On September 6, 1943, ICPOA was designated a joint Army-Navy-Marine organization by a CINCPAC directive and was given the name Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA). Some of the research reports dealt with military and naval matters, such as No. Neither Kitazono nor Endo had been able to prepare a comprehensive defensive plan, and in any event had neither the men nor the resources to carry it out. 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 following month at least 20 fighters were lost in combat, while eight were destroyed in July. The U.S. 24th Division's 19th and 21st Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs) were to land at Tanahmerah Bay. Ultimately, a major air and staging base was developed in the Hollandia area and most of the higher headquarters in the Southwest Pacific area established their command posts there during the summer of 1944. [14] [2] SEATIC was part of the South East Asia Command, established at New Delhi, India in November 1943 and moved to Kandy, Ceylon, on April 15, 1944. To help ensure soldiers turned in any souvenirs of intelligence interest, the CIC established a souvenir grab bag. This contained items of no intelligence value, such as Japanese postcards, stationery, pictures, and clothing, and any soldier who handed over a souvenir needed for intelligence analysis was allowed to take an item from the grab bag in exchange. ATIS also published a how-to handbook on conservation treatment of captured records and produced a Document Restoration Kit for units in the field. 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. [13] Eventually it would grow to over 2,500 personnel, some of who served with Advanced Echelons and combat units. During the first week of March 1945, I Corps ATIS Advanced Echelon on Luzon translated four top secret Japanese operational orders made between February 26th-March 2nd. 39 with Navy Operations, Plans and Orders (1941-1944). Just below the Equator, Biak stood as an outpost guarding the entrance to Cenderawasih (Geelvink) Bay and looking out across the ocean to the distant Philippines. [20], Since Port Moresby was the only port supporting operations in Papua, its defence was critical to the campaign. The town itself was on the shore of Humboldt Bay, with a first-class anchorage. The National Archives at College Park as well as other United States and foreign archival institutions hold copies of these publications. Forward positions would first be established at Milne Bay, located in the forked eastern end of the Papuan peninsula, and at Buna, a village on the northeast coast of Papua about halfway between Huon Gulf and Milne Bay. ", Samuel Eliot Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, p. 120, The first strike, on 7 April, was against Allied shipping in the waters between Guadalcanal and Tulagi. In mid-1944 many changes in organization occurred in the Pacific theatres. The Battle of Hollandia (code-named Operation Reckless) was an engagement between Allies of World War II and Japanese forces during World War II. [8] At the start of 1943, ICPOA was basically dealing with intercepted messages because not that many prisoners of war or documents had been captured. On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, severely damaging the US Pacific Fleet. The westernmost island of this group, Goodenough, had been occupied in August 1942 by 353 stranded troops from bombed Japanese landing craft. [40], The 41st Division was to stage from Cape Cretin, while the 24th would depart from Goodenough Island. Over 170 were published, including many extracts from diaries and notebooks. Instances were noted of officers completely out of their depth, of men eating meals when they should have been on the firing line, even of cowardice. 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. As their number grew, and the volume of available intelligence increased, such a procedure became unnecessary, and also impossible due to the limited number of linguists available. After the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, in March 1943, an abandoned lifeboat at Goodenough Island (northeast of New Guinea) from the Teiyo Maru was recovered and found in it was The Japanese Army List, dated October 15, 1942. American military leaders knew that while the number of prisoners (and thus information) taken in the Pacific would be relatively small, compared to the war in Europe, Japanese records would become all that more important as an intelligence source. This discovery resulted in a hurried revision of the assault plans regarding these islands. [13], Due north of Port Moresby, on the northeast coast of Papua, are the Huon Gulf and the Huon Peninsula. [10] After the chief of staff of the Second Area Army travelled to Wewak to deliver Adachi orders in person, he directed that the 66th Infantry Regiment begin moving from Wewak to Hollandia on 18 April; it was expected that this unit would arrive there in mid-June. On April 29, 1944, ATIS Research Report 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. This was done to fool the Japanese into believing that the documents had not been discovered by the Allies. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. [36], The Australians decisively turned back the Japanese assault in the ensuing 2931 January 1943 Battle of Wau. MacArthur, the supreme commander in the area, also commanded all U.S. Army troops in the Southwest Pacific in his capacity as commanding general, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. Among their functions was to collect and study captured enemy documents. [9] The documents were quickly brought back to Hawaii. [18] A large number of Japanese aircraft were stationed at airfields near Hollandia in March 1944. However, this is contradictory to the total number of Japanese combat deaths calculated across most individual battles in the campaign. 9, Japanese-English Medical Dictionary; No. [67], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}23158.8S 140431.2E / 2.533000S 140.717000E / -2.533000; 140.717000. MacArthur was further determined to conquer all of New Guinea in his progress toward the eventual recapture of the Philippines. There was also a small airstrip.To the west, the Cyclops Mountains rise to over 7000 feet (2100 m). The story of the capture and return of the Z documents is detailed in Appendix II. 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. [47], I-Go demonstrated that the Japanese command was not learning the lessons of air power that the Allies were. The timely publication of 18 of these reports afforded a wealth of information preparatory to the invasion. 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. Nowhere in the modern world has an armed liberation struggle persisted for so long - nearly 30 years - and with such secrecy, as the West Papuan war of resistance against the military government of Indonesia. The Americans landed at Hollandia and Aitape simultaneously on 22 April with the aim of bypassing the Japanese stronghold at Wewak and thus leaving the Japanese 18th Army isolated and cut off there. In January 1944, during the New Britain-New Guinea operations, captured Japanese code books enabled radio intelligence staff to determine the intentions of Lt. Gen. Hatazo Adachi, commander of the Japanese 18th Army. After four days under these conditions the two units had reached the western airfield and on 26 April it was secured. [7] The volume would have been more but members of the 414th CIC unit learned that Chinese soldiers through ignorance destroyed many documents. A complete list of the names of all officers and noncommissioned officers of the Japanese 222nd Infantry Regiment was captured on May 28, 1944. Miscellaneous identifications taken from documents captured in early November in the Pinamopoan Area, Leyte, gave the first indication of the Japanese 1st Divisions presence in this area. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies began on 10 January 1942, and the Imperial Japanese Army overran the entire colony in less than three months. ATIS was directed to make available to the board any and all information having to do with the identification of Japanese war criminals. When very few documents were captured and relatively little was known about the enemy forces in the SWPA, it was imperative to translate all documents in full. In March 1943, a document was captured showing the submarine schedule between Lae, New Guinea, and New Britain. Garrisons were effectively besieged and denied shipments of food and medical supplies, and as a result, some claim that 97% of Japanese deaths in this campaign were from non-combat causes. Japanese forces began to land on the island of Luzon in the Philippines on December 10. . Admiral Nimitz exploited the same intelligence advantage when he planned the next stage of the Navys campaign in the central Pacific. [46], On landing, the U.S. troops came under sporadic small arms and machine gun fire, but this was quickly suppressed. The Aussies were fighting mad, for they had found some of their captured fellows tied to trees and bayoneted to death, surmounted by the placard, 'It took them a long time to die'. In early 1945, in the vicinity of Bhamo in northern Burma, CIC CIT No. 126 is Hoko: The Spy-Hostage System of Group Control-The Clue to Japanese Psychology. On April 29, 1944, Research Report No. [28][29] Secondary landings would take place Aitape, 125 miles to the east, at the same time as those around Hollandia. 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. In New Guinea, U.S. and Australian infantry were moving along the northern coast, pushing the Japanese before them. In the early months of 1944, both at Bougainville and at Rabaul, large numbers of Japanese troops were effectively put out of action without being confronted in bloody combat. The report contained 28 pages of translations, each translation accompanied by a photostatic copy of the original document and authenticated under oath by the translation. They included: No. Tweet. 