The plane in which Fukudome was flying also crashed into the sea, near the island of Cebu. [25] But fighters did provide cover for the transports, and for bombers when their targets were within range. This attack also destroyed 60 percent of all rations and ammunition that had been landed, and resulted in shortages amongst the infantry advancing towards the airfields. In March 1944, plans were developed for ATIS to be located in closer proximity to combat operations. Copies of these ATIS publications can be found at the National Archives at College Park, the Australian National Archives, as well as other archival repositories. [36] The air and naval attacks succeeded in isolating the remaining Japanese forces in New Guinea. Exact tracings and translations were supplied to XXIV Corps prior to attack on these positions. The documents were then sent on to ATIS, SWPA, for final examination. The Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), had its origins in the Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (ICPOA) which had been established on July 14, 1942 in Hawaii as Admiral Chester W. Nimitz intelligence center. MacArthur was further determined to conquer all of New Guinea in his progress toward the eventual recapture of the Philippines. Japan's threatened military encroachment closer to Australia hinted at some type of potential invasion of the northernmost frontiers. In addition, about 5,400 survivors of the Japanese defeat at Buna-Gona were moved into the Lae-Salamaua area. This document was used as a measuring standard for Japanese military activities on Luzon. Hollandia was a port on the north coast of New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies, and was the only anchorage between Wewak to the east, and Geelvink Bay to the west. For this, he ordered the air arm of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's Third Fleet carriers to reinforce the Eleventh Air Fleet at Rabaul. Opposition on the ground at Hollandia was negligible and within four days the two divisions had secured inland Japanese airfields. This discovery resulted in a hurried revision of the assault plans regarding these islands. The landing was supported by carrier-based aircraft of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which had also struck Japanese air installations at Wakde and Sarmi to the northwest. During the early days of the war the Japanese forces were advancing. On April 29, 1944, ATIS Research Report No. Wrecked Japanese planes litter Hollandia field, largely the victims of USAAF attacks earlier in the month (80-G-325109). Gona fell to the Australians on 9 December 1942, Buna to the US 32nd on 2 January 1943, and Sanananda, located between the two larger villages, fell to the Australians on 22 January. Due to USAAF doctrine and a lack of long-range escorts, long-range bomber raids on targets like Rabaul went in unescorted and suffered heavy losses, prompting severe criticism of Lieutenant General George Brett by war correspondents for misusing his forces. 76) and Japanese efforts to fight Plague and Cholera (No. They were prepared and distributed as a result of a specific need, and represented a form of publication for matters outside the usual range of translations and reports. Advancing on Australia The Japanese effort at the start of World War Two was focused on conquest. region: "", [14] However, using 27 tons, at 40 lbs. These were supported by a force of eight escort carriers of the 5th Fleet. [5] The first Nisei linguists were tested when the Marines invaded Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 and flew prisoners of war and captured Japanese documents were sent a short distance away to New Caledonia for processing by the Nisei language team attached to Task Force 6814. SEATIC and SINTIC operating in Southeast Asia and China received and translated relatively large quantities of captured documents during the war. Allied troops set up 105mm howitzer in Depapre New Guinea 1944. The beach was narrow, though, and only allowed two LCMs to land at a time, while the even bigger LSTs had to remain offshore where they were cross loaded on to LVTs. The Japanese invaded New Guinea from November 1941 till April 1942 and occupied the Dutch part (except for Merauke) and the northern Australian part (Fakfak fell April 1, Manokwari April 12). At the same time, two sketches were captured at Tacloban, Leyte, which showed the disposition of the Japanese 16th Division. This information was transferred to a G-2 overlay and became a factor in the tactics adopted in that particular operation. The terrain, however, proved more problematic. The plane in which Koga was flying crashed at sea, with no survivors. [64][66] Both Humboldt and Tanahmerah were developed with naval base, ammunition, repair and fuel facilities. The situation was not fully resolved until 3 May when transport aircraft began landing on an airstrip that was hastily built by an engineer aviation battalion at Tami. Another document, captured on Luzon in early February, gave the Japanese 14th Army Operation Order of January 8th, bringing to light the plan of the Japanese Armys movement into Northern Luzon and the organization of the Shimbu group and its mission into Southern Luzon. Australian ground units operated under Gen. Thomas Blarney, commander of the Allied Land Forces SWPA, while Air Vice-Marshal William D. Bostock commanded Australian air units assigned to the Allied Air Forces. It stated also that the land offensive was scheduled to commence some time in the middle of November. 