Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons Read online

  Andrew Langebaea and Daniel Pule remained at Aola to keep in touch with the native scouts. In addition, Andrew took on a very special assignment. Ever so carefully he planted a potato garden over the first hundred yards of the path leading toward Paripao. By sunset it was impossible to find a trace of the track, or to know that any one had ever gone off that way.

  Reaching Paripao at 5:30, Clemens found everything ready for him—a leaf hut combining house and office, other huts laid out nearby, a wireless mast with palm fronds lashed to the top for camouflage. He quickly set up the teleradio and renewed contact with MacFarland on Gold Ridge, Rhoades at Lavoro, and the overall control station on Malaita.

  One problem remained. Tulagi couldn’t be seen from the house, so a good lookout post was needed. Next day Clemens found a suitable spot: a 50-foot tree at the edge of the village. Cane loops were nailed to the trunk for footing, and at the top he built a camouflaged platform, six feet by six feet, complete with railing. Here a sentry always stood watch, occasionally lowering a bucket for food or betel nut, searching the horizon with an old pair of field glasses, and blasting on his conch shell when he saw anything unusual.

  But at first there was little to see. A week slipped by, and still no sign of the enemy. Clemens whiled away the time clearing a chicken yard, target-shooting with his .22, and reading three treasured volumes of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies and histories that he always carried with him. Henry V met the French on Saint Crispin’s Day and Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, but still no Japanese crossed to Guadalcanal.

  Then on May 27, a rumor that enemy patrols were ashore at Tenaru, fifteen miles to the west, and on the 28th Clemens’s scout Koimate panted up the hill with the first details: The Japanese came in two launches … they were ashore only a few hours … then one launch headed back to Tulagi, the other west toward Lunga.

  Near the western tip of Guadalcanal Snowy Rhoades learned of the landing too. By now he had been joined by Leif Schroeder, ferried over from Savo by native canoe, and the two men were operating together. They moved back from Lavoro to a leaf house about two miles into the interior, but they were on the coast every day, and Rhoades was on excellent terms with a cluster of Catholic missionaries who had clung to their station at Visale. Bishop Jean Marie Aubin, like most of the Catholic missionaries in the Solomons, vaguely hoped to maintain a sort of Christian neutrality in this great temporal struggle, but it was hard to be neutral when your friends were in danger.

  Rhoades learned that more and more Japanese patrols were coming ashore … that they were looting houses, joy-riding on horses, and shooting cattle, which they then dressed and took back to Tulagi. So far, pretty innocuous. Then, early in June, Bishop Aubin slipped him a message that put a more disturbing light on things. A Japanese observation post, complete with radio and machine gun, had been established at Sapuru, only a few hills away.

  Don MacFarland, now established with Ken Hay on Gold Ridge, was also aware of the mounting Japanese activity. June 8, a body of troops arrived from Tulagi, and neat rows of tents sprouted on Lunga plain. On the 19th a destroyer anchored off the beach and began ferrying more men and supplies ashore.

  On June 20 Martin Clemens’s scout Chimi confirmed the destroyer and brought first word that the Japanese had built a wharf. That afternoon clouds of smoke hung over Lunga, as troops began burning off the tall Kunai grass that covered the plain.

  “It looks as if the Nips are going to stay,” Clemens noted in his diary that night, and all the Coastwatchers knew that a whole new phase was about to begin. From now on they would be operating deep behind enemy lines. How they would fare, operating alone on an island against an enemy army, only time could tell.

  2

  ALONE

  WHAT WERE THE JAPANESE up to? Martin Clemens, Don MacFarland and Snowy Rhoades tossed the question back and forth as they prepared for the dangerous days ahead. The three men were in frequent if erratic contact, sometimes by the teleradio, sometimes by native runners who darted back and forth over the trails that laced the hills and jungles.

  In view of reports that the Japanese troops were vandalizing and befouling the neat plantation buildings on Lunga plain, Clemens wondered whether they really intended to stay after all. But then why the wharf? Perhaps only to ship things off the island.

  Snowy Rhoades was wondering too. When the Japanese began burning the grass, he thought they might be clearing land for an airfield, but as the days passed, there was still no sign of construction. And the wharf? On July 1 he radioed that it was only for loading meat.

