MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign

Modern War Studies

by Stephen R. Taaffe

When General Douglas MacArthur led Allied troops into the jungles of New Guinea in World War II, he was already looking ahead. By successfully leapfrogging Japanese forces on that island, he placed his armies in a position to fulfill his personal promise to liberate the Philippines.

The New Guinea campaign has gone down in history as one of MacArthur's shining successes. Now Stephen Taaffe has written the definitive history of that assault, showing why it succeeded and what it contributed to the overall strategy against Japan. His book tells not only how victory was gained through a combination of technology, tactics, and Army-Navy cooperation, but also how the New Guinea campaign exemplified the strategic differences that plagued the Pacific War, since many high-ranking officers considered it a diversionary tactic rather than a key offensive.

MacArthur's Jungle War examines the campaign's strategic background and individual operations, describing the enormous challenges posed by jungle and amphibious warfare. Perhaps more important, it offers a balanced assessment of MacArthur's leadership and limitations, revealing his reliance on familiar battle plans and showing the vital role that subordinates played in his victory. Taaffe tells how MacArthur played the difficulties of the New Guinea campaign by maintaining his undivided attention on reaching the Philippines. He also discloses how MacArthur frequently deceived both his superiors and the public in order to promote his own agenda, and examines errors the general would later repeat on a larger scale up through the Korean War.

MacArthur's Jungle War offers historians a more analytical treatment of the New Guinea campaign than is found in previous works, and is written with a dramatic flair that will appeal to military buffs. By revealing the interaction among American military planning, interservice politics, MacArthur's generalship, and the American way of war, Taaffe's account provides a clearer understanding of America's Pacific war strategy and shows that the New Guinea offensive was not a mere backwater affair, but a critical part of the war against Japan.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction, Military History, Military Fiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting and well-written book about a campaign I had almost no knowledge of. Taaffe is very fair to all involved, bringing out the good and the bad. A major plus is the number of maps he provides for each battle. You will still need to have a reference map around because the area of operations is so large. MacArthur remains a jerk but his fanatical pursuit of a return to the Philippines is not bad strategy in the end. 4 Stars

MacArthur is able to gather significant forces for his South West Pacific Area (SWPA) campaign. Taaffe's contention is that Mac wasn't interested in New Guinea except that is was the fastest way to get to the Philippines. SWPA forces:

Although the New Guinea campaign played a vital role in the Pacific War, few historians have looked at it in any depth, perhaps because the more glamorous concurrent Marine operations in the central Pacific and the subsequent Philippines liberation campaign have overshadowed it. The New Guinea offensive, however, was no small or insignificant affair. By the end of the campaign, MacArthur commanded some 1,377,000 American, Australian, and Dutch troops. Eight American divisions, three independent Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs), three Engineer Special Brigades (ESBs), an entire fleet, and two Army Air Forces saw action. Some 11,300 Americans were killed or wounded in the process. By comparison, the Army committed only five divisions to the better-known Sicily campaign and suffered 3800 fewer casualties.

The argument against two efforts (SWPA and Central Pacific) against the Japanese:
Scholars have often criticized the dual drive decision. Two offenses scattered scarce Pacific resources and increased pressure on a logistical network already stretched to the limit by the far-flung Pacific War. Moreover, two weaker drives presented opportunities to the Japanese to use their interior lines to concentrate their dwindling resources on either prong in the hopes of defeating the Americans in detail. King’s refusal to give SWPA significant naval forces exacerbated this possibility, making MacArthur’s offensive especially vulnerable to a sudden attack by the Japanese fleet. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese Navy, itself entranced by Mahanian visions of a decisive sea battle, never took full advantage of this opportunity. Using both Nimitz’s and MacArthur’s routes doubled the number of islands the Americans had to pry loose from their die-hard Japanese defenders, with a proportional decline in the number of men that could be applied to each operation and, presumably, a commensurate increase in the time and casualties it took to reach the Japanese mainland.

