…. The women were strained from overworking, there was…high infant mortality, there was all the grief of separation and bereavement and the frightening…loss of will to live…”
The people of the Buna coast, in particular, returned to find their land strewn with the detritus of war. Airfields and roads quickly fell into disrepair. Undetonated shells lay scattered around the swamps. The population of crocodiles burgeoned. Rotting corpses fouled drinking holes, homes and gardens had been destroyed, birds and animals had disappeared, and trees were nothing but bare, bullet-ridden trunks. In the sunlight and stagnant water of bomb craters, mosquitoes bred, malaria cases skyrocketed, and the disease became more virulent by passage through many human hosts.
Sam DiMaggio recovered from blackwater fever in time to take part in the battles of Saidor, Aitape, Morotai, and Leyte, where he suffered on and off from malaria. He was discharged on points (a soldier needed only eighty-five combat points to get back home and DiMaggio had 130) one day before his company shipped out to Luzon. Once back in the States, he was sent to Fort Ord in California, where he was in charge of a barracks of a hundred men who were training to go to the Pacific. He was at Fort Ord on V-E Day, May 8, 1945, and in Albion, Michigan, on V-J Day, September 2, 1945. DiMaggio received a Combat Badge, a Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and four campaign stars for his service. His brother Jimmy was killed in northern France by a German sniper in November 1944. DiMaggio had six more malaria attacks after he was discharged in July 1945 with the rank of sergeant. The piece of shrapnel that lodged in his jawbone on December 19, 1942, is still there today.
Suffering from jungle rot and malaria, Stanley Jastrzembski was put on limited duty in Sydney, Australia, where he guarded a stockade. Although he had enough points to get home, he stayed on until Japan surrendered—until, as he says, “the last dog was hung.” Jastrzembski was discharged in mid-August 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.
Gus Bailey won the army’s second highest award—the Distinguished Service Cross—for his heroism at Buna. Back in Australia, he was promoted to captain and made commander of the 126th’s 1st Battalion. He took