Navy Medicine May-June 1943
Jennifer Mitchum
The New Georgia Islands, approximately 170 miles northwest of the Russells, was the next stop in the Allied offensive. New Georgia contained several staging points from which the U.S. could ferry supplies and troops to other battle areas. Moreover, the Japanese had completed an airfield at Munda Point on the
northwest corner of the main island of New Georgia and were in the process of building a second air base near the mouth of the Vila River on Kolombangara Island.
These bases hereby threatened U.S. installations not far off. Prior to May 1943, U.S. fliers conducted a number of successful raids on Japanese airfields, but none interrupted their use for more than a day or two.
Therefore, the Allied leaders decided to invade the New Georgia Islands. Under the invasion plan, a combined Army, Navy, and Marine force was to land simultaneously in several places in the New Georgia area.
Staging Points: Guadalcanal and the Russells
Under the plan, Allied troops were to spring their attacks from Guadalcanal and the Russells. Thus,
medical and logistic problems had to be addressed and corrected on these islands.
Medical personnel aimed to reduce the possibility of invasion troops contracting malaria while passing through Guadalcanal. "...if we are able to prevent them [the troops] from contracting the disease at Guadalcanal so that they are malaria-free on reaching the combat zone, they will be much less likely to
contract malaria during the fighting as the natives (seed bed) will not be in the combat area,"(1) wrote CAPT Arthur H. Dearing, MC, in a letter to RADM Ross T. McIntire.
Viewed as an area problem, eradicating malaria from Guadalcanal would be difficult. "The prevention of mosquito breeding in the combat area is a difficult proposition and although I am sure that we can do better than was done on Guadalcanal, I fear we will always have a high incidence of malaria amongst our combat troops,"(2) noted Dr. Dearing.
Medical personnel in the Russells continued to tackle problems such as malaria, fungus infection, and jaundice. Twenty-five men were evacuated in May.(3) In June, battle casualties increased. One unique injury was suffered by LT S.S. Logan, who lost his left foot to a Japanese propeller while parachuting to the ground. The Japanese pilot had first attempted to machine gun the American as he floated beneath his canopy.
Segi Point Taken Early
On 21 June, attack transports Dent (APD-9) and Waters (APD-8) crept past the western coast of Vangunu Island in poorly chartered waters, and debarked two companies of the Fourth Marine Raider Battalion at Segi Point, New Georgia. The Americans hit Segi Point first in order to establish a forward
airfield and to deny the area to the Japanese.
On 30 June, ACORN 7 arrived at Segi Point. Half the medical department accompanied the first wave; the remaining half was due to arrive in July. Upon landing, first wave medical personnel established a first-aid station and three four-bed tent wards. Subsequently, the Seabees cleared a site about one-half mile from the beach and erected a 100 X 16 ward. Shortly thereafter, additional buildings including a surgery and X-ray building and two additional wards were erected. Hospital corpsmen then manned several stations including the crash boat and truck, the ambulance, and the airfield first-aid station.
The Major Offensive
On the morning of 30 June, forces landed according to plan at several points in the New Georgia area. The first wave landing on Rendova included about 600 Seabees tasked with preparing beaches for landing of small boats and pushing roads into the jungles. The Seabees camp, about 700 feet from the front line, had a sickbay and hospital tents. Two 16 x 10 tents with cots served as wards and a 16 x 16 pyramidal tent served as a dispensary. Because of poor road conditions, personnel had to carry patients from the camp to LSTs for
evacuation.
Enemy on New Georgia
The Japanese had intended to develop New Georgia as a major base, but were never able to muster
sufficient manpower in the islands to do so.
At the time of the U.S. landings, most enemy garrisons had been in the vicinity between 5 to 9 months. American intelligence learned that during that time the Japanese increasingly suffered from disease and
starvation which inevitably weaken their forces and made our seizure of the islands less costly.
Malaria was a principal factor. Most of the enemy troops had contracted the disease in New Britain or Bougainville prior to coming to the central Solomons. The incidence was believed to had exceeded 30 percent by June 1943.(4) In contrast, incidence of malaria in Allied troops in the Central Solomons did not rise "over five percent per month and was never a serious impediment."(5)
The Aleutians
Paralleling the south and central Pacific Solomons campaigns was another U.S. offensive was
underway far to the north. In the summer of 1942, the Japanese occupied several of the Aleutian Islands--most importantly Attu and Kiska. By May 1943, U.S. forces were prepared to take them back.
The morning of 11 May, U.S. forces landed on Attu with naval units providing fire support and air cover for Army troops. In the bitter fighting that followed, Navy medicine's focus was aboard vessels at sea. The beach party of USS J. Franklin Bell (APA-16) evacuated 100 casualties to Adak between 11 May and 16 May.(6) About 20 of these were shipboard and boat incidents. One such incident occurred during an enemy torpedo attack when a landing boat fell and crushed a man to death. Foul weather hampered shore-to-ship evacuation.