The JCS couldn’t make a decision on who to fully support at the expense of the other. The Commander-in-Chief was the next stop for a decision but the JCS didn’t want to go there:
Such criticisms, however, downplay or discount the seriousness of the interservice rivalry. Of course, the consensus-bound JCS, unable to resolve their Pacific strategy differences, might have petitioned the president, but none of the service chiefs wanted to abdicate their strategic responsibilities to the unpredictable Roosevelt, who had already shown a positive genius for disrupting American grand strategy. The JCS, in other words, was gambling that their flawed dual drive strategy would cause less damage to the American war effort than any plan FDR might come up with should they appeal to him.

MacArthur fought for his SWPA route to the Philippines for his own objectives but it wasn’t a bad idea in the end. - The benefits of a two-pronged strategy against the Japanese:
Besides, as things turned out, there were some advantages to the dual drive offensive. JCS predictions that the two offenses would be mutually supporting came true. The central Pacific campaign drained off most Japanese naval and air power in SWPA, reducing their mobility and limiting their strategic options in the region, thus contributing to MacArthur’s swift advance across New Guinea. Similarly, the SWPA offensive tied down large numbers of ground troops, which the Japanese might otherwise have stuffed into the Marianas and Palaus, whose capture in June and September 1944 proved difficult enough as it was. Moreover, resource dispersal cut both ways.

New Guinea—not just big but full of bad stuff:
New Guinea, the planet’s second largest island, extends 1300 miles east to west, covering a total of 312,329 square miles, more than Texas…. Size complicates military operations in all sorts of logistical and operational ways, but the problem posed by New Guinea’s vast expanse was exacerbated by a primitiveness bordering on prehistoric. With almost no roads, port facilities, or airfields, staging and supplying a modern war was more complex and difficult than fighting it,…

Don’t let first impressions fool you. The terrain was impossible and the wildlife could well be considered an ally of the Japanese Empire:
His first impression was of “a vast mountainous country, bathed in mist, and luxuriously green” with a shore that “looked inviting, and like the typical tropical islands that one has seen pictures of, read about, or imagined.” ….. Later, after taking it all in, Kahn referred to New Guinea as possessing “the most unreceptive terrain imaginable.” Another visitor….called the place “a military nightmare.”

A nightmare indeed, and in more than one way. Behind New Guinea’s beautiful green-carpeted mountains, placid coastline, and bright blue ocean lurked countless hazards that threatened a GI’s life and limb as much as Japanese bullets, which were numerous enough. The mountains were jagged and impassable, the coast a swamp and jungle-ridden expanse full of razor-sharp kunai grass up to seven feet high, and uncharted coral reefs skulked offshore, waiting to rip open landing craft bottoms like so many tin cans.

The wildlife complemented the terrain. The man-eating crocodiles, three-foot-long lizards, birds of paradise, big black flightless cassowaries, huge bats, tree kangaroos, parrots, and poisonous snakes were scary enough but rarely life-threatening or even visible. More irritating were the insects—mosquitoes, wasps, scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches, fleas, chiggers, leeches, ants, and flies—that swarmed everywhere, as if receiving orders directly from Tokyo. Most dangerous of all, however, were the microorganisms that thrived on the island, transmitting malaria, dengue and blackwater fevers, amebic and bacillary dysentery, tropical ulcers, scrub typhus, yaws, and innumerable other exotic diseases that had little in common beyond point of origin and misery inflicted.

The weather didn’t help either:
Mother nature took her toll in other ways as well, mostly, but not exclusively, through continual torrential downpours that rotted everything from clothes to skin and rusted guns and other implements of war. Some areas received more than 100 inches of rain annually, and deluges continued almost daily even through the May—October “dry season.” The rain caused sluggish streams and rivers to rise with dirty, debris-ridden water that inundated camps, turning them into foul-smelling bogs of mud for GIs to slog through. When it was not raining, the scorching sun and humidity made life just as wretched. Indeed, the clouds reminded one suffering soldier of hot steam rising. Night brought some relief, but eerie animal sounds, cracking rotting wood, crawling insects, and condensed moisture dripping from trees punctuated the inky darkness, convincing more than one lonely sentry that all the Japanese in the world were just a few feet away. One journalist later remarked, “We who experienced New Guinea thought it was the ultimate nightmare country.”

