The Commandos found a section of the lightly guarded carts and pack horses, and crept into position. As the lead pack horse rounded a bend, there were three burley commandos, wearing dark bandanas and an evil grin.
“Hello Mates,” said one. “This here’s a toll road. What’s that you’ve got tucked away there? Looks like it’ll make a nice tidy payment.”
The Japanese had no idea what they had said, and were gunned down as they frantically tried to get to their shouldered rifles. Then the Kiwis “Commandeered” the gold, led it off the trail, and assigned a small team to deal with it, moving on into the silence and shadow of the mist. Drawn to the sound of fighting to the west, they would arrive on the flank of the battle for M’ba field at just the right moment.
Colonel Shoji heard the sound of their coming as fighting broke out on his extreme left flank. He quickly gave the order to redeploy to the sugar mill. Then he got on the radio and notified General Sato, informing him of the situation. The only two bridges over the M’ba river would soon be under attack, and if they fell, it would mean two thirds of the 38th Division would be cut off east of the river at Tavua. With great reluctance, Sato sent word that Ito and Tanaka should bring their regiments to M’ba at once.
Collins would take Tavua the next day.
The loss of Tavua and the gold mines were serious enough that Sato now contemplated suicide rather than explain why this had happened to any superior officer up the chain of command. Yet for the moment, the necessities of war stayed his hand. There was no word in the Japanese language for retreat, yet that was what Ito and Tanaka were now doing, no matter how the move was couched as a redeployment to see to the defense of M’ba.
Further south, Sato could also take some solace in the fact that the 48th Division had also redeployed, falling back to the very outskirts of Nandi itself in the face of a determined and relentless attack by Patch and the 23rd Pacifica Division.
In both these actions the Japanese had suffered from the fact that they had only two regiments forward deployed on the defense. Sato had kept his 230th Regiment in the rear at M’ba, and wisely, for that vital field and the bridges over the river would already be in enemy hands if he had not done so. As for Major General Tsuchihashi in the 48th Division, he had deployed his 1st and 2nd Formosa Regiments on the Momi Line when the attack started, but retained Abe’s Regiment at Nandi as a reserve, and to watch for any possible enemy landing from the sea.
This need to keep troops on the coast between Nandi and Latouka was a serious liability, and it meant that the Japanese could never get parity with the attackers, who enjoyed a two to one advantage on both fronts.
Just as the action on the main Fiji island was looking inevitably grim for the Japanese, a long simmering feud between two senior officers was going to weigh heavily the outcome. It had started months ago, involving Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, the brilliant and aggressive planner that had helped lead Yamashita’s lightning advance through Malaya. Yet in tandem with those qualities, his temperament included a strong dose of brutality, and many atrocities were committed when Tsuji was near. One such incident was the terrible Sook-Ching Massacre of Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore, and another smaller affair had occurred on the island of Cebu, where it soon came to the attention of the Japanese commander leading the occupation there, General Kiyotake Kawaguchi.
The General had learned that several court justices and other local officials had been summarily executed by The Kempeitai, and at the urging and direction of Colonel Tsuji. He vigorously protested, calling the acts nothing more than barbaric revenge killings, and saying they were beneath the lofty heights of Bushido, the warrior’s code. Tsuji did not appreciate this opposition from a rank and file General in the Army, and resolved to exact a little more revenge against Kawaguchi.
Having become somewhat influential after his successes in Malaya and elsewhere, Tsuji maneuvered behind the scenes to get Kawaguchi’s 35th Brigade transferred to the most dangerous fronts of the war, hoping that he might then regret his remarks, or even be killed in action. It so happened that the battle underway in the Fiji Group was now the center of the hot fire of the war, and sure enough, Tsuji used his influence to see that Kawaguchi’s Brigade was placed into the 17th Army Reserve, and suggested it be sent to relieve the now badly depleted Sakaguchi Brigade on Viti Levu.
Since the 48th Division was already earmarked for deployment to Fiji, Kawaguchi’s Detachment would go to Noumea to reinforce the Ichiki Detachment there instead. As such, it became a desirable reserve in theater, close at hand and light enough to be lifted on fast destroyers. Tsuji’s revenge would soon see the unit arrive at a critical time in the battle for Viti Levu.
General Kawaguchi did not know he was being set up by Tsuji at all. In fact, he looked forward to any opportunity to get his men into battle, much preferring that to any assignment in a backwaters reserve position on New Caledonia. His brigade had stormed through Borneo, taking Kuching, Pontiak, Tarakan and other vital bases. Then he went to Cebu and Davao in the Philippines where he ran afoul of Colonel Tsuji. Heedless of his enemy’s plan, the General gleefully packed away his dress whites in a trunk to wear as he accepted the American surrender on Viti Levu—at least that was how he saw things happening in his own mind when he got the orders to assemble his troops at Noumea Harbor.
There were the cruisers Haguro and Myoko, with destroyers Ushio, Akebono, Ariake, Yugure, Shigure and Shiratsuyu, all waiting to take his men on a fast ride east through the night. He breathed in the night air, his eyes watching the clouds above as they chased the moon, confident he would soon prevail.
Confidence is one good quality in an officer during war, but when it ripened too much to overconfidence, it became a dangerous thing. That ripening was not so dangerous in a man like Kawaguchi, but it was becoming fatal in the mind of General Imamura, the overall commander directing these movements. He was now sending what amounted to the last strategic reserve the Japanese Army had in the entire South Pacific, and to a place where the merits of such a deployment were questionable, to say the least. Yet Imamura had a reason for being so generous with his thinning troop reserve. It was one he would hold close for a time, and one that would soon change the entire course of the war, or so he believed.
The only thing that mattered on Viti Levu were those airfields—not the town of Tavua, or the little harbor at Nandi Bay, nor even the gold mine. When the order to send Kawaguchi came in, the fields at Tavua and M’ba had already been rendered useless. Now there was only the main field at Nandi, about ten Kilometers north of the new front line in the south. If Patch could gain just a few more kilometers, he would have that field under his guns, and the whole reason for all these deployments would be rendered null and void.
Yet all Imamura could see was the hope that, with this new reinforcement, the situation might still be reversed. For his part, Kawaguchi had every reason to feel he would soon wear those dress whites. His honor demanded no less. The “Brigade” he commanded was really no more than a reinforced regiment, the 122nd under Colonel Oka, augmented by the Kuma Battalion from the 4th Infantry Division. It was still a strong force, and would soon become a most welcome reinforcement for the defenders on Viti Levu.