  On Gold Ridge, Don MacFarland was equally puzzled. As late as July 3 he speculated that the Japanese were clearing land just to get timber for rebuilding Tulagi. “After all,” he wrote Clemens, “it is feasible to suppose they are short of billets.”

  July 6, all doubts were dispelled. That morning a twelve-ship Japanese convoy came steaming down the Slot and anchored off the mysterious wharf. While destroyers screened the work, the freighters and transports disgorged 4 heavy-duty tractors, 6 road rollers, 2 generators, an ice plant, 100 trucks, a completely equipped infirmary, and dozens of cases of a soft drink labeled Mitsubichampagne Cider. The miracle of the bulldozer had not yet been revealed to the Japanese, but for earth-moving they brought along the beginnings of a miniature railroad: two tiny locomotives and a dozen hopper cars.

  Two construction battalions also streamed ashore, along with 400 fighting troops to guard them. The Coastwatchers knew none of these exact figures, but their native scouts made them well aware of what was going on. Judging from the equipment, Snowy Rhoades’s first hunch was right: The Japanese were building an airstrip. From Townsville Eric Feldt urged his three men to find out everything they could about it.

  The new Japanese move meant a drastic change in the life style at Gold Ridge, 2800 feet up and directly behind Lunga plain. Don MacFarland and Ken Hay were ensconced in a comfortable five-bedroom house built as headquarters for the European manager of a gold-mining company. The firm hoped to capitalize on the strain of gold that had been found both on the ridge and in the Sorviohio River valley below, and at this point nobody yet realized how little gold was really there. The European manager was now gone, but a capable Fijian named Kelemende Nabunobuno remained as caretaker, and he served as a sort of host for the visitors.

  The tone of the place was set by Ken Hay. A legendary island character, he was a man of gargantuan girth, impassioned kindness, implacable grudges, and a thousand money-making schemes. He traded in any kind of merchandise. He organized currency-exchange deals with the fleeing Chinese traders. Quite naturally he was also involved in the current gold-mining operations. He believed in living well, as attested by the Electrolux refrigerator, hauled up the mountain by a dozen natives and now the showpiece of the establishment. Hay wasn’t about to let living in the bush destroy the good things in life—he even insisted that his butter be served in ice.

  MacFarland was the working stiff in this combination, trying to serve as coordinator of all Coastwatching work on the island, carefully keeping his teleradio operating under the worst conditions. Both Rhoades and Clemens often found their sets out of order, but never MacFarland. His transmitter was always dry, his batteries always charged. No wonder that at the control station on Malaita, and at Feldt’s headquarters in Townsville too, he became a sort of epitome of reliability.

  But even the most efficient intelligence agent is only as good as his information, and it was here that MacFarland was especially lucky. The Fijian caretaker Kelemende had excellent contacts. The native “police boys,” mostly provided by Clemens, proved daring and resourceful. One got a job as a cook in the Japanese officers’ mess at Lunga, stayed for four days, and brought out highly useful information on the camp layout.

  The Japanese themselves made these infiltrations easy. In their rush to get the airstrip built, they turned to native labor:

  NOTICE NO. 1—All inhabitants on this island must be ordered by Japanese Government to cooperate for Japan. Any inhabitant against it should be severely punished by Japanese Martial Law.

  ORDER NO. 1—Men only over 14 years old or less than 50 years have to work for Japanese troops at some places on this island. After a month’s labor they will be given the identity as a civilian on this island. During work for Japanese troops, they will be supplied with meals, etc.

  Ishimoto, the interpreter and guide on Tulagi, now crossed over to Guadalcanal. Promoted to a sort of political affairs officer, he took on the job of putting the order into effect. It was not an easy task. Few of the natives could read, but they were shrewd, and when the order was read to them, they quickly grasped that they were not going to be paid. Their only return for a month’s labor was to be given “identity as a civilian on this island”—whatever that meant.

  Nevertheless, a trickle of cowed natives began reporting for work, and mingling with them came some of the Coastwatchers’ most resourceful scouts. Clemens’s man Dovu got work as a carrier, helped bring stores from the beach to the airstrip site … and made careful note of everything he carried.

