Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
Major General Arthur Samuel Allen
My father served in the First World War. He was in a transport unit in France for three years. And fortunately, returned.
His brother-in-law was a member of the 45th Battalion in the first war, and he was taken prisoner and gassed twice. But he survived and served during World War Two. His brother was Major General Arthur Samuel Allen, Commander of the Seventh Division, the youngest Colonel in World War One.
War's outbreak and early service
I was at home, and we heard it on the radio. And that was a Sunday, from memory, and on Monday, I went to work. And about 4:00 Monday afternoon, I received a telegram to immediately dress and report to the unit headquarters at Arncliffe. At that particular time, I was acting intelligence officer for the 45th Battalion. I served in that posting for about three or four months before I decided to join the Air Force as a part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
Eventually, I was taken in for training in the Air Force, in aircrew, and I started flight training. And one day when I arrived back at the airfield, I landed the plane a bit high, and they tested me and discovered that I was not suitable for training further. And so, I took my discharge from the Air Force, and two or three days later, enlisted back into the 45th Battalion. And I served with that battalion for a number of months until the 31st Brigade headquarters asked for me to be transferred to the brigade headquarters, as a sergeant acting a brigade intelligence officer.
And after several months, the Second Division sought my posting as intelligence officer of the division. And then, about September 1942, I was posted to the New Guinea Force headquarters, in Moresby. At New Guinea Force headquarters, I was in charge of the message centre, and I handled all message in and out of New Guinea Force headquarters in that period of time. And after I'd been there a few months doing that, I was approached to see if I would transfer to air liaison, and suddenly, I was air liaison for the 90th American Bomb Group in Port Moresby.
90th Bomb Group
There were no maps, and no one seemed to know how to live off the jungle, and I made part of my job to learn how to live and eat in a jungle. And I used to train the air crew, and on top of that, if they were going on a bombing raid and there was something for me to do, I was put in the crew as a waist gunner until we got over the target, when I had to go do what it was I was asked to do. Like dispatching letters to the natives about the war, and all that. That continued, but being a heavy bomb group, they were mostly doing strategic bombing, rather than close support bombing.
In May 1943, I was posted from the 90th Bomb Group to the 3rd Attack Group, which was the first bomber unit to be stationed on the northern side of New Guinea at Dobodura. And the 3rd Attack Group was a very precise and accurate group of pilots, flying Mitchell bombers and Boston bombers. Most of their attacks on shipping and such targets was done at 20 feet. And in 1943 they were skip bombing shipping. At times, the targets we were asked to bomb were things like green trees, and it's very hard to identify a single tree in a jungle. And my task in supporting it in the group was to fly with them, and identify the ground position of the unit that needed support, for argument's sake on Shaggy Ridge in New Guinea, they had difficulty in getting accurate bombing, and I arranged for the American chief pilot to go to the front line and see what it was we were trying to do for them. And it was following that Shaggy Ridge was captured.
We also laid the smoke at Nadzab, for the support of the airborne units that landed near Nadzab. Their cooperation and accuracy was never in doubt. I received a report that the biggest submarine in the Japanese Navy was expected to surface in Lae, or off Lae, at 6:00 in the evening on a certain day, and I asked the 3rd Group to attack if in fact, the submarine did rise. The aircraft arrived at three minutes past 6:00 to see the conning tower opening, and so, that was the end of the Japanese large submarine.
Air Liaison Officers
They apparently appreciated my presence because at one point in time, they tried to have me transferred to the American Air Force. And there were other Air Liaison Officers with the American units and Australian units of the Air Force.
Mine was just, my unit was just one of those…the exact number of Air Liaison Officers, I don't recall, because we were split into two groups. There was one and two Air Liaison group, and each Air Liaison group had squadron units comprising an officer, a clerk, and a driver, and that was a full unit for one Air Liaison Officer. And with the group, if there was a lot of work to be done, there were two Air Liaison Officers posted to the same group.
I was accepted as part of their unit and whatever there was going in the way of accommodation and food, I was part of that unit, and treated as though I were actually a member of the unit. The cooperation with them was nothing less than 100 percent, particularly the 3rd Attack Group.
