This was the setting of the green war: the green of slime and vegetation, the green of gangrene and dysentery, and the green-clad enemy, whose officers smeared yellow-green, bioluminescent microorganisms on their hands so they could read maps at night. The diggers, and the GIs who were now joining them, called themselves “swamp rats.” The hideous tropical ulcers that formed on their feet, arms, bellies, chests, and armpits were known as “jungle rot.” Waving away the clouds of flies and mosquitoes that swarmed over mess gear was called “the New Guinea salute.” Bugs were everywhere: biting ants, fleas, chiggers, poisonous spiders, and brilliantly colored, enormous insects that would land on a sleeping man and, like vampires, suck his body fluids. Twisted vines swarmed with vividly colored birds and great winged creatures with teeth, like gigantic rats. Pythons and crocodiles lurked in the bogs and sloughs, waiting for a man to stumble from the mucky trail. At night a soldier would rip away blood-glutted leeches from his genitals and his rectum. Bug bites, when scratched, turned into festering sores. Since native bearers were reluctant to help him, especially near the front line, the average soldier had to carry as much as a hundred pounds on his back, and he nearly always ran a fever. It was a rare infantryman who wasn’t afflicted with yaws, scrub typhus, blackwater fever, ringworm, malaria, amoebic dysentery, or bacillary dysentery. For every man suffering from a gunshot wound, five were laid low with illness, and that is not a true measure of the extent of the sickness, because no one was hospitalized unless his fever rose above 102 degrees.40
MacArthur heard all this while treading back and forth in his Brisbane office. Then he stopped, turned to Sutherland and Dick Marshall, and said in a low, trembling voice, “We’ll defend Australia in New Guinea.” He called an off-the-record press conference to provide war correspondents with background for their future dispatches. Gavin M. Long tells how “the thirty or more war correspondents and officers rose as the General made an impressive entry—bare-headed, grave, distinguished looking, immaculate. His right arm was raised in salute. There was no other introduction. Pacing to and fro . . . MacArthur immediately began to declaim his statement of the military situation. His phrasing was perfect, his speech clear and unhalting, except for pauses for dramatic emphasis; the correspondents took notes, but there was no interruption of any kind. The conference room had become a stage, MacArthur the virtuoso, the other officers the ‘extras’ in the cast, and the correspondents the audience. It was a dramatic occasion.” George H. Johnston, an Australian journalist, recalls that the General held them spellbound for two hours, never groping for a word and displaying “the histrionic ability of Sir Henry Irving.” He told them that Australia could be saved in Papua, and only in Papua. He said: “We must attack, attack, attack!” The meeting over, Long writes, “the General again raised his right arm in salute and strode from the room followed by one or two staff officers. The conference was over. One man alone had spoken—the Supreme Commander. There was no questioning, no opportunity to clarify the meaning of the statement. It had come direct from the lips of General Douglas MacArthur, and as such it was, evidently, beyond question.”41
Sir Thomas Blarney, the cheerful, ruddy, stubby Australian who commanded MacArthur’s ground forces, was one of the few officers who didn’t believe that the Japanese would throw the Allies out of New Guinea. Most of MacArthur’s staff, by contrast, was shocked. They hadn’t anticipated this decision, which, he said, was one of the reasons he had made it; if they hadn’t expected it, neither would the Japanese. And in fact the enemy was caught off balance. After the war Captain Toshikazu Ohmae of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who had been the senior staff officer of the Southeast Asia Fleet at Rabaul, told an interrogator: “The Japanese did not think that General MacArthur would establish himself in New Guinea and defend Australia from that position. They also did not believe that he would be able to use New Guinea as a base for offensive operations against them. The Japanese felt that General MacArthur could not establish himself in Port Moresby because he did not have sufficient forces to maintain himself there. ”42