  There were some close calls. In a rash moment the bureaucratic Daniel Pule took a job helping unload a small schooner at Taivu. As he sweated away, Ishimoto himself suddenly appeared. With head bowed in the best Japanese tradition, he politely inquired, “My friend, I’ve known you before at Tulagi?”

  Pule’s heart was in his mouth. Indeed Ishimoto had often seen him at Tulagi and might well connect him with the government. He tried to indicate that he couldn’t speak English and gestured for a cigarette.

  “You’re a liar,” Ishimoto said coldly, all politeness gone.

  Pule desperately clung to his pose. He gestured that he was hungry and wanted some food. Ishimoto seemed a little more convi
nced and had some rice brought over. Pule now tried one more bit of pantomime: He wanted some betel nut. Hesitantly Ishimoto indicated he might go to a hut some yards away. Once there, Pule fled and was safely out of sight by the time Ishimoto realized he was gone.

  In another encounter, one of MacFarland’s scouts found himself closely questioned by a Japanese officer—not Ishimoto, but one who also spoke good English. The scout managed to convince the officer that he was just another English-speaking native, but as he turned to go, the Japanese casually asked if there were any Europeans in the hills. When the scout replied, “None left—all gone away,” the officer, who had perhaps learned his English in America, simply snorted, “Bullshit.”

  It was all too clear that the Japanese knew a great deal about the Coastwatchers on Guadalcanal. From the coerced medical assistant George Bogese—and perhaps from radio intercepts—Ishimoto knew at least some of the names and would ask affectionately for the whereabouts of “Mr. Snowy” or “Mr. Mac.”

  Early in July Rhoades passed along a rumor that the Japanese were planning to use paratroopers to trap Clemens and MacFarland. Knowing the tangled, jagged terrain, neither man worried much about that, but it was different when Rhoades also reported that the enemy planned to use bloodhounds. There was something especially chilling about the thought of being tracked down by dogs, and the Coastwatchers gave the matter considerable attention. Rhoades urged Clemens to put citronella on his heels and walk in streams; he himself scattered arsenic along the trails leading to his hideout.

  But it was MacFarland who had the real secret weapon. Ken Hay kept a mongrel bitch named Suzy, and it was said that if her droppings were spread across the path to Gold Ridge, this would draw any bloodhound away from the scent he was following. The theory was never tested, for actually the Japanese at no time used dogs to track the Coastwatchers. They did use watchdogs to guard their facilities, and these were apparently what inspired the rumor.

  These were especially grim days for Martin Clemens at Paripao in the hills behind Aola. On July 4 word had reached him that Japanese patrols were coming ashore at Taivu, nearest point on the coast and only seven miles away. He immediately doubled his sentries and began pulling farther back the following morning. He traveled light now. The big safe and office records had been hidden in a tunnel dug into the hillside, and the party consisted only of two scouts in the lead, a dozen carriers, Michael the cook with his helper, and Clemens himself bringing up the rear. All that day and the next he climbed deeper into the interior, soaked by the rain, slipping and sliding in the mud, sweating from the heat, his throat as parched as his clothes were drenched.

  Finally, on the evening of the 6th, the little group reached an isolated toothlike rock, hundreds of feet high, connected to the surrounding hills by a thin ridge only four feet wide. Atop the “tooth” perched a tiny native village called Vungana. It looked as safe as Edinburgh Castle and the view of the coast was magnificent. Here, Clemens decided, he would make his next stand.

  Yet the outlook was anything but cheerful. Native loyalty in some villages was beginning to waver. The Japanese were reported coming down the south coast behind him. His radio batteries were low. He was running out of water. On July 8 he radioed the Malaita control station a gloomy assessment of his situation, CANNOT DO VERY MUCH GOOD FOR MUCH LONGER. HAVE YOU INSTRUCTIONS?

  He began to think about getting off the island. There were a couple of boats hidden on the south coast; maybe he could reach them. That same day he radioed Gold Ridge, asking whether MacFarland intended to evacuate and suggesting that the government ketch be left for Clemens himself, “if need be.”

  Back came a laconic “Yes.”