Low level attack
The group commander asked me to go with him on mooning Japanese barges at night. And my task was to try and find dark patches in moon reflections on the ocean. And suddenly, I saw a series of shadows, point them out to the pilot. He threw the plane onto its wing and turned his landing lights on, and there in front of us were five Japanese barges loaded with troops.
We stayed there dealing with those barges until we ran out of bombs and ammunition. But the attack was done from a maximum of 20 feet above sea level. The low level was not designed for heavy bombers. It was only designed for attack by big craft like the Mitchell or the Boston, and the Beaufighter, the Australian Beaufighter. They were the ones that did, and particularly in respect to the battle of the Bismarck Sea, there were 22 Japanese vessels trying to reinforce New Guinea. And the RAAF and the American Air Force jointly attacked that convoy, and all from minimal altitude, and in fact, the whole 22 ships were destroyed. The 3rd group got somewhere around 10 or 11 of those 22 ships.
307th Bomb Group
While I was posted to New Guinea force headquarters, in charge of the message centre, it was my task, like in the afternoon, to prepare a possible communique for General Blamey to dispatch to General MacArthur. My writings were vetted by Army headquarters, Australian Army headquarters, before being shown to General Blamey for his approval and dispatch.
Morotai. I was part of the group sent to Morotai in preparation for the capture of the three oilfields in Borneo, the three oilfields being Tarakan, Balikpapan, and Brunei. I was posted to the 307th Bomb Group of the American Air Force. And we had to use heavy aircraft because their closest target was five hours flying away from our airfield. At the same time, I also assisted with attacks on the Philippines, the southern Philippines, part of MacArthur's capture of the Philippines.
Tarakan
Borneo was an almost wholly Australian attack, and the first of those was Tarakan, and I had been asked to provide a report on the airfield at Tarakan. And we flew down the airstrip at about 1000 feet, and then I reported to our Australian Army headquarters on my considered state of the airfield, which I felt was no longer useful. Subsequently, I learnt that the airfield used to rise and fall with the tide.
On Tarakan, we then started the pre-invasion bombardment, and on the day of the landing, three Air Liaison Officers were made Air Support Observers ... Sorry, Support Air Observers, and our task was to inform the general staff on the ship offshore, the state of the shore landing, the first being an hour before the landing, two hours after the landing. And at two hours after the landing, I took over for the next three hours, giving a ball to ball description of the progress of the battle.
The ground troops had fluorescent panels which were coloured and these were a guide to me as to which company or battalion line I was dealing with from the air, so that at no stage there was the possibility of misleading attacks by aircraft on our own troops. At a later period of the battle in Tarakan, we received a request for urgent bombing of a group of Japanese preparing what was possibly an attack on the troops. I asked the Commander of the 13th airport permission to fly over and assist the Australians, and he posted me into the lead aircraft to ensure that the accuracy of the bombing was going to where our troops were, in fact. And the bombing was carried out line astern.
Some months later, we received a letter from Washington, stating the bombing in that particular attack, the accuracy had been such that it was considered to be a world record for close support. And the unit, the American unit, received a presidential citation for each member. That's the main things that I recall from Tarakan...
I forgot to mention, on Tarakan, there was an interesting situation. During my flying for three hours on the first day, I discovered a gun on a ridge was firing in our direction. The pilot took instant action to change his course, and I radioed the headquarters ship in harbour that we had been fired on by a twin-barrel gun. And the staff on the ship said for me to hold on and see if they could get a destroyer to attack.
A short time later, an American voice came on the radio. "Hello, Aussie. You ever done any firing from aircraft?" And I said, "Yes, I've been trained to assist artillery." He said, "Right. The first shell is going now." I reported back, "Your direction was very good, but you were about 200 yards beyond the target." He said, "Right. Second shell going." I said, "That was good. It was 200 yards short." He said, "Great. That's all I needed. Get out of the way because the whole armament of the destroyer is now going to hit that target." There was no gun left. Their accuracy was very good.
Balikpapan
Our attention centred on Balikpapan. My task was to examine the aerial photos each evening, to determine what targets had been destroyed, and what ones needed some attention. I suddenly saw on the aerial photos a couple of days running that the Japanese were building what I thought might have been trenches. And it took me some time to fathom out that it wasn't a trench, they were designing, it was a gutter they were making from the tank farm on the hill, down, and I thought it was going to put oil right along the landing beach that the troops were to land on.