14) was published and entitled Japanese Violations of the Laws of War. The report contained 28 pages of translations, each translation accompanied by a photostatic copy of the original document and authenticated under oath by the translator. During the so-called atoll campaign in the Pacific, US Navy, Marine Corps, and Army personnel captured many valuable documents on various islands. Over the course of an hour, this feature, dubbed Pancake Hill, was captured with only minimal opposition. He was succeeded in September 1942, by Capt. On 10 January 1942, during the Dutch East Indies Campaign, Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies as part of the Pacific War. Then began the grueling Kokoda Track campaign, a brutal experience for both the Japanese and Australian troops involved. In the first months of 1942, the Japanese launched further attacks against British Burma, Australian-administered New Guinea and Papua, and the islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Often, they consisted of combined translations of several documents relating to the same subject, such as (No. [27], The ground forces would be supported by two naval bombardment forces. The Battle for Milne Bay was a small one as World War II engagements went, but very important. [30], The D'Entrecasteaux Islands lie directly off the northeast coast of the lower portion of the Papuan peninsula. This information was put to immediate tactical use and resulted in the capture of the position by the US 7th Cavalry Squadron. This was done to fool the Japanese into believing that the documents had not been discovered by the Allies. Cushing, realizing the possible significance of the documents, notified his superiors who in turn notified the Allied Intelligence Bureau in Brisbane. Accordingly, the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, directed on September 22, 1944, that Advanced Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ADVATIS) be established in the immediate vicinity of General Headquarters at Hollandia. In February 1944, marines and soldiers from the 27th Infantry Division captured important documents at Engebi Island. By 1944 the school had outgrown these facilities and moved to nearby Fort Snelling. ATIS received and translated in April 1944 the diary of prisoner of war Hiroshi Horikoshi, a civilian employee (interpreter) with the Japanese 14th Army, who was captured at the same time. "Within a few days, the enemy was retreating from the Wau Valley, where he had suffered a serious defeat, harassed all the way back to Mubo"[37] About one week later, the Japanese completed their evacuation of Guadalcanal. To the invaders from Japan, and the occupiers from Australia and the United States, however, New Guineans appeared as colonial subjects at best, and as slaves at worst. The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. The landings were undertaken simultaneously with the amphibious invasion of Aitape ("Operation Persecution") to the east. [14] MacArthur would have liked to deny this area to the Japanese, but he had neither sufficient air nor naval forces to undertake a counterlanding. Late the next month at Biak, an island in Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, CIC agents seized the records of the finance office, post office, bank, and Japanese headquarters. It held what turned out to be a gold mine of valuable documents, including battle plans, codes and letters. His contemplated offensive against Wau died a-borning. [1] Among them were the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center (SEATIC)[2]; the Sino Translation and Interrogation Center (SINTIC)[3]; and, the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA). 72 (formerly ATIS Information Bulletin No. [5] During the Guadalcanal campaign a large quantity of documents were captured, including ones retrieved from the Japanese submarine I-1, just offshore.[6]. Joseph J. Rochefort (of the Battle of Midway code-breaking fame). The Allied victories in 1943 set the stage for the strategic advances of 1944, but they did not determine the exact lines of attack. The attack force comprised 84,000 personnel, including 52,000 combat troops, 23,000 support personnel, and a naval task force of 200 vessels of 7th Fleets Task Force 77 under Rear Admiral Daniel Barbey. After the Japanese invasion of New Guinea the Americans, aided by Australian troops, organized a series of landings and other offensive actions against the Japanese in New Guinea. 17 with Allied and Japanese Operations Among Natives of Dutch New Guinea; No. Barbey's VII 'Phib carried out two almost simultaneous undertakings. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. Most Japanese troops never even came into contact with Allied forces, and were instead simply cut off and subjected to an effective blockade by Allied naval forces. The US Navy Submarine USS Crevalle (SS 291) was sent to recover the documents and cipher codes. MacArthur, with a firm foothold in New Guinea, was determined to move next to the Philippines, from which he had been driven after Pearl Harbor, and from there launch the final attack on the Japanese home islands. Today known as Jayapura, in 1941 Hollandia (140.707E 2.543S) was the largest settlement in the Dutch half of New Guinea.It was located on the only really first-class natural harbor on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea, Humboldt Bay, though it had only primitive port facilities. Furthermore, the Milne Bay affair demonstrated once again that an amphibious assault without air protection, and with an assault force inferior to that of the defenders, could not succeed. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Counter Intelligence (X-2) personnel at Rangoon Burma seized, in the former Japanese Embassy, a mass of documentation on the Kempei Tai (Japanese Military Police), Japanese political intelligence organizations, spy schools, and other political and intelligence organizations. The town itself was on the shore of Humboldt Bay, with a first-class anchorage. Engineers operating amphtracks pushed forward from Jautefa Bay to the lake to carry the infantry around the Japanese positions at the lake, completing their flanking maneuver on 25 April. Lieut. The diary covered the period January 1942-January 1944. The umbrella term for the series of strategic actions taken by the Allies to reduce and capture the vast Japanese naval and air facilities at Rabaul was Operation Cartwheel. The Netherlands, Britain and the United States tried to defend the colony from the Japanese forces as they moved south in late 1941 in search of Dutch oil. At 177 planes, this was the largest Japanese air attack since Pearl Harbor. The forces of the Southwest Pacific Area were ready to move on to the Philippines. The ATIS Information Section supplied information derived from interrogations; translations; and, situation reports, intelligence summaries, maps, photos, and other outside publications. [11] This document was quickly translated and published as ATIS Publication No. None of the senior officers present had been in post more than a few weeks and the senior air officer had been relieved following the destruction of his air forces at the beginning of April. West Papua: Forgotten War, Unwanted People. On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, severely damaging the US Pacific Fleet. Historians acknowledge that the deciphering of the Z Plan was one of the greatest single intelligence feats of the war in the South West Pacific Area. [citation needed]. [16] In the resulting 48 May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, the Allies suffered higher losses in ships, but achieved a crucial strategic victory by turning the Japanese landing force back, thereby removing the threat to Port Moresby, at least for the time being. [60] A total of 7,200 Japanese troops assembled at Genjem and then attempted to withdraw overland to Sarmi; only around 1,000 reached their destination. [56] Historian Edward J. Drea attributed the success of the operation largely to MacArthur's bold decision to exploit intelligence gained through code breaking, and judged it was "MacArthur's finest hour in World War II and ULTRA's single greatest contribution to the general's Pacific strategy". Second, the Allies had become convinced that the Japanese were preparing a major seaborne reinforcement and so had stepped up their air searches. First, with completion of the reduction of Rabaul, the South Pacific Area was closed as an active theatre, and Halsey left to take command of the U.S. 3rd Fleet. This translation aided materially in speeding up the execution of the subsequent attack on Saipan and other Japanese bases in the Pacific, which occurred shortly thereafter. The experience of the green US 32nd Infantry Division, just out of training camp and utterly unschooled in jungle warfare, was nearly disastrous. [27] As the Japanese ground forces pressed toward Port Moresby, the Allied Air Forces struck supply points along the Kokoda Track. To alleviate this difficulty, in July 1944, an officer was assigned for duty with ATIS for the purpose of organizing a sub-section to clean and restore documents making them more readily legible. I am estimating that a cubic foot of records is 2,500 pages. Reports were issued when sufficient information on any subject had been collated to warrant publication. In November 1943, during Operation Galvanic, marines of the 2nd Marine Division captured important documents at Tarawa Atoll (Betio). The campaign was long and arduous, but by the end of 1944 the Japanese threat was contained in New Guinea. The most important find was a set of plans and specifications for some of the defenses encountered on the island. During the period of October 1942-July 1943, the work of indexing, abstracting and collating information from captured documents and prisoners of war, answering internal queries, and providing information to assist translators and examiners, was carried on by a staff consisting of six officers and ten enlisted personnel. [20], I Corps under Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger provided most of the ground forces for the combined Operations Reckless and Persecution. Statistical and Accounting Branch Office of the Adjutant General 1953, p. 94, Craven & Cate 1948, p. 477 & 