  The strain grew, and on the 14th Clemens asked in his diary a rhetorical question that caught all his weariness and discouragement in just four words: “O Lord, how long? ? ?”

  Snowy Rhoades felt the pressure too. Ishimoto had visited Visale “looking for Europeans,” and while Bishop Aubin managed to fend him off, there was no telling how long the old man could play dumb. Nor could the Japanese fail to notice the track that Rhoades had by now beaten between the coast and his hideout in the hills.

  July 9, he decided it was time to move. Traveling mostly at night, a party of 24 carriers brought his rice, kerosene, benzine, and the teleradio down to the west coast of the island. Here everything was loaded into his launch—hidden for just this emergency—and again traveling by night, he headed down the coast.

  Twelve miles, and Rhoades was at the mouth of the Hylavo River. Here he unloaded his gear onto the beach, sent the launch away, and began waiting for a fresh group of carriers who would meet him at dawn. It was still dark, so he hid his supplies under some coconut fronds and lay down in the sand for a nap.

  The sound of a diesel engine woke him up. There was no chance to run for cover without being seen, so he rolled under some leaves and waited. In a few seconds he could make out a Japanese barge edging along the shore toward him. Aboard were about forty soldiers and the ubiquitous Ishimoto. Rhoades hardly dared to breathe—if he was seen he was lost—as the barge crept within a hundred yards. Then, finding nothing, it chugged on down the coast.

  An hour later the carriers arrived with two canoes, and Rhoades was on his way up the Hylavo. A two-mile paddle, another mile of walking, and he finally reached his new hideout—a leaf house built in the foliage near the river bank. Here at last he felt safe for the moment.

  At Gold Ridge the situation looked so dangerous that on July 8 Eric Feldt ordered Don MacFarland to fall back to “the most inaccessible part of Guadalcanal” and keep radio silence until needed again. MacFarland lingered on, but he began preparations to withdraw and even talked evacuation with Martin Clemens.

  The place seemed dreadfully exposed. Nor was security helped by three more refugees. The newcomers were F. M. Campbell and his two teenage sons Jack and Pat. Campbell had been an early district officer who married a native girl, retired to grow copra, and was now mining gold on land leased from the government just below the ridge. Along with another doughty individualist named Andy Andresen, Campbell had continued prospecting, regardless of the war swirling around him. As the Japanese swarmed onto Lunga plain, he complained in a note to Martin Clemens, “It’s all very upsetting and not conducive to the health or good gold-digging.”

  At last, as Japanese patrols began fanning inland, the Campbells decided they should, as young Jack later put it, “forget prosperity and head for Gold Ridge.” Andresen remained at his house by his claim, but he led scouting parties for MacFarland, occasionally coming up to the ridge to discuss the latest developments.

  There were now nearly a hundred people clustered on Gold Ridge, counting MacFarland’s scouts, Hay’s servants, and about thirty natives brought along by the Campbells. Only MacFarland and the scouts had much to do. The rest settled back, relaxing uneasily, surrounded by danger for literally hundreds of miles. They argued, drank, hunted, practiced target-shooting, and played endless games of rummy with a worn deck of cards supplied by Martin Clemens.

  So many people doing so little couldn’t help being conspicuous, and it was probably a group of them loafing together that finally attracted the attention of two Japanese Zero float planes on the morning of July 12. Down they roared in a strafing run as the Gold Ridge group dived for the bush. The hideout had been discovered.

  MacFarland decided to move back at once. Two hours of frantic packing, and they were on their way. They headed south, made about four miles, and camped for the night. Shortly after dawn they were on their way again, down into a dark valley … then up the next range to the top of Mount Jonapau … then down again into the valley behind that. It was back-breaking work, especially for the lumbering Ken Hay. Finally they tied a rope around his waist, raising and lowering him over the roughest places like so much bulk cargo.

  July 14, they straggled into Bombedea, a primitive native village on the banks of a swift stream called the Sutakiki. Here MacFarland decided to make his new camp. He had by now put two whole mountain ranges between himself and the Japanese. That should be enough, and if not, there were good escape paths leading to the south coast. The Campbells joined him, while Hay and Andresen moved into nearby settlements.