The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [42]
Seizo Okada effused:
We gazed over the Gulf of Papua from the peak of the last main ridge we had fought to ascend. “I can see the ocean! The sea of Port Moresby!” The officers and men who had endured such bloody conflict embraced on the top of a stony ridge, crying and pointing. There were no longer any deep mountain ranges in front to block their progress. An undulating ocean of verdant green forest fell away before us. In the gaps between the trees, half obscured by the mountain mist, something was glittering. It was undoubtedly the sea. The Gulf of Papua…. Later that evening, we stood on the peak and saw the lights of Port Moresby. We could just make out the searchlights shining over the airfield at Seven Mile to the north of the city.
Captain Nakahashi of the 55th Mountain Artillery was moved to write in his diary: “Over there was Port Moresby, the object of our invasion, which had become an obsession. Officers and men alike embraced one another overcome by emotion…. The line of captured positions more than atones for their blood.”
It had been a hard-won victory for General Horii and the men of the Nankai Shitai. Of the six thousand combat troops that Horii had committed to the invasion of Port Moresby, only fifteen hundred remained, and at least half of these men were wounded, sick, or severely weakened by hunger and disease.
“The only thing that kept up the morale was the thought of Port Moresby,” wrote Seizo Okada. For a moment Horii’s men could forget the loss of so many friends and the hunger that gnawed at their bellies. Their jubilation, though, would not last.
As the Japanese contemplated victory in New Guinea, Guadalcanal thrust itself onto the main stage. Despite the diversion of resources and troops to the Solomon Islands, the Japanese were in trouble there. When U.S. Marines virtually destroyed an entire Japanese detachment in the Battle of Bloody Ridge in mid-September, Japanese General Headquarters in Rabaul once again was forced to amend its plans for taking Port Moresby. Their strategic situation was complicated by another disturbing development—Japanese war planners learned of MacArthur’s intention to attack Buna.
Though news of Japan’s defeat at Guadalcanal filtered forward along the Japanese supply line to Ioribaiwa Ridge, General Horii refused to accept its implications. He and his troops had come too far and suffered too much to turn their backs on Port Moresby. Privately, Horii brooded. But publicly, he proceeded as if the news from Guadalcanal had no consequences for him or his troops. Horii designated September 20 as the day on which his army would resume its attack on Port Moresby, and sent out patrols over the Goldie River, which separated Ioribaiwa from Imita Ridge, to identify enemy positions and to assess the terrain that lay ahead.
Horii’s soldiers were too busy foraging in the jungle and among the scattered native gardens to contemplate the aftermath of Japan’s defeat at Bloody Ridge. Despair, though, filled their diaries. On September 11, hoping to conserve his food supply, Horii had cut the daily rice ration to less than a pint per man. Yet by September 17, the rice was nearly gone.
Horii’s supply situation was desperate. Allied pilots pounded Rabaul with 1,760-pound bombs and attacked transport ships bound for Buna. Those supplies that made it to the north coast and were marked for the front line rarely made it that far forward—starving soldiers and carriers pilfered them along the way.
On Ioribaiwa Ridge, sick and