I visited Army headquarters and showed them my attitude, and they agreed that it looked as though they were going to make an oil fire for our troops to land in, and I was requested to get the American Air Force to destroy the tank farm and the cracking plant at Balikpapan. Which, after the landing, it was discovered that that had been the plan. But it's obviously saved a lot of Australian lives. We completely razed the tank farm. There were no tanks left standing when we finished our bombing.
And the cracking plant, I think possibly, and this may not be very right for me to say, but I had been asked to ensure that the cracking plant and the tank farm were not to be damaged in any way. Possibly because Shell, the Dutch firm, probably requested that. But once we found this channel being dug from the farm to the beachfront, the Australian Army decreed that they should both be destroyed, which they were.
American praise
I was once invited to a meeting between the Commanding Officer of an American unit and the Commander of the 5th Air Force headquarters. And the American Army Major complained that the American Air Force were not helping them in their landing. The Air Force General said, "No, that is correct. We are prepared to give you one aircraft per mile of advance. But in the meantime, we are assisting the people who are defeating the Japanese, and that's the Australians." That's a little bit ... But it did happen.
Japanese supply problems
Japanese headquarters for the war in the South Pacific was Rabaul, in New Britain. And as their headquarters, there was always a lot of shipping and aircraft, and this was the strategic targets that were often put forward. Wherever we knew there were problems, we would assist in doing what we could to destroy them…Airfields were attacked, too.
In fact, when the American ... when the Japanese airfield Hollandia, which then was the capital of Dutch New Guinea, when the Americans landed there, they had to bulldoze 314 wrecked aircraft off the airfield, so that they could use the airfield for attacks towards the Philippines…at no time during any of my 35 combat missions did I ever see a Japanese aircraft flying.
And it got that way for supplying reinforcements and food for Japanese troops. Shipping was just too dangerous, and they had to rely on sending barges at night, right offshore, to reinforce or feed troops. In fact, the food got such a problem for them that they started eating human flesh. And the Australian army had a pathologist who checked on the food content whenever it was located, and his job was to identify whether it was Australian or Japanese or native flesh that the Japanese were resorting to, to stay alive.
Investigating war crimes part 1
When the war concluded, I was posted to Dyke Force, D-Y-K-E, which was situated in Kupang in Timor. Our task was to disarm the Japanese in the area between Darwin and Bali. And in addition, of course, war crimes became a matter that needed urgent attention. I accepted the task of being the war crimes investigator for that area, and I used to receive information from released POWs, as to people to try to locate ...
It's not popularly realized that the majority of the enemy committing crimes was not only done by the Japanese, but by two nations that the Japanese occupied, Korea and Manchuria. We concentrated initially in locating crimes perpetrated in Timor, and I was able to arrest a Japanese warrant officer, a member of the Kenpeitai which is the equivalent of the SS in Germany because I had an eyewitness that saw this warrant officer murder five Australians and throw their bodies in a well.
During my investigation, we emptied the water from the well and located the remains of those five Australians. The warrant officer, before I could have him taken to trial, died one night, and the post-mortem indicated that he had died as a consequence of an Australian weapon lodging a shrapnel near his spine, and the shrapnel moved and severed his spinal cord. But we had to make sure that the Japanese were well aware of that, and they did attend the post-mortem, in that particular case.
Investigating war crimes part 2
We arrested a number of Japanese for doing torture to the Australians. Unfortunately, there was one case which I had to deal with, where an Australian officer had been tortured, and he, unfortunately, gave the Japanese the code words and information to enable them to deal with it.
We discovered the people who had tortured this Australian officer, and I was faced with the problem. Should I have those men brought to trial with the officer who successfully lived through the war, but how do I have him as a witness? I had no idea what the government might to do someone who had given help to the enemy. So, I never supplied the briefs to enable those men to be prosecuted. The prosecution would have only given them about three months in prison, and it wasn't worth putting someone's future at risk with the government.
Investigating war crimes part 3
With prominent Japanese criminals, they weren't dealt with at the Australian war trials. They were restricted to the Allied trials on Manus Island. One day, I had a feeling that an officer, a Major General, on one of our islands, was possibly a criminal wanted for the rape, or his part of the rape of Nanking. I visited that island and went single-handedly to the 21,000 camp of the Japanese, and after investigation, realized the person I suspected was there.
