Party at Arawe

A staff car rolled to a dockside some where in New Guinea, discharged a four-star passenger. Columns of green-clad U.S. soldiers boarding transports recognized Douglas MacArthur's plain shirt and trousers, braided cap, plump cigar. Brigadier General Julian Cunningham walked over, saluted.

"Hello, Cunningham," said the Commander in Chief. "How are you? Ready for the party?"

Everything was ready. Within the next 24 hours, Douglas MacArthur's men had crossed 90 miles of blue sea, wrenched a beachhead from the Japs on New Britain Island, pressed closer the western arm of the Allied pincers slowly closing on Rabaul, the enemy's Southwest Pacific stronghold (see map).

Target: a Peninsula. As the General's ships took on the cargo of invasion, the General's planes droned over the sea. For a fortnight they had pounded the southwest end of the long (300 miles), thin (60 miles at the widest), scimitar-shaped, jungle-covered, volcano-studded island that was once a German colony, then an Australian mandate until captured by the Japs in 1942.

Now they headed for the Arawe peninsula, an isle-screened knob on New Britain's coast between Cape Gloucester and Gasmata. There they dropped 356 tons of explosive--a Southwest Pacific record. That night the invasion fleet moved in.

The Japs at Arawe had not been bombed out, were not surprised: at 3:40 a.m. an enemy scout plane detected the American fleet. It shadowed the invasion ships for at least two hours before the first landing was made. But the Japs were not prepared for so strong an attack at a spot so lightly defended and so difficult to reinforce. General Cunningham's plan called for a diversionary landing by Sixth Army units on "Blue Beach" at the top of the peninsula, then the main landing on "Orange Beach" at the foot.

Between 4 and 5 a.m. under a ringed half moon, with lightning stabbing the horizon, the American ships entered the narrow channel through Arawe's island screen. The wooded, sloping Jap shore lay silent, waiting.

The diversionary force, about 150 Commando-trained troops, slipped into rubber landing boats, headed for Blue Beach. The Japs may have thought this the main show. At close range they opened fire with machine guns and a light cannon and the U.S. loss was heavy. The fire destroyed eleven of 16 American boats, killed or wounded most of the 150 expendables, forced the remnant to turn back.

An hour later, while Allied planes patrolled above and warships lobbed in shells from the sea, two Ducks (amphibious trucks) led the main landing on to Orange Beach. Armed with a newly installed weapon, the Ducks raked the shore, cleared a way for Buffaloes (amphibious tanks), then Alligators (amphibious, troop-carrying tractors).

Nowhere, save at Blue Beach, did the Sixth Army encounter the defenses or the bloody kind of resistance found at Munda and Tarawa. Its casualties were light. It quickly dispersed a numerically weak Jap garrison. Within five hours it had made good the landing. The Arawe peninsula and its key coastal isles were taken. The mopping up was not completed when U.S. troops began to enlarge their beachhead.

Target: a Powerhouse. The landing on Arawe was General MacArthur's biggest show since the Japs were turned back from Australia's doorstep. But in the counterdrive on the enemy's Oceania domain it was not yet more than, an important nibble.

Arawe lies 290 wild, rugged miles from Rabaul and its broad harbor. At Arawe, the. General is not in position for a practicable overland march. But he is in a key spot to hasten the process of isolating Rabaul, a process begun by strong seaand-air attacks in the past two months.

Through Arawe's coconut groves the Japs had cut a runway now unused and overgrown by tropical bush. Arawe's harbor served as a barge-staging point for supplies to Jap centers on New Britain's south coast. In American hands Arawe would sever one enemy line of communication, would provide a jumping-off place for the next Allied amphibious advance. Most important, it would turn an idle airstrip into a forward base against Rabaul.

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