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. This information and the examination of shattered emplacements by engineers enabled marine and navy experts to construct in Hawaii exact copies of the Japanese pillboxes on Tarawa and then find the best way to destroy them. 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. Three weeks later, on March 21, 1944, a captured field order disclosed the Japanese strength at Rossum, New Britain. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the leaders of the Allied nations agreed to this change in strategy focusing on neutralizing Rabaul rather than capturing it.[50]. It was not just on the islands that important information was captured. [1] All of the various organizations widely disseminated the information contained in the captured records. This material was translated by ATIS in May 1945 and provided Allied naval commanders with immediate intelligence regarding a variety of topics. [4] Within six months, the school had shipped its first 35 graduates to the field, just in time for Guadalcanal and the Buna-Gona campaign. The campaign between Allied and Japanese forces commenced with the Japanese assault on Rabaul on 23 January 1942. It was recognized that before an invasion of the Japanese home islands became possible it would be necessary to undertake extensive aerial bombardment of the islands and cut Japans lines of communications to the Dutch East Indies and Malaya. [18] For more information regarding the Z Plan see my article The Z Plan Story: Japans 1944 Naval Battle Strategy Drifts into U.S. Hands, Part I and Part II in Prologue, Vol. [41] Through the afternoon of 1 March, the overcast weather held at which point everything began to go wrong for the Japanese. The Japanese occupied the village with an initial force of 1,500 on 21 July and by 22 August had 11,430 men under arms at Buna. US troops debark from LST-66 at Tanahmerah Bay Hollandia. 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. Among this cache were code books and a list of Japanese and German agents in the United States. Others included information about the Psychology in the Japanese Armed Forces (No. The headland was formed by the Cyclops Mountains, a mountain ridge rising steeply to 7,000 feet (2,100m) and was backed by Lake Sentani, extending 15 miles (24km) east to west. By the end of the day on 23 April the 186th Infantry were about halfway to Lake Sentani, while those from the 162nd had secured Hollandia and were securing the high ground around their objective, winkling out isolated pockets of resistance with aerial support. Fortunately, one American officer wrote in 1944, the enemy as a nation is addicted to keeping diaries, and converting everything into writing.. In the meantime another landing was made at Aitape in Australian New Guinea, about 125 miles (roughly 200 km) southeast of Hollandia, where Australian engineers soon completed an airstrip. 87 (Japanese Mines and Minesweeping); and, Nos. Then began the grueling Kokoda Track campaign, a brutal experience for both the Japanese and Australian troops involved. The fires around White 1 continued until 27 April when the engineers were released to return to the beach. The admirals preferred to bypass the Philippines and take Formosa, which was much closer to Japan. By the time the Allied bombers and PT boats finished their work on 3 March, Kimura had lost all eight transports and four of his eight destroyers. The Dutch East Indies fell into Japan's sphere. 5, Bibliographic Subject Index for Enemy Publications 1-200 (November 30, 1944), with a supplementary index from 201-300 (March 1945); No. They were discontinued with the dissolution of the Philippine Island Research Section of ATIS on October 9, 1944. Before the operation against the Japanese at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, 41st CIC Detachment Special Agent in Charge Duval Edwards at Finschhaven during March and April 1944 gave many lectures on the great importance of soldiers turning in any captured documents. The brief spurt of books in 1943 and 1944, when Japanese were able to visit the occupied Dutch East Indies, dealt mainly with Dutch New Guinea, and then only in a very rudimentary way. [43], The remaining destroyers with about 2,700 surviving troops limped back to Rabaul. I Corps, became commander of the newly formed U.S. 8th Army. These documents, contrary to American intelligence, indicated that the Japanese were strongly entrenched on Parry and Eniwetok islands. The three supporting U.S. cruisers and destroyers began their bombardment around 06:00, concentrating on targets around the entrance to Jautefa Bay and Hollandia. Current Translation No. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [21][22] Of the total force, 22,500 combat troops were assigned to the landing at Aitape; while the rest (nearly 30,000) were allocated to the Hollandia landings. Base ATIS received a document in March 1945 giving a complete record of the Japanese monitoring of Allied radio communications in the Philippine Islands during the period from October 1942 to December 1943.