More commentary about fighting on the island of New Guinea:

Not only did New Guinea’s geographic position cause SWPA difficulties, but so did the big island itself. The Army was unaccustomed to waging war in a jungle far from its logistical network. Poor visibility, inadequate maps, a dearth of landmarks, and superb Japanese camouflage techniques forced the Army to fight squad-, platoon-, and company-sized actions, not at all the big conventional European slugging match military thinkers contemplated in their serene prewar days. Nor had they given much thought to the interservice coordination a New Guinea campaign entailed. …. According to a perhaps apocryphal story, one educated native, asked about American fighting abilities, noted that “the GIs were not very good jungle warriors, but that was irrelevant; they simply brought in their heavy equipment, cut down the trees and underbrush, and fought on what was left.” It was war, American style.

I appreciate this book shows the good and bad of MacArthur (and all his cronies and subordinates). Pretty fair throughout. The good side:
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Palmer, Jr, was one of a group of 6th Division staff officers introduced to MacArthur at his Brisbane headquarters in 1944. Addressing the men in dramatic terms, MacArthur told them “Don’t ever surrender because the enemy will not treat you properly. Don’t ever back up an inch. Don’t give them an inch.” Like most men subject to MacArthur’s stirring oration, Palmer was moved and inspired enough recall the event years later. Indeed, MacArthur always seemed to speak beyond the immediate audience to posterity, as if trying to rally future generations to his posthumous banner.

MacArthur had that effect on people, here and throughout his illustrious life. His abilities, moreover, extended far beyond the rhetorical. He impressed men with his charisma, force of personality, keen intellect—one observer compared his mind to “a beautiful piece of almost perfect machinery”—purposefulness, and courage. Explaining to a subordinate why he never wore his helmet while under fire, MacArthur said, “Well, I wear this cap with all the braid. I feel in a way that I have to. It’s my trademark... a trademark that many of our soldiers know by now, so I’ll keep on wearing it.”! This, combined with the natural leadership skills of a gentleman aristocrat and an absolute certainty of the justice of whatever cause he advocated, went a long way in explaining his brilliant career.

The dark side:
…but MacArthur possessed a dark side that made him, as one scholar noted, one of the “most exasperatingly complex men ever produced by the American military, a blend of Caesar and Caligula, skittering along the thin line between brilliance and eccentricity.” The fact that his undoubted physical courage bordered on the suicidal, once realized, put a completely different face on the notion of following him into battle. Similarly, his total commitment to his causes often degenerated into self-righteousness, pomposity, self-deception, and egomania. To achieve his goals which he all too often confused with the nation’s—MacArthur lied to and manipulated those around him. Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Wilkinson, Britain’s liaison officer to SWPA, probably described MacArthur best: “He is shrewd, proud, remote, highly strung and vastly vain. He has imagination, self-confidence, physical courage and charm, but no humor about himself, no regard for truth, and is unaware of these defects. He mistakes his emotions and ambitions for principles. With moral depth he would be a great man; as it is he is a near miss which may be worse than a mile.”

The main avenue of attack in New Guinea was from the sea. The Allied forces developed some unique and iconic vessels to support operations:
…..the Army, in conjunction with the Navy, developed innovative vehicles to transport men and materiel over water to hostile and primitive shores. Among this slew of new, oddly-assorted amphibious craft, one of the most valuable was the oceangoing 328-foot Landing Ship, Tank (LST), which could carry 29 medium tanks, 2000 tons of equipment, or 1000 men directly onto a beach and unload them via its ramp door. Nicknamed “Large Slow Target” by its passengers because of its speed—or lack thereof—and its annoying tendency to attract every Japanese plane in the immediate neighborhood, LSTs were SWPA’s workhorse, carrying men and supplies up and down the New Guinea coast and participating in amphibious operations.

LSTs were not the only landing craft that transported troops and equipment long distances. The dual-ramped Landing Craft, Infantry (LCI) could carry 188 troops apiece, almost as many as old converted destroyers, or apps. Neither of these could land under fire, so the Army for this purpose initially used the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP), a 36-foot armor-plated wooden vessel that carried 36 men or 8100 pounds of cargo. In fact, LCVPs were so important that SWPA set up assembly plants for them in Australia and New Guinea. Later, LCVPs were gradually phased out in favor of the more effective 50-foot all-steel Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCM) craft, which carried 60,000 pounds of cargo or 60 troops. To supplement LCVPs and LCMs, the Army used DUKWs, which, with their watertight hull and wheels, served as amphibious trucks that shuttled men and supplies ashore.

