The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [149]
All personal details on Herman Bottcher come from soldiers’ recollections and two articles: “Fire and Blood in the Jungle” by George L. Moorad in the July 3, 1943 issue of Liberty Magazine and Mark Sufrin’s article “Take Buna or don’t come back alive” in the Historical Times.
Chapter 4. Sons of Heaven
Details on General Horii are taken from Lida Mayo’s book, Bloody Buna.
Using G-2 daily summaries housed at the National Archives and Milner, I was able to detail Allied intelligence failures.
There are a number of excellent books on the militarization of Japanese society: John Toland’s The Rising Sun, Soldiers of the Sun by Meirion and Susie Harries, Tojo and the Coming of the War by Robert Butow, David James’ The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, Japan’s War by Edwin Hoyt, and Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which investigated Japanese war crimes after the war, harshly condemned bushido. Although a willingness to die in the execution of one’s duty was a genuine part of the historic samurai ethic, the original conception of bushido left room for honorable surrender, both for the samurai and his enemies. Bushido’s twentieth-century perversion, however, engendered what military historian Eric Beregrud called “a cult of death,” in which no compassion was given and none was received.
Japanese quotes and diary entries are from ATIS documents.
The Australian perspective is from Ham, Brune, and Horner.
Chapter 5. Cannibal Island
Excerpts from Harding’s letters home appear in Anders’ biography and lend insight into Harding’s humanity.
Excerpts from MacArthur’s speech are taken from Blakeley. Anders also includes portions of MacArthur’s speech.
For a perspective on just how much it rains on the island of New Guinea, consider that Seattle, Washington, which is often considered the wettest place in the United States, gets an average of about seventy to eighty inches of rain per year. Milne Bay, one of the wettest places on the island’s eastern half (Papua New Guinea), regularly gets two and a half to three times that.
For this section I relied on a number of fascinating books: Gavin Souter’s New Guinea: The Last Unknown; Osmar White’s Green Armor and Parliament of a Thousand Tribes; New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History by Clive Moore, Documents and Readings in New Guinea History, edited by J. L. Whittaker and a host of others; Tim Flannery’s Throwim Way Leg; Prowling Through Papua by Frank Clune; W. N. Beaver’s Unexplored New Guinea; F. Hurley’s Pearls and Savages; L. M. D’Albertis’ New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw; and Captain J. A, Lawson’s Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea. Stephen Anderson’s article, “How Many Languages Are There in the World?” which appeared in the May 2004 edition of the Linguistic Society of America’s scholarly publication, was also very helpful.
Souter’s book, in particular, describes successive stages of exploration in New Guinea, and is full of fascinating anecdotes about the von Ehlers expedition and others.
First Contact tells the story of the “discovery” of the New Guinea Highlands by Australian gold prospectors Michael Leahy and his brothers. (There is also a film called First Contact based on Leahy’s film footage. It is widely considered an ethnographic classic.) The bulk of the book is about the events of 1933, when Leahy led a series of prospecting expeditions into the highlands and initiated the first contacts between highlanders and Europeans. The account is based on his diaries and later writings and on interviews with the native highlanders who witnessed the events. The book is full of photos taken at the time.
Chapter 6. Forlorn Hope
Many of the Company E details are derived from Lutjens’ diary, a series of lectures he delivered on the Papuan