Paul Mason, short, bespectacled, soft spoken, held an aerie in the south mountains over Buin, and dark, wiry W. J. “Jack” Read watched the ship and aircraft movements of the Japanese in and around Buka in the north. One memorable Mason wireless dispatch: “Twenty-five torpedo bombers headed yours.” The message cost the Japanese Imperial Navy every one of those airplanes, save one. Read reported a dozen or so Japanese transports assembling at Buka before their trip to Guadalcanal, with enough troops loaded on board to take the island back. All of the transports were lost or beached under the fierce attack of U.S. warplanes.
In 1941, as the war with Japan commenced, there were 100 coastwatchers in the Solomons. There were 10 times that number as the war ended, later including Americans. Assembled first as a tight group of island veterans in 1939 (although there had been coastwatchers after World War I) under Lieutenant Commander A. Eric Feldt, Royal Australian Navy, their job was to cover about a half million miles of land, sea, and air.
The very first moves of the Japanese on Guadalcanal were observed by coastwatchers in the surrounding hills. The coastwatchers could count the Japanese hammer strokes, almost see the nails. When the Japanese began the airfield (later to be called Henderson Field), the report of the coastwatchers went all the way up the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and across the desk of Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet.
Later, General Alexander A. Vandegrift on Guadalcanal banked heavily on the intelligence coming in from the radios of the coastwatchers. The attacks on the Treasuries and Choiseul were based on the information provided them. On New Georgia, long before Americans decided to take it, a coastwatcher had set up a haven for downed Allied pilots. And if the Americans needed a captured Japanese officer or soldier for interrogation, the local scouts were often able to provide one.
The key to coastwatching was the tele-radio or wireless, good to 600 miles by key, 400 by voice. Cumbersome, heavy, the set took more than a dozen men to carry it—an indication of how much the Allies depended upon the local natives.
The risks were great. Death would come after torture. But Mason recalled the risk was worth it, seeing the sleek, orderly formations heading for Guadalcanal, then limping back home with gaping holes in their hulls. Mason and Read were highly decorated by both the Australians and Americans for their vital services.
Battle at Sea
A final part of the planning for the main landing on Bougainville had envisioned the certainty of a Japanese naval sortie to attack the invasion transports. It came very early on the morning of D plus 1. On the enemy side, Japanese destroyer Captain Tameichi Hara, skipper of the Shigure, later recalled it was cold, drizzly, and murky, with very limited visibility as his destroyer pulled out of Simpson Harbor, Rabaul. He was a part of the interception force determined to chew up the U.S. invasion troops that had just landed at Empress Augusta Bay. The Shigure was one of the six destroyers in the van of the assigned element of the Southeast Area Fleet, which included the heavy cruisers Myoko and Haguro, together with the light cruisers Agano and Sendai. At 0027, 2 November 1943, he would run abreast of U.S. Task Force 39 under Rear Admiral Merrill, who stood by to bar the enemy approach with four light cruisers and eight destroyers. Among his captains was the daring and determined Arleigh Burke on board the Charles S. Ausburne (DD 570) commanding DesDiv (Destroyer Division) 45.
This encounter was crucial to the Bougainville campaign. At Rabaul, Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin had told his sailors, “Japan will topple if Bougainville falls.”