[11] For the same reasons, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces South West Pacific Area was determined to hold it. The information contained in these reports were bibliographically indexed. per cubic foot, this works out to 1,350 cubic feet of records. From there the documents were immediately sent to Brisbane for translation by ATIS personnel. The story of the capture and return of the Z documents is detailed in Appendix II. This information resulted in the Americans speeding up their invasion convoy by a day. [33], Operation Lilliput (18 December 1942 June 1943) was an ongoing resupply operation ferrying troops and supplies from Milne Bay, at the tip of the Papuan Peninsula, to Oro Bay, a little more than halfway between Milne Bay and the BunaGona area. After the cessation of hostilities, the War Crimes Echelon, a separate part of ATIS, was established. The town itself was on the shore of Humboldt Bay, with a first-class anchorage. [33], Initial operations commenced in the second week of March 1944 with air raids by aircraft of the U.S. 5th Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force attacked Japanese airfields along the New Guinea coast from Wewak to the Vogelkop and on Biak Island. This was done to fool the Japanese into believing that the documents had not been discovered by the Allies. [4][23], The main landings at Hollandia would be made at two locations. [12] General Headquarters South West Pacific Area Operational Instruction No.7 of 25 May 1942, issued by Commander-Allied-Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, placed all Australian and US Army, Air Force and Navy Forces in the Port Moresby Area under the control of New Guinea Force. [28], "Thenceforth, the Battle of Milne Bay became an infantry struggle in the sopping jungle carried on mostly at night under pouring rain. The Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in 1942 represented crucial losses for the Japanese and marked a turning point in the war. At Kokoda [between Port Moresby and Buna] 268 documents were captured, at Buna 1,349, at Lae [eastern New Guinea] 1,562, while at Saipan in July 1944 the figure reached at least 27 tons.[14]. It included excerpts from Japanese captured documents on their research and use of bacterial warfare. 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. Earlier, during the Leyte campaign, important documents and diaries were captured by CIC detachments indicating the collaboration of a prominent police officer. The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. He told soldiers that ATIS personnel had told him that they had seen Japanese . For his action during the Biak operation, Jack Y. Cannon, the commanding officer of the 41st CIC Detachment received the Silver Star. 7 was cancelled and no record is held that No. 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. The Japanese also planned to capture other strategic areas where they could establish advance posts and raise an outer barrier against an Allied counteroffensive. This was usually done in the form of listings (usually termed bulletins) that provided a brief description of the records and various types of publications containing full or partial translations of specific documents and publications containing full or partial translations of documents relating to a general or specific topic. The Navy played a crucial role in operations to take Japanese airfields. Excerpts from the citation indicate that he, with great risk to his life made reconnaissance in a number of caves which had been occupied by Japanese, approaching dangerously close to enemy fire and recovered more than 11 cases of enemy documents vitally needed for the successful conclusion of the operation.. At the Kempei Tai (Japanese Military Police) headquarters they found numerous lists of names and evidence of collaboration and disloyalty to the Philippines and the United States. The Battle for Milne Bay was a small one as World War II engagements went, but very important. Before the end of May 1944 the 41st Infantry Division moved westward from Hollandia and made a landing on the little island of Biak. When Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea, was captured in late April one of the first places CIC agents seized was the post office. Reports were issued when sufficient information on any subject had been collated to warrant publication. [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. 119 deals with the Japanese Military Police Service and Report No. 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. The battle was an unqualified success for the Allied forces, resulting in a withdrawal by the Japanese to a new strategic defense line in the west of New Guinea and the abandonment of all positions in the east of the island. During the second phase, lasting from late 1942 until the Japanese surrender, the Alliesconsisting primarily of Australian forcescleared the Japanese first from Papua, then the Mandate and finally from the Dutch colony. 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. The Japanese defended Biak valiantly, even managing at one point to bring in 1,100 reinforcements, but they were finally overcome in early August. The campaign resulted in a crushing defeat and heavy losses for the Empire of Japan. The unit was in effect a miniature ATIS, with various sections, coordinating the production of translation and interrogation reports of immediate operation value. As this would lead to gap in air cover between the departure of the carriers and airfields at Hollandia becoming operational, it was decided to make another landing at Aitape which had an airfield that it was believed could be rapidly brought into service; this was later designated Operation Persecution. [4] See The Beginnings of the United States Armys Japanese Language Training: From the Presidio of San Francisco to Camp Savage, Minnesota 1941-1942,. [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. 3, Glossary of military terms encountered in Japanese documents; No. They totaled 104 in number. The other landing would be made at Humboldt Bay by two RCTs (the 162nd and 186th) of the 41st Division. Round one had gone to the Americans and Australians who had ejected the. Two months after JICPOA was formed US forces invaded the Gilbert Islands. Some claim that 97% of Japanese deaths were from non-combat causes. 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. The Battle of Hollandia (code-named Operation Reckless) was an engagement between Allies of World War II and Japanese forces during World War II. By 26 April, U.S. troops secured the two eastern airfields, and later that day linked up with forces advancing from the 24th Division advancing from Tanahmerah Bay. [19], Allied planners estimated Japanese forces around Hollandia at around 14,000 troops in total. The large majority of the defending Japanese troops there had uncharacteristically abandoned their positions and fled inland. Over the course of an hour, this feature, dubbed Pancake Hill, was captured with only minimal opposition. In September 1945 they seized in Singapore important documentary evidence of war crimes, including photographs showing captured Indian soldiers being executed for refusing to join with Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army. In New Guinea, U.S. and Australian infantry were moving along the northern coast, pushing the Japanese before them. [9], The Japanese 8th Area Army (equivalent to an Anglo-American army), under General Hitoshi Imamura at Rabaul, was responsible for both the New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns. In mid-July 1944, near Moemi, soldiers recovered three cases of buried records, including seven important documents that a Japanese deserter had led them to. 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. Intelligence gained from breaking the codes protecting Imperial Japanese Army radio messages led the Allies to learn that the Hollandia area was only lightly defended, with Japanese forces being concentrated in the Madang-Wewak region. The most important find was a set of plans and specifications for some of the defenses encountered on the island. Japanese forces to the west were reconfigured to form a defense line through Biak and Manokwari,[62] while the Japanese 18th Army, still in defensive positions around Wewak, to the east, were faced with a long retreat west through the jungle having been ordered to bypass Hollandia and Aitape and reinforce the 2nd Army in western New Guinea. Between the mountain ridge and the lake was a narrow plain where the Japanese had built a number of airfields; three had been constructed by April 1944 and a fourth was under construction. It was captured and was found to be carrying a Japanese message. The U.S. 24th Division's 19th and 21st Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs) were to land at Tanahmerah Bay. U.S. Military forces began capturing records almost as soon as the war began and started exploiting them immediately. [12] Initially, the intelligence product of JICPOA received no CINCPAC-CINCPOA authentication. They included plans, charts, air defense details on all Japanese-held Pacific islands, and battle orders. While MacArthur sought eight days worth of support from the fleet's powerful fleet carriers, Nimitz would only agree to commit this force for two days after the landings. [5], According to John Laffin, the campaign "was arguably the most arduous fought by any Allied troops during World War II". I am estimating that a cubic foot of records is 2,500 pages. The landings at Hollandia and Aitape were followed just four weeks later by landings at Wakde, Sarmi and Toem, to the west. The main landings at Hollandia and Aitape were followed just four weeks later by landings at,! 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