So, I had him arrested, put aboard the Australian Navy vessel that had taken me there, and that General finished up being tried on Manus Island, and was given a death sentence. I was surprised on arriving at the jetty on Sumba to find a staff car waiting there to transport me from the vessel to the camp. The car was a V12 Lincoln, and to ensure that the Indonesians did not mistake me for being a Dutch citizen, they had heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles before and after the car on the way to the camp.
On arrival at the camp, the commanding Japanese General, a Lieutenant General, supplied me with the details of the suspected criminal, and after being advised of the charges we were laying against this Major General, the Lieutenant General said that he was prepared to have the General escorted to the vessel, and he would have him delivered there at any time that I wished to nominate. And they did.
The Japanese, during my visit there, treated me absolutely perfectly. There was no indication of any anger or bad thoughts. I was treated the way I had expected to be treated. All my dealings with Japanese during the surrender in Timor, their attitude was, without question, it was instant acceptance of any rules or work details that they were put to.
I often needed information during the pursuit of war crimes, and at no time was I denied any help in locating or recognizing the Japanese responsible. And at all times during my dealings with the Japanese after the surrender, I found them all very easy to deal with, and they accepted the orders and instructions we handed to them. At no stage was there any sign of contempt for us, or anything like that. We were accepted as the victors.
A lost diary
During my war crimes investigation, I was given an envelope ... or, sorry, not an envelope, a little roughly bound up parcel. And when I opened it, inside was a diary, which had been found in a school by escaping Australians, and with a stub of a pencil, one of those Australians had maintained a diary during the time they survived, mostly health-wise, in their attempt to escape from Kupang. The capture of Kupang by the Japanese was very one-sided.
There were about 2000 Australians originally in Timor, and the Japanese landed 25,000. And because the opposition was too much. The officers suggested the troops could try and find a boat to sail back to Australia. And these young men that are mentioned in the diary, one by one, had to drop off of their escape because of health, and eventually, there was just the one left. And he finished the diary by giving his mother's name and address in Tasmania, and his wife of three weeks, in Tasmania also.
So, I posted the diary and a note to the POW's wife in Tasmania, and some weeks later, I received back a letter, stating that she appreciated my sending the diary to her and that she would always treasure it, but not as much as the person who arrived the day after the diary. Her husband had made it safely back home.
Indonesian mutiny
An incident occurred off Timor in which we became involved. The Australian government decided to return the immigrant Indonesians back to Indonesia, and on the way back, they mutinied, some of them, on the ship. And when the ship pulled in to Kupang, these Indonesians were unloaded and were based on an island off Kupang. It was my task, another one of my tasks, to periodically go over and see if they needed any assistance or help. And they were kept there, away, because in Kupang, there was a Dutch battalion, and we didn't need any fighting. We'd had enough fighting.
Captured money
I finished up with quite a large quantity of paper money and at government instruction, I was to hand that money to the Dutch battalion representative in Kupang. So, I advised them that I had several trucks loaded with this money for them to take over. The officer turned up and said he was prepared to accept the money and would sign for it if I counted it to him. The total sum of the money was 19.5 million guilder, which I had in three three-ton trucks because it was all just paper.
So, the Dutch officer refused to accept it unless I counted it. I said ... as I smoked at that time, I took a box of matches out and said he had two choices: to sign my statement of the total money or allow me to set fire to the three Japanese trucks which were going to be tossed into the sea anyway. And he signed. So, the Dutch were able to reimburse themselves with 10 percent of 19.5 million guilder.
Two Dutch officers
Our relationship with the Dutch battalion was a bit at arm's length. How we were, there were two officers, two Dutch officers, who used to come to our mess regularly, and one day, I said to one of them, "Tony, why do you always come down to our mess?" And he said, "Well, I prefer the company of Australians."
It was some time after the war that I read the "Escape from Colditz Castle," and who was the first person to leave Colditz Castle? Tony. Tony and an Englishman walked out the front gate of Colditz Castle and made their way back to England. The cooperation we received was not what I would have expected with the Dutch force, but certainly, I had very much pleasure in knowing these two other Dutch officers.
