Seven Forward Passes

The strategic conquest of New Guinea, world's second largest island,* was completed last week by General Douglas MacArthur.

There was still some fighting to be done along the 1,500 miles of its length; 55,000 to 60,000 Japanese troops had been trapped in pockets along the north coast. But for U.S. and Australian troops a grueling, malarial campaign which began two years ago (when the Japs almost took Port Moresby) had ended in a brilliant victory. Its final phase was all but bloodless.

Considering its strategic importance, MacArthur's coastal campaign had been one of the most economical of World War II. The first stages had been slow and costly: a heartrending series of marches through jungles and over mountains to battle at Buna, Gona, Sanananda, Salamaua, Lae. But while the campaign to secure a foothold on one tip of the great island was being fought the hard way, a better, smarter war was being planned.

Along the Coast. The Allied team finally got the ball at the end of 1943, on Huon Peninsula--the equivalent of their own 15-yard line. What followed was the military equivalent of a series of seven forward passes, ending on Vogelkop (Bird's Head) Peninsula, 1,200 miles away --the enemy's goal line.

First objective of the new strategy was Sidor. U.S. forces swarmed ashore in a surprise landing on Jan. 2, while Aussies fought down the steaming Ramu Valley, in the rear of the enemy, toward Madang. The next move, and every one thereafter, was to be a leapfrog pure and simple.

Between MacArthur and the western end of New Guinea were two Japanese armies at least 100,000 strong: the Eighteenth, under Lieut. General Nijusan Adachi, with headquarters at Madang; the Second, spread from Geelvink Bay to Vogelkop's beak at Sorong. But it was no part of MacArthur's strategy to meet any of these masses headon. His strategy was to fight only as much as was necessary to gain footholds behind them. Then he was behind them and they behind him. Whichever lost control of air and sea was then undone.

Land, Sea and Air Trap. Lieut. General George C. Kenney's Fifth Air Force (later combined with the South Pacific's Thirteenth into the Far Eastern Air Force) smashed Jap air power and made the sea lanes impassable for Jap supply ships. PT boats shot up barges which the Japs tried to use as a substitute.

MacArthur's own Seventh Fleet was joined by the best part of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz' Pacific Fleet, with carriers and battleships, for the crucial move on April 22: double landings at Hollandia and Aitape, both beyond Wewak--and beyond 50,000 Japs. The Aussies simultaneously captured Madang, completing the trap.

From then on, the pattern was so consistent that even the beleagured Jap commanding the Second Army should have been able to figure it out: Wakde Island-on May 17; Biak on May 27; Noemfoor on July 2. But the Jap apparently persisted in the conviction that MacArthur's next move would be against Second Army headquarters at Manokwari.

MacArthur fooled him: he took Sansapor on July 30. The Japs, on short rations for months, riddled by malaria and dysentery, lacking medicines, lacking everything but ammunition, began a hopeless trek through the jungles seeking some remote cove where their vanishing navy might pick them up. Their comrades who had tried a breakout at Aitape were being destroyed by the thousands.

On New Guinea, as on New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville, the pent-up Japs' lot was hopeless. A rock-bottom price had been spent to make it that way. MacArthur's forward passes had cost the U.S. and Australian armies only 662 dead, 63 missing. They already have cost the Japs 24,941 dead, 2,855 prisoners. The ratio of Jap dead to U.S. dead: 37 to one. MacArthur had won his campaign not by smashing the enemy armies but by taking positions where his control of air and sea was decisive.

*Larger: Greenland.

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