Cold weather coupled, wet terrain, and ill-fitting leather boots caused about 260 cases of immersion foot, a condition as likely to put a man out of action as a bullet. The patients, many of whom had been in
foxholes on snow-covered mountain slopes for up to 7 days, came aboard USS Heywood (AP-12) and were assigned to a troop compartment. The compartment was purposely unheated with the temperature hovering around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. During this initial period, patients received codeine and aspirin to alleviate pain. After several days, the temperature in the compartment was brought to a comfortable room temperature.
Consequently, swelling went down and devitalized tissue separated as a dry gangrene in one or several of the patients' toes after about a week.
Although patients came aboard Heywood shivering and complaining about the cold, medical personnel reported very few cases of initial shock and an extremely low infection rate.(7) On 6 June, Heywood pulled into port at San Francisco with nearly 500 wounded of the Attu campaign.(8)
Because of its exceptional facilities--which included a sick bay with six permanent berths, a small operating dispensary, and an operating room--medical personnel aboard Spica (AK-16) were able to aid ships and smaller crafts that were unable to reach shore due to inclement weather. USS Spica had been sailing Alaskan waters loading and unloading cargo at American outposts on the Alaskan coast and Aleutian Islands. Medical personnel reported no fatalities or serious injuries.(9)
Aboard ships, lectures and films stressed preventive medicine, first-aid, and treatment of burns, wounds, fractures, hemorrhages, shock, and sunstroke. In addition, personnel frequently instructed stretcher bearers and corpsmen in artificial respiration, and proper handling of injured, particularly those with head injuries and fractures. Moreover, medics conducted inoculations and constantly inspected food stores and mess areas.
In some cases, medical personnel performed under adverse conditions. The medical team aboard USS David W. Branch (performed a successful operation in an area so confining that it was difficult to stand around the operating table.(10) Similarly, USS Indianapolis's (CA-35) physicians performed surgery in an operating room recently damaged in a ship-to-ship collision. When a surgical emergency arose that evening, medical
staffers patched a hole in the hull with canvas and proceeded with an operation. Interestingly, the medical
personnel aboard Indianapolis reported that the task of patrolling and blockading in the Aleutians was more physiologically and psychologically wearing on the ship's crew than actual combat.(11)
Overall, the morbidity rate was low at Attu. Ship confinement and lack of contact with natives equalled the best preventive medicine measures. By using life-saving drugs, plasma, and by rapidly transporting wounded to area medical facilities, mortality was reduced. Moreover, respiratory infections seldom occurred in the Aleutians. USS Hatfield (DD-231) medical personnel reported that despite extremely low temperatures and an ice-coated ship, crewmembers did not develop colds until they put into a U.S. port.(12)
The Prison Camps
Thousands of miles south of the Aleutians, American POWs held in the Philippines heard about the American offensive. "...Their [local press] war news is scanty, and where it is given, we can read enough between the lines to know that the enemy are beginning to feel the pressure," wrote CDR T.H. Hayes, MC, in his journal while interned at Bilibid.(13)
War prisoners in Japan also heard about the Allied offensive in degrees. Newspapers indicated that Germany was being hard pressed but the Japanese maintained that their forces were being 100 percent
successful. In reference to the Aleutians, newspapers reported that the Japanese fought to the last man at
Attu and that the U.S. lost 6,000.(14)
As Allied pressure increased on the Axis, those interned were feeling the squeeze as well. The
"vacation" of sorts Bilibid prisoners enjoyed during the earlier months of 1943 had come to an end. In the
latter part of March, the Japanese discontinued academic classes they had offered at Bilibid. Moreover, the captors forbade group formations except for religious, entertainment, and athletic purposes. Those at Bilibid and in work details suffered from dysentery, malaria, and diphtheria. In addition, cholera became rampant in both Cabanatuan and Bilibid. The Japanese supposedly had no treatment for cholera and Bilibid medical
personnel only had enough vaccine for each staff member to get one shot.
By the end of June, the food situation had severely worsened throughout the Pacific islands. "The Japanese chow allowed us has deteriorated so, even from the inadequate miserable dole that it was, that just plain dry rice is all that is fit to eat and they are putting a squeeze on that," noted Dr. Hayes.(15)
Deficiency diseases were on an upsurge. Many in the camps died from starvation and other curable
diseases because of slack diet and lack of medicine. On 7 June, Dr. Hayes noted in his journal that about 50 percent of the prisoners that had came over from Bataan and Corregidor had died, primarily from starvation
and brutality.(16) Incidentally, the Japanese brought several guinea pigs to the Bilibid prison hospital to be used as test animals in experiments conducted to find cures for such ailments as tuberculosis.(17)
In other camps, the situation was reported to be much worse than Bilibid. On 13 June, a draft arrived at Bilibid from the Palawan camp with horrible stories of camp conditions. They said that morale was
completely gone and that the men had been "reduced to animal existence."(18) Sex perversion was said to be
rampant in the camp and that there were no clothes, no shoes, hardly enough food to survive.(19) Work
conditions were such that prisoners worked nearly nude in the jungle. Brutalities occurred daily. With
practically no medicine in the camp, the men suffered from pellagra, scurvy, beri beri, malaria, and dysentery. In desperation, many fled to the hills.