Amphibious operations involved more than just hitting the beach. The assaulting infantry had to move inland, and the Army built amphibious vehicles to accompany them. With its steel hull, low silhouette, and cleated tracks, Landing Vehicles, Tracked (LVTs), or, as they were nicknamed Alligators,” could travel over water and reefs, scale beaches \ gradient, and move inland with ammunition.

The war in the Pacific from a Japanese view—those Allies just don’t fight fair:

The American assaults did not exhibit much finesse at the tactical level, but it was hard to argue with their success; not that there were many Japanese left after each operation to try. Moreover, as the Japanese would soon learn, the American amphibious steamroller seemed impervious to the laws of entropy; as it advanced it gathered momentum, violence, and fury. To make matters worse, the Americans were already displaying an alarming tendency to strike the Japanese where they were weakest, cutting off and isolating their strong points and in effect transforming them into vast jungle prison camps. Ground down by the previous year’s setbacks, and already feeling the pinch of the American Navy’s increasingly relentless submarine campaign, the Japanese could not begin to match an American strategic mobility that neutralized the effect of their possession of interior lines. Said one Japanese intelligence staff officer after the war:

“This was the type of strategy we hated most. The Americans, with minimum losses, attacked and seized a relatively weak area, constructed airfields and then proceeded to cut the supply lines to troops in that area. Without engaging in a large-scale operation, our strongpoints were gradually starved out.... [T]he Americans flowed into our weaker points and submerged us, just as water seeks the weakest entry to sink a ship.

It was easy to pity those surrounded Japanese, who were quickly reduced to a squalid, disease-ridden, hand-to-mouth existence, but their fate was preferable to their comrades who found themselves in the direct path of an American juggernaut that concentrated enough firepower on its target t0 reduce the immediate locale to a bleak moonscape.

MacArthur didn't treat the Australian forces under his command as equals:

MacArthur willingly employed Australian soldiers as part of the Cartwheel campaign while he waited for American forces to arrive in strength, but he was less eager to share power with them. To be sure, he cultivated a relationship with Australian Prime Minister Curtin, but he saw this mostly as a political alliance against his enemies. Although he publicly approved of Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey’s appointment as SWPA’s ground commander, he subverted Blamey’s power by placing all American combat units under Krueger’s 6th Army, deceptively termed the “Alamo Force,” leaving Blamey with authority only over Australian troops. During the New Guinea campaign, MacArthur relegated Australian ground units to mopping up duties, ordering them to clear out the Japanese troops the Americans swept around on their way to the China-Formosa-Luzon area. In fact, MacArthur’s campaign could not have proceeded as it did without all those Australian soldiers garrisoning static rear areas.

Australian officers recognized that MacArthur was downgrading their role in SWPA’s offensive, but there was little they could do about it. Not only was MacArthur protected by Curtin, but by 1944 Australia’s military star was waning. Australia had been at war for more than four years. Australians played a prominent and distinguished role in Britain’s campaigns in North Africa, Greece, Crete, and the Middle East—and had committed so many men overseas that it had crippled its own economy. In response, in 1944 the Australian government began demobilizing many of its soldiers so they could till the fields and work the factories. By September, there were only 372,000 of them still in uniform, down from a wartime peak of some 640,000. The remaining soldiers spent the rest of the conflict fighting isolated Japanese garrisons in New Guinea, the Solomons, and Borneo. MacArthur recognized that this task was strategically purposeless, but the Australian government supported the idea, reasoning that such operations would keep otherwise idle and demoralized troops busy, and it might provide them with a postwar claim to Japanese territory. This did not happen, and for the remainder of the war Australian soldiers fought and died in remote areas far from home for no sufficient reason.

I thought this comment was on target. A trooper is part of the invasion of the Admiralty Islands and about to spend his first night ashore in a small perimeter while outnumbered by the Japanese forces:

(He) speculated on what would happen next. “I feel just like a June bride" quipped one soldier. “I know just what’s going to happen but I don’t know how it’ll feel.”