His forces were certainly meager, but he was convinced that if the Nipponese established a single beachhead in Australia, the continent would be lost; a foe gallant enough to cross the Owen Stanleys would quickly sweep across the plains down under, and at that time MacArthur lacked the reserves to envelop them. If, as he later wrote, the jungle was “as tough and tenacious an enemy as the Japanese, “ it was the enemy’s enemy, too. Better a bloody, head-on, grinding collision on Papua, he reasoned, than a battle of maneuver when he had no troops to spare for maneuvering. At the same time, Guadalcanal was on his mind. The issue there was very much in doubt. He believed his drive in New Guinea would relieve some of the pressure on that beleaguered island. In fact, as we know from other postwar interrogations, once he swung over to the attack the Japanese decided to give Guadalcanal priority; Horii was told that the capture of Port Moresby would be delayed until the marines had been driven into the sea. Nevertheless, the General’s overruling of his staff was as courageous as it was shrewd. In George Kenney’s words, “MacArthur without fear of criticism might have decided to remain on the defensive until sufficient forces could be made available. . . . With insufficient naval forces to insure his supply line to New Guinea, with a vastly outnumbered air force, and with the apprehension of the people of Australia in regard to invasion of that continent by the enemy, a lesser general might even have considered the abandonment of Port Moresby, his only base in New Guinea.”43
That praise comes with special grace from an officer who, more than any other individual under MacArthur’s command, was responsible for the vindication of his decision to defend Moresby. When Kenney arrived in the Southwest Pacific as chief of the theater’s air force, Allied fortunes were at their lowest ebb. That summer MacArthur wrote to navy Captain Dudley W. Knox, an old friend then stationed in Washington, that “the way is long and hard here, and I don’t quite see the end of the road. To make something out of nothing seems to be my military fate in the twilight of my service. I have led one lost cause and am trying desperately not to have it two.” Hap Arnold, who paid him a flying visit five weeks later—the first member of the Joint Chiefs to tour the Pacific—wrote in his diary that evening: “Thinking it over, MacArthur’s two-hour talk gives me the impression of a brilliant mind—obsessed by a plan he can’t carry out—frustrated—dramatic to the extreme—much more nervous than when I formerly knew him. Hands twitch and tremble—shell-shocked’44
At first glance, fifty-two-year-old George Churchill Kenney seemed an unlikely agent to change all this. Short, swart, stocky, scarred, and extroverted, he was in many ways the antithesis of his new commander. MacArthur was remote and austere; Kenney was gregarious. The General was dashing; his new air chief’s style was casual and understated. Kenney was there to replace George Brett, who was his friend and who he felt had been undermined by Sutherland with the tacit approval, if not the outright connivance, of the theater’s commander in chief. Like most army airmen, Kenney regarded Billy Mitchell as a martyr, and like his pilots and crewmen he could not forget that MacArthur had been a member of Mitchell’s court-martial. Finally, Hap Arnold had warned him that his first task would be to survive the General’s ire. MacArthur felt he had been ill-served by both the navy and the air force, and Arnold predicted that Kenney’s reception in Brisbane would be hostile.45
It was. On the evening of Tuesday, July 28, he checked into flat 12 on the second floor of Lennon’s Hotel, and early the next morning he rode up to Allied air force headquarters on the fifth floor of the AMP Building. There he found Brett, depressed and resentful over what he regarded as unjustified slights. By the time he reported to the eighth floor, Kenney was thoroughly apprehensive. Sutherland dourly told him to go right in; the General was waiting for him. MacArthur waved him to a huge black leather couch and began pacing. Kenneys impression was that the General “looked a little tired, drawn, and nervous. Physically he was in excellent shape for a man of