As in the Philippines, food was by far the major concern in Japan. CAPT R.G. Davis, MC, who had been interned in the Karenko camp in Japan since August 1942, noted in his journal that the Japanese rations were very scant and many of the internees who were nearly skin and bones would have died but for occasional Red Cross packages.
With a promise of more favorable conditions, internees at the Karenko camp were transferred to Shirakawa in the early part of June. Shirakawa, 150 kilometers north of Takao on the west coast of Taiwan, was the land of plenty with acres of rice, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, mangoes, and general gardening. The new camp had bungalow-type barracks and was surrounded by a high bamboo fence. A hospital was under construction. Initially, the food situation in the camp improved. But after a few days, food again became scarce.
As war news increasingly favored the Allies, some prisoners perceived that the Japanese were
changing their attitude. CAPT Davis noted that his captors seemed to be complying more and more with the Geneva Conventions and that there was a feeling in the camp that the doctors and the sick might be going home by 15 Aug. "...The Japanese annihilation is a great shock to them who swear revenge, etc., but now is the time for them to bargain before they experience a total military defeat. Our present status is 180 degree turnabout. We may all get exchanged, but certainly the doctors and the sick," noted Dr. Davis.(20)
From Santa Tomas to Los Banos
In May 1943, the Japanese sent 800 men to Los Banos, which was about 60 or 70 miles south of Manila, to set up a new civilian internment camp. The camp, an agricultural college outside Los Banos, had been part of the University of the Philippines. Two civilian doctors and the 11 Navy nurses went with the group to set up a 25-bed hospital unit. "It was quite a hassle putting that little 25-bed unit into a hospital. It had been abandoned and apparently transient troops--both American and Japanese--had used it as a quarters as they passed through. They had ripped the cupboards off the walls to make wood for fire," recalled Navy nurse Dorothy Still Danner.(21) Medical personnel were creative in stocking the hospital. They constructed
hospital beds and operating tables from bamboo and scraps of wood. Moreover, personnel fashioned odd bits of corrugated tin into cooking and medical utensils, and used torn linen and clothing for dressings. While medical personnel established the hospital, other internees were building several barracks that would
eventually accommodate about 3,000 prisoners.
Elsewhere
In May, enemy resistance in North Africa ended and the dispensary in Casablanca was commissioned as Base Hospital No. 5. Its location permitted the Naval Air Transport Service and the Air Transport Command, from Port Lyautey and Casablanca respectively, to evacuate patients to the U.S. more easily.
BUMED made organizational changes and continued its hospital expansion program in CONUS and abroad. In June, base hospitals began to be equipped for 1,000-bed capacity. In CONUS, hospitals were
commissioned at Camp Lejeune, NC, and at New Orleans, LA, on 1 May and 1 June respectively. Base Hospital No. 6 was commissioned on 1 June at Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, and Mob-9 on 13 May at Brisbane, Australia. Convalescent Hospital USNCH Asheville, NC, was also commissioned on 24 May as was USNCH Yosemite National Park, CA, on 23 June.
In way of Navy medical changes, on 29 May, BUMED lowered the dental requirements as to agree with the mobilization requirements of the Army. Only severe and irreparable dental defects were to be used to
disqualify inductees. In addition, a Force Dental Officer was assigned to the staff of Commander South
Pacific Forces on 1 June.
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References
1. U.S. Navy Medical Department Administrative History, 1941-1945, Vol. I: Narrative History, chap. 2, p 38.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p 36.
4. Ibid., p 45.
5. Ibid., p 45-46.
6. Ibid., chap 4, p 2.
7. Ibid., p 3.
8. Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, Volume III: G-K, p 323.
9. U.S. Navy Medical Department Administrative History, 1941-1945, Vol. I: Narrative History, chap. 4, p 5.
10. Ibid., p 6.
11. Ibid., p 4.
12. Ibid., p 9.
13. Hayes TH. Journal, part II, p 166.
14. Davis RG. Journal, p 51.
15. Hayes TH. Journal, part II, p 168.
16. Ibid., p 164.
17. Ibid., p 146.
18. Ibid., p 165.
19. Ibid.
20. Davis RG, p 51.
21. Danner DS, LT, NC, USN. Interview by Jan K. Herman, 3 & 4December 1991. BUMED Archives, p 57.