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bases around the territories seized by the Southern Army. Combined with existing fortifications, Japan would control the Pacific from the Kurile Islands southward to the Gilberts in the Central Pacific, then westward through the Solomons and Bismarcks to New Guinea, and finally around Java and Sumatra to Burma—a chain of strongholds more than twelve thousand miles in length. As the linchpin of what the Japanese called the Southeast Area, Rabaul would be developed into an impregnable military complex, a hub from which to launch additional campaigns and further extend Japan’s grip on the southern hemisphere.
    In other words, the Japanese planned to transform Rabaul, with its huge anchorage and excellent topographical features, into the mightiest fortress in the Pacific.
    THERE WAS GOOD REASON for a direct chain of command from Tokyo to the South Seas Force. The Imperial Army and Navy were parochial, neither one willing to be subordinate to the other, particularly at the start of what promised to be a glorious offensive. But with Imperial GeneralHeadquarters in charge of operations, the typical rivalries were avoided. As insurance, the services were bluntly ordered to work together. The South Seas Force, for example, received Great Army Instruction No. 992 on November 8, 1941, which emphasized, in part: “The army and navy will cooperate.”
    There wasn’t an officer alive in either service who would dare to question the directive’s legitimacy. Every direct order in the Japanese military system, whether written or verbal, was regarded as though Emperor Hirohito himself had issued it. As a result, the army and navy components of the South Seas Force not only cooperated but conducted a near-flawless operation against Guam.
    When the Southern Offensive commenced on December 8, Tokyo time, several troop transports and a sizeable convoy of Fourth Fleet warships were already en route to Guam, an American possession in the Mariana Islands. Land-based naval aircraft from Saipan softened up the island’s defenses for two days, and when the invasion troops stormed ashore on December 10, the garrison of 153 U.S. Marines and the local militia surrendered within minutes.
    After securing Guam, the South Seas Force spent the rest of December preparing for the invasion of the Bismarcks. On January 3, 1942, Maj. Gen. Tomitaro Horii and his battalion commanders flew more than 630 miles to Truk for a planning session with their navy counterparts. Boarding the cruiser Kashima in Truk lagoon, they met with Vice Adm. Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the Fourth Fleet, and hammered out the various details of “R” Operation, as the coming invasion was called. The meeting concluded with the signing of a cooperation agreement between Horii and Inoue, ostensibly to satisfy the dictates of Tokyo, after which Horii and his staff flew back to Guam.
    The following day, the Imperial Navy’s 24th Air Flotilla received orders to begin attacking Rabaul from its base at Truk. Having already conducted several high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the area, the aircrews were undoubtedly anxious to initiate combat. None, however, could have foreseen that the air war over Rabaul would continue unabated for almost four years. The longest battle of World War II was about to begin.

CHAPTER 3

Gladiators
    T HE WAR CAME TO RABAUL on a pleasant Sunday morning, the fourth day of 1942. Dawn broke rapidly, as it always does in the equatorial latitudes, giving the antiaircraft gunners atop the North Daughter a breathtaking sunrise. Accustomed to such splendor after weeks of sitting at their posts, they might have assumed that yet another monotonous day awaited them. If so, they were in for a surprise.
    At approximately 1000 hours, plantation manager Cornelius L. Page sent an urgent radio message from the tiny island of Tabar, ninety miles north of New Britain. Recruited two years earlier into the network of coastwatchers, he had observed a flight of Japanese