Biography of an Unknown Soldier

     In the past, it has been the practice of biographers to focus almost exclusively on the well-known, the big shots, and the media's favorites.  One example is that of Robert E. Lee about whom historian Thomas L. Connelly says:  "In this morass of over thirty biographies and hundreds of other monographs and articles, the image of Lee has been that of the Christian Knight-Soldier, magnificent in victory and in defeat."

     For this reason, I have chosen to do this essay about my father, William G. Rector, Jr., (1917-1992).  He is unknown as a soldier; yet he and his fellow soldiers of the 41st Infantry Division (147th Field Artillery Regiment) were instrumental in destroying the Japanese Empire.  This, then, is a story of unsung heroes.

     For my dad, it all started in September, 1939, when Hitler's legions of death and destruction swept into Poland and turned such sleepy and innocent Polish villages as Auschwitz and Treblinka into code names for barbarism.  Shortly after Hitler unleashed the dogs of war, President Roosevelt first increased the National Guard's unit strength by fifteen percent (Dad enlisted in Battery B, 147th Field Artillery Regiment of the South Dakota National Guard.)  In late 1940, national mobilization was ordered.  About one year later, the 147th Field Artillery was sent from San Francisco en route to the Philippines.  Because of a storm, they had to stop at Pearl Harbor; and then a week before the famed Pearl Harbor attack, they left for Australia.

     Australia turned out to be a mess; there were only about three thousand allied troopers in all of Northern Australia.  It looked as if the Japanese were going to invade!  Well, they didn't and they missed to prolong the war indefinitely, for Australia would prove to be our main offensive base during the war.  After some fooling around in Australia, some minor combat action in the Bismarck Sea, and service with the elite "Dakota Scouts," dad was sent to the Officer Certification School in Brisbane, Australia in the fall of 1943.  After he graduated and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in Field Artillery, he was assigned to the 41st Infantry Division.

     Shortly after he was assigned to the 41st Infantry Division, the 41st was sent to Hollandia for its first major combat campaign.  The importance of Hollandia can be best summarized by the following paragraph from a volume of the U.S. Army Official History by Robert R. Smith:

          Anchorages at Hollandia were known to be capable of basing many of the largest combat
     vessels, cargo ships, and troop transports.  Inland plains in the area were thought to provide almost      unlimited potentialities for airdrome development.  Aircraft operating from fields at Hollandia
     could dominate most Japanese airdromes in western New Guinea and nearest islands of the Indies,
     could fly reconnaisance and bombing missions against the western Carolines, including the
     Paulaus, and could provide support for subsequent landing operations along the north coast of
     New Guinea.  Small naval vessels, such as motor torpedo boats (PT's), operating from Hollandia
     area bases, could interdict Japanese barge traffic for miles both east and west of that region.
     Finally, the Hollandia region was capable of development into a major supply base and staging
     area for the support of subsequent Allied operations farther to the west.



     The operation was to be a pincer operation between the 24th and 41st Infantry Divisions.  Resistance by the enemy was expected to be very tough; yet, it wasn't.  Indeed, as Smith notes:

          To the allies the Hollandia operation had proved to be an unexpectedly easy tactical success,
     since the Japanese had been strangely ill prepared to defend adequately this potentially powerful
     base.  General MacArthur had sent one and two-thirds reinforced divisions against Hollandia on
     the assumption that 14,000 Japanese, including nearly two regiments of infantry, would be
     found there.  But no strong  Japanese resistance and little co-ordinated defense had been
     encountered there.  It appears that about 11,000 Japanese of all services were at Hollandia on
     22 April and that ground combat elements were represented by no more than 500 antiaircraft
     artillery men.



     Hollandia's airfields, despite being great prizes, proved to be bothersome as shown by Lieutenant General Walter Kreuger:

          Hollandia, Cyclops, and Santani airdromes had sustained a terrific bombardment, but the
     engineers put them into shape for some of our planes to use them in a comparatively short time.
     Cyclops field, for example, was used by some planes on 28 April and Hollandia field by some
     C-47's on 2 May and by considerable traffic on 4 May.  But complete development of these fields
     was seriously handicapped by the heavy rains which slowed up construction and delayed road
     work made it difficult to bring up heavy equipment.


     Yet, despite those difficulties, Hollandia became a major asset in the winning of the war.

     As soon as Hollandia was secured, my dad's battalion was rushed to Wakde Island.  The importance of Wakde Island was as Smith states:

          Although General MacArthur's planners had given up thoughts of seizing Wakde Island as an
     adjunct to the Hollandia operation, they did not drop the area from consideration.  First, the area
     was apparently capable of development into a major air base for the support of subsequent
     operations.  Second, as more information from various intelligence sources became available at
     General Headquarters concerning Japanese airdrome development, troop disposition, and supply
     concentrations at Wakde-Sarmi, the area began to acquire a threatening aspect.  It was a base
     from which the enemy could not only endanger the the success of the Hollandia operation, but
     also imperil allied progress into the Geelvink Bay area.  Indeed the Allied Air Forces considered
     that an early seizure of the Wakde-Sarmi region after the capture of Hollandia was a prerequisite
     to continuing the drive toward the Philippines.