723 (note 15), Office of the Combined Chiefs of Staff 1943, p. 67, New Guinea: The US Army Campaigns of World War II, "Biography of Lieutenant-General Heisuke Abe () ( ) (18861943), Japan", United States Army Center of Military History, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 19421944, "Report on Historical Sources on Australia and Japan at war in Papua and New Guinea, 194245", "The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Volume I", "Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, Volume II Part I", National Archive Video of Hollandia Bay, New Guinea Invasion, Allies Study Post-War Security etc. [21], Although RAAF PBY Catalinas and Lockheed Hudsons were based at Port Moresby, because of the Japanese air attacks, long-range bombers like B-17s, B-25s, and B-26s could not be safely based there and were instead staged through from bases in Australia. Their operation plan decreed a five-pronged attack: one task force to establish a seaplane base at Tulagi in the lower Solomons, one to establish a seaplane base in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of New Guinea, one of transports to land troops near Port Moresby, one with a light carrier to cover the landing, and one with two fleet carriers to sink the Allied forces sent in response. The campaign resulted in a crushing defeat and heavy losses for the Empire of Japan. Such experiments led to improvements in naval gunfire techniques and infantry tactics in time for the Marshalls operation. The Allies proceeded to turn the island into an air base. Allied casualties amounted to 157 killed and 1,057 wounded. 25 with Anti-Japanese activities in Java; and No. Task Force 74, under British Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley, consisted of the cruisers HMAS Australia and Shropshire plus several destroyers, while Task Force 75 was made up of three U.S. cruisers, Phoenix, Nashville and Boise under Rear Admiral Russell Berkey. Japanese plans to occupy Port Moresby were negated by losses during the Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of Milne Bay. 7 was cancelled and no record is held that No. Researchers should, of course, use the National Archives Catalog. Adachi's decision may have been motivated by a belief that Hansa Bay would be the target of the next Allied amphibious landing and that he could reinforce Hollandia at a later date. [17] These troops were positioned along the Depapre Lake Sentani trail. All agreed, of course, that the naval forces that had met with such success in the Gilbert Islands should push toward the Marianas, from which the heavy B-29 bombers of the Army Air Forces could strike at Japan. They immediately sent back to Australia approximately 3,500 pounds of records, letters, and other documentary material. Report No. [1] All of the various organizations widely disseminated the information contained in the captured records. Limited Distribution Reports were special reports, highly classified, consisting of translations of documents possessing information of the highest intelligence value or of immediate importance, issued from time to time as directed. Pre-landing reconnaissance efforts were hampered by the destruction of the Australian scouting party that was landed in the area by submarine in late March, and the reality of the terrain was only discovered through aerial intelligence that arrived too late. The Japanese also seized the key oil production zones of Borneo, Central Java, Malang, Cepu, Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea of the late Dutch East Indies, defeating the Dutch forces. [8], The Japanese high command intended to hold Hollandia. U.S. Army Air Forces, Pacific Ocean Area (except the B-29s) were placed under Lieut. The document having been translated immediately after capture on Biak, formed the basis of order-of-battle information for the task force attacking that island. 16 dealt with interrogation of captured American B-24 air crews; No. These documents, contrary to American intelligence, indicated that the Japanese were strongly entrenched on Parry and Eniwetok islands. The other landing would be made at Humboldt Bay by two RCTs (the 162nd and 186th) of the 41st Division. The large majority of the defending Japanese troops there had uncharacteristically abandoned their positions and fled inland. In early June, US Army engineers, Australian infantry and an anti-aircraft battery were landed near the Lever Brothers coconut plantation at Gili Gili, and work was begun on an airfield. In May 1943, external requests for information available from ATIS sources led to the development of Information Request Reports published only in answer to specific requests for information. [12] Initially, the intelligence product of JICPOA received no CINCPAC-CINCPOA authentication. Many of the captured documents provided significant intelligence to General Douglas MacArthurs forces in the SWPA. [15] The only Allied response was a bombing raid of Lae and Salamaua by aircraft flying over the Owen Stanley Range from the carriers USSLexington and USSYorktown, leading the Japanese to reinforce these sites. [22] The cost to the Allied fighters was high. Todays post is by Dr. Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. 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