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11. The Final Phase Actions elsewhere in the South and Southwest Pacific theaters during the spring of 1944 would relegate the Bougainville operations to tertiary importance. The occupation of the Green Islands in February, followed by the seizure of Emirau in the st. Matthias Group on 20 March, completed the isolation of Rabaul, which had meanwhile been systematically pounded into impotence. Operations undertaken by the 1st Marine Division at Cape Gloucester and by the army's 40th Division at Arawe further contained the Japanese on New Britain. Elsewhere, General MacArthur's forces on 29 February began the operation to seize the Admiralty Islands, whose Seeadler Harbor gave Admiral Halsey's ships one of the better anchorages in the South Pacific. MacArthur had received permission from the Joint Chiefs to leapfrog past the Huon Peninsula to seize Hollandia and Aitape on the northwest coast of New Guinea. This brilliant manuever resulted by the end of April in the encirclement of an entire Japanese army, rendering it useless for further operations. Thus the focus of Allied forces in the Pacific areas had shifted. No longer in a defensive mode, the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific commands were looking ahead to the invasion of the Marianas and the Philippines. Illustrating very well this change of emphasis was the altered role of Admiral Halsey. In April he was informed that he would relinquish command of the South Pacific area and take most units of the 3d Fleet north to Hawaii. There, for the rest of the war he would interchange command with Admiral Spruance of the increasingly powerful big Blue Water Fleet, which by mid-1944 could proceed relatively unopposed anywhere in the vast Pacific. The change in command was a The Final Phase 185 part of a general restructuring that on 15 June assigned General MacArthur control of the bulk of all Allied forces then operating in the South Pacific. Admiral Halsey's successor, Vice Admiral John H. Neston on Noumea, would command only a fraction of the military units available to his predecessor. General Griswold's XIV Corps was to be removed from Bougainville as soon as practicable to be used in the invasion of the Philippines. The task of General Griswold's forces, which would continue to operate on Bougainville until later in the year, remained the same as before the Japanese offensive in March. The perimeter had to be strengthened and manned at all times since Griswold fully expected the Japanese to launch another major offensive. The enemy had to be kept off balance by continual patrolling and by establishing strongpoints at strategic locations far removed from the main defense lines. Senior American officers never seriously considered offensive operations designed to capture the entire island, believing that they would be a needless waste of men and equipment. Constant air, land, and sea observation could keep track of the main Japanese forces in the north and south. As long as they remained quiescent they were no threat to the perimeter, and certainly any action by General Hyakutake could have absolutely no bearing on the war's outcome. The Americans decided to allow the Japanese space since they could now do little harm. The living conditions of the Japanese soldiers, never good under the best of circumstances, became increasingly desperate. Added to the dangers that forward troops always faced, such as contact with large American combat patrols, was the growing specter of starvation. Sealed off from regular supplies from New Ireland or New Britain, Hyakutake's army had to depend entirely on its own labors to acquire food. The normal rice ration of 750 grams of rice for each soldier was cut in April 1944 to 250 grams, and beginning in September there was no rice ration.1 A large portion of the available army and naval personnel had to be put to work growing food. Allied pilots took delight in dropping napalm on these garden plots whenever possible. The native workers who had been impressed into service were the first to defect, but soon many soldiers also just walked away from their units, taking the chance of surviving in the jungle on what could be gathered. After the failure of the March attack, morale in most units became deplorably low. There were instances, normally unimagined in the Japanese army, of open insubordination and even mutiny. Although General Hyakutake dreamed of a midsummer offensive, it became obvious that no operations as large as that smashed in March could be undertaken [3.134...

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