Reports

of

General MacArthur

JAPANESE OPERATIONS IN THE
SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA

Volume II - Part II

COMPILED FROM
JAPANESE DEMOBILIZATION BUREAUX RECORDS

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-60007

Facsimile Reprint, 1994

CMH Pub 13-2

FOREWORD

The Reports of General MacArthur include two volumes being published by the Department of the Army in four books reproduced exactly as they were printed by General MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters in 1950, except for the addition of this foreword and indexes. Since they were Government property, the general turned over to the Department in 1953 these volumes and related source materials. In Army and National Archives custody these materials have been available for research although they have not been easily accessible. While he lived, General MacArthur was unwilling to approve the reproduction and dissemination of the Reports, because he believed they needed further editing and correction of some inaccuracies. His passing permits publication but not the correction he deemed desirable. In publishing them, the Department of the Army must therefore disclaim any responsibility for their accuracy. But the Army also recognizes that these volumes have substantial and enduring value, and it believes the American people are entitled to have them made widely available through government publication.

The preliminary work for compiling the MacArthur volumes began in 1943 within the G-3 Section of his General Staff, and was carried forward after the war by members of the G-2 Section, headed by Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby with Pro fessor Gordon W. Prange, on leave from the University of Maryland, as his principal professional assistant. Volume II of the Reports represents the contributions of Japanese officers employed to tell their story of operations against MacArthur's forces. The very large number of individuals, American and Japanese, who participated in the compilation and editing of the Reports would make a complete listing of contributors relatively meaningless.

Volume I narrates the operations of forces under General MacArthur's command from the Japanese attack on Luzon in 1941 through the surrender in 1945. While service histories have covered much of the same ground in separate volumes, no single detailed narrative of General MacArthur's leadership as commander of the Southwest Pacific Area has yet appeared. Chapters dealing with the reconquest of Borneo, plans for the invasion of Japan, and the Japanese surrender make a distinctly new contribution. Volume I Supplement describes the military phase of the occupation through December 1948, reporting events not treated elsewhere in American publications. Volume II on Japanese operations brings together a mass of information on the enemy now only partially available in many separate works. Collectively, the Reports should be of wide interest and value to the American people generally, as well as to students of military affairs. They are an illuminating record of momentous events influenced in large measure by a distinguished American soldier.

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FOREWORD TO THE 1994 EDITION

I determined for several reasons to republish General MacArthur's reports to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II. First, the Reports of General MacArthur still stand as a detailed account from MacArthur's perspective of his operations against the Japanese in the Southwest Pacific Area. Second, the Reports offer a unique Japanese version of their operations in the Southwest Pacific that remains one of the few English-language descriptions of Imperial Army campaigns during World War II. Third, excellent illustrations, many of them original artwork commissioned for the Reports, plus superb maps give these volumes an enduring value for military historians and the American public. Finally, while General MacArthur remains a towering figure in American historiography, the passage of fifty years has dimmed the contributions of the U.S. Army units that first checked the Japanese southward advance in Papua New Guinea, then spearheaded the counteroffensive along the north New Guinea coastline that enabled MacArthur to make good his promise to return to the Philippines. The veterans of these campaigns, both men and women, deserve to be remembered for their contributions to the Nation in its time of greatest peril. These are General MacArthur's Reports, but they are also his testament to the American soldiers who served under his command.

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PREFACE

This volume parallels the record of Allied operations in the SWPA from the Defense of Luzon, 8 December 1941, to the Surrender Negotiations in Manila, 15 August 1945. It is the Japanese official record, contained in operational monographs furnished by the Japanese Demobilization Bureaux, the successors to the former War and Navy Ministries, developed by Officers of the Japanese Imperial Headquarters, Tokyo, and on the Staffs of major Japanese Commanders in the field. Like Volume I, the material is thus presented by eye witnesses to events, and is supported by official documentary evidence.

It is a record of bitter resistance and tenacious fighting by a first-class Army and Navy, led by Diplomats and Military Politicians through the holocaust of national destruction, an Army that was steeped in medieval cruelty, but fought with the most modern technical skill and savage valor, until superior skill and equal valor broke the spell of the Samurai and the legend of an invincible Empire.

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

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TABLE OF CONTENTS - PART II

ILLUSTRATIONS - PART II

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