     And so, without fanfare, in a four-day operation, the various units of the 41st Infantry Division overran the islands of Wakde.  The stage was now set for "Bloody Biak."  According to Smith:

          Biak was important because it lies off the coast of New Guinea, and because its capture would
     a virtually safe advance to the Philippines.  Biak had few good harbors and the bulk of its
     coastline was fringed by rough coral reefs--this made the going quite tough.



     Biak, as a battle, was savage--it ranks with Buna, Saipan, Tarawa, and Guadalcanal (1st phase) in the Pacific battles.  However, at Biak, the Japanese, for the first time, used tanks against the Americans.  However, despite the 11,000 man garrison, savage fighting, and harsh terrain, the 41st came through.  Biak was also important for a certain near-encounter as evidenced by naval historian Samuel Eliot Morrison:

          The Japanese Navy here tried to interfere with an amphibious operation for the first time since
     Bougainville (Nov. 1943).  Admiral Toyoda realized that heavy bombers based at Biak would be
     handicap to his plan for a big naval battle in mid-1944--a plan of which we shall hear more
     He therefore decided to transport 2,500 amphibious troops from Mindanao to Biak.  Three
     attempts were made by a reinforcement echelon of destroyers under Rear Admiral Sakonju, who
     who was no Tanaka.  Once he was turned back by a false report of an aircraft carrier, and on 8
     June he was chased off by Crutchley's cruiser-destroyer force.  Toyoda now assembled a really
     powerful striking force, built around superb-battleships Yamoto and Musashi, which should have
     been able to sink anything in Seventh Fleet.  Three days before it was to head for Biak,
     Commander in Chief Combined Fleet (Toyoda) decided, correctly, that Spruance's Fifth Fleet was
     about to land in the Marianas, and pulled all naval forces north into the Philippine Sea.


     The culmination of Toyoda's plan was the Battle of the Philippine Sea, or "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot," which didn't exactly come out the way Toyoda thought it would for as Brigadier Peter Young relates:

          The Japanese lost about 460 trained aircraft crews, 3 aircraft carriers and various other ships
     sunk and damaged; while the U.S. Fifth Fleet lost only about 130 aircraft and few ships.  The
     Japanese were greatly crippled; never to have another real chance to win the naval side of the war.



     Biak also proved to be the last important army operation prior to the reconquest of the Philippines.  Leyte was captured, then Manila, by U.S. Sixth Army forces.  Then, finally the 41st Division--now part of the U.S. Eighth Army--saw action at Zamboanga.  According to Smith:

          Zamboanga is located on a long peninsula that juts out  into the sea.  It has several airfields in
     its vicinity, and since the recent landings in Palawan failed to yield any really good airfields, the
     value of the Zamboanga increased dramatically.  After facing some initially tough opposition, the
     41st Division broke through and seized all of its objectives.


     For dad, the war was over, for he was granted a leave in time for Easter, 1945.  He was then sent to Fort Bragg for additional training for the Japan campaign.  Just as he was preparing to leave for the Pacific, the two A-bombs were dropped and the rest was history.

     Now, the above were the combat operations of the 41st Infantry Division while my dad was with them; but there are several unofficial happenings of importance.

     After the big raid on Darwin, there weren't too many white women around; but there wee some Abos around.  Abos were the Aborigines of Australia and they were  extremely dark skinned.  One soldier stole a pair of Aussie shoes and two apples when they were unloading the sunken ships in the harbor.  He a made a deal with an Abo girl whereby, in exchange for the shoes and one of the apples, the girl agreed to have sex with him.  So one night, he is lying on top of her having sex when he hears this "crunch" sound.  He opens his eyes ad guess what?  She's eating the apple while having sex!  Naturally he became known as "Apple."

     In New Guinea, the Japanese had treated the natives (especially women) very badly--rapes and the like.  Since having the support of the natives was important--having sex with a native woman became a court martial offense with the sentence being thirty years in a military pen.  One soldier didn't fare that well, for the New Guinea natives didn't like foreigners messing around with their women.  He went out, got caught with a native girl by her father and brothers and so failed to return to duty the next day.  Dad was sent out to find him; and along the way, he met up with a few natives who had served with the Dakota Scouts.  They promptly took him t the missing man.  The Melanesians had stripped him, suspended him by his thumbs from a tree, inserted a rose bush thorn up his penis, and then they took anther thorn to push the first one up, and another, and another.  Somewhere in the process, the soldier died.  Dad cut him down and carried the corpse back to camp with the help of two of the natives.

     In the Bismarck Archipelago, there was a hitherto unknown  (to the western world) elephantiasis that devastated the native men.  Most of the men on Woodlark Island, for instance, had testicles the size of two softballs--one native's testicles were about the size of a volleyball.  One American soldier caught elephantiasis and his testicles were swollen to the size of softballs so the army sent him home.  Dad looked him up in the hospital two years later and his testicles were still as large as baseballs.  The doctors didn't know what to do; they were still experimenting.  He died a year later.


     Because the men were "deprived" of "healthy sex lives," some of them planned to rape Japanese women in the invasion; but the A-bombs kept them from carrying out their plans.

       And now, just what was thought of the 41st by the brass?  Well, on June 15th, 1945, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur said after an inspection:

          "Everything is as I expected to see it in splendid shape.  This is one of my oldest and proudest
     divisions.  Its achievements have been of the first order.  I have the greatest affection for and pride
     in the 41st Division."

     And so ends the service career of my father.



                                                             Bibliography

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