sixty-two. He had a little less hair than when I last saw him six years ago, but it was all black. He still had the same trim figure and took the same long graceful strides when he walked. His eyes were keen and you sensed that that wise old brain of his was working all the time. “ At the moment, he was clearly wrathful: “For the next half hour, as he talked while pacing back and forth across the room, I really heard about the shortcomings of the Air Force. . . . They couldn’t bomb, their staff work was poor, and their commanders knew nothing about leadership. . . . He had no use for anybody in the organization from the rank of colonel up. . . . Finally he said that not only were the aviators antagonistic to his headquarters but he was even beginning to doubt their loyalty. He demanded loyalty from me and everyone in the Air Force or he would get rid of them.”46
All this time, Kenney was trying to gauge MacArthur’ underlying mood and translate the bitter words into feelings—to fathom their true meaning. It occurred to him that the General “was not quite as angry as he seemed. There was something else in the picture. Could it be that he was analyzing me to see how I would react when he put the pressure on me? . . . Probably the fireworks were his way of finding out.” When the General paused for breath, Kenney stood up. He said that he knew how to run an air force, and while undoubtedly many things were wrong with this one, he intended “to correct them and do a real job”—to “produce results.” As to the question of loyalty, he said, “I had been in hot water in the Army on many occasions [but] there had never been any question of loyalty to the one I was working for. I would be loyal to him and I would demand of everyone under me that they be loyal, too. If at any time this could not be maintained, I would come and tell him so and at that time I would be packed up and ready for the orders sending me back home.”47
MacArthur stood absolutely still, listening impassively. His eyes, Kenney remembers, were “calculating, analyzing, appraising.” Then he walked over and put his arm around the airman’s shoulders. “George,” he said, “I think we’re going to get along together all right.” He told Kenney of the coming Marine Corps landings in the Solomons, and agreed with Kenney that Hap Arnold’s instruction, to “maintain a strategic [air] defensive for the time being,” was unrealistic. If the enemy continued to outnumber the defenders’ aircraft five to one, and could send as many as twenty-five to forty bombers southward from Rabaul, escorted by fighters, Moresby would be irrevocably lost. Kenney’s most urgent task was to gain control of the air over New Guinea. Achieving this would depend upon skillful use of the Allied planes now being frantically uncrated and assembled in Brisbane. MacArthur promised to provide him with every available hand, and his new air commander returned to the fifth floor beaming.48
There Brett dampened his enthusiasm. MacArthur, he said bleakly, was mercurial; his glowing promises could be sabotaged by Sutherland. Brett predicted that Kenney would have trouble with the chief of staff—“the General’s Rasputin”—and sure enough, a few days later the new air chief discovered that Brett’s nemesis was usurping his successor’s prerogatives by scheduling bombing missions and assigning targets. Furious, Kenney strode into Sutherland’s office, perched on his desk, picked up a pencil, and drew a tiny black dot in the center of a blank piece of paper. “That,” he said grittily, pointing at the dot, “is what you know about air power. The rest of the sheet is what / know about it.” When Sutherland blustered, Kenney said coldly, “Let’s go into the next room, see General MacArthur, and get this thing straight. I want to find out who is supposed to run this air force.”49
At that the chief of staff backed down. Like most members of MacArthur’ staff, Kenney came to dislike and mistrust Sutherland. He later remembered him as “an arrogant, opinionated, and very ambitious guy . . . I don’t think Sutherland was even loyal to MacArthur. He pretended that he was and I think MacArthur thought he was, but I wouldn’t trust him.” In facing him down, Kenney had preserved his own understanding with the General, with excellent results for the Allied cause. In Clark Lee’s opinion, “MacArthur’s restoration to full health and activity might well be dated from the day that Kenney walked into his headquarters in Brisbane, sat quietly through a long tongue-lashing on the subject of airplanes and pilots, gave him an unusual promise of ‘personal loyalty’ which MacArthur had demanded from all ‘outsiders’ in those days, and set about helping his new commander win the war. The importance of Kenney to MacArthur in the following three years cannot be overestimated.”50
MacArthur and his chief of staff, Richard K. Sutherland, in Brisbane, July 1942
