The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [80]
The Japanese knew that they were coming, and because of the delay had two extra days to prepare their defenses. The night before, the Japanese had whetted and sharpened their bayonets, oiled their weapons, inspected their machine gun belts to make sure they would not jam in the heat of the battle, and checked their firing lanes.
Since landing in mid-July, engineers had been busily fortifying the area. The Japanese had established a series of masterful positions along a narrow eleven-mile front, extending from Gona on the west to Cape Endaiadere on the east.
The Japanese defense of the beachhead was built around three main positions. One was at Gona, the other along the Sanananda track, and the third was in the Buna area from the Girua River east to Cape Endaiadere, a promontory just west of Cape Sudest and the American’s coastal headquarters at Hariko.
Girua, located just up the coastal trail from Buna Village, was the main Japanese base with a supply dump and hospital. It was defended by a variety of positions and packed with bunkers, blockhouses, and trenches. Farther south, for miles along the Sanananda track, the Japanese established a main position and a handful of forward outposts. All the positions were situated on dry ground, surrounded by tangled, stinking, crocodile-infested sago, nipa, and mangrove swamp.
Beginning east of the mouth of the Girua River and continuing southeastward, the Japanese line of defense cut through a coconut grove and then turned southward to the trail junction where a track forked to Buna Village on one hand and to Buna Government Station on the other. The area between the forks became known as the Triangle. An offshoot of the Girua River called Entrance Creek bisected it. Sweeping north, the Japanese line enclosed the Triangle and then turned eastward to the grassy area known as Government Gardens. From the gardens, it led south and then east through the main grassy area to Siremi Creek, near an old airstrip. Continuing southward, it enclosed the bridge over Siremi Creek between the old strip and a new airstrip. Then, making a right-angled turn to the new strip, it followed the edge of the strip to within a few hundred yards of the sea. Cutting sharply northeast, it emerged on the sea at a point about 750 yards below Cape Endaiadere in an area of coconut palms known as the Duropa Plantation.
In the Siremi Creek area the only dry ground was occupied by the two strategically important airfields, one called Old Strip, which was bombed relentlessly by Kenney’s pilots; and the other called New Strip. Although the airfields were primitive, MacArthur coveted them. In Allied hands, they would serve to check any further Japanese threat to Port Moresby. They would also aid an Allied advance along New Guinea’s north coast and make bombing raids on Rabaul far more practical.
Access to Buna and the airstrips, however, was almost impossible. By water, Buna was protected by a maze of shallow coral reefs. By land, it was surrounded by a swamp, only three feet above sea level, reaching far inland. The natives used the few dry areas for gardens of taro, yams, sugarcane, bananas, and breadfruit. The drier areas outside the perimeter of the swamp were barely more accessible. They were covered with coconut palm plantations and broad fields of golden kunai and elephant grass. The elephant grass grew to heights of ten feet, and both grasses were razor sharp.
In the area east of the Girua River, the Japanese had erected hundreds of impregnable coconut log bunkers between eight and thirty feet long. In designing them, the Japanese engineers had attended to the smallest of details. The bunkers were reinforced with coconut logs, I-beams, sheet iron, and forty-gallon steel oil drums filled with sand, and camouflaged with earth, grass, rocks, and more logs. Because of the high water table, engineers constructed them