The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [158]
I learned much of the history of Buna, and the correct spellings of place names, from Wellington Jojoba, a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, who was raised in Buna.
Details of William Hirashima’s life are from the transcript of Dr. David Swift, University of Hawaii.
The story of Simon Warmenhoven’s heroism on the trail is from a letter that Herb Steenstra wrote to Warmenhoven’s daughters. In an interview with Jack Hill, I learned of Warmenhoven’s heroism during the bombing of the airstrip in Port Moresby.
Milner discusses the paucity of accurate intelligence. There was a commonly held belief that the Allies might be able to take Buna “without firing a shot.” Eichelberger comments on this in Our Jungle Road to Tokyo; and in his article, “War Is Like This,” E. J. Kahn does, too.
Chapter 12. The Kill Zone
I found the translation of the poem “Umi Yukaba” in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook’s book, Japan at War: An Oral History. Details of the advance and first day’s battle are from Lawrence Thayer’s account, a series of articles that Robert Doyle wrote for the Milwaukee Journal, interviews with soldiers of the 128th, writer-historian Tom Doherty’s account in the Wisconsin Magazine of History titled “Buna: The Red Arrow Division’s Heart of Darkness,” and Bergerud’s interview with Ernest Gerber.
In the early days of the battle, according to Doherty, “Murphy’s Law ran amok.”
Accounts of the bombing of the flotilla of boats that included General Harding are from Lida Mayo, Harding’s Buna Diary, Anders’ biography of Harding, a report of the incident that Harding wrote on January 6, 1943, a colonel’s account of the disaster (written on December 8, 1942), Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Hollenbeck’s diary, which can be found at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, an article by Murlin Spencer called “2 Allied Generals Swim Half Mile” that appeared in the St. Paul Dispatch, and Pat Robinson’s book The Fight for New Guinea.
Harding mourned the loss of McKenny. “The Division,” he wrote, “lost a good man.”
The 128th urgently radioed General Ennis Whitehead, General Kenney’s deputy commander, requesting airdrops to replace the supplies that were lost.
According to author Thomas Carmichael (The Ninety Days), despite Kenney’s boast about his pilots supplying the artillery, it was a role that he showed a “total inability to fulfill.”
Descriptions of the Japanese positions are taken from Milner, The Papuan Campaign, and Bergerud’s Touched with Fire. Geoffrey Perret writes in There’s a War to Be Won that the Japanese position was so formidable that “Two men and a machine gun could hold off a battalion.”
Groom writes, “The Japanese were fighting from beind the most formidable bunkers seen since the Western Front of World War I.”
Doyle wrote of the attack: “The Yanks are advancing—crawling on their bellies through the rain soaked jungle so thick they can’t see more than 10 yards ahead of them…” Doyle also writes of the medics’ outstanding work.
Details of that first night are from my interviews with Ray Bailey. Stutterin’ Smith writes of being put under Australian command.
Chapter 13. A Poor Man’s War
Eric Bergerud called the battle for the north coast “a poor man’s war.”
Harding comments at length in his Buna Diary on MacArthur’s orders to take Buna. According to Kenney, “Harding was getting the blame, as he had not weeded out incompetent subordinate commanders who didn’t know what to do. The troops were shot full of dysentery and malaria was starting to show up…. The troops were green and the officers were not controlling them…. They threw away their steel helmets and then wouldn’t go forward because they didn’t have them. They were scared to death of snipers.”
Smith writes of his battalion’s return to the east side of the river.
Soldiers would eventually come to call the Triangle the “Bloody Triangle.”
Details of Hirashima’s heroism are from the transcript of Dr. David Swift, University of Hawaii.