By the following month the airman was putting seventeen B-17s over Rabaul in a single attack, crippling the base from which the enemy was launching his two great drives on Guadalcanal and Papua. Kenney’s most significant contribution that year, however, was his ingenious use of C-47 transports. In planning his Papuan offensive, MacArthur was frustrated by the six-hundred-mile-wide moat of the Coral Sea, lying between Port Moresby and his supply depots in Australia. He now had three infantry divisions ready for combat, but with Japanese fleets roaming the sea, sending them northward in ships would entail unacceptable risks. Kenney, an air-power evangelist, suggested flying them up. He said he could land twenty-six thousand foot soldiers on Moresby’s five new airfields, keep them supplied, and provide them with all the equipment they needed to drive the enemy back to Buna. “But not trucks,” a staff officer said. “Yes, trucks, too,” Kenney shot back. “We can cut the chassis frames in half with acetylene torches, stuff the halves in C-47S, and weld the frames together when we get them up there.” In a burst of exuberance he added, “Give me five days and I’ll ship the whole damned U.S. Army to New Guinea by air.”51
By pushing MacArthur’s bomber line fifteen hundred miles north of Brisbane, Kenney transformed Moresby from a garrison under siege to the chief Allied base in the Southwest Pacific. MacArthur, grateful and delighted, said to him, “George, you were born three hundred years too late. You’re just a natural-born pirate.” He rechristened Kenney “Buccaneer, “ and throwing an affectionate arm around the airman’s shoulders he told his staff, “This little fellow has given me a new and pretty powerful brandy. I like the stuff. It does me good. And I’m going to keep right on taking it!” When word came through that one of Kenney’s youthful officers was being promoted to brigadier, a graying member of the Bataan Gang muttered: “That kid. Well, I hope he’s twenty-one.” MacArthur said icily, “We promote them out here for efficiency, not age.” One day a war correspondent asked the General, “What is the air force doing today?” MacArthur replied mischievously, “I don’t know. Go ask General Kenney.” The newspaperman said, “General, do you mean to say you don’t know where the bombs are falling?” MacArthur grinned and said, “Of course I know where they are falling. They are falling in the right place. Go ask General Kenney where it is.” Another time, when several fighter pilots were picked up in Sydney for disorderly conduct, MacArthur said tolerantly, “Leave Kenney’s kids alone. I don’t want to see them grow up either.” When Kenney and Sutherland were arguing over the need for a U.S. Department of the Air Force, the General broke in to say that he thought the airman was right. Kenney reminded him that he must have changed his mind since 1932, when Congress was weighing such a step. In a rare admission of error, MacArthur replied, “Yes, I have. At that time I opposed it with every resource at my command. It was the greatest mistake of my career.”52
One of the first American soldiers to learn that MacArthur was about to send them to New Guinea was E. J. Kahn, Jr. The General addressed the troops, disdaining a Signal Corps microphone and speaking to them directly. As Kahn recalls, “His speech was extemporaneous, but it was full of the rich, labyrinthine sentences that distinguish his prose. His main point, though, was crisply and pointedly made. He said we’d soon be in action. ‘And I want each of you to kill me a Jap,’ he added. Up to that moment few of us had guessed that we’d shortly be in a position to comply with such a request. Less than a month later our first detachments were on
the way to New Guinea.”53
It was now mid-September. To the east, the marines were struggling to hold their defensive perimeter around Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field. MacArthur expected just as cruel a fight to retain Moresby; Horii’s men were so close to the port that at night they could see its searchlights crisscrossing the sky above it. But on Thursday, September 17, the day that the Australians ferociously hurled back the enemy’s final lunge southwest of Ioribaiwa, Horii issued his last rice rations to his feverish, emaciated troops. Three days later he told them he had decided to withdraw back across the mountains. (“No pen or words can depict adequately the magnitude of the hardships suffered,” he said. “From the bottom of our hearts we appreciate these sacrifices and deeply sympathize with the great numbers killed and wounded.”) Four days after that he disengaged north of the Imita Ridge and began leapfrogging his battalions backward.54