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

1944 was a transition year in the campaign for New Guinea. This was the year US forces moved the Australian forces to a support role and took center stage. Driven by MacArthur's desire to return to the Philippines, the campaign expanded to wide maneuvering up the eastern New Guinea coast taking key areas and islands. His forces leapfrogged from one Japanese strong point to another leaving air bases in their wake to the support the next advance. The weight of fighting done by regimental combat teams. Yet, equally shared by the engineers, quartermaster, medical corps, and the 7th Fleet who took on the hostile environment. The environment produced more hardships and casualties than the Japanese forces.

Mr. Taaffe aptly describes all of this and more in his focused history of the New Guinea campaign in 1944. In each of the book's chapters, he tells the history under the shadow of MacArthur's long-term strategy and the intrigues and politics of internal and external factors that occurred. Mr. Taaffe concludes his chapters with a succinct summary of the events and their implications on the next phase of the campaign. The most dramatic chapter is the battle for Biak. This chapter best describes the internal pressure commanders faced. MacArthur's desire for speedy victories led to key oversights and inflated expectations. That in turn, led to many hardships for the soldiers.

At the book's end, Mr. Taaffe does a final assessment of General MacArthur and his key commanders. Here he lays out the pros and cons of each senior leader. The book was well written and organized.

[Neil Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the best general study of the campaign I have ever read. The writing is clear and thoroughly footnoted. A nice selection of maps as well. A lot of ink has been spilled, and rightly so, about MacArthur's mistakes, but this book demonstrates why they happened. MacArthur was fighting the Navy as much as the Japanese; as the book demonstrates, the frantic pace of his campaign wasn't so much to keep the momentum on the Japanese as to get close to the Philippines. A lot of men died to satisfy his fixation. Most books focus on just one battle, but this one gives the entire American side; the Australians are left out, but the author acknowledges that their huge contribution is simply outside the scope of his book. Very glad I stumbled into this.

[Mark Merritt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine easy read of a little studied campaign that was essentially just a stepping stone to get MacArthur and his forces back to the Philippines in 1944 during The Pacific War. The author provides a very workable read, with enough detail to keep it interesting and enough maps to covey the location. Even so, reading this in conjunction with Google Earth greatly enhances the reading experience. Highly recommended!

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book about a fairly forgotten part of the Pacific War. An interesting addition to MacArthur's personality - both his strengths and weaknesses. It also brought appreciation to me about the vast scale of WWII and just how many men, how much material, and how much effort was expended in that effort.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very indepth look at a little known campaigne. I needed additional maps to follow the detailed accounts of MacArthur's battles.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was a two-theater war necessary? In the end, it was a good idea. Mac's artful dodging on the road to the Philippines.

[Andy Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of just a few books on the Army campaign in the SW Pacific. Good straightforward military history!

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

The New Guinea Campaign is almost forgotten. Compared to the European theater, with charismatic generals like Eisenhower and Patton against the Nazi war machine, or the naval actions in the Pacific with the dramatic clash of carriers before USMC amphibious assaults, the Southwest Pacific Theater has receded from view. MacArthur's overbearing personality and Korean War fall from grace probably have something to do with it, along with the lack of focused battles.

Taafe reads the New Guinea Campaign as a clash of personalities, primarily between MacArthur and his obsession to liberate the Philippines, and the Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur saw the theater as a race, to get in a strategic position to attack the Philippines before the Navy could get in position to attack Formosa. He pushed this pressures onto his subsidary commanders, General Kreuger of the Army, General Kenner of the Army Air Force, and Admiral Kinkaid, and the men who would actually do the fighting.

The jungle was as much their enemy as the Japanese. Trackless mountains, malarial swamps, kunai grass infested with typhus carrying mites, beaches that washed away, and warding coral reefs. Logistics in the SWPA was a nightmare, although the Americans had it far better than the Japanese, who lost millions of tons of shipping to submarines.

This book shows brilliant strategic outflanking moves, followed by the hard work of prying the Japanese out of the jungle. By 1944 the Japanese Army lacked the mobility to offer more than tactical resistance. One of MacArthur's greatest failures as a commander was to denigrate everything after the landing as "mopping up", when the Japanese forces no longer defended the waterline, and turning clearings into airbases required weeks of attacking fortified cave complexes.

In this book, the difficulties of terrain and distance rise foremost, while oddly enough from the title, MacArthur recedes. His victory came from a stubborn refuse to let nature stop him.

Oh